CREATIVE PROJECT - The Case of the Mutilated Middlemarch

 

For this project, you will be taking the information the class gathered regarding The Case of the Mutilated Middlemarch, and writing your own creative short story that tells the story of the crime, and the story of the solution. Other than the crime of Middlemarch being mutilated and a limited pool of suspects, everything else should be entirely made up through your imagination.

 

• Your main character may be the detective (such as Sherlock Holmes) though it might also be the sidekick (Holmes).  If you cast youself as the detective, remember that you are writing a creative story - not telling the story of your own research. This is not a personal narrative - it is detective fiction. If you feel yourself writing a personal narrative, create a detective persona (that is not you) and feel free to set the crime in another time and place. As long as Middlemarch is mutilated, it does not have to be in the Ohio University Library or even in the 21st century.

• Create as many characters as are necessary for your story, though you will at least need the detective and the culprit (and probably someone for the detective to talk to).

• The culprit must be one of the six suspcts who were investigated by the class, but it does not have to be the one your group interviewed. You will have access to the sources and report of each group.

• Your evidence for the case must incorporate at least three (3) different sources from Project 1. You should not need to do additional research (though that is not prohibited). You may use each source as often as you reference material gathered from the source. If you reference something that you learned from the student summary of the source (rather than reading the original text yourself), you still need to cite the original source. Whether you take from the original source or the student summary, you must follow MLA guidelines for ethical citations. 

• In order to maintain the flow of the story, use footnotes to reference what material you used. Do not reference the source in the body of the text. Instead, insert a footnote at the end of a phrase when research was used. In the footnote, explain the information from the source, elaborating on the source text and explaining how it is relevant to your story at this point. Make sure to include the last name of the author or the title of the piece - depending on which is first seen in the full citation in the works cited - and page numbers, if appropriate. I should easily know which source is being referenced in the footnote and the reference in the footnote should take me directly to the citation in the works cited. See this .doc for an example. 

• Create a new page at the end of your story titled "Works Cited" that provides the complete MLA citation of each source that you referenced in a footnote within the story.

• The case should incorporate the elements of the detective fiction genre that we discussed in class, such as managing curiosity and suspense, negotiating point of view, and creating a narrative arc.

• Your story should be free from mechanical and grammatical errors.

 

Your story should be 3-5 pages long, though there is no penalty for a longer story.

 

Have fun with this. Be creative! Use descriptive language. Remember that the setting is entirely up to you - only the crime and the suspects are predetermined.

 

Document Details:

The story should be typed and double-spaced in a Word document (with a .doc or .docx at the end) with 1-inch margins on all sides. Your story will need a title, but not a title page: place your name, the course number (ENG 3080J), the date, and my name at the top left-hand corner of the first sheet. Also, please include your last name and page numbers in the top right margin of each page.