creating a story linking two newspaper articles

in groups of four we were given two unrelated newspaper clippings.  The aim of the task was to think of a storyline to link the stories by thinking of a film plot.

The first story was about the results of an inquest of a baby who had died in a Nottingham hospital after a ‘drug error’  The second story was a South Wales woman aged 21 years old who had received 160 parking fines.

Our group came up with the following plot:

Louisa Swinburn was sacked after the dreadful mistake and moved from Notts to South Wales. She had a breakdown, is unemployed and got 160 parking fines.  She has also discovered she is having a baby.

Introduce a red herring to surprise the reader

The reason for the mistake.  Louisa had been really drunk after splitting up with her boyfriend.  Really stressed at work

Louisa’s best friend bumps into her ex in Nott’s and spills the beans about Louisa’s pregnancy (his baby)

Who are the characters?

Louisa Swinburn

Age 21

Just qualified as a nurse when ‘drug’ mistake’ happened

Was living with her boyfriend however night before mistake she had a big argument with her boyfriend.  She got very drunk drowning her sorrows.

After accident she runaway to Wales

Smoker

Not very strong, insecure.  Outside she appeared confident.

Best friend is Danielle from Notts.

Boyfriend is Paul

We then worked by ourselves to write the story around the plot which we had created.

I started mine by writing dialogue, but really struggled, after speaking with Gary he advised me to avoid dialogue as if was clearly not my strong point and try to find a way of working around it.

Here another free writing exercise writing up the start of the story which we put together.

Stepping out of the scruffy 2 bedroom flat, Louisa apathetically tears last nights parking ticket from her window and throws it amongst the pile of rubbish building up in  the  back of her car. The car door let out a deafening screech as she slammed it shut. She lethargically leans back in her seat and pulls her seatbelt across her, the heat from the sun pounding against the pile of rubbish in her car creates a sickly musky scent surrounding her. However not even seeming to notice the smell she just places her key in the ignitions and gets ready to drive off into the sun. ‘’ring,ring,’’ Louisa is stopped suddenly by the ringing of her phone.

I struggled with this task,  the group which I was put in didn’t seem to work very well together and our ideas just didn’t seem to go anywhere, I constantly felt as if the group were dismissing my ideas as if they had already created an idea  of where they though the story was going and I was just trying to twist it around.