Weeks 7.

Today for lesson, we had a test first and than we had a normal class. The test was short and sweet, the kind I like. By the end of lesson, I began to ask myself, “ How do you make a story believable?” and this was inspired from the true or false assignment that we had to do for this weeks lesson. Now, I’m not just saying this to show I was able to reflect from class, but it was a serious question that kept ringing in my mind. A person could write a story that is true yet it may seem unbelievable and vice-versa but I guess it takes someone skilled to write something that is not true yet make it believable.

I thought about it and it would actually be pretty easy to make a fake story believable if it contained simple happenings that could actually happen in everyday life to anyone, but how do you write about something that is somewhat out of this world or seemingly outrageous or totally out of the norm and yet make the reader believe it? If I wrote a story about me marrying a penguin, for example (a bad one I know), how could I make it sound believable? I guess there’s a line that divides what may actually be believable and what really can never be made to sound believable. How about including believable characters in unbelievable stories? Does that make sense? Are fictional stories with very believable characters better to read than outrageously out of this world characters? Am I making any sense, help me out here Monsieur Ryan.

Notes.
Functions of dialogue. 

-To express characters personalities.

-Communicates emotions

-tells of past or future event

-reveals new information,twists to the audience

-Express culture

Elements of dialogue.

Dialogue reveals character

- A character talks about himself or herself

-other people talk about character

Dialogue establishes relationships between characters

- Characters express attitudes and opinions that are in opposition to one another

-good effective dialogue will move the story forward.

Dialogue communicates faces and information to the audience.

-It conveys essential exposition

-characters will talk about what happened establishing the story line.

Note: It is plot based information that should be given to your audience.

Dialogue ties the script together.

BAD THINGS about dialogue!

- Tell to much

-tell everything instead of showing

-corny dialogue!

TIPS!

-use dialogue sparingly

-never telling the aduience what they can see for themselves

-Dialogue is no substitue for action

- Dialogue should match conventional speaking, “real talking”.

- Never tell to much.

Lesson 6 started off pretty normal, we just read out our letter to the past in a small groups which found more comfortable doing as opposed to reading it aloud to the whole class. It was not until Ryan read out his own letter to the past that the lesson took an emotional turn. We got to learn something about Ryan and his past. That’s when it struck me. A writer should be able to bring emotions in the reader. Emotions is something I’m not very comfortable with, but i guess as a writer, you have to face the different emotions that linger within oneself and use this emotions and channel them into the stories we write. In a way, we are making ourselves face our own feelings as we take a deeper look within ourselves. To tell you the truth, i did think of faking my letter to the past but i decided against it. I decided to try it out, try writing about how I feel. After all, people are emotional beings and there is no running away from that.

We also learnt that experience was the third story telling tool. “Experience”, sounds simple enough but what does it really imply? How do i really tap my past experiences and pen them down and make a good story out of it? I guess to do that, i must first come to terms with my feelings and problems and who knows, maybe peace can be found through writing about them. “Self-expression”, this term kept ringing in my head at the end of lesson. I shall try writing anything to express myself, that would be some good practice maybe even therapeutic. The aim or one the aims of today’s lesson i presume is to show us that a writer has to be able to convey his messages to the reader and get them interested. Arousing feelings within the reader would be a good way to do this. Well, guess I would have to get in touch with my inner self…. ( whimpers)

Notes.

” A virginal heart has its logic”

-Writing for an audience.
-Screen Writer = Storyteller.

The cinematic experience is not just made of words you might put on paper,but the audience’s emotional reaaction.

Writing is people to people.

Writers purpose.
-To connect themselves,their unique vision,their material, the drama and others.

People want to be connected to the movie. They one to feel something, possibly to relate themselves.

Where to look for a story?
- Inside yourself
-Everything to learn about people.

Storytelling tool 3: Experience
- All people have fragment of stories.
-There potential ideas prompt your desire to know more
-respond emotionally and intellectually

Lesson 5, lesson 5. What can i say about lesson 5? well, i’ll start by saying lesson 5 felt pretty ordinary though i like the certain non-conventional way of doing stuff in class like commenting on the 5o words essays that a few people read out in class. It everyone to interact and forces them to pay attention because you need to hear out their stories. We watched a french movie by that famous french director dude, Truffaut. I always have trouble remembering the titles and names, sorry. It was a nice movie, i felt it had a warm feel to it and that may be possibly due to the time it was set in. Seeing how the boys went about with their crush on that french lady was rather interesting and charming in a way. Oh, and we watched a short clip from the movie Taxi and wow,just hat short clip alone was enough to get me interested in the movie. The scenes we watched showed the a lot of the characteristics of the character played by Deniro. We got to see the way he thinks, his mentality, his outlook of the streets and the people on the streets. He thinks he is a moral person, wanting to clean up the streets and all yet he is a pretty cooked up fellow himself. It’s really intriguing.To think of it again, lesson 5 was actually quite fruitfull.

