Blog Day 5

For the halfway mark in our A-term, we began by doing our daily writing prompt, which was a (made up) quote about bioluminescence and glow sticks, from which we had to write a story. After that, we spent some time watching or reading for individual books or TV/movies.

Everyone in the class had to read a book (within reasonable length) and watch either:
     - a series of movies (at the maximum, a trilogy),
     - 6-8 hours worth of a TV show
     - or 3 completely unrelated movies to compare and contrast

All of the works must be speculative fiction of any sort, whether it be sci-fi, fantasy, dystopian, or anything else in between. By doing this, we hope to gain a better understanding of speculative fiction and worldbuilding, along with character design. We could work in groups of 1 or 2 for the project.

Image: Cover art for Steelheart.

For example, sophomore Casey Carter and I are reading Steelheart, a book by New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson. The story is a simple premise:


10 years ago, a star appeared in the sky one day and gave some people powers. The power led to many gaining a god complex and viewing humans as beneath them, and the strongest of these "Epics" have taken up residence in different cities in the US. Humanity now lives under the iron boots of those with the power to kill them as easily as swatting a bug.
David Charleston is a normal human in the steel-covered city of Newcago. Steelheart–a man with the strength of 10 men and control of the elements–rules the city now. He is completely invulnerable. No one fights him...except for the Reckoners.
David has been studying, waiting, and planning like the Reckoners have ever since Steelheart came to Chicago and killed his father.
David has seen Steelheart Bleed.
He wants to see it again.


After we spent some time doing assignments for the class, we worked on–you guessed it–assignments for the class! Another requirement is that everyone writes some sort of piece of speculative fiction. It can be a short story, series of short stories, a chapter of a novel, or some other genre–within reason and it must be speculative fiction, of course. After working on this for an hour, we broke for lunch.

Image: Cover art for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

After our lunch, we began watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the episode "Hush" from season 4) to see a unique example of worldbuilding because the episode is silent for the majority of the runtime. Once we finished that, we talked about the episode and how it developed the world and the plot although it was silent before we continued working on our personal stories after a break. After approximately an hour, we were given a choice: either work on the stories or continue watching or reading your chosen piece(s) of media.




This was a fun first week to the A-term, and although I am an experienced casual writer, I already feel that I have learned a lot about writing fantasy and sci-fi in speculative environments, and I look forward to continuing on this path next week.