no spoiler alerts
Again, I am not going to spoil the book for you; as you are reading this you may just be begining 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 sequal (and, in fact, I would be surprised if Mandel is not writing one); if she does, that's fine. This will be your sequal.
And I am using the term "sequel" loosely here. If you want it to be a prequel (something that happened before the first book) or a parallel story (something that happens elsewhere at roughly the same time as the original (what is going on with Miranda, for example?), then that is fine.
"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 just one dramatic chapter (about 8 pages). Do not give a lot of backgorund about the first novel; just begin where your sequel begins, in the middle of action probably. Consider a scene from the middle of your book, not the opening or ending chapter. Give us a scene or two involving a couple of character. You could look at what a couple of the original characters are doing after the events of the first novel; you might look at totally different characters in another part of the world (one writer looked at what happened to those people who took one of the airplanes west, for example). Is this further traveling? Does it take place later at Clark's museum? Are the characters new (showing what is happening somewhere we have not yet seen? The choice is yours.
To get an idea of just how little a novel covers in a short chapter, review a short chapter from the original book.
Since so much of this book invites us to think about how to survive off the grid, you will possibly 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). That will, then, be the focus of the research portion of this project (see below).
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 (or your teammate) 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.
what you will turn in (and how)
As was noted in the pinkinsh sidebar box near the top, this project will be done in steps; there are three of them. Each step has a separate due date (see Class Schedule page). The first step requires you to make a choice.
1. 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. Be sure you check the due date on the Class Schedule.
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. The (short) proposal will be typed in MLA format, and it will include:
A project title (it can certainly change)
An overview of your project as you envision it. The final project will only be eight pages, so you cannot write more than a short chapter from your sequel (more on that under Final Project below). Where will this be set? Will it be happening before the events of Station Eleven? in a different location at the same time? after the events of the first novel? What will the situation be? What characters do you imagine? Really, anything you imagine you can pack into this very short chapter you can mention here (and you can certainly change that as you go along).
Thoughts on what research you will be doing to help make this story feel real. For example, if your story takes place in an old civil defense bunker, what is life like in a bunker? That is what you would have to research.
An initial Works Cited page (in MLA format) showing some sources are available for the research portion of your project (you can see more on the Research Paper below). You should have at least three sources.
You will e-mail the Project Proposal as an attched Word (.doc or .rtf) file. Once it is APPROVED! you can go on to the next step.
Simple enough. Before submitting your proposal, look at the Proposal Sample for your project in the Resources section on Etudes.
2. the Research Paper
The research paper will be due a couple of weeks prior to the Final Project (due date is on the Class Schedule). It is absolutely required and is worth up to 100 points.
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.
One part of this project will have you do research on details you will use in your story to bring it to life, to make it feel authentic. If, for example, 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 geography of Colorado, earthships, living off the grid. It can, in part, be survivalist information, or it might 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. Writing about the city in the distance at the end of the novel might have you research how to start power when the grid is down. One sequel focused on Spain (the student was interested in Spain) and how the customs of a small Basque village might have them deal with plague victims in a different way than we see in the original novel. The research was on Spain, rural geographical features, details of rural life, Basque customs.
Here are a couple of 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. A sequel might involve just one chapter where the cave dwellers are outnumbered and are 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.
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 Colorado Rockies. What is that geography like? What would be available to him in his plane? What resources are there around him? These are the things you would research.
The research paper should be about four-to-eight pages and use at least three secondary sources (nothing like Wikipedia, please). The last (additional) page of the research paper will be an MLA-format Works Cited page.
You will e-mail the Research Paper as an attached Word (.doc or .rtf) file.
You can view a partial Research Paper Sample for your project in the Resources section on Etudes.
3. the Final Project
The Final Project will be the sequel itself. It will be about eight pages and is also worth up to 100 points.
As I noted above, "sequal" seems like a very hefty task. You are not expected to write several hundred pages (thank goodness), but how can you deliver an entire sequal to a novel in just eight pages.
Well, you can't.
About the most you can hope to do is a solid, interesting, dramatic chapter that gives a sense of one pivotal scene from your sequel. There can be a conflict (how do my three characters cross a flooded river? or will my one character leave the safety of a fallout shelter when his food is running out or when he is going stir crazy?). You will want to set the scene with lots of descriptive details (what IS that fallout shelter like? It's probably a bit different from the video game Fallout. Your research will have helped you with those details). With two or more characters you will certainly want some dialogue (can you recall a lot of novels without dialogue?).
And even though you want to tie up all of the loose ends and tell the reader who dies and who lives happily ever after, RESIST THAT URGE!
I recommend you end with some sort of cliffhanger, you get your character(s)into a situation, incorporate some problem, leave the reader guessing what will happen (sort of like every dramatic television show or movie you've ever seen; sort of like Master Chef which cuts to a commercial before letting you know which contestant will be eliminated). Yes, it's maddening, but it's effective.
So if your characters have created a rope bridge to cross that raging river, put one character half way across, and have the branch on the far side of the river start to creak and snap. Stop there. End with a scouting party getting captured by townspeople, or have a scientist discover a cure but have no clear way of getting the cure TO anyone--something like that.
Be creative. Write like a novelist (show, do not explain). Have fun!
It is possible to turn this in by putting it on a website (sort of like an e-publication), but it also makes sense to submit this as an MLA-format Word (.doc or .rtf) document that you attach to an e-mail and send me. The choice is yours :)
You can view a Final Project sample for the Sequel in the Resources section on Etudes.