Station Eleven - Sequel Project: Part 1
Research Paper

there's research, and then there's research

As I mentioned on the main Sequel Project page, part of your research involves you familiarizing yourself with various things (setting details, situations, how things work--whatever you need to make the scene/chapter you are creating feel authentic. For example, if you have your characters catching Blackfin Snapper in Lake Shasta, any reader knowing much about fishing will know you got it wrong; the Blackfin Snapper is an ocean fish found mainly in the Gulf of Mexico. Lake Shasta is a large freshwater lake in Northern California.

Something as simple as having characters hide in an abandoned Carl's Jr. in Pennsylvania will get a savvy reader saying, "But they don't have Carl's Jr. in Pennsylvania; the chain is called Hardee's there." Your scene will instantly become unbelievable. You need to get the details right.

However, these are just to help you with the final project (coming up); it is not what you are doing specifically for your research paper.

so what's the research paper about?

The research paper will be due prior to the Final Project (due date is on the Class Schedule). It is absolutely required and is worth up to 100 points.

If you did not read the lecture on How (and Why) to do a Research Paper very carefully, please do so now.

ok? done?

Reminder: if you did not yet get your Sequel Project Proposal APPROVED, then you need to do that now. I will not read or grade your Research Paper until both of those have been checked off. And late papers are penalized 10%.

ok? done with all that?
whew!

The general research on geography, living conditions, clothing, and so on is just that--general, and writing about everything in your paper 1) would make the research paper unfocused/choppy (and probably pointless), and 2) would make the research paper a hundred page assignment. You do not want to have to write a book. You are going to focus on just one key element of setting or of situation or of activity that will make the scene you are writing feel authentic.

For example, if you are writing about a couple trying to survive the plague by living in a remote Colorado earthship that is totally off the grid, you will research the Colorado, earthships that are off the grid. Your thesis will be whatever unique element(s) an earthship has to help the couple succeed (making your thesis something like "Earthship design gives it unique advantages for someone to survive completely off the grid," and that is what the entire research paper will support, in great detail).

Here are a couple of other specific examples:

• Imagine you are writing about a small group that is protecting a water source and some other resources. They are in a cave above a valley, and marauders keep trying to attack them to get their resources. That's a lot going on, and it would take 100+ pages for all of that to unfold with its multiple conflicts and obstacles. Your one scene could be narrowed to the cave dwellers furiously fortifying their cave and laying traps. Research (and there are some great books on this), would involve how people fortified and laid traps to hold off large forces in the past; you will probably find books on castle fortifications and on specific battles long before there was electricity. You might even find some useful Doomsday Prepper books on this subject.

  Your research paper could open with an "Imagine you are in a small group holed up in a cave with hostiles heading your way. You have little time to prepare, but you do your best to lay traps and fortify the cave. This sort of thing has been donw as long as conflicting groups have tried to hold off invaders, and there are simple but practical ways to effectively protect a small, isolated locatation using just what is at hand." Notice that that last part seems a lot like a thesis statement, and it is. Your entire research paper will then be practical information on ANYONE (not characters in a book) building simple fortifications and traps.

• It is soon after the plague has been discovered, and four people are surviving in a rocket silo bunker in Kansas. What is it like inside such a bunker? What stores/provisions are there? What would a floorplan look like? What would the daily routine be like? You would have to research that (just as the creators of 10 Cloverfield Lane had to research life in an underground bunker to make their movie [partly] believable).

• You follow the pilot who left Severn City to go see what his home is like. Perhaps he has crashed in the Sierras. Researching everything about the Sierras is far to huge; fortunately, our your pilot is ex-military and has had some wilderness training. He knows how to catch small game with improvised traps. Do you? If not, then that would be the focus of your research paper. NOT how to survive in the wilderness, BUT INSTEAD how to catch small game with home-made traps. That's all. That's plenty.

  And, later, when you do the Final Project, the scene you write might show that pilot hunkered down watching a trap; the small critter approaches, and, CLIFFHANGER, we don't know if it's caught or not (or it gets away, and the pilot sets the trap again--END OF SCENE).

And if I'm doing the comic book?

Really, it's the same thing; keep the focus of your research paper very small, and fashion a thesis statement that gives your paper a point. The problem is that with a comic, you can tell a larger story, so you have more research choices, but select one crisis, one situation to do research on. For example,

• Dr. Eleven's space station has sprung a leak following a fight with the creatures below. What would he do? You would need to do a research paper exploring how real astronauts would deal with that situation (step-by-step), so that you could have your characters do similarly in the comic book.

Either way, keep it small. Fortunately, you actually selected a narrow focus for your research paper, when you turned in your Proposal, and as long as it was APPROVED, it should work fine :)

specific requirements

The paper must be in current (8th edition) MLA format and will be about four-to-six pages (with an additional page being the Works Cited page). If the paper or WC page are not in MLA format, the paper will not be accepted, and you will have to fix it for a late penalty. As long as you did the WC page correctly for the Proposal, this should not be a problem.

• Papers that are less than four FULL pages will not be accepted

• Papers that are less than five FULL pages are trying for a "C"

• Five FULL pages or more are required for your paper to be considered for a higher grade

You should have at least three sources, but you will probably have more, and, again, AT LEAST ONE SOURCE MUST BE A BOOK.

You are required to have direct quotations from all of those sources, and those direct quotations must be followed by parenthetical citations. Overall, about 1/3 of your paper should be documented quotations from the sources.

Do include pictures if possible, but remember that pictures do not count as pages of text.

You will e-mail the Research Paper as an attached Word (.doc, .docx, .pdf or .rtf) file.

you are not alone

There are samples in the Files section of Canvas.

an (important) afterthought:

When you get to the Final Project, you will not quote directly or include citations or a Works Cited page. You will borrow and re-imagine some of this information and put it into your own words in a way that logically sets a scene, explores an activity, etc. However, fiction writers often include an Acknowledgements page either at the beginning or at the end of their book(s), and it would be nice for you to have an Acknowledgements page after your scene. There will be more on that in the instructions on the Final Project :)