last blog post!

I'm planning on doing my paper on the early development of the film industry. After watching Barton Fink and reading Walter Benjamin I've developed a curiosity in the difference between theater and film. I'm also curious on how film developed as a novelty to a major industry.

Adapting

Adaption is an interesting form of writing. It is technically taking someone's work and transposing it into another medium. One thing I think all the articles touched on is that not every good book will make for a good movie, and choosing the right book to make an adaption of is key. The articles all address questions that arise with adaptions. A few of the articles also address what everyone asks when a book is adapted; was it as good as the book? In the article True Blood Book Adapation Sucks the answer is a resounding no for True Blood. The main point in the article is that the writing, probably done by men, doesn't get the characters or story at all. I've never watched the show but it definitely doesn't sound as good as the books. The characters seem shallow and the plot just about sex according to brokeharvardgrad. Sometimes though, the movie out does the book such as the movie A Clockwork Orange. The vibrant imagery of the book comes alive in the movie.

In the article Novel Adaptions: How close should they be? the actual discussion of adapting a novel makes me think of a book I'm currently reading called Illuminations. The book is a series of essays written by the Social Theorists Walter Benjamin the one I'm thinking of is his view on translations. While adaptions don't go far into the linguistic realm as Benjamin writes( unless they are adapted from other languages) his points are valid for adaption. The adaption shouldn't be a direct take of the original text but should be able to draw on the original intentions of the work. The example of True Blood according to brokenharvardgrad wasn't about just sex but a more evolved story.

What and why I picked this.

I chose a group of poetry. I picked it because it's the one type of writing I've been doing for a while. I used it a lot as a way to deal with problems going on with my life. It became a great coping mechanism for me. Most of it never got polished because I tended to not go back to it I simply wrote out whatever I was feeling and that was it. Most of it is fairly introspective too going through the whole teenage years. I've gotten out of the practice of writing much poetry because lately I haven't been dealing with the strong emotions.The particular pieces I actually just asked for someone else to look through them to help me decide.I keep all of it online somewhere so I just linked them in to explore it. I had them pick around eight to narrow it down for me. I talked about why they picked what. The first one I picked I entitled "Gone" and I chose it because it pretty much sums up the events that got me into writing in the first place. The next piece was Bits of thought. It describe some of the less serious stuff I've done that was pretty manic. I just get random ideas and put them together even if they might now make complete sense. The third one is "Fairy Tale" it kind of described my longing to return to childhood before everything got complicated. The fourth was entitled "Lost Her" I spent a lot of time trying to capture the emotions I had after my father died. Lost her though it is about a man losing a woman was just another attempt of trying to type out my desperation to not lose my father. The last piece is "House Cat" the only reason it is there is because I think my friend just liked cats. I wrote it to word my frustration with all the stuff I had to deal with at the time.

Creativity

The first article "Ideas in creative writing" is informative and gives good ideas but, for the most part it was just telling me what to do and how to do it. I agree with what they say but the way they go about it, it feels less like suggestions and more like commandments of fiction writing. The first thing is that the article tells you that you should avoid macro level ideas and stick with just characters. The problem is often times some of the larger forces that we he is telling us not to write about become the influential force behind characters. Fiction also becomes a way of transposing radical ideas into a package that can be given to the general public. It would have been better to say focus on character development rather than to toss out macro level ideas.

The other opinions set forth in this article are pretty good though. I think as far as organic and static characters it is true. If the character doesn't change through the story than the story doesn't feel like it moves at all. The thing that contradicts this though are characters in television show. The story isn't exactly a book but they don't change. In cartoons their clothes don't even change. The characters go through some ordeal but at the end they are the same character and we still love them. I love the last idea from the article though, drawing from real life for fiction is always great. It creates a more dynamic character if the person is real in a basic form.

The article "Getting started in Science Fiction" was hilarious, and despite the best effort of the author after reading it I just wanted to write more. The article isn't so much telling you how to write but telling you that you will suck and it will be hard. It is more about living as a writer than about actually writing. The problems you will face as a writer in science fiction are innumerable. It does give some positive messages too about starting out (that everyone sucks at the start). A lot of the advice given is helpful and recognizes that ideas come from anywhere but aren't what make the story they just shape it.

hello audience

Writing for an audience is a basic for writing most things. You don't use technical jargon when writing to a general audience and you don't have to speak in layman's terms if you are writing for a certain audience. I like this topic overall because of it being basic and I'm sure plenty of people have written things without taking audience in consideration.

