Week 10

Hi guys, today I am going to be talking about how I would do my own podcast. Now, I know podcasts these days are popular and all, but quite frankly I have never been that interested myself. I don’t listen to them much. So, when it comes to writing about how I would do my own, I am kind of unsure. A podcast to me is someone just talking about well, whatever they want to talk about whether it be educational or entertaining.  But my interests are pretty limited so that is probably the reason I don’t listen to them is because someone just talking inst that exciting to me. It takes skill to make just talking entertaining, like adding emphasis to words. Maybe if I found one that was on a topic I could relate to like for example, music, I’d stick around. But if I was to do my own personally, I would try to sound out-going and enthusiastic about what I was talking about. My topic would probably be on something like heavy metal. With this I could add some of that music in for examples. But the cool thing is I edit a lot of music so I could create something of my own that would fit into the podcast perfectly or to the tone of the video.

Week 9

Welcome back everyone! Today I’m going to be writing about how I would make my own web series. After watching some of the videos this week I noticed that these videos had a lot in common. The main thing that stuck out to me was the lack of any form or music or sound aside from the person talking. I don’t watch many blog videos so this actually was quite striking for me. The second thing I noticed was there was not really any shaky camera angels. It was stationed and focused precisely on the person so they could be in the middle of the frame. These two elements helped the story because it helped you stay focused on the person talking. If I was to start blogging and making videos about me and my life I would defiantly keep out the music. Even though it would be hard for me, I learned that for this style of video it benefits the video having it out. If I was going on a road trip, I would also use text to describe what was happening around me, maybe my feelings too.

Week 8

Hi again everyone. Today I am going to be discussing what makes a good story. Everyone is going to have different opinions on what makes a good story. For me it would have to be how much it relates to stuff I like. For example, I like fantasy and horror subjects, so a good story for me would maybe be set in a far way fantasy realm with unfamiliar and deadly entities. A story that would not be so interesting to me would probably have to do something with nonfiction like history. But what makes a good story isn’t just things we have an interest in. Now I don’t do a lot of reading now a days. But I can tell you that both paper and digital stories both require some of the same things to make them entertaining. Lots of things can make any story interesting like conflict; obstacles the character has to face. We can relate to this because everyone has to deal with some sort of obstacle in their life. Conflict in a story is relatable and entertaining. Through conflict we can learn more about the character and their true personality and how the people around them will react to this. Conflict and the hardships we go through define us, or as my parents would say “it builds character.” Another thing that makes a story entertaining is what is the risk the character is taking? If there are high stakes and a lot that the character can lose if they fail, it draws us in. It makes us want to cheer on the character in hope that they don’t fail their quest. This makes the story more suspenseful and intense.

As a writer in the past, I related to the last point they made in the video we had to watch which was what else made a good story was how in depth the character was. How advanced is their personality? How deep is their conflict? How far are they willing to go? Coming up with characters and their backstory’s whether it was tragic and heartfelt or fairly average was always fun. Sometimes it was relatable and maybe based on your own life, sometimes it was completely made up. Either way, even if people had not gone through the circumstances themselves, they could still understand how hard it was for your character. The cool thing about story telling though is even if you have not gone through a scenario which the character has gone through, through good story telling it still makes you feel as if you had a connection to them. It brings out emotions in us. And digital story telling can use some more elements to bring out the story better such as music. Which of course, normal books can’t do.

In conclusion, what makes a good, entertaining story is things like conflict, risk, and character development and depth. Without these key elements, your story and character would be bland, dull, and overall just pretty boring. There would be nothing to thrive for and nothing to lose which would make your audience lose interest. “For a given audience, a story is a sequence of content, anchored on a problem, which engages that audience with emotion and meaning.” (Alexander, Brian 13)

D4Darious. “What Makes A Good Story?” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Mar. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=394&v=DCzcoyDp2fY.

Alexander, Brian. “The New Digital Story Telling.”

Week 7

Hi again everyone. Today I am going to be discussing what makes a good story. Everyone is going to have different opinions on what makes a good story. For me it would have to be how much it relates to stuff I like. For example, I like fantasy and horror subjects, so a good story for me would maybe be set in a far way fantasy realm with unfamiliar and deadly entities. A story that would not be so interesting to me would probably have to do something with nonfiction like history. But what makes a good story isn’t just things we have an interest in. Now I don’t do a lot of reading now a days. But I can tell you that both paper and digital stories both require some of the same things to make them entertaining. Lots of things can make any story interesting like conflict; obstacles the character has to face. We can relate to this because everyone has to deal with some sort of obstacle in their life. Conflict in a story is relatable and entertaining. Through conflict we can learn more about the character and their true personality and how the people around them will react to this. Conflict and the hardships we go through define us, or as my parents would say “it builds character.” Another thing that makes a story entertaining is what is the risk the character is taking? If there are high stakes and a lot that the character can lose if they fail, it draws us in. It makes us want to cheer on the character in hope that they don’t fail their quest. This makes the story more suspenseful and intense.

