Emotional intelligence in creative writing and peer collaboration
Emotional Intelligence
Introduction
What am I going to do when I learn that a classmate has basically stolen my story idea and is winning a contest using my story? What should I do if I discover that a classmate had used the plot and theme of a story I wrote a few months ago, and simply changed the names of my original characters and changed the place in which my story was set? This paper responds to that challenge and brings emotional intelligence into the issue.
My story and the plagiarized version of my story
Some months ago I published a short story on an Internet site that got a great deal of positive response from those visiting the site. It was a story based on a major blizzard that hit western Minnesota. Emma, the wife of the protagonist Victor, was isolated in her home by a winter storm that dumped two and a half feet of snow on the ground. The ice storm that followed the blizzard literally froze the doors and window shut, and Emma could not even go out to fetch more firewood. Her husband Nolan had gone mountain climbing in late fall and had never returned. He was actually wounded from a gunshot, and an old mountain hermit had found him bleeding and had taken him to a little hunting cabin where Nolan was healing.