Notes: Lecture Three [031106]

Definition of Tragedy
♥ It is an imitation of an action (mimesis) that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude: in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament: in the form of action not narrative: with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith accomplishment its kartharsis of such emotions…




6 Parts of Tragedy
♥ Plot
♥ Character
♥ Thought
♥ Diction
♥ Song
♥ Spectacle

PLOT is the most important feature of tragedy.




What is Plot?
Story is bigger than the plot itself – things that occurred before the film started/after
♥ Plot is the actual arrangement of incidents that occurs in the film
♥ It is not the story itself, but the way the incidents are presented to the audience
♥ The structure of the play




Beginning
♥ The incitive moment
♥ It must start the cause and effect chain.




Middle
♥ Climax
♥ It must be caused by earlier incidents and itself cause the incidents that follow it.

No longer accurately followed in modern stories (now its usually at the end)





End
♥ Resolution
♥ Must be caused by the preceding events but not lead to other incidents
♥ The end should resolve the problem created during the incitive moment.




Episodic Plots
♥ According to Aristotle, the worst kinds of plots
♥ The acts (episodes) succeed one another without the probability or necessity
♥ The only thing tying together the events in such a plot is the fact that they happen to the same person

Nothing to do with the rest of the movie on the whole;
doesn’t keep the story focused on the main action.
Just because its episodic, does it really mean its bad??
Thus, is it truly bad to be episodic?
Audience MAY become irritated with not getting what they came for – the plot.




Simple Vs. Complex Plots
SIMPLE:
♥ Simple has only a “change of fortune”

COMPLEX:
♥ Complex has a reversal of intention “peripeteia” (when things change) and recognition “anagnorisis” (moment of recognition) connected with the catastrophe.

Things have changed – something that worked one way now works another way.




Character
♥ Character supports plot
♥ Personal motivations are connected to the cause-and-effect chain
♥ The protagonist in a tragedy should be renowned and prosperous (rich and famous), so his change can be from good to bad.
(the fall is greater for the rich and famous as opposed to taking things away from someone who is poor)
♥ In the ideal tragedy, the protagonist will mistakenly bring about his own downfall – not because he is sinful or weak – but because he does not know enough
(main character is not evil, still morally acceptable, still the hero, just tht he has a flaw. Something about him tht he doesn’t understand about the world and cos of tht he’s gonna be punished a.k.a “hamartia” [when the character doesn’t know enough])
♥ This lack of self-knowledge is called “hamartia”




3 Act Structure
Advantage of working in three act structure is it breaks down the story and makes it more manageable

1st Act: Set Up
♥ Story begins with a goal-oriented character introduced at a point of crisis
♥ The character meets roadblocks produced by the plot and antagonist
Someone wants something and its hard to get it – most movies

2nd Act: Confrontation
♥ Action intensifies
♥ An event happens which forces the character to make his or her choice.

3rd Act: Resolution
♥ Level of effort rises to new heights
♥ Both plot and character is resolved
♥ But the main character either achieves or does not achieves his goal (essentially, the character can lose)




Important Vocabulary
♥ Katharsis – emotional release that the audience experiences
♥ Mimesis – imitation of the real world in art and literature
♥ Anagnorisis – when the character realizes that its his fault
♥ Perepeteia – when things change from good to bad
♥ Hamartia – lack of self-knowledge (goes away when anagnorisis occurs)




Storytelling Tool 1: Observation
♥ Observe in a conscious way
♥ Develop the ability to see and record movements, physical characteristics, and settings.




Homework: People Watch
♥ 2 people
♥ Bullet points
♥ Don’t require full sentences or present tense/active voice

Reflections 3: reflect i shall.

What was your reaction trying to get the stories out? Was it limited? Difficult? How’d it go?

THIS (ryan’s question to the class of course), basically marked the start of week 3’s tutorial session.

Almost half the class found it easy, whilst the rest found it hard keeping to the word limit.
As for myself, I think it was a mixture of both (but I secretly [okay, maybe now it's no longer a secret. ohh bummer.] think i’m more inclined towards the ‘hard keeping to the word limit’ group)
Why?
The reason’s simple.
I’m a helluva nag.
The super long-winded me couldnt get myself to stop at 50.
I just kept going on and on till it struck me that it was only supposed to be 50-words long.
Another barrier was that I found it hard to start.
I tried using the method Ryan taught us on day one.
It didn’t help.
The only source of inspiration seemed (it appeared at that critical point of time) was the toilet, very unfortunately.

