–> Critical Reflection #3 Assignment: Now that you’re three weeks (half way) into your senior project experience, are you answering your essential question? (CR3)

— Writing on your essential question: What have you learned about your essential question so far? What further questions do you have? and/or Has your essential question changed? If so, how? What do you want to know more about?

— How are you exploring your essential question; is it different from what you expected? If you don’t feel like you’re answering your essential question, what is happening that’s different from what you expected?

— Are you surprised by any of the challenges that you’ve faced so far? How have you met those challenges and what can you do going forward to deal with them?

4/29

Essential question: How can storytelling help me to examine the world around me?

Honestly, my project hasn’t served my essential question as much as I hoped it would. I made an effort to introduce some world issues into my plot, but they feel somewhat manufactured, such as the setting being in a resort town. I don’t have the space to do that subplot justice and continue my main plot as I want to. I’d also hoped my project could help me examine the world a little closer to home through characters, and while I can do this in writing exercises, it’s not really innate to the project as I had hoped. My essential question is very open-ended, which I designed on purpose so that I could adapt with my creative process. I’ve found that while I have to fight to draw out some parts of the project, others come easily. Occasionally I’ll have a moment of inspiration and get an idea that I feel is important to the overall narrative, though I can’t explain why. As an example: while I planned to have all the characters use real weapons in their fights, I’ve now decided to include a scene where a character, cooking something in a frying pan, turns from the stove, plates the food, and keeps turning to hit an attacker with the now-empty pan. It’s almost Home-Alone-y in its improvised violence, but that’s not why I want to keep it; rather, I feel that this juxtaposes domesticity and danger in a way that I like. However, this isn’t really addressed in the rest of the plot, making for a choppy overall message.

This sort of writing is totally new to me, and I came in with very few expectations. One thing I definitely did not consider and which has proved challenging is continuity requirements. Every choice is an avalanche: if I change one thing about one character or one scene, I have to go through everything I’ve done to make sure the change is supported (or at least not challenged) and to update as necessary. This can be going through and replacing a character’s name, or a bigger change, like to the plot. Either way, it can be tedious and often leads to even more changes.