Tag: Project 2 update

For those of you have not heard my project 2 idea, I will be writing an NPR article about Fragile-X syndrome (an autism-like disorder) and my research on it. The article will essential be a news article describing the foreseeable cure that was discovered by my lab (the Kwan Lab). I would like to incorporate some personal accounts of Fragile-X that I find online. My intentions for the piece are to make it something that is easy for anyone to read and understand.

I went into this project with the goal of making a RadioLab talk out of it for the third project, but I am having trouble fitting my project into a format that would work for RadioLab. If you are not familiar with RadioLab, it is a radio talk show project by NPR that investigates strange stories and seeks to make worldly conclusions from them. It’s an awesome program.

My main concern for this project is that I am not reaching my full creative potential. I am thinking I may change the format of the piece to make something a bit more unique. If I can find a way to make my project fit the RadioLab format, perhaps I will write the dialogue for a RadioLab show.

Since my last official posting I have changed my direction on my project 2 a bit to reflect the fact that I am not really a fiction writer, nor do I want to be, and it would be immensely difficult and frustrating to have my first go at it be so time constrained. Keeping with my original theme of dystopian literature, I decided to instead write a fake piece for the online magazine, Slate, exploring why dystopian fiction has reemerged as so popular recently. I plan to interview a couple friends who enjoy the genre and look at some trends and other article. I will most likely argue that we are in a time where our generation feels the future of the planet is certainly at stake, and our interest in dystopias reflects our fear of the unknown, or something like that.

As I mentioned in my “Why I Write” paper, I am not a multiple drafts kind of girl. I generally will not sit down and write a word of a paper until I’m ready to write the entire thing. Therefore, there currently is no tangible “work in progress” and I am not really bothered by that. I have been making an effort to familiarize myself more with Slate so I can write in its tone and style, I have been researching the recent popularity of stories like  The Hunger Games and The Giver. Taking the idea from Sara Estes, I will probably try to use that website newsjack to make a cool looking Slate article.

Any suggestions of other things I should talk about in my article would be highly appreciated!

So I’ve been writing a short story for my Project 2. Immediately as I got going I started to realize how hard it would be to keep the story short, and not give up any of the content that I want. So far, I have written a section from the point of view of just one of my characters, and I was surprised at how little of the story I was able to bring forward. However, the upside to this is the fact that I have been able to develop the character a good amount already.

My other question that has stuck in my head is the way I have the events coming up in my story. So far for my first character Ed, I have used a staggered delivery. For example, it starts introducing a man with lung cancer, and says it has been 2 months since his diagnosis. From that sentence I go back in time to the doctor’s visit, and have that dialogue. Right after that I bring the character back to the current situation. Shortly after this he goes back in reminiscence of the first cigarette that he ever smoked. Within this memory I jump around a little bit too. It makes sense to me, and I think it’s easy enough to follow, but it could be an issue to actual readers.

Other than these though, the project is coming along. Fortunately, I have a pretty good plan of how I want to write the story, and the direction it is going.