Anyhow, a few of us were picked to read out one of our very creative piece of works.
Oh boy was i one of the “lucky” few chosen ones, especially since i was the first to be picked. (i know i know, darn.)
So i read out my ingenius creation – the stalker (which apparently wasn’t so original after all).
the rest of the class was to work on our comments in the following format:

Author:
Title:
What it’s about:
What works:
What doesn’t:

Summary
Dom: Rejection taken wrongly
Colin: Loser trying to get girl, doesn’t get her and kills her.

What works
Vinod: people get the story easily and don’t think of anything else. Situation is imaginable.
Ben: Knife part was interesting (Ben didn’t expect the knife to appear, coming from a nerd)
Dip: the thought of a sixth-grade stalker killing someone; demented, unconventional.
Atiqah: -liked the story-

What doesn’t
Vivian: ending is unexpected/weird (didn’t expect the nerd to kill her)
Ben: its just what the nerd said; you just don’t expect that coming out from nerds.
Ryan: overly cliché – opening. A lil absurd, but its more like a black comedy to him, no issues with age.

With that, I shall try to work on new stuff with their comments and hopefully, it’ll help me write better (:

Out of the other few stories which were read aloud in class, i thought Vani’s flow in her story was really good, and that Colin’s story was really cleverly written (very innovative and fresh, in a way.) Amongst all of our stories, i found myself liking Dip’s the most. His use of language was really good; description – such that he didn’t have to state that it was boxing he was writing about. superb job!

Then we went through the whole Aristotle presentation thing.
Oh boy, there’s just so much ancient-ish stuff going through that guy’s mind man!
I’m finding it hard to grasp all his weird (but good, since it’s recognised by many people) theories and longlonglong (and complicated) names!!

Gee man.. Writing has always been a simple task for me.
However, its starting to become no easy feat.
I’ve lost all my creative juices.
-sigh-

Reflections 2: yet again, i reflect.

Ryan paired us up for the in-class exercise to work on our openers.
I got Ben and he got me (yea, like duh!) so here’s MY work (using his opener of course!):

In despair, he watches the clock tick his life away. It is the dawn of a new day and having little time to spare, Jang-Woon sets off feebly to Mount Jeong-Seum where the secrets of the supreme Loong-Teh lie, hidden deep beneath the rocks. As the enemy nears the treasure, Jang-Woon grows weaker with each passing day, unable to ward off their almighty powers and indomitable strength. Without unraveling the mystery his forebearers died to protect, he will have to vanish from the face of the earth along with his ancestors. The evil troops of Seong-Hee must not be the ones who recover the ancient secret of Loong-Teh for should they do so, no other warrior, no matter his strength and power, will be able to conquer Jeong-Seum and the people will suffer a much worser fate than they are suffering now.

After time for the exercise was up, Ryan raised a question and asked if it was easier doing this week’s exercise (having a variety of openers to pick from) or last week’s (having just one opener); The general opinion was that it was easier this week. For me though, i feel both have got their pros and cons. For example, it is easier if we are given a range of openers to choose from. However, this can also work against us as we may not be able to come to a decision in time and may lack focus on the opener we picked, thinking of the ‘what-if’s. (okay, i hope i’m making some sense here)

Anyway, Ryan asked us to read out our stories from this week’s exercise. I got picked (again! gee man..). My mistakes apparently, was that I lacked the active voice and that I was confusing everyone with all my characters’ korean names (whoops!).

After going through Colin’s as well as Ben’s work, Ryan posted another question to us: Since one of us wrote the opening line and the other filled up the contents of the story, who then, is the author of the story?

Vinod voiced out his opinion that the author is dependent on the type of the opener whereas Atiqah mentioned that the story is still very much ours (the person who wrote the rest of the story) although there was provision of the first line from someone else because despite all that, the content (and meat of the story) is at the end of the day, belongs to us. I would have to agree with the latter on that.

Ryan then proceeded to ask us to evaluate the originality of the story this way, since it is after all, written by two people (the one who wrote the opener and the one who continued the story).

As the lesson progressed, Ryan posted an intriguing question to the class: Who do you think was the first person to tell stories? (he even hinted that it can be traced back to the era of cavemen). Well, after much silence (if i don’t recall wrongly), he finally gave us the answer – Aristotle – a greek philosopher who wrote a 40-page memo that explained how stories are told (and thus being the first person who explained how stories are organised).

We were then left with an assignment – 50-word stories which should have:
♥ distinctive character
♥ complete sentences not necessary
♥ can work with dialogue
♥ the title helps stories

and thus, my reflections come to an end.

till next time, adios folks!

