Online Course Lady: Writing Laboratory: January 2012

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Diary Style

The diary format is one of the most popular styles for the Storybooks!

Here are some possibilities and ideas to ponder:

Types of Diaries. While most diaries are about the day-to-day events of someone's private life, there are other kinds of diaries too, such as travel diaries.

A Story with Multiple Entries. The best kind of diary page uses multiple entries to help pace the story, providing a sense of drama and anticipation as one events after another takes place, with each event getting its own diary entry.

A Story with Multiple Diaries. You can also combine diaries of different people in a single page so that their different diary entries tell the same story from different points of view.

Animal Diaries. It's not only humans who keep diaries; you could imagine animals keep diaries too!

Finding the Diary. If you are thinking about diary style for a Storybook project, you might also ask this question: just who has possession of the diary so that we are able to read it? Is the diary something passed on after the writer has died? Was the diary stolen? Thinking about just where the diary (or diaries) come from can be a frametale that you tell in the Introduction.

Here are a few diary projects:

Fairy Godmother: Diary Thief

The Mysterious Gaeilge Diary

Everything is Froggy: The Frog Diaries

Choose Your Own Adventure

The Internet is a very dynamic space which offers you a chance to create "choose your own adventure" Storybooks. All you have to do is include a link at some point in the story where the reader can click on the different options, and the link that they click will take them to the next story (or the next part of that story), which will be on a separate page of its own. To get a sense of how that works, take a look at these past "choose your own" Storybooks:

PlayerOne v. Maya mimics the style of a video game where you are the "player" who is attempting to see through the illusions of Maya in stories from the Indian Epics.
Tragedy Versus Comedy is a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in diary format, but with completely different plot lines for you to choose from. The new plots go in different directions than Shakespeare's play, so no matter what you choose, you are in for a surprise!

In a less elaborate format, you can invite your readers' direct involvement in your blog posts too. For example, you can ask them to vote on different endings for a story in their comments, or your could invite them to suggest a "moral" for the story.

Newspapers and Television News

There are so many exciting ways in which you can adapt a newspaper or television news style for retelling stories in new ways. One of the best things about news reporting is that this style allows you to bring different voices into the story as the reporters interview different people who have important information to share, such as eyewitnesses to the events, experts, and members of the public who might want to voice their reactions.

To get started, you might want to look through these Storybooks done in the news reporting style and see what features grab your attention!

News reporting style. If you decide to go with a newspaper format, you might want to look the Wikipedia article about News Style. It gives a good, detailed overview of the characteristic features of news reporting, such as the headline, byline, lead, and so on. You might enjoy this fun newspaper clipping generator where you can put your headline and story in order to generate a custom graphic image: Newspaper Clipping Generator.

Newspapers have more than news. Remember also that a newspaper can contain lots of different types of material in addition to news reporting, so you might want to include different kinds of stories in your Storybook. Instead of doing all four stories as news reporting, you could include feature articles, a "Dear Abby" type of column, an editorial, etc., finding just the right newspaper feature to fit each story that you want to tell.

Television news style. Television news also has its typical features, with the news anchor, the remote reporter, etc. Just to get a feel for how television news works, sit down and watch a news broadcast, taking notes as you look for stylistic features that you think would work well for your project!

Here's a screenshot of a Storybook, Ganges Gazette, which uses a multicolumn layout (columns are easy in Google Sites) in order to simulate the multicolumn layout of a newspaper:

Television Show as Storytelling Style

There are all kinds of storytelling styles used in television shows. In the list below, you can see the various television show format that people have used for their Storybooks:

Drama and Comedy:

Homes and Home Improvement:

Reality Shows:

Dating:

Quiz Shows:

Competitions:

Awards Shows:

News Shows:

Political:

Politico: Sherwood Edition - The Debate over Robin Hood

Third-Person Omniscient

Technically speaking, any third-person style is omniscient (i.e. "knowing all," not limited to a single point of view), but I would like to make a distinction here between Third-Person Omniscient style without an explicit storyteller and Third-Person Storyteller style where there is an explicit storyteller who is not a character in the story itself (for the storyteller as a character in the story, see the First-Person style page). In this page, I will focus on the Third-Person Omniscient style and its many advantages compared to other styles of storytelling.