The first reading "Writing for Children Snips and Snaps" really showed someone who understood the audience. The whole thing is broken down into key points and each point describes and gives good examples of what they are talking about. The whole page makes me feel like I could write children's books. I also like the article because it gives a detailed breakdown of considerations for a specific audience.

The three other articles all focused on writing for audiences in general but they did not all come from the same position. I think all the articles make several suggestions and good points towards considering the audience. It also gives ideas and strategies toward making sure you are going to be understood by the audiences. I took from Lynn Alfino's article about writing for magazines are several things to consider for the magazine such as martial status.

The other two articles take the perspective from a student. I found the information here pretty useful being a student. I tend to be writing for a instructor. One thing that is interesting about this is in high school they teach you to write for a general audience and then it flips and you are suppose to be a writing for an instructor. I'm not sure why there is this contradiction. I like that the article from the bbc site has the word reason and audience bold. The reason for writing something may also affect what you are writing as much as audience. Say the reason you want to do the writing to make people laugh or to give information you'd consider what the audience would think is funny or what the audience should know. One thing that these three articles also point out is getting help for writing. A couple examples of this is seeking people with a better understanding of the subject or just finding someone to read over it as a general reader.

The stranger in fiction

I like Stranger Than Fiction so far I think it says something about life in general. First off it makes all lives seem worthy of having a story written about them. At the start Will Ferrell's character is rather unassuming and dull but he quickly becomes more interesting. I think the movie also gives more of a feel of how writing is creating something in this case the world Will Ferrell inhabits. It questions ho controls the plot in the story; the character or the writer. Dustin Hoffman being in this movie and playing the character he is makes me think of I Heart Huckabees. He acts as a guide in both movies. He also sets the movie within a literary framework setting Crick to figure out whether the story he is in is a tragedy or a comedy. On the other side is the writer herself seeking the best way to kill him by observing death. Death of course being a major part of the movie also as we see how he reacts to his eminent death.

Distraction and My dead Kindle

I'm pretty sure I've broken most of the rules in Writing in the Age of Distraction. I tend to leave all manner of programs running and get distracted constantly. I do however tend to leave unfinished sentences or at least placeholders. I know as soon as I return to typing I'll go back to figuring out what to put there instead. I tend to look up facts as soon as I have the chance to. I almost always try to be in the right mood. I could do everything I want to and then suddenly remember something else. I probably should follow his advice otherwise it tends to take me an hour or so to write something that only takes 10 minutes.

My kindle died a few months ago and I've been reluctant to actually send it in and pay for it to get fixed. It isn't that I didn't enjoy it greatly. I found myself reading tons of books I never really had the care to go pick up from the library or a bookstore. I also did much of the same things noted in How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write. I constantly switched between a few different books cycling back and fourth depending on how I felt. I did plenty of impulse buys just on the urge to try something different or look for something I heard about. I sampled books, subscribed to blogs and newspapers all of which had trial versions. There are a few things not mentioned in that article and maybe because it was an older kindle. You can e-mail with it for free. The network is free to use and you can access mobile versions of programs like g-mail. It is kind of annoying waiting for the little ink letters to catch up while typing them out but it was better than nothing at the time. I'm not sure if I'm will to invest money to fix it because I'm afraid it will just fall and break again but it was great while it lasted.

Writing in the now.

I enjoy writing and Ive been on computers for years. I think I remember typing not too long after learning to write. My penmanship is pretty horrible because of it but the only thing I ever write normally is a signature. Today we all communicate online like in the article WE ARE ALL WRITERS NOW. The internet has become a giant social network for everyone creating writers of everyone good or bad. The funny thing I think is that despite youtube and other sites the internet seems to be made to be a machine of words. The internet writing can be pretty bad but to point at one thing and proclaim that all of it is bad is being pretty foolish. Take twitter for example I'm sure if you search eating lunch you'd get a bunch of people just announcing that which for the most part is totally pointless. You have to look through to find the good amongst the bad. I also think that the internet allows people who might not have had a chance to get a published work out there a voice.

second post

I'm a fan of Mcsweeney's. I was introduced to the books not to long ago by my English major friend and his very literate family. Mcsweeney manages to incorporate everything involved in writing and a few things that vaguely do. The Internet Age writing syllabus continues the satire making fun of every major social internet experience. Paper is dangerous in the internet world and every moment of your life can be described in 140 characters or less.

first blog for english

I'm not sure really what to post so I'll leave you with a picture of a monkey.