As a writer in the past, I related to the last point they made in the video we had to watch which was what else made a good story was how in depth the character was. Coming up with characters and their backstory’s whether it was tragic and heartfelt or fairly average was always fun. Sometimes it was relatable and maybe based on your own life, sometimes it was completely made up. Either way, even if people had not gone through the circumstances themselves, they could still understand how hard it was for your character. The cool thing about story telling though is even if you have not gone through a scenario which the character has gone through, through good story telling it still makes you feel as if you had a connection to them. It brings out emotions in us. And digital story telling can use some more elements to bring out the story better such as music. Which of course, normal books can’t do.

In conclusion, what makes a good, entertaining story is things like conflict, risk, and character development and depth. Without these key elements, your story and character would be bland, dull, and overall just pretty boring. There would be nothing to thrive for and nothing to lose which would make your audience lose interest.

D4Darious. “What Makes A Good Story?” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Mar. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=394&v=DCzcoyDp2fY.

Week 6

For this week’s reading I will be answering if the game “A Summer Story” is a story or a game or both. After playing it, it is safe to say that it is definitely a story. But is it also a game? It is not as interactive as some of the other activities we have done in this class like the cave game last week. In A Summer Story all I did was basically click enter and sometimes get the choice to pick if I wanted to venture off or turn off my phone to conserve battery life. I think this could have been enhanced if the story was longer but I got through it relatively quickly. Now this story definitely isnt something as advanced as an MMORPG (which is what I play a lot) so for me to say it is a game is kind of hard for me because I am use to using a controller and having combat and an open world experience, not just reading and getting to choose two options a couple times. However, letting me even choose a few options does enhance the story because it makes it more interactive, it personally makes me concentrate more so I can pay attention so I feel like I can choose the best option for me to make in the story. One literary element that made this story more entertaining was the sound effects. When I chose to go wander around the town looking for Ai’s café but ended up getting lost at night and heard the jingling sounds of something metallic brought on more intensity in the story.

Week 5

Hi again everyone! For this week I will be answering the question “Is interactive fiction (such as Colossal Cave) a good way of telling a digital story? Why? How is it different from traditional storytelling or from other digital stories we’ve read so far?”

Well personally, I think interactive fiction is a great way of storytelling. I love being the one being able to make the choices of where the character or I will be going next. As for the online version however I did not like how there was no go back button or how you could not scroll back up to see what was previously said. Unlike a book where you could backtrack, on this version I found myself repeating the same words over and over because I could not remember what I had previously tried typing. I like how with interactive story telling it makes you think more. With this game in particular it made you think more about what was aorund you, but also how to interact with those objects in your own way.  Overall it was a good experience, reminding me of my childhood when I use to read the Goosebumps books where it let you choose your own path and then skip to whatever page number to follow the path you wanted to go down. It differs from what we have read so far because with normal books the path is already laid out, you don’t get to choose, only follow.

Week 4 Final Draft

Welcome back to my blog! This week I am comparing the two stories “Zombie Attack” and “The Dionaea House.” In this blog the subject I will be comparing is point of view. Point of view being the eyes we see the story though whether it be our own, or a character in the story. I chose to do these two stories for their similarities in posting styles. One is posted in short sentences over twitter while the other is similar although it just uses longer posts through email. Both of these stories use first person view. One is describing what it is like to survive years in a zombie apocalypse, all the things we encounter, and witness, the other describing the strange events that led up to a group of friend’s friend shooting two people and then himself in a restaurant when it was completely against his nature the previous years. With “Zombie Attack” I felt like if you read it backwards and forwards it would still make sense. In fact, half way though I did and noticed I thought that is still was readable. But with this blog, the short tweets, along with skipped days, makes for large gaps. It doesn’t go into very much detail. This increases the suspense and there is more confusion as to what is going on. Things are escalating and since there are these gaps, its harder for us to know exactly what is going on and why. It makes the reader work to make sense of it and also makes our imagination run wild as it tries to fill in those gaps. The ending is very short, and  it’s clear that things have degraded into utter cautious and everyone is just trying to survive with no conclusion whether they live or die or not. The story leaves us hanging. "All the kids are dead. Every man for himself!"
As for The Dionaea house “I know how you feel. It’s hard not to think of the times he sat next to us at the table, smiling like a fool, rolling dice and moving his pieces around the board.” “That’s Andrew in a nutshell yeah, at least that’s how I remember him. He got on my nerves sometimes, but damn if he didn’t love being part of the gang.” We find out how he had to house sit for a family member for a few days and came back different. “Was that the start of his madness? Or whatever it is that drove him to shoot up a diner? Were we there to see him first lose his grip? Jesus, Eric, why the hell didn’t we say anything?”  By using the first person narrative, the story grabs our attention by making it feel like we are actually the ones in the story witnessing/ seeing and feeling everything that is going on. It makes the story feel more personal.

https://twitter.com/zombieattack

Attack, Zombie. “Zombie Attack (@Zombieattack).” Twitter, Twitter, 30 May 2014, twitter.com/zombieattack.

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dionaea_House

“The Dionaea House.” Creepypasta Wiki, creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Dionaea_House.