Sometimes writers are attracted to first-person style because they like the idea of writing in the voice of a specific character, and they assume that there is something "impersonal" about third-person style, that it is lacking in personal voice. That does not have to be the case at all! In fact, third-person style can contain the voices of ALL the characters, unlike a first-person story that is limited to a single voice. In a third-person style, characters can speak to one another in dialogue, and you can also share the thoughts and feelings of characters either directly in quoted thoughts or indirectly by describing their thoughts and feelings. As a result, there does not have to anything at all impersonal about third-person style; it's all up to you and what you want to do with the options it provides.

So, as you ponder the different third-person options, here are some specific styles to think about that can help you take an existing story and make it your own:

News Reporting. Okay, reporters are not omniscient (wouldn't it be great if they were?), but they do write in a third-person style which aspires to be omniscient. It's a great writing style for conveying the plot of a story while also bringing in the voices of different characters who are quoted in the story. See this page for more information about newspaper style.

Quests, Mysteries, and Adventures. Quests are one of the oldest story traditions in the world (the quest of Odysseus to get home, the quest of Gilgamesh for immortality, etc.). Mysteries, meanwhile, are one of the most popular storytelling genres today; you can think of mysteries as a quest for the criminal, a quest for the truth. You can also create a Storybook that tells a series of adventures that are set in motion by some dramatic starting event. See this page for more information about creating quests. mysteries and adventures.

Modernizing and Futurizing. With the power of storytelling, you can take ancient stories and pull them into the present, or you can even push stories into the future. This page gives you some tips on strategies for modernizing and futurizing traditional stories.

Time Travel. The time travel genre is another way in which you can use the power of your imagination to overcome the traditional limitations of time; see this page for some advice on writing time travel stories. Another possibility is the alternate history genre where you imagine how things would have turned out if history had gone in a different direction!

Postscripts and Prequels. Using the power of your imagination, you can easily extend a story into the past (the prequel) or into the future (the sequel), developing the plot and characters in completely new directions.

Twist the Ending. There's no magic rule that says the story has to end the way that it ends. You can use your own power of imagination to come up with a completely different ending: the fate of the characters is in your hands!

Magical Books and Manuscripts. One way to add to the power of a story is to show us that story as being part of some kind of magical book or manuscript, some long-lost tale that has just been rediscovered. You can even make the discovery of the book or manuscript into a frametale that wraps around the stories contained in the book itself.

Story and Settings. Sometimes the setting is actually the most important part of a story. By creating a special setting, you can then bring stories into that setting so that the separate stories are united by the setting:

stories set on the OU campus
stories set in a haunted house
stories set in a famous historical location

Poems and Songs. You are not just limited to prose when you write a story; you can also write in verse or use song lyrics.

you can tell an entire story in the form of a song
you can mix poetry and prose together to create a story
you can mix song lyrics and prose in the form of an album review

Mixed Genres. Stories do not have to stand alone; instead, stories can sometimes serve as a commentary on an image or on some other text:

show us a painting or sculpture of a mythological or legendary subject, and then tell the story that is depicted in that painting
start with a photograph of a geographical feature, and then tell us the myth that explains how that geographical feature came into being
start with a photograph of a historical monument, and then tell us the story behind the monument
give us a food recipe or a drink recipe, and then tell a story that is prompted by some ingredient in the recipe

For an example of a third-person Storybook that is about food and about a quest, and modernized too (this Storybook combines all kinds of techniques!), you can go food shopping with Sam, a modern-day Odysseus: Odysseus Goes Shopping.

Modernizing and Futurizing

Modernization allows you to change the traditional characters, settings, and plot to bring them up to date. You can go even farther and re-tell the story in a futuristic setting!

