Week 15 Story Lab: Empoword Chapter 2

When we tell a good story we make imaginations run wild.

(Image by Tumisu from Pixabay)

Notes: Telling a Story

• There are many different ways to interpret a story
• Narration: a rhetorical story-telling mode involving the construction and relation of stories
• Techniques for narration
• Plot: refers to the actual events that take place in the story
• the primary subject of the narrative
• Scope: boundaries of the plot
• When and where? Background?
• Context
• Can be narrow or broad
• Should focus on details that fit in the bigger picture
• Sequence and Pacing: the order of events and the amount of time you give to each event
• Freytag's Pyramid
• Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution
• In Medias Res= "in the middle of things"
• Begin in the middle and circle back to the beginning
• Point-of-View: the perspective from which a story is told
• 1st person: uses "I" "me" "we" "us"
  
• 2nd person: uses "you" "your"
• 3rd person: uses "he" "her" "them"
  
• 3rd person omniscient: uses same as third person but is all knowing of every character
• Tone: the emotional register of the story's language
• Mood: the emotional register a reader experiences
• Building Characters
• Characterization: the development of characters through action, descriptions, and dialogue. Relies on specificity
• Direct= through specific description of the character
• Indirect= through behaviors, speech, or thoughts of the character
• Types of characters
• Round- very detailed and require attentive description
• Flat- minimally detailed
• Static- remain the same through the whole narrative
• Dynamic- change within the narrative as a result of the events
• Dialogue: communication between two or more characters
• often demonstrates the traits of a character or the relationship of the characters
• When dialogue is not doing more than one thing it can feel flat 
• Rhythm of dialogue should tell the reader something
• Choosing a Medium:
• Multimedia or Multi-genre: narration that synthesizes multiple different forms, like video and audio, nonfiction, poetry, and photography
• Think of how to combine mediums to effectively tell a story

I learned a lot of good things from this chapter! I thought I knew how to properly tell a story but there are a lot of elements I was not including that I should be!