Notes: Lecture Two [271006]

There were no notes given during the tutorial.

Reflections 1: the virgin experience of reflecting over storytelling.

Behold all unsexy commoners! For yee’ is sexy and sexy is me!
All hail sonia, your sexyness! (it looks nicer spelt this way, says your sexYness.)
-imaginary people kowtowing-

sidenote: oookay, maybe this whole ’sexy’ saga has gotten into my head quite a bit.

Instead of starting straight with my reflections of the lesson itself, i shall go ahead with the usual “date all the way back to….” series:

The Pre-Rigmarole
Storytelling.
Just the name itself gave me the heebie-jeebies.
My friends mocked at the module, thinking i’d be taught how to read out aloud and articulate stories to children or the elderly at the community libraries (one of those “storytelling time” programmes for kids or golden agers).
It didn’t take long before i started to ooze of contempt for the module.
Walking in to the classroom that day, i expected little of the lesson or worse still, nothing.

The Rigmarole
I was slightly late that ‘fateful’ (to add some melodrama, if you will) friday and walking down the chilly (another addition to the melodrama ‘family’! yeeehah!) corridor, mr C (no prizes for guessing who!) and i were discussing chirpily whether or not the lecturer would be cute ahem, VERY serious matters when we finally got to the entrance of the classroom. By the time we got into the classroom, almost everyone was in their seats filling up a white card, which by the way is a interesting and great idea as a lesson ’side track’ just so that we learn new things about one another (lecturers all think we already know one another but no..); hence, a good way to start things off. We also played the ‘name ‘ game hence the name i got myself – sexy sonia!

I soon came to realise that Mr Ryan isn’t boring like other lecturers. Why so? I found that he had a super innovative way of introducing himself. In my opinion, he used a 2-pronged approach: we learn about him and the way he does it helps in storytelling (in a way..). During the lesson, I understood something I never once realised: stories are actually being conveyed through many mediums. A few examples would be films, books, video games, comics, music and news. In addition to that, I learnt that when having ‘writers’ block’, we should just start writing something (even if its in no relation one way or another to the topic itself) just so it gets us started. Very useful advice I’d think. (:

Oh and we did an exercise with an extremely weird ‘opener’ – here’s my very own version:

Dominic puts on his hula girl outfit and enters the temple. Thinking his costume will serve as a good distraction, he elbows his way through the large crowd and starts to hula dance. Without the need of much effort, he succeeds in drawing the crowd’s attention away from the million-dollar tablet. Meanwhile, his partner-in-crime, Alvin, weaves his way across the people who now are very much amused by Dominic’s antics. Upon reaching the altar, he spots the much-acclaimed tablet of Chi-Won. In his attempt to discreetly steal the tablet, Yan, the caretaker of the temple yelps out in alarm.

To sum things up: In short, Mr Ryan gave a totally different approach to storytelling. Storytelling is more like scriptwriting but isn’t so much so because there are many other avenues of telling stories and not just via films. Storytelling – I love!

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.”
-Confucius-

Notes: Lecture One [201006]

Proper Writing Format
Assignments in this class will use:

♥ Present tense – to create an immediate feel
(as though the same events are going on at the moment) – like sitting in a movie theatre watching it

♥ 3rd person (he/she/it/person’s name)
[editorials/scripts/news casters in 3rd person present tense]

♥ Active voice

The 3rd person / present tense
♥ Screenplays use this format
♥ It presents a more immediate and urgent feel to the material.

E.G: “Mark picks up the gun and holds it in his hand. It begins to tremble, as if alive.”




Passive vs. Active voice
Passive Voice

♥ Uses weak verbs
♥ Tells rather than shows what’s going on
♥ Distances the reader from the story

E.G: “The sky was blue with a lot of white clouds” (tells rather than shows)
[subject of the sentence is at the end]

E.G: “Mark was angry at Jane for tricking him into helping her.”

Active Voice
♥ Uses strong action verbs
♥ Shows the action
♥ Uses an immediate sentence structure
♥ Conveys the story in a lively manner
♥ Gives subject something to do/start sentence with subject
♥ Creates a visual image of what character needs to do




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.
♥ Note down questions you were asking yourself as you wrote it
– Whose story am I telling?
– What is the point of this story?
– How can I engage the attention of the audience?
– Role of writing the story?




Assignment
♥ Reflection
♥ Write 12 opening statements, ones that should let people feel creative in their writing.
– James paces around the empty hallway…
– Karen opens the envelope. Her hand shakes…