Project Desciption
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Drafting |
My initial thoughts about where my power comes from was family. I thought about stories that connected us together, and that's when I thought of my brother, Luke. I remembered the time he had a major surgery and being so bored in the waiting room that I started to write what had happened during that day. I came back to that piece of work for inspiration and decided I wanted to refine it. It eventually became my official story. I started with just the part where I was in the waiting room, then I backtracked to what happened earlier that day, then week. The ending was pretty messy and abrupt.
After feedback from Mr. Max, he told me I needed more dialogue. I added more details and scenes with talking to add realism and interest.
Next the audience said they needed more memories of Luke to show his importance and to gain a better connection with him, so I added a section about the birth of Luke to explain the emotional struggles we have already had with him.
Then I continued to add pictures and finalize my storyline. There are some parts where I started to add more characters, but I later deleted them because it would take too long to integrate them into the plot.
The final draft was all about refining and taking out unimportant details that don't matter. It needed to be 8-9 minutes long, so shortening was my main priority.
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Critique |
My story had been heard by more than half the class before I presented at exhibition, and that was because I had done so many rounds of critique. To me, this is the most important part of the writing process. The 3rd round was the most beneficial because we worked in smaller groups and read our stories to each other. Reading a story on paper is a very different experience than hearing it directly from the author's mouth. Although it takes a significant amount of time, it's more personal this way and the critique is more heartfelt.
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Scripting |
Scripting our stories brought them to life. It told us when and how we should voice parts of our story. When I did this process, I read my story to myself aloud and my natural reading told me where I would insert these cues:
Bold Text is for emphasis Italicized Text tells you when to slow down Underlined Text reminds you to look up at the audience {PAUSE} is self explanatory |
Recorded Practices |
Over the break, we had to practice our story everyday to get comfortable with it. Here are those practices:
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EXHIBITION! |
Our night's theme was family. I had the privilege of opening the show.
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Reflection |
At first I thought my power came from my brother because he was the main character of my story. But later on I realized that family was the overarching theme. The event was about a family member getting sick and the rest of the family coming together and being reminded not to take each other for granted, because we can lose each other so easily and quickly.
During the writing portion of this project, I learned about In Media Res. This is Latin for "into the middle of things”. In other words, you put a piece of the middle of a plot acting as a hook to make the audience more invested in your story and keep them wondering how things came to be that way. I recognize this theme in many TV shows today, but I never knew the correct term for it. I also learned that your first draft will never be perfect, so I should stop trying to make it good while I’m still writing it. I need to throw up all my word-vomit onto the paper and know something good will come out of it. I want to remember to do this in any type of writing situation I find myself in because it helps me come up with a lot of potential content to work with. In hindsight, this project was somewhat easy for me. I enjoy writing and the story I chose I had already partially written beforehand. It also wasn’t emotionally draining because my brother is still alive, so I knew there was a happy ending. I also consider art to be one of my hobbies and somewhat therapeutic, so it too was easy for me. The hardest part would be making my mind map, which took about 4 hours to research and draw. Even though it looks good, I spent way too much time on it and could’ve used that time elsewhere in this project. I’m proud of how I presented at exhibition and think it went well. The audience was pretty dark from my perspective, so I couldn’t see anybody’s reactions, but later that night my mother told me my youngest brother had started crying during my piece. It was fulfilling to know I had made at least one person- my 4 year old brother- feel something. The only thing I regret is not changing the position of the podium because it made me strain my neck to look down at my paper. I don’t think I could have done any better in this project. I put my best foot forward and invested a lot of time and effort into my work. If hadn’t written about my family, I probably would have written about my friends and how much they give me joy. I had the privilege to watch every person's story, and after listening to Angelo’s piece about his friends, it inspired me to appreciate mine and consider writing about them in my free time, even after this project is long gone. If I could change the project for next year, it would be to lengthen the time allowed to present. In the beginning, 8-10 minutes of reading on a stage was very frightening to many of us. But after reflection, my group all agreed that they could’ve used more time to add more elements into their stories to gain a stronger emotional connection with the audience. |