Creative Forms: Short Fiction, Narrative Poems, Scripts and Adaptations

The Big Bad Wolf hires a publicist

Imagine the Big Bad Wolf calls a public-relations firm. People think I'm a villain, he says. I want a press release that tells my side. Your job is to write it.

That is one of the curriculum's own suggestions: Grade 11 writers might create public relations texts to change a villain's image, or turn a short story into a narrative poem. These tasks are fun, but they are also serious literary work. To transform a text, you have to understand it deeply: its characters, its point of view, its structure and its gaps. This lesson teaches you to write creative forms with craft and to explain your choices, which is how they are usually assessed.

Short fiction: deliberate choices

Point of view decides what the reader can know.

• First person (I) feels close and personal, and allows an unreliable narrator, whose version the reader learns to question.
• Third person limited (she, inside one character's mind) gives closeness with a little distance; the reader knows only what that character knows.
• Third person omniscient can enter any mind and comment on events; it suits large casts and wide views.
• Second person (you) is rare and intense; it can make the reader feel accused, implicated or instructed.

Structure decides when the reader learns things.

• In medias res: start in the middle of the action, then fill in background.
• Flashback and frame: a present-day scene frames a memory.
• Non-linear: scenes out of order, connected by an image or theme.

Symbol and motif: an object or image that gathers meaning through repetition (a key that keeps appearing; a rink that is flooded again each night).

Subtext: in strong dialogue, characters often do not say what they mean. For you? Always. might be friendly, sarcastic or sad, depending on what the reader knows.

Turning a story into a narrative poem

A narrative poem tells a story in verse. The ballad is the classic form: quatrains (four-line stanzas), lines alternating four and three stressed syllables, rhyme on lines 2 and 4 (abcb), and often a refrain that repeats.

To transform a story:

1. Find the spine. List the five to seven events the story cannot lose.
2. Compress. One stanza per key moment. Cut explanation; keep concrete images and a few words of dialogue.
3. Choose sounds on purpose. Rhythm can speed up for action and slow for grief; a refrain can show time passing or build dread.
4. Decide what the new form adds. A poem can make one image (the lone figure flooding ice) into a symbol in a way a story might not.

Scripts and monologues

In a script, the audience only sees and hears. There is no narrator to explain thoughts, so feelings come through dialogue, action and stage directions.

• Scene headings say where and when.
• Character names in capitals before each speech.
• Stage directions in italics or brackets: short, present tense, only what can be seen or heard.
• Parentheticals (not looking up) tell the actor how to deliver a line, used sparingly.

A monologue is one character's long speech. A dramatic monologue speaks to a silent listener and reveals more than the speaker intends. Writing a monologue for a minor character in a novel you are studying (the friend, the parent, the antagonist) is a common Grade 11 task: it shows you understand their perspective and the events they witnessed, which you must keep consistent with the source.

Recasting a character: the villain's press release

A press release has real conventions: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE at the top; a headline; a dateline (place and date); a lead answering who, what, when, where, why; a quotation from a spokesperson; a short About paragraph describing the organization; and a centred ### to show the end.

Public relations writing uses spin: euphemism (structural inspection for blowing a house down), selective facts, and reframing (the villain as misunderstood). Writing spin teaches you to spot it, which connects to the critical literacy you practise in the Media Studies unit. The best villain press releases are funny and faithful: every claim twists a real event from the source text.

Respecting stories and their owners

Not every story is free to adapt. Many First Nations, Métis and Inuit stories belong to particular families, communities or tellers and have protocols about who may tell them and when; in many Anishinaabe communities, for example, certain stories are traditionally told only in winter, when snow is on the ground; practices differ between communities, so ask rather than assume. Do not retell or rewrite a traditional or sacred story without permission. Instead, adapt texts that are published for study (and credit the author), write original stories, or, with your teacher, invite a storyteller who can guide you.