The Station Eleven Project: Sequel Option
Read the directions carefully. There are several steps; be sure you don't miss anything.
This assignment is worth up to 210 points per student. It is the major assignment of the semester. You cannot pass the class if you do not complete this project. Start early; work smartly and steadily.
No Spoiler Alerts!
I am not going to spoil the book for you; as you are reading this you may just be beginning the novel (I hope you take lots of notes!). Nevertheless, by the time you reach the end, you will see that there are obvious opportunities for a sequel (and, in fact, I would be surprised if Mandel is not writing one); if she does, that's fine. This will be your sequel.
"Sequel" sounds a bit daunting. After all, Station Eleven is over 300 pages long. No, I do not expect you to write a 300-page sequel. I do expect you to write somewhere in the neighborhood of a chapter or two (say 6-8 pages). Do not give a lot of background about the first novel; just begin where your sequel begins, in the middle of action probably. Give us a scene or two involving some of the original characters and what they are doing now. Is this further traveling? Does it take place later at the museum? The choice is yours.
Since so much of this book invites us to think about how to survive off the grid, you will want to work some element of that into the scene(s) you write. It does not have to be a lot, just a few setting details or actions suggesting how your characters are living (on the road, at the airport, in the town to the South, wherever).
Keep it lively. Give your reader a sense of character, of place, of situation (make it exciting perhaps?). Use lots of descriptive detail. Do not explain; write the narrative the way a novelist would write it. Also, do not try to tell a complete story; this is just a very small bit of a novel. It is a great idea to introduce a problem and not resolve it (that is called a cliff-hanger, and it leaves your reader wanting more).
Warning: No Silly Zombie-Clone Stories
Yes, you do want to have some conflict, some obstacle, some tension in your story, but try to find a balance.
However, remember, please, that the book we read was not World War Z or 28 Days Later. Mandel's novel was the finalist for the National Book Award because it was not just a thriller-killer work. Don't do something silly like resurrect The Prophet, and as much as I applaud the storyline of The Last of Us, well, that has been done...lots. Just as the tribes want "the best" literature (they demand Shakespeare, for goodness sake), your reader wants something thought-provoking, not just provocative.
This is not really a spoiler; if you have not finished the book yet, this will not mean anything to you. In the last line, Clark "likes the thought of ships moving over the water, toward another world just out of sight" (Mandel 333).
That might give you an opening thought about how to shape your sequel. Since you will be researching the creation of an off-the-grid community, what wonders might your characters come across as they enter "another world just out of sight"? Will it be the first logical steam punk community? It certainly could be a dangerous place. This community might fear the re-emergence of old ways (Clark wonders if he should stop telling the young about the past; it disturbs them).
Also remember that you are not limited to the characters given in the first novel. This could be a tale of something happening similtaneously to the events in Station Eleven, only in a very different part of the world. What might an isolated community on one of those huge container ships be like? You might have to modify your research a bit if you looked at that angle, and that's OK.
The Various Steps
- Create a Project Proposal and submit it for approval (all Projects require Proposal approval); a sample proposal can be found in the Resources section on Etudes. You will need to turn this in BEFORE the final project. Check the Schedule for the due date for this piece of the project. This is worth a maximum of 10 points.
- Create a Research Paper: Writers want their work to feel real. Stephen King, for example, spent paragraphs describing a run down diner and its jukebox in his book Christine, and to get it just right, he studied an old diner, looked at the old jukebox. Writers do research.
Thus, you wll need to do some research on how to live off the grid. It can, in part, be survivalist information, but more of the research should focus on how to start and sustain a small community (what hippies used to call communes). Without power or...well, power pretty much does it...where would the community locate? What limitations would they have, and how could they inventively overcome them? Would they, for example, try to rebuild a water wheel to turn a generator and get some power? What do your sources suggest? A more-modern community might use solar panels (surely in this post-apocalyptic community books about solar power must exist somewhere). Other major concerns are shelter, food, health, safety, eventually luxuries/comforts. Note: for a very interesting sub-topic here, you might want to investigate Earth Ships. The research paper should be at least four pages and use at least three secondary sources (nothing like Wikipedia, please). The last (fifth) page of the research paper will be an MLA-format Works Cited page. - Create a Final Project. This will be the sequel described above. Again, this will be about six to eight pages typed up in MLA format.
- It is possible to turn this in by putting it on a website (sort of like an e-publication), but it makes more sense to submit this as two papers. The choice is yours.
The Sequel Project Proposal
Before you spend a great deal of time on the research, the invention, the writing, you will need to get a Project Proposal approved by me.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: I will not accept your final project if you have not had the Project Proposal approved. Then things roll down hill in a very unfortunate way--you will not get a score for this 200-point paper; you will not pass the class.
The proposal itself is not hard, but it does require you to have considered your options, to have thoroughly read and understood the project choices.
Your proposal must include the following:
- A project title (it can certainly change)
- A brief description of your research
- An initial Works Cited page (in MLA format) showing a minimum of three sources which are available for the research portion of your project.
- A brief synopsis of what you plan to cover in your sequel.
Simple enough.
A sample Sequel Proposal can be found in the Resources section on ETUDES. Be sure to look at this before you turn in your own proposal.
Sample Projects for this option can be found in the Resources section on Etudes.