Ira Glass on Storytelling

Last week in class we watched a video on the building blocks of a good story... I saw that the video was about five minutes long and figured it was just going to be a guy sitting in a chair the whole time telling a story.  Well, he did do all these things but to my surprise it was actually very interesting.  I found myself eager to start writing in my daybook before the video was even over!

The first thing that caught my attention was when he said, "In high school you are taught..." Immediately I started to think about my experience with writing in high school.  Basically what he was saying was that in high school you are given a topic sentence and specific things to write about in each paragraph, which is one-hundred percent true!  I remember for the tenth grade writing exam you were giving a topic to write about and they told you what the guidelines were for each paragraph.  This was the case for almost every paper I wrote and maybe it is why I dislike writing so much.  But anyways back to the video!  The guy was saying to simply tell a story.  Have a sequence of events down and tell us, "I did this, then I did this, and then..."  He emphasized the word "anecdote" and said that no matter how boring your story is the power of an anecdote will make your story more efficient. 

I think Lacy showed us this piece because this is exactly what we are trying to do with our Literacy Narratives.  Also we did another activity where we read a newspaper article and took the perspective of different characters.  I chose to write in first person perspective and then in the moment.  This helped me a lot with my Narrative and it gave me some ideas to play around with to hopefully improve.  

Fishbone!

Hello fellow writers.  I titled this piece “Fishbone” because for homework one day last week we had to read a story and complete this “fishbone” thing.  I was like whhhattt??  Fishbone?  And not to mention the title of the story we had to read was, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.”  I thought to myself, “Well, I

So, some background information on the fishbone… The middle piece was to write what we thought the main argument the author was trying to convey, on the bones extending from the body we had to write the main points and on the last piece of bone we had to write our personal response.  I was like okay this sounds good let’s get to work on this thing!

 

The first part of the story was really funny and easy to follow, but as the girl went on it got more confusing.  There was so much Spanish in it and I do not know how to read Spanish!  I feel like she just kept dragging her story on and on, when she could’ve got her point out in a much more condensed form.  My understanding of the text was that she was describing all the different forms and difficulty of the many languages and how she has a certain accent to conform to her current location.  I can relate to this in a way because I know that I talk differently to my parents and grandparents than I do with my friends.   I have to watch what I say and how I say things with one of my best friends from New York because she says things a lot different than I do.  During the class discussion this topic came up and Lacy asked us if there is ONE right form of English.  I think that there is not just one right way and it varies with your culture.  Everyone has different accents and ways to say stuff I just think a lot of it has to do with what and how you were raised to speak. 

So, my question to you is: can you really “Tame a wild tongue?” 

Blog 3.. Literacy Dig

For this week’s blog I decided to look back at what I wrote for my literacy dig assignment.  I actually missed the class when Lacy described the assignment to us so when I looked at the syllabus and saw what we had to do I was a little frazzled.  But I proceeded on with it!

 

So.... I open my daybook and start to title the page.  I am sitting at my desk in my ten by fifteen inch dorm room as I begin to look around at some of the things that are of value to me and a big part of my life.  We have to list five things and write a "thick description" on it.  The items that I decide to choose are: my Charlotte 49er’s planner, my Brita water bottle, my overflowing trash can, my Alpha Delta Pi sunglasses and a picture of my two best friends.  All of these items show a little bit about me and I hope that as an outsider you can see why these objects are meaningful to me. 

My planner shows that I am an organized person and like I like to have my day planned out.  I love the feeling of accomplishing something and marking it off.  My water bottle is sitting in my mini fridge under my right now filled with crisp, clean filtered water.   Water is all I drink.  It is simply the best thing for a person to drink and I love the taste (even though water doesn’t really have a taste haha).  I am not really sure why I chose my trash can as an object to be honest.  Maybe it shows that I eat a lot because it is always full! My fourth item is my ADPi sunglasses.  I love sunglasses, just like I love the sun and summertime.  I wish it could be summer all year long and never winter!  My final object is my picture of me and my two best friends.  My friends mean everything to me.  We are with each other through the tick and the thin and I know for a fact I can always count on them. 

So there you have it!  My five objects that mean a lot to me in my everyday life!

 

Arin Hall

Reflective Blog 2

Looking back through my daybook, I chose to write about my writing timeline. When we were asked to think back as far as you can remember to the events that shaped and influenced you as a writer I got a little scared. I was scrambling through my head all the times I had to write something and what made me better as a writer. So.... this is what came to mind:
 

Over the past 13 years of school, I was never really a writer. I loved to read and stuff but never liked coming up with my OWN ideas and writing them on paper. The first thing that I can think of is my mom used to read me childrens books before bed all the time. It was the way she read them that I adored. Her voice flowed so nice and she would get deeply into the book. Shortly after she stopped reading books to me I got a journal for my 10th birthday! I was so excited. It was blue and white and had Dogs all over it. I started writing in my journal every day. I would write what I did that day, what was on my mind at the time, why my brother was so mean to me, and so much more! I loved getting my feelings out on paper because I didn't always have someone to share them with. I feel that this made me become and emotional writer and showed me that I love to rant about things.

In the 4th grade my teacher gave us an assignment where we had to read a book, dress up as the main character of it, and write a report and present it to the class. Mine was about a kid who lived in the city that played baseball. So.... I dressed up in a baseball cap and pants... yes I look kind of like a boy but oh well! I think that the fact that I had to dress up as the character really helped me as a writer. It put me IN the story and helped me visualize it better.

Vocabulary words and stems. Yes, I hated these words so much when I was in the 8th grade. We had to do so many of them and I honestly wanted to throw them accross the room and never have to look at them again. But of course that wasn't the case. I am glad I did all of the vocab words and stems now because it expanded my vocabulary tremendously and helped me with high school essays a ton. My senior year of high school I had one of the hardest teachers. But she turned out to help me a lot. She taught me how to critique and edit and how to write in different ways. This helped me with my college essays!

Overall through this whole experience I discovered that I am still not a awesome writer, but I try. I get better and better as the years go on and I hope that that will continue through my college years.

-Arin Hall

Blog 1. Theme for English B

Last week on August 23, 2012, my English teacher presented us with a poem called, “Theme for English B.”  As soon as I saw it was a poem I wanted to pull my hair out.  I cannot stand poems.  She told us to read through the poem and write in our daybooks what comes to mind as we read.  So, I open up my daybook, with a sigh, and get started, on what I hope will be as painless of an experience as possible.

As I look back at my writing in my daybook, I find that all I talked about was how I can relate this poem to myself.  Hughes talks about how he feels like an outcast in the world.  For me, I sometimes feel out of place at home, in school, and in public.  I feel like because I am short and do not look my age at all that people see me differently.  I constantly walk around with my head down and my confidence low because I feel that I am different from everyone else.  After reading this poem for a third time I realized that I needed to open my eyes up.  Langston Hughes refers to a colored boy born in Winston Salem who struggles with his own identity and place in society.  The line that I am not really sure of is when he says, “But I guess I’m what I feel and see and hear.”  What does he mean by this?

After looking back on my daybook writing and the poem itself, I have come to a conclusion that poetry is still very hard for me to read and write about.  I did expand a lot on lot from what I previously wrote in my daybook.  I guess that is why I picked this piece to blog about, so hopefully I can get better at my writing. 

Arin Hall