Kebiru

I needed to share my rebuttal to the idea of "Black" was a label given to us by White people.

Facebook comment:

"But Black is English for the Spanish word Negro. Yes, it is a label but labels are still for property. Just wish we'd stop identifying as colors because we are people and not crayon adjectives, an inaccurate one at that."

Me:

From the beginning of slavery, Colonist have always referred to themselves as White. Others were given such color designation: Natives=Red, Chinese=Yellow and so on. And yet we were treated and LABELLED as lesser. Story time: I was on a cruise for my honeymoon in 2016. An old white guy complements me on my sketching and then politely asks "Are you with that other Colored lady?" "Nah. I'm on my Honeymoon." I was still colored to his generation. You may want to believe the stories that White America "gave" us the name Black. History shows us differently. We fought long and hard to be equal. To be the Black to their White. I'm fine with that.

I was finishing page 84 of Kamau (yeah I'm really holding out on you guys) to get volume 3 done for a comic convention. The problem with ending the volume was 'where to end it.' I thought of the 7page 3 Act Structure that I always introduce in my Comic Book Club workshops. My 3 Act Structure is broken into Problem, Attempts and Solution. The length of time you take showing/writing the Problem is equal to the time Solving the problem. The Attempts only need half the time to show. In the way of a film, the Problem is given 30mins, the 3 Attempts are given 15mins and leaves 30mins for the Solution. Unless your Marvel...

Act 1 'the Problem'

When writing your story, stop thinking about how your character will fight, the cool powers or twisting narratives. This thinking veers you off track. All stories start with a problem that guides the story along. That's all you need as a framework. When it comes to my 7page limitation, the 1st Act is given 2 pages.

Page one introduces the norm of the world and the characters in it. This is were you set the rules of powers and magic, who the character is before the change, etc. Harry Potter is tormented by is Uncle and lives under the stairs for example. Page two introduces the problem. Simple enough as introducing the bad guy's plans, or the trip to wherever. Harry is a wizard and has to go to school.

Act 2 'Attempts'

Once you have your problem, it's time to plan 3 solutions... that will go wrong. This is the point were college writers will roll their eyes at me and share graphs of proper story structure with midpoints, escalations and climax. Again, thinking like this only muddies the brainstorming. A better approach is to think pragmatically. A space princess leaves a message in a droid for help. First thing to do? Get off the planet. That's an Attempt in itself.

Each Attempt is a page (Page three, four and five), but it's how you present the Attempts is what governs the genre you want. (Note: I'm still breaking this part down so bare with me) Mysteries like Harry Potter uses the breadcrumb approach. Each Attempt to solve the mystery ends with a new questions. The second Attempt of a love story usually shows the underlining problems of the new relationship. The third Attempt often ends the worst way.

Advance Writing: B-plots are added along side to flesh out the other characters. In some cases it moves the story along, like in the case of Hamlet's madness in Hamlet. And, only add this when you've written the first structure.

Act 3 'Solution'

The Solution is the final plan that solves your problem. This is the confrontation with the bad guy, the hair brain scheme to get the girl back, etc. When approaching this you can break the final 2 pages (Page six and seven) into whatever works best. It could be the race to the problem and facing it, facing the problem and the fallout or the problem into a twist. Who knows.

Is this the professional way of looking at a story? No, but I've seen more big budget films with an over-complicating the narrative that fail to attract an audience. While simple plots make it big. I've been teaching this way for over 6 years and the short stories my students have written have been great. So if it works for 9+ year old children, anyone over 18 can do it better.

Tell me what you think?