Here are some examples of modernized Storybooks. Sometimes the modernization is a natural result of choosing a storytelling style that in and of itself conveys a modern quality, like therapy sessions or social media. Other examples of modernization are more complex, where the characters and/or setting and/or plot are changed in order to give the story a modern feel.

Time travel is another possibility, too: time travel can be used to send people back into the past, but it can also be used to bring characters from the past into our present!

If you are a fan of science fiction, you might want to try retelling a traditional story so that it is set in a science fiction future. Here are some examples of futuristic Storybooks, like this one —Siren, City in the Clouds — which puts fairy tales into the future.

Drama: Quest, Mysteries, and Adventures

There are two very different approaches you can take in adapting traditional stories to a quest, mystery, or adventure of your own:

Approach 1: Embedded. You can use storytellers to re-tell the traditional stories INSIDE your own quest or mystery. For an example, see Shadows of the Ishvara (where the Hindu gods tell stories to our hero as he journeys to find answers to his questions) or Lost in the Woods (where people search for a lost girl in the woods, telling stories to each other as they do so).

Approach 2: Reenacted. You can also use the traditional stories to provide the quest itself, so that the plots of the old stories become the plot of your own quest or mystery. For examples, see Odysseus Goes Shopping (where Sam, our modern-day Odysseus, experiences adventures strangely similar to the ancient hero) or Finals Week: Death Notes (where an OU student encounters supernatural creatures on the OU campus, starting in Bizzell Library).

Either approach can work really well, so figuring out which of these two styles you like best is the first question to ask yourself if you are thinking of doing a Storybook based on some kind of quest or mystery. So, take some time to look through these past Storybooks that feature some kind of quest, mystery or adventure, and see which ones you like best.

That will probably give you some ideas for what you want to do with your own project. If you are thinking you want to use some kind of detective, you can find plenty of Storybooks with detectives who are investigating a mystery of some kind!

First-Person Storytelling

First-person is a fundamental storytelling type, along with third-person (third-person omniscient OR third-person storyteller). When you tell a story in first-person, that means the storyteller is an actual character in the story, someone who can speak as a participant in the story's events or as an eyewitness. There are some big advantages to this style of storytelling, but also some big disadvantages. You need to ponder both the advantages and disadvantages of first-person style in order to make sure it is a good choice for the story you want to tell:

Advantages

You have access to the inner thoughts and emotions that the narrator might choose to reveal. (Although not all narrators are reliable!)
There is a strong, single voice unifying the story and creating a sense of immediacy.
You can develop a strong emotional connection between the reader and the narrator.
You as the writer get to experience being entirely "inside" someone's head, seeing the whole story through one set of eyes.
You can create a sense of surprise that gives a new twist to a familiar story by using an unexpected narrator: the villain as narrator, an inanimate object as narrator, etc.

Disadvantages

The single voice of the narrator can become monotonous. A first-person narrator can report what others say, but no real dialogue is possible, while in a third-person style, you can include many voices. All the characters can speak for themselves!
The narrator may not have access to all the knowledge required to explain the events of the plot. That's not a problem for a story with an already familiar plot (Little Red Riding Hood, for example, or the Trojan Horse), but it can be a problem for a story whose plot is new to your readers.
Unless you have a context for the narration, it can feel artificial: where does this voice come from and why is this person telling a story? And to whom? Setting and audience are very important questions to ponder for a first-person style.

For help on focusing your first-person style, here are some specific strategies to consider:

Diary Style. Because this is such a popular first-person style, I have created a separate page with advice on writing in diary style.

Blogging. Blogging is a new form of diary style but allows for some features not found in traditional diaries, such as comments from readers. Here are some ideas for writing with blogs and other social media.

Letter-writing Style. Letters are a powerful style for storytelling; here are some examples of Storybooks in letter style. They have the personal voice of a diary, but they also allow for back-and-forth dialogue along with the complicating element of distance and delay. As variations on the traditional letter style, you could also work with modern styles of letter-writing such as email and texting, and there are generators like iFakeText.com that can help you simulate back-and-forth messaging.

