Chapter 6: Moving Beyond the Beginning, Middle, and End

In this chapter, Ohler focuses on mapping both the short and more detailed story.    He uses an example of the story "William Tell and the Young Girl Who Could Fix Computers"  and purposefully leaves out sections involving tension, transformation, and resolution to model what a story needs.  His statement sums up his thought on the story, "So far, it's a good example of a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end and works from a functional perspective, but is not powerful, memorable, or useful."  (Ohler, Kindle Edition, 1,305 of 2,900).

It seems to me that this is a valuable method in which to introduce the rise in the story using the visual representation of a flat story map being transformed into one with transformation/resolution that will engage an audience.  Having taught 3rd grade for four years, I remember spending the year focusing on beginning, middle, and end in all writing assignments.  This system of teaching writing does often lead to incredibly dry, simple, basic stories.  

Our solution at the time was to use the hamburger model to represent including juicy details.  Each portion of the burger symbolized an essential part of their stories.  The top bun was the beginning, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and ketchup were the juicy details that added interest , the hamburger patty was the meat where plot developed, and the bottom bun summed up the entire story.  Then I would relate it to going through a drive through and ordering a Whopper and what their reaction would be if they were missing any of those pieces of their meal.  Students always enjoyed the visual and began to relate it to their peer editing, making comments like "You need more juicy details or your audience will be disappointed and ask for a refund."  I would review my own writing with the students, asking them which pieces were missing and how we could strengthen and produce a more satisfying story.

I believe that the use of the VPS story mapping would have an even larger impact because it more clearly explains the transformation stages rather than simply categorizing all the important details as "the meat" of the story.  Having read through the first six chapters of this book, I would have enjoyed applying many of these strategies to both my primary and intermediate grade level classrooms.