Week 12 Story Lab

TVTrope

This week for the Story Lab, I decided to look into the TVTrope and see what the website was about.

I was really impressed with TV Trope and how much information there is on one site! I knew TV and movies and books all share a lot of the same general ideas and general plot movements, but it was crazy to look at one movie and get everything that is involved with that movie in such detail.

The main page I looked at was The Incredibles, and I looked at all the different "tropes" that movie has. There was so much detail even just for that one movie! You never really think about all the small little tropes (some examples are  "And your dog too" and the "annoying little sibling" ones). I think it's a great resource for writers to be able to see different tropes and figure out how to play around with them.

The Incredibles from Source

Story Lab: Week 10

Empo Word:
Chapter Two Reading Notes:

- "We're all stories in the end" has a lot of different interpretations and so do many of the things we write
- Narration is how we convey our stories and there's different techniques to that, such as plot.
- Scope is the boundaries of plot (so like what you'll be covering); sequence and pacing is the order of the events and the amount of time you give to each event (this determines how the reader sees the story)
- Remember the elements of plot
- Different ways to structure plot, but it needs to be there
- Point of view is very important to your story, along with the tone
- Building characters is vital to the story, they are needed to bring your story forward
- Stories can be multi-media or multi-genre stuff
- Overall the article reminded me about the basics of storytelling and how I need to be putting more thought into each layer of my story and how it'll best be portrayed. Even small things like what POV works best for the story can really change how it turns out in the end.

Snape Writing Meme from Source

https://www.writerswrite.com/writingmemes/

Week 6: Story Laboratory

This week for my story laboratory I chose to look at the Writer's Write blog for different ideas of what to do to make writing better.

Here's my notes of what I found:

One of the articles I looked at was the puff or fluff article. The reason I chose it is because sometimes, when writing pieces with a word count, it's easy to try and add fluff into the story to make it longer and meet the goals. However, the article actually didn't say yes cut fluff, it said use it wisely. I liked that it was still an option on the table, you just have to use it when the mood is right.

The next article was about setting the mood for a story, which I think is very important when writing short stories. You don't have a lot of time so you have to try and set the mood quickly but effectively. It included a list of 140 words to describe the mood in fiction. I think that if I pick one of the words before writing a story and then work to set the tone based on that word, I will be able to effectively set the tone for my short stories.

Another article I read and liked was about a plot. In my opinion, you can't have a good story without a good plot. I just don't get hooked and interested without it. So I think it's always a great idea to consider the overall plot of your story. It talked about how characters need to have a worthy story goal and how it's important to know all the parts of your plot (Inciting Incident, Climax, Rising Action, etc.) so I think for future stories I'm going to give that a little more thought.

Writing Meme from Source

Week 4 Lab

For Story Laboratory, I chose to watch the Two Ted Talks over story telling and stories:

The danger of a single story and imaginary friends and real life consequences

The first one talked about the dangers that can come from stories only coming from one culture group. She then continued to talk about how the stories she was told affected how she say people, and how later in life the stories others were told affected how others saw her. I think she's right in the stories that are told and made popular are what influences our view. More stories need to be told from different perspectives to help educate others and let them know that each country isn't held accountable by one thing. I think it's awesome how she was able to put her own experiences about how she had misjudged people based on a narrative she was told too, because it made her more relatable to the audience.

The second Ted Talk was about the relationships that people form with fictional characters whether you watch them on TV or you read about them. She talks about how because we see fictional characters or celebrities so often, we feel like we know them. She even includes the study her and her grad student did comparing fictional friend's deaths to real life acquaintance's deaths. I think the study itself was very interesting and think it says a lot about how close we get to people in fictional situations. When writing, I think it's important to remember that people can fall in love with fictional characters and be actively routing for them and wanting them to succeed. You want people to route for the characters you write about.

Quotes about Fictional Characters from Source