Interview Style. The interview style has the advantage of bringing another voice into the story: the interviewer. The actual story is still being told in first-person, but you have another voice to ask questions and guide the story, with the interview in many ways serving as a kind of stand-in for the reader, asking the questions you think your readers might ask. Here are some Storybooks written in interview style. If you are doing interview style, think about the different contexts in which interviews might take place:

newspaper interview
television interview
radio call-in show
job interview (perhaps with accompany resume!)
speed-dating (that's a kind of interview too!)

Therapy Style. You can see therapy as a variation on the interview style, but with the therapist playing a much more important role than an interviewer. If you choose therapy style, you will need to create the character of the therapist, as well as the type of therapy: individual sessions, couples therapy, help group, etc. You'll need to decide just what type of therapist and what type of therapy will best suit your topic! Here are some examples of therapy-style Storybooks.

Courtroom Style. As opposed to the supportive therapy setting, the courtroom setting is a great space in which to bring out tension and conflict in a story, including first-person testimony from eyewitnesses, along with the roles of the judges, the attorneys, and the jury. Here are some examples of Storybooks written in courtroom style.

Other Storytelling Settings. In addition to interviews, therapy, and courtrooms, there are all kinds of other settings and occasions that can accommodate first-person storytelling, and many of these same settings can be used for third-person storytelling as well, depending on whether the storyteller is telling a story in which they were personally involved (first-person) or not (third-person storyteller).

a bar or pub (examples)
a beauty salon (examples)
an awards ceremony (examples)
meeting in the afterlife (examples)
birthday party, retirement party, other party
weddings, funerals, holiday gathering
waiting room (doctor's office, airport, etc.)

Sidekick as Narrator. You can get a new perspective on a familiar story by using a sidekick or other minor character as the narrator. You might even choose to use an animal sidekick or minor character; you are not limited to human narrators! Here are some examples of Storybooks as told by minor characters such as sidekicks.

Inanimate Object as Narrator. For an even more surprising perspective on a story, you can choose to have an inanimate object narrate the events - but choose your object carefully. You need to make sure that, somehow or other, the inanimate object is able to get the information it needs to tell the story. You can get some ideas from looking at these Storybooks with inanimate narrators.

Traveler as Narrator. When someone has gone on a journey, it is natural for them to tell the story of their journey, either in a diary (see above), or through letters (see above), or by speaking to an audience face-to-face when they come back home. To get some ideas, take a look at these Storybooks with stories told by travelers. Also, don't forget that in addition to telling stories about their own travels, a traveler might tell you about the people they met on their travels, and those people in turn might be storytellers (a first-person story within a first-person story).

Time Travel. Don't forget about the possibility of time travel also! You can get some ideas by looking at these time travel Storybooks which feature first-person stories as told by the travelers in time. Your time-traveling narrators do not need to be human; Doctor Who is available, for example, and you can even have animals who travel in time.

"I remember when..." In addition to the settings and occasions mentioned above, there are all kinds of reasons why people (or animals or gods) might tell stories about their lives, reminiscing about the past. They might also tell stories about other members of their family or even about their ancestors, a a "back in the day" type of story. To get some ideas, look at these Storybooks with storytellers reminiscing about the past.

Motivational Speaker. You can imagine all kinds of venues in which someone might tell a motivational story from their own life, using first-person style for a dramatic personal testimony:

someone giving a TED talk
speaker at graduation
a preacher in church
a guest speaker in school
a coach in the locker room
political campaign speech

For an example of a Storybook that brings four different first-person narratives together in a single project, take a look at Legends of Fire. In this Storybook, four different dragon-hunters from around the world meet and share their stories of adventure:

Third-Person Storyteller Style

You are probably all familiar already with the terms first-person style and third-person omniscient style, but this idea of "third-person storyteller" style may seem kind of odd to you, although it's really something very natural. The idea is that every story has to have a storyteller, and in third-person storyteller style, you actually meet the storyteller, while in third-person omniscient style the narrator is standing outside the story, hiding behind the curtain as it were, unknown to you.

