"Researching Your Character"

Week Two: Discussion Board - "Researching Your Character" (Due: Aug 15 Status: Not Completed)

Discussion Board Goal:

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking your story from logline to basic outline. In order to chart the journey of your protagonist, you need to understand how he or she would respond in any given circumstance. Understanding what obstacles to give your character requires knowing their background, lifestyle, location, current situation, and how all those factors affect their responses to situations, impact their motivations and, therefore, how believable they'll be. If you let your idea for the story dictate character rather than the other way around, you’ll run into scenarios where you’ll end up with contrived characters, scenes and dialogue, and an audience that can’t connect to your story.

This discussion is intended for you to better get to know your characters.

Instructions:

1. From the story you have chosen for your final thesis project, select a subject your protagonist would be familiar with but that you are not. This can, but does not have to be one of the areas you identified for research in last week’s discussion.

Example:

• Your protagonist is an FBI profiler, but you've never worked as one. Or, your antagonist is an Iraq war vet with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and you’ve never had the disorder.

2. Research 10 facts on that subject. You should strive to pull information from a variety of sources.

3. In your post, indicate the subject matter you’ve researched, the 10 facts you’ve found, and cite your sources.

4. Next, check my contribution to the discussion to find out which classmate you’ve been assigned to. Your task will be to take the subject matter he or she has researched, and find an additional five facts about that topic.

5. Post your response, indicating the classmate and subject matter you’ve been assigned to, the five additional facts you’ve uncovered, and where you found the information.

NOTE: Since this portion of the assignment is for your classmate's research, I'm asking that you PLEASE USE APA GUIDELINES so your classmate can find the information you uncovered if they decide to look more into the information you found for them.

6. Look at the additional facts your classmate has found about the subject matter you chose. Did you learn something new? Were they able to find information somewhere you did not? Did you get any ideas where you could look for more info?

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are basing your protagonist on yourself, you MUST complete this assignment using your ANTAGONIST.