Hacking Fiction: an experiment in textual transformation

Your goal in this assignment is to write a sequel/spinoff to one of the novels we’ve read in class – – Jeff VanderMeer, The Strange Bird; Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife; Rebecca Roanhorse, Trail of Lightening; Ling Ma, Severance; Ben Winters, The Last Policeman; Sam Sisavath, The Purge of Babylon: A Novel of Survival; or, Richard Matheson, I Am Legend. 

Here are the rules:

  1. You must choose a non-major character (i.e. not Henry Palace from Last Policeman, not Maria, Lucy, or Angel from Water Knife, not Candace from Severance, etc.).
  2. You must create and develop a story for this non-major character, a story that we don’t “get” or see in the novel.  Your story can either extend the character beyond the last page of the novel, fill in the character’s story before s/he/they enter the novel, or elaborate a story that occurs simultaneously to the novel’s span.
  3. Your story must be narratively coherent (i.e. consonant with the events and timelines of the novel), ontologically coherent (i.e. share the same story-world and all of its features – – an asteroid is coming, water is scarce, the plague has/will arrive/d, etc.), psychologically coherent (i.e. your version of the character should act somewhat like the novel’s version of the character), thematically coherent (i.e. your story should pick up on/develop some theme, conflict, or question central to the original narrative).
  4. You have five double-spaced pages maximum to spin your story.  The story can either be a scene or a chronicle.
  5. The “three strikes” rule continues to apply.

If I were doing this assignment, I would think back to the novels we’ve read and try to remember a non-major character that strikes you as interesting, weird, disturbing, etc.  Then, I’d review/recall the plot of the novel your character belongs to.  I’d probably narrate my spin-off story to answer questions like:  what happens to the character in the unseen/untold parts of the narrative? why does this happen? what does this spin-off story reveal about the “main” story?

Due: Email your remix story to me by Thursday, May 13, 5 p.m.