So, by using the third-person storyteller style, you get what you might call a "story-within-a-story" (or "a story inside a frametale" as it is also called). To get a sense of how that can work in a Storybook project for this class, take a look at some past Storybooks that feature third-person storytellers. In some cases, the information about the storyteller is very brief (as in Aesop example below), but in some cases the storyteller's story is developed in as much detail as the story-within-the story. There are all kinds of ways to use the third-person storyteller approach, depending on what your own goals are as the author!

Meanwhile, just to show you how the presence of a storyteller adds new purpose and meaning to the story itself, take a look at this Aesop's fable (more about the story here). In some collections of Aesop's fables, you will find this story about a fox and a hedgehog, told in third-person omniscient style:

A fox was crossing a river but she got swept by the current into a gully. A long time passed and she couldn't get out. Meanwhile, there were blood-sucking flies swarming all over the fox's body, making her quite miserable. A hedgehog wandered by and happened to see the fox. He took pity on her and asked if he should remove the flies, but the fox refused. The hedgehog asked the reason why, and the fox replied, "These flies have taken their fill of me and are barely sucking my blood at this point, but if you take these flies away, others will come and those hungry new flies will drink up all the blood I have left!"

That's a story in third-person omniscient style. There are characters in the story (the fox, the hedgehog), and they have a conversation back-and-forth (we hear the fox's voice directly, the hedgehog's voice indirectly), but we don't know who is actually telling the story. In fact, we're not even supposed to ask that question; we just take the story about the fox and the hedgehog as it is, on its own terms. The fable is anonymous, so there is not even an author to lend their name to the invisible storyteller behind the curtain.

In one collection of Aesop's fables, though, we see Aesop himself as the third-person storyteller who tells the story of the fox and the hedgehog in an attempt to defend a politician who has been put on trial.

Aesop was defending a demagogue at Samos who was on trial for his life when he told this story: 'A fox was crossing a river but she got swept by the current into a gully. A long time passed and she couldn't get out. Meanwhile, there were blood-sucking flies swarming all over the fox's body, making her quite miserable. A hedgehog wandered by and happened to see the fox. He took pity on her and asked if he should remove the flies, but the fox refused. The hedgehog asked the reason why, and the fox replied, "These flies have taken their fill of me and are barely sucking my blood at this point, but if you take these flies away, others will come and those hungry new flies will drink up all the blood I have left!" And the same is true for you, people of Samos: this man will do you no harm since he is already wealthy, but if you condemn him to death, others will come who do not have any money, and they will rob you blind!'

I've used bold and italics to try to show you how this third-person storyteller style creates a story-within-a-story effect, something that you might also call a frametale. This is still third-person because we don't know who is telling you this story about Aesop (there is still another author hiding behind the curtain as it were), but we do know how is telling the story about the fox and hedgehog now: Aesop himself is the storyteller!

What's important about this style of storytelling is that the frametale adds new meaning to the story that it contains, providing a kind of an explanation or application of the story. This story, for example, plays on the idea of politicians being "blood-suckers" like those blood-sucking flies who are causing the fox so much trouble; Aesop uses the story about the fox to point out that if you get rid of one set of blood-suckers and simply replace them with another set of blood-suckers who might be even more hungry than the ones before, you could be making a bad situation worse. That's something that the fox is experiencing in a literal sense as the flies suck her blood, and it is something metaphorically happening to the people of Samos who are afflicted with blood-sucking politicians.

So, as you ponder a storyteller for the story you want to tell, you should try to choose a storyteller who has a reason for telling the story, a message or moral that they want to convey. That could be a grandmother trying to impart wisdom to her grandchildren, or a salesperson who wants to persuade you to buy something, or the descendant of a famous person who wants you to respect their ancestors, and on and on and on. If you use a storyteller this way, it lets you give your stories a purpose and a meaning that they might not have otherwise!

