Storytelling Tool 2: Experience – Week 6

Story telling tool 2: Experience

– A storyteller should be concerned with the potential of every experience.

– Everything about you – where you were born, what food you eat, the bump on your forehead – your experiences are unique and irreplaceable.

– Many of your experience are universal and translatable and can be used in any location.

Universal themes
– Friendships
– Love
– Family
– Death
– Betrayal
– Loneliness
– Hardships (different for different people, different culture.)
– Hope

Translatable (what would you change)
– Settings
– Characters
– Language
– Culture

Tip:
– If you don’t know what to do with a character, make him yourself for a while. (Put ourselves in other people’s shoes)

– See how he relates to the world he has been thrown into.

-All people have fragments of stories.

– These potential ideas prompt your desire to know more.

– Respond emotionally and intellectually to what you heard.

– Good stories are born in the heart, not the head.

– Remember the rod of an audience.

– After all, you ARE the audience.

Storytelling tool 3: Memory

– Your memory is a wonderful cabinet of past incidents which you have experienced or been told.

– These memories are points of reference to your own past existence.

What’s the difference between memory and experience?

Experience – true
Memory – can be manufactured.
Eg. Can be true or can be false.

Tip: Write what you do not know because you will find some part of you that does know.

There is always room for personal discovery.

How do we use memory to build creative content?

Film Screening

Les Mistons (1957)
Director: Francois Truffaut

Film Screening

Les Mistons (1957)
Director: Francois Truffaut

Assignment 1
Write 2 short stories
– One is completely TRUE
– One is completely Fase

Only the author knows which is which!

Post these on your blogs under a page called true or false by tues, 3rd June, 10am.

Assignment 2
After posing your story, visit 3 classmates below you on the blogroll and vote for which story you think is true and which is false.

Principles of Tragedy – Week 4

Assignment

VIsual Trigger: Find and image and tell a story that comes to your mind as you see it.

Pictures should not be taken for this purpose – use only pictures you can find.

Take a picture that can create my story.

Can be a magazine, internet, any other pictures.

Incorporate principals of tragedy into your writing..

What is tragedy?

Tragedy doesn’t mean that something bad happens and the story ends.

It means something bad happens as a result of a flaw in your character, and you show how this tragic fall forces your character to learn something about herself or himself.

6 Parts of Tragedy in a Play
-Plot, events that happen
-Characters
– diction
– thought
– Melody
-Spectacle

3 act structure
Act 1 : Intro, set up characters, problems that occurs
Act 2: Obstacles
Act 3: Resolution, morale of the story

People Watch – Week 3

Storytelling Techniques – Week 3
(Make-Up lessons with Miss Phuah)

REVIEW EXERCISE 2: 50 WORD STORIES
– Difficulties – What were they?
>> Keeping on word limit.
– Restrains – Did they help?
>> It helps to focus on the main idea.

Do constrains help you to be a better writer?
>> It helps to be more creative.
What constraints do professional writers face?
>> Professional writers face datelines, casting problems…

STORYTELLING TOOL 1: OBSERVATION

– Observe in a conscious way – watch with awareness

– Train yourself to see and record:
– Movements
– Physical Characteristics – are important because it shows how they carry themselves.
– Settings – how they behave in different situations

– Adopt a KNEE EYE – to be aware
– Develop a natural SENSE OF CURIOSITY – be interested in people in events, but not intrusive.

~ An observed event, when subject to simple questions, can set up a sequence of possibilities that will develop into a story worth telling.

For eg, when you observe a couple having a meal yet totally not talking…. what questions come to your mind?
– Have they just had an argument over something?

– WHOM AM I WRITING ABOUT? –Which character, whose point of view are you telling about.
– WHO IS MY CHARACTER?
– WHAT IS HE / SHE / IT LIKE?
– WHAT DOES HE / SHE / IT DO?
– WHAT HAPPENS TO HIM / HER / IT IN THE STORY?

EXERCISE: AWARENESS LEVEL
– 2 students
– Back to back
– DESCRIBE each other ACCURATELY

Assignment:
ARISTOTLE

– You are to answer the questions on the handouts
– As a group, prepare a PowerPoint or keynote presentation.

1. Review the list of questions in groups of 3
2. You have an hour to complete your research
3. Avoid presenting just facts or theories. Support your answers with interesting antidotes or tales about Aristotle.

Presentation by our classmates during lesson
Problems writers face
– Deadlines
– Plagiarism
How to solve: read up more and watch more movies, copyright your work.
– Casting Problems
– Creative differences with other writers/directors

Watch what is people doing and not just what is said
(See the actors)
Observing what people do as well as what they say

Conflicts – Week 2

Conflict

Means… Disagreement

– Definition

– Opposition of persons or forces

– Can result internally or externally

Internally – yourself
Externally – against other people, organizations

– It is the interaction of opposing ideas, interest, or wills that creates the plot.

Three movies/TV Series that has conflict:

Heroes – fighting for power from one another
Gossip Girl – Reputation and relationships
Step up – Skills and Position

– a serious / not so serious disagreement
– Hostile encounter
– Mental / Emotional / Physical Struggle
Physical Struggle: Handicap

Types of Conflict:

– Dramatic conflict is the protagonist’s struggle against something or someone.
~ Man vs man
~ Man vs environment
~ Man vs system
~ Man against self

– Variations of conflict can arise from gender, age, religion and culture.

Gender: different mind set
Age: generation gap
Religion: different believes
Culture: different way of doing things / different superstitions

Causes and Effects of conflicts

– Conflict arises when there is CHANGE

– Changes may be major or minor
Changing a class time – Either or

While change is universal and common, it is not always accepted.

Examples of changes:
Seasons, lives, relationships, feelings, bodies, locations, technologies

– Conflict arises when people resist changes

– The intensity of conflict depends how people react to the change

– People must learn to cope with change if they want to survive

– The action in drama depends on conflict

Importance of Conflict

– Plot cannot be constructed without conflict

– Central feature of the screenplay

– As your character attempt to reach their goals, they come into conflict with each other.

– The end of the story nears when the protagonist and antagonist approach their goals and the conflict rises to generate maximum suspense and excitement.

Antagonist – Anything, a barrier

Writing for an Audience

– Screenwriter = Storyteller
~ The cinematic experience is not just made up of text on paper, but the audiences’ emotional reaction to that information.

Director to people x

Writer to people x

Camera to people x

IT’S PEOPLE TO PEOPLE

What is the writer’s purpose?

To connect the audiences:
– Themselves
– Their unique vision
– The material / Issue
– The drama
– Others

Audiences want to be transported by a screenplay.

Where do you look for a story?

Within yourself eg. Experiences, memories, emotions

Practice observing, ‘listening’ and reading body language of people

(To tell a good story, you have to create characters.)

Figure how to connect your viewers to your story through emotions, characters, etc

Assignments

5 stories of exactly 50 words each, posted to your blog.

(Do a word count before submission.)

Short Films Showed:

The Call Home

Directed by:
Han Yew Kwang

Written by:
K.S.A Shah
Raj.A Pillai
Subra V.S
Rachel B. Kaur
Han Yew Kwang

2001, Singapore, 31:00

The Secret Heaven

Written and Directed by: Sun Koh
Singapore 2002, 16:00