Reflecting on week 2’s lesson
Another week of lesson had gone by.Thus another reflection has to be up:D
Let me recall what we had done for the week. First of all there was no lectures but i think everyone can tell since there are no lecture notes up.
Anyway,Ryan decided to pair us up. We each had to read our partner’s openers and choose one that we liked best/could work with and come up with a story.
I had Jordan as my partner and from all of his openers i choose the following:
1) The photographer drops his camera and dashes into the building, towards the screams without giving a second thought about his job.
p.s i edited it a little,fine one word then, because it wasn’t in present tense.
This was the story that i could come up with in the stringent 15 mintues allocated to us.
—————————————————————-
My Wonderful Story
The photographer drops his camera and dashes into the building, towards the screams without giving a second thought about his job.
Time is essence yet his mind and body is locked in mortal combat-his mind begging him to leave while his body gets ready for a possible fight. The screams are raising an octave with every step he takes. The agony in those screams lacerates his heart and affects him to the bottom of his very soul.
Stealthily he makes his way into the long corridor unaware, what to expect but knowing he has to help the person.
Adrenaline rushes through his veins as he reaches the corridor and sees a decomposing wooden door with thick green vines coiled around it. With pure determination he yanks the door open. A bright luminous light envelops him, searing his eyes.
A silhouette of a body shrieks and begs him to take it with him. Without any thought he carries the body and walks out of the door, never questioning one bit why everything seemed to posses a dream-like quality.
As he walks out of the door, his heart rate accelerates just for a moment and he takes a breath of fresh air and welcomes himself into the new world.
Randall finally wakes up from his coma of six years.
————————————————————————
I liked what i manged to come up with in that short amount of time.
Writing that story brought me back to my secondary school days where we have to rush and write a decent composition under an hour. I was actually happy writing it as i love descriptive writing. However i realised fromt he feedback that i got that this is slightly different from screenwriting.
In screenwriting visual imagery is more important.Thus words used to vivdly describe the actions/emotions would be preferred as after all it is meant to be acted out and filmed.
One example given to me was for the following sentence:
Time is essence yet his mind and body is locked in mortal combat-his mind begging him to leave while his body gets ready for a possible fight.– I was told to edit it to something like perhaps,
- he stood at the doorway looking both sides wth sweat dripping down his forehead contemplating which way to go
This would show the hesitance and fear he had while trying to make a decision.
That example helped me understand it better. Another tip to add to the collection.
Next we moved on to talking about who would own the story.Would it be the person who wrote the opener or the person who completed it. It was quite a heated discussion i must say.I agree with Ryan, that the latter would be the real author who deserves the credit first. I mean anyway can start a story but finishing it is another thing.Besides the former had only sparked the idea. Like who ever came up with ” ONCE A UPON A TIME…”
After the “debate”, we were given homework to do.That would be the five 50 word stories.Not a word more.Not a word less. This is a tough and yet interesting assignment i must say.The word counting part especially.I keep forgetting where i left off.
——————————————————————————————————–
We ended off the lesson with talking about and preparing a presentation on a greek philosopher named “Aristotle”. This fellow is the one who had came up with somewhat like a set of official rules for storytelling. He also wrote a book called Poetics in which as scriptwriters and storytellers we can learn alot from.
Overall the lesson was pretty much interesting and entertaining as nobody slept.=X
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Week One Notes
–LECTURE NOTES 101—
We were told that,
Assignments should all be in:
-Present tense
-Third person
1st person – me
2nd person – you
3rd person – name
Example: “Mark picks up the gun and holds it in his hand. It begins to tremble, as if alive.”This adds impact to the story as though as it is happening to us at that very moment.
Third person is used in screenplays,scripts etc..
-Active voice
Why is this “format” used?
-Possibly because, screenplays are script of a movie.Its just the written version of the visuals that we are about to see on screen. Thus it has to follow this format so it allows the audience to see the movie as though as they are experiencing right at that moment.It gives a more immediate as well as an urgent feel to it.
