Lesson Three …

So having created a general plot and created characters for my story I was asked in lesson three to begin writing dialogue between the characters. So the plot as it is now goes something like this …

Pino is the school bully. He is a big kid, the leader, and never does his homework; he always picks on the smaller kids to do it for him, but no one knows that he struggles with his homework (that is why he bullies others into doing it for him). One of these kids is Oscar.

Oscar is quiet and reserved and goes unnoticed but is really a genius inventor. They are both in Miss Daisy’s class.

Miss Daisy is a kind and patient teacher. Although Pino continually disrupts her class she never exerts any authority, she is passively aggressive and just bottles up her anger.

Then one day, Pino decides to play a trick on Oscar and hides one of his inventions that he is working on. Oscar loses the plot and cries as the other kids laugh at him. Miss Daisy raises her voice and Pino talks back to her as she questions him. She cannot take it and leaves the classroom, leaving everyone stunned.

The next day something strange happens. Miss Daisy turns up looking very different. She comes in with a cane and looks much scarier than the Miss Daisy that everyone knows. As class begins a few kids start to break away into gossip and “BANG”, Miss Daisy slams her cane on the table. They sit there frightened. The day goes by without further disruption and as the end of school bell is about to ring Miss Daisy hands them all a sheet with 100 questions to complete as homework. They all know that they cannot finish this by next class and plead with her but she refuses and slams her cane again and says that those who do not finish will stay back for detention and will write out lines.

The next day everyone turns up bleary eyed and tattered. Most of the class had finished, Oscar had no trouble but had to do double the workload because he had been bullied by Pino. However when marking the work Miss Daisy notices and calls Pino to stay back after class. He had been caught out. But he maintains that he had done it himself. Miss Daisy forces him to write lines until his hands become blistered and cackles an eerie cackle that sends shivers up Pino’s spine. When he has finished she looks him the eye and tells him that his punishment is not yet over. He walks away with deep suspicions – something was not right.

The next day Pino wakes up to find that he has turned into a pencil. He looks up and sees Miss Daisy. He screams at her and she turns around. “My name is Miss Vile and I am a witch … Miss Daisy has lets just say is booked out for the time being (cackles)”. She explains to him that his punishment is to do homework for the rest of his life. He pleads with her to let him go. She cackles and throws him into her satchel. When she arrives in class she puts the satchel down next to her table. The closest desk is Oscar’s desk.

Whilst she goes out for lunch, allowing Oscar to stay in the room to work on his invention, Pino tries to call out to him. Begging for his help Oscar refuses. However the boys soon realise that Miss Daisy is inside the satchel as well. The tape that had been covering her mouth had fallen off and she was able to call out to the boys. She had been turned into a book. She explains that Miss Vile is her evil side who was able to take over her body when she had broken down in class. Pino feels guilty for causing that and Oscar who wants to help Miss Daisy offers his assistance. Miss Daisy explains that Miss Vile is able to be sustained because for all the evil she does in one day she records it in the book that Miss Daisy has been transformed into.

Now the only way to save Miss Daisy is if Miss Vile is unable to do anything evil. They all knew that she did this through the excessive amounts of homework she gave the class. And so Oscar offers his invention which was a homework machine. He had been fed up doing Pino’s homework so created a machine that would do it. That way everyone in class could do finish their homework.

But although Miss Vile was struggling to maintain her evilness, she was still alive. How could this be? Pino and Oscar work together and realise that all the bad behaviour that Pino had done was still stored in his being and everything Miss Vile had written in the book was written with Pino and so her evil combined with Pino’s evils in the past keep her alive. And so the boys realise that Pino must apologise to all those he had hurt and the only way how was through letters. Pino writes a letter to everyone including Oscar who delivers them all at lunch. However it didn’t work and Oscar realises that Miss Vile knew what they were up to. Then Pino feels the rubber at the end of the pencil burning up.

Then it occurs to Miss Daisy that Pino can erase the lists. Oscar grabs Pino and rubs out all the words in Miss Daisy as Miss Vile is coming towards them, by now she had realised they knew and was trying to stop them. As she comes her body begins to disappear until the final word had been erased. Then once gone Miss Daisy returns to normal but Pino stays the same. He then realises that the last person to apologise to was Miss Daisy. He does so and returns back to normal. Pino and Oscar had saved the day. Oscar now helps Pino with his work and although still two different characters they respect each other and are friends.

I’ve realised that I have pretty much reached the 1000 word story expected in the Final Exercise in what was supposed to be a plot summary and so I’ve sort of gotten to the point where now I’m unsure as to what to do. So far I’ve tried to follow the course as it is set and even re-did the second lesson because I had read the exercise wrong. I think I’m only going to refer to the course as a guide now; for ideas and simulation. Also I’ve lost faith in the course because the “useful links” aren’t useful at all because they are links to subscription based services, some links don’t even open! I’ve enjoyed the experience of writing for children thus far but I seriously doubt the effectiveness of the course itself. The structure is well defined, set out well but I’ve encountered too many problems to really feel confident in recommending this to anyone else interested in the course. I think without my motivation in doing the course I would have given up by now.

So for the answers to lesson three please see “Part Three – Contemporary Settings”.