Notes.

Characters are the heart,soul and nervous system of your story. ( extremely true)

It is true your characters that viewers express emotions.

And “Yoda” ( Ryan) said :-

• Without characters, you have no action.
• Without action, yo have no conflict.
• Without conflict, you have no story.
• Without story, you have no screenplay. (dum dum!)

When developing a character,we should ask ourselves :-

• Who is my character?
• What does he want?
• What is her quest? How is it going to be done?
• What drives him to the resolution of the story? ( not a car of cause!, ” drum roll” )

3 dimensional characters .

1. Physiology
- the physical appearance.

2. Sociology- surroundings of the character

3. Psychology- mental state and emotions of the character

( i should refer to mel for the sheet that further elaborates on the above points )

Interior : what happens to the characters before the movie.

Exterior: What happens to them during the movie.

(STORYTELLING TOOL 2 : Memory)
By writing what I already know, I can relate better and convince the writer. However, we should write what we also do not know. Past memories and incidences can be used to write good stories. Tap the potential of one’s memory. here here!

This week’s lesson was cool. We got to watch the movie, ” Election”, and there was no actual lesson. I found the ides of watching a movie during class to explore Greek tragedies pretty decent, not to mention, there was no actual lesson. Since there was no actual lesson, there was no note taking which had to be done and i love not having to take notes. Well, “Election” was a good movie, i just love them MTV productions. Mr. Mcallister the protagonist in the movie meets his downfall at the end of the movie for doing something he thought was right which was morally wrong of course. Thus the movie is a Greek tragedy all though Mr. Mcallister is no Achilles.

Personally, i find the term ” Greek tradegy” kind of cool. It has a certain, masculine quality about it but i think im straying away from topic and yes, im doing it intentionally in an attempt to spice up my blog. I do realise my reflections are rather stale ( or so i think). Overall, awesome lesson this week. The sex scenes in the movie was damned gross and that women Mcallister was cheating his wife with a women who looked like a dude… Any-hows, cheerio.

I found that in this lesson we begain to get down to some real work. We reviewed the openers and the stories each partner was supposed to write for the other based on one opener. I read my story out to the class and was able to get some good feedback. . Cliched endings, i should try to avoid those and i have be more aware of my habit of swithing between present and past tense. Lets not forget, class started later because of a fire drill, yes a fire drill that involved real fireman minus the real fire. We had group presentations for the aristotle research thing and we didn’t use powerpoint although my group did some slides… oh well… From what i noticed, Aristotle ( Greek lunatic) is one confusing dude but all of us manage to make some sense of his theories and stuff. I bet Alexander’s shuddering in his grave right now. To sum it all up, lesson 3 was still pretty interesting..

 Notes.

-Aristotles poetics : a book about the basic foundation of writing poems.

A greek tragedy is a drama genre and in it the heroes will die in the end.

In a greek tragedy the someone through fate will be punished for having to much confindense or pride in the end and things like the over confidence will lead to the downfall of the character.

6 Important parts.

1. PLOT : results of a mansactions determines hsi success and his failures. With no action there can be no tragedy.
2. Character
3. Thought : some kind of inteligent design to the plot structure.
4. Diction
5. Spectacle

According to aristotle a good story : shows rather than tells,creates cause-and-effect chain that clearly reveals what may happen and arouses not only pitty but fear as well,because memebers of the audience can imaigne themselves within the cause-and effect chain.

Cause and effect chain.

• Good plot of unity of action.
• It should be set in one place.
• Film breaks this rule.

Plot is most important aspect of tragedy and a plot is defines as  an arrangement of incidents,the structure of the play, the arrangement of how you communicate the important elements of the play and it is not the story itself but the way the incidents are presented to the audience. .

3 aspects of a plot.

1. The Begaining :- the incitive moment and it must start the cause and effect chain.
2. The middle :- The climax and it must be caused by earleir incidents.
3. The end :- Resolution, must be caused by the preceding events but not lead to new incidents.

There are three basic rules for the type of writing we do in storytelling class.

1. write in present tense.

2.write in the third person.

3.Always have an active voice.

This are the three tenants of storytelling, follow them and i should get a rather decent story.

Important:( screen plays use this kind of writing style)

Present a more immediate and urgent feel to the material.

The passive voice VS the Active voice.

Passive:

• uses weak verbs
• tells rather than shows
• distances the readers from the story.

Active:

• Uses strong action verbs
• shows the action
• uses the immediate structure

We should communicate what people do instead of how they feel. Something people can visualise.

Pointers.

• If your stuck, keep moving forward.
• If you can’t get started,keep writing anyway.
• Always keep going and solving problems until you are in calmer seas.
• It doesn’t matter what you write, you will soon begin to think and move at your own pace and rhythm.

I should think about who’s story am i telling, whats the point of this story and how can i engage the audience when I’m writing.