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.
Arin, I really liked this post. I liked how you mapped out your ideas in a way that it was really easy for me as a reader to follow your thought processes. It made me think back to that video and I remember expecting the video to be boring, and you were right, It really was quite interesting. Good job!!
ReplyDeleteHey Arin! I love how you gave us your expectations before the video. I was thinking the same thing! I think he said a lot of true things, like you said, about simply telling a story, but having a powerful anecdote to back it up. As I reader, I find it disappointing sometimes to read a great story that's meaningless or something with an incredible truth but no plot line. I think it's always a challenge for the story teller to creatively employ them both.
ReplyDeleteHey Arin.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed watching the video in class. I can relate to the fact that the activity with the newspaper article as well as watching the video really helped me to write my Literacy Narrative. I completely agree with what you said about High School writing. Everything was planned and you knew what you had to put in each paragraph. Im really interested to see how watching this video helped you to write your literacy narrative.
Hey Arin! I really liked your post titled "IRA Glass on story telling". When I saw the beginning with the guy in the chair I thought the same thing. I thought that he was just going to tell the same old story. When you stated "In high school you are taught..." Immediately I started to think about my experience with writing in high school." I had the same response. I like how you mentioned the 10th grade writing exam, that was a horrible experience for me.
ReplyDeleteI really notice that "in highschool you are taught" part too... and I think Ira Glass is right about this... and yet... I hate how k-12 teachers are always getting a bad rap... I catch myself doing it too.
ReplyDelete