[Third person is where focus is placed on the subject. Present tense focuses on the verb. ]
———————————————————–
Passive vs. Active Voice
Passive:
• Uses weak verbs
• Tells rather than shows what’s going on
• Distances the reader from the story.
The sky was blue with lot of white clouds
Active voice:
• Uses strong action verbs
• Shows the action
• Uses an immediate sentence structure
• Conveys the story in a lively manner.
-Put the subject infront to give it something to do.
Passive: Mano was angry at Jane for tricking him into helping her. (No actions from Mano) Include an action in and it becomes an active voice.
Active: Mano snapped angrily at Jane for tricking him……
—————————————————————————————
We were given some tips to help us write better.
Tips for Writing:
• If you have a work in progress never stop for the night if you’re stuck
• Always solve the problem and keep going until you are in safer water. A good night’s sleep is important. Sleeping on problems is a myth.
• If you can’t get started on a project, start writing anyway. To do this, you have to have some words to type.
• It doesn’t matter what you write. You’ll soon begin to think and move in your own rhythm/pace.
———————————————–
Some questions to ask yourself while writing:
-Whose story am I telling?
-What is the point of the story?
-How can I engage the attention of audience?
-Who is so-and-so (main character) and what is he going to do?
———————————————————————————–
First Lesson
–REFLECTION–
Yes i have finally uploaded all my lecture notes.Now let me continue with my reflection.
Today we had our first storytelling in the freezing room. Luckily my mind was still able to function despite the cold gusts of wind the kept blowing against me. Location production class had trained me well.
I must say I was not exactly looking forward to storytelling. I had expected it to be like Written Communication. The module that I had abhorred very much. I was all prepared, ready to brace myself to go through another torturing semester of a similar module disguised under a different name.
However when Ryan told us that it’s not anything like written communication, maybe except for the fact that we do write, I was delighted. Furthermore there was no need for citations. The best two phrases I would love to hear at every class, “No citation”. Oh how glad I was to hear those two magical words. It made my day. Finally I can start writing descriptive/narrative stuff and almost anything I want. There would be no evil citations to limit my creativity anymore.
We started off the lesson rather interestingly. We formed a circle and had to play a game. That immediately brought back some nostalgic thoughts of primary school days where we formed a circle and played what I would consider very lame games now. We had to come up with adjectives that start with the same letter as the beginning of our name. We had a few interesting ones in our class such as sexy Sean, jolly Jueyi and even a Marilyn Monroe.
The game got me intrigued about wanting to know what else is there to come in this class. Almost everything seemed out of the norm. We even had to create a blog and that will be where we will submit all our assignments.
I liked the approach of the lessons. It was a relaxed and fun atmosphere and I did not feel unnerved one bit. It helped a lot when we were trying to write a story that he gave us to write in class. It started off with the following line:
“Jueyi puts on his can-can girl outfit and enters parliament”
While trying to write the story a thousand and one questions clouded my mind. Firstly how does a can-can outfit and parliament go together. It was absurd. However with a little help from my muse I was inspired to write a story that enabled me to connect them.
We also learnt that stories are part of our daily life, that almost anything can be a story; be it games or the usual novel. When I heard that games could actually be stories I felt that I had been given insight to some profound knowledge. I mean seriously who would have thought that games are actually stories. After delving into that, I realised that the very basis of developing a game is by starting out with a storyline.
A good example would be role-playing games where you are either some dragon-slayer or some hero off to save the world form some doomed destruction. Without a storyline the game might not have a structure and the player would be at lost what to do.
The fact that I was awed by this information made me realise that I probably haven’t finished playing much games as I usually jump right into it without really bothering to read the storyline and knowing what I was supposed to do or go. I was very enlightened.
The one thing that bothers me is the fact that we have to write in present tense. I am not exactly a big fan of writing in present tense. I prefer to write in past tense. However learning to write in present tense will be an interesting experience for me.
We were told to write in present tense, as it is more effective in evoking the audience’s emotions. This is especially true for screenplays. It made me realize that writing stories and scripts are not really that different as they both do only one thing-Tell a story.
Thus overall, the class was very much enjoyable and I look forward to it.
