Monday, February 23, 2009

My Medias wouldn't go In Res today....

Okay, so today I'm trying to help some of my Creative Fiction I students, many of whom are freshmen and just getting used to this 'we have to do work now?' thing called High School. Not many of them understand why they should be starting their stories with action and conflict instead of backstory. It was, unfortunately, quite useless to name from the ba-zillion novels that do it correctly, because not enough of my kids have read a great deal of fiction (popular or classic) yet. So I went with movies. No big deal, right? Gotta take them where they are and teach 'em up from there, right?

Only one problem.

I spaced.

Seriously. Me. The guy who posts movie quotes for all of my students to guess during the day. I wracked my brain for some good examples, and I came up with nothin'.

Squat.
Diddly.
Bubkus.
You get the picture.

So yeah, I copped out and asked them to volunteer some examples (those that got what I meant by In Medias Res, at least) and got a few good ones...the Bourne films, Bond films, the new one with Nick Cage (Bangkok Dangerous?).

But obviously, I need a much bigger list for next time, and certainly more of a genre variety. I am constantly chastised because I don't use enough quotes from "girl movies" (Better Off Dead counts, doesn't it?). So anyway, a number of acceptable "girl movies" that start in the middle of things would be massively helpful.

Whaddaya think, gang? Any ideas to help my poor burgeoning writers grow? Alex, I'm lookin' at you here (just kiddin')

2 comments:

Abbie M. said...

Don't worry Mr. Nantz, we had no idea you were fumbling for an example. :)

If you're wondering WHY I appear to be stalking your blog (I'm not, I swear!), it's because your comment about your story in Pulp Pusher today made me really curious, so I just had to check it out. But I had no idea how to get there, so I came here, and got sidetracked by reading other posts, and... well, you get the idea.
See you monday!
Abbie

Jake Nantz said...

Abbie,
Hon, I don't know that I have enough "regulars" to call anyone a blog-stalker. At the very least, I'm glad you read back through and (hopefully) got something out of it. Though I'm still serious about you guys not reading that story. and yeah, I know, you guys can look at it on your own time, but I'm still not sure I want you reading it. Might give me an entirely different reputation at school....