And for your viewing pleasure, here are two different illustrations of the story; the first is by an unidentified illustrator of a 19th-century edition of Aesop's fables in English, and the second is from an illustrated edition of La Fontaine's fables by the great French caricaturist J. J. Grandville. I think the hedgehog is better in the first illustration, but I love the sinister giant flies in the second version, just waiting to get their turn:

Friday, January 6, 2012

You're Great

For a hilarious post about using the apostrophe, check out The Oatmeal.

Cartoon by Brian Crane

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Always Stress the Positive

Well, I have to confess that I am indeed the kind of person who tries to stress the positive, esp. in the sense of Carol Dweck's "growth" mindset. But then, I am not a robber, ha ha!

Cartoon by Mike Baldwin

Will Spell Correctly For Food

The "will work for food" motif has spawned many image commentaries, both serious and humorous, as you can see from this Google Image search.

Cartoon by Dave Blazek

Babble

Wikipedia can tell you about the history of the game Scrabble, about babbling, and also about the Tower of Babel.

Cartoon by Dave Coverly

Rosetta Phone

Meanwhile, you can read about the actual Rosetta Stone in this Wikipedia article.

Cartoon by Dan Reynolds

Roman Numeral Pin

You can consult Wikipedia for the history of Roman numerals and also Arabic numerals (which are really Hindu-Arabic numerals).

Cartoon by John Deering

moved

This post has moved.

Cute Bunnies and Baby Deer in Candyland

You might want to check out the Wikipedia article on euphemism; you might also consider this a case of political correctness. Of course, there is also a raging debate on video games involving war and violence. Lots going on here!

Cartoon by Brian Crane

Perks of Being an English Major

Well, I was a double-major in Slavic Literature and Classical Literature... so English majors looked pretty respectable to me, ha ha. But I've ended up employed. Eventually. :-)

Cartoon by Jacob Andrews

Synergistic ideation

Wikipedia has an article on buzzwords, including business-speak buzzwords. Are there some examples of buzzwords and jargon that drive you crazy?

Cartoon by Dave Coverly

Im txtng while drvng

For the dangers of texting and driving, see this Wikipedia article.

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

Less People

For an explanation of the difference between less and fewer, check out Grammar Girl.

Cartoon by Hilary Price

Incarcerated

For the etymology of the word "incarcerate," see etymonline.com.

Cartoon by Dave Coverly

Best Speller - Best Texter - Best Googler

We didn't have Google when I went to school ... but believe me, I have become a seriously good Googler in my old age, ha ha.

Cartoon by Harley Schwadron

I'm the Ghostwriter

Although it is a common practice in the publishing industry (read more at this Wikipedia article), I can assure you that it would be considered academic misconduct to use a ghostwriter for a class at OU!

Cartoon by Hilary Price

Sound It Out

There is an article at Wikipedia about the phonics-based approach to learning to read.

Cartoon by Dan Piraro

LOL Hyenas

Yes, LOL is now in the dictionary; in 2011, it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. As for whether hyenas really laugh or not, see this Wikipedia article.

Cartoon by Dave Coverly

Cliches, Dead Metaphors & Worn Out Expressions

We are so lucky that worn-out language does not need to go in a landfill! Meanwhile, Wikipedia has an article on "dead metaphors."

Cartoon by Kathryn Lemieux

Classic Literature: As Written - As Read

This post has moved.

Poor Pronunciation

For the sheer craziness of English pronounciation, try this English Pronunciation Poem.

Cartoon by Brian Crane

Alphabetical Alphabet

We take for granted the use of the alphabet as a system for ordering things "alphabetically," but this was not something that was immediately obvious to people. One of the first ancient books to be organized alphabetically, in fact, was a collection of Aesop's fables written in Greek. For more information about the alphabet and alphabetizing, see Wikipedia.

Cartoon by Glenn McCoy

Sunday, January 1, 2012

The Cloud

The terminology of "cloud computing" has caught on very quickly, hasn't it? If you are interested in the technical details, you can read about "The Cloud" at Wikipedia.

Cartoon by Tom Cheney