Week 15 Lab: Advice to Writers site

For my last story lab (and last assignment for this class!), I looked around Jon Winokur's Advice to Writers website! This site was very interesting and full of great tips and ideas.


My favorite thing I saw was a piece of advice from just a few days ago, on November 24th. A contributor named Stephen Sondheim had this to say:


"The last collaborator is your audience…when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written. Things that seem to work well — work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece — suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience."


This advice struck me as a unique way to view the writing process as well as helpful advice. Considering one's audience is a crucial element of effective writing. Quality writing should affect the reader in some way. The reaction of the audience becomes part of the writing experience itself after you (as a writer) pen a finished product. Sondheim's idea of a "last collaborator" jumped out at me as an especially creative way to name this phenomenon. Ultimately, the best writers learn to adjust their work to the audience. This doesn't mean writing fluff to please an audience or letting potential readers guide your core ideas or style; it does, however, involve a consideration of how you can bet communicate your ideas and employ your style in a way that helps the audience rather than blurring your intended meaning. Writing can quickly become excessive and overly complicated. The best writers learn to resist this and focus on engaging their audience.


I've enjoyed this final story lab and this class in general! This will be my last post on this blog. I've gained a lot from making it, perhaps someone else will have gained something from reading it (at least my stories).

Looney Tunes, Warner Bros. Source: Wikimedia

Week 12 Lab: Writers Write website

For my story lab this week, I looked around the Writers Write website. I thought this website was fun and had some excellent writing advice. Although the whole website was interesting and helpful, the section I enjoyed the most was an article called "The 3 Best Tips For Writing Dialogue." Dialogue can be difficult to craft in a way that sounds realistic and is engaging. I've struggled at times to create quality dialogue in my stories.

The first tip on this article is simply to "read." This is an undervalued component of writing solid dialogue. Seeing both good and bad dialogue in stories can help you as a writer decide what types of dialgoue you want to include in your stories. Imitating good dialogue style is very doable!

The next tip was to "listen." Reading lines to yourself out loud can be a good way to catch lines that don't make sense or sound strange. Ear tests are helpful in determining how realistic dialogue sounds. This is a practical tip that applies to all sorts of dialogue.

The final tip in the article is to "watch." The author says to "Watch the scene play out in your head.
Make the actions of your characters follow their words. In this movie both of the actors are just sitting or standing, delivering these lines."
This advice is really interesting. Generating a movie scene in your mind allows you to visualize what would be happening and fix anything that would be out of place. This can also help you focus on the individual characters and their possible emotions in order to write lines that best reflect your conception (as a writer) of your own characters.

This writing website was great, I definitely have enjoyed the story lab for this week. Hopefully these tips about writing effective dialogue will help me craft compelling lines of dialogue in my stories during the rest of this course!

Ballpoint pen being used to write. 

From author Ildar Sagdejev. Source: Wikimedia

Week 10 Lab: TED Talk videos

For this week, I chose the lab option and watched two TED talks about stories and storytelling.

In the first video, "The Danger of a Single Story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Adichie tells of growing up in Nigeria and experiencing a lack of representation in children's books. She began writing, and her characters resembled the White American/British characters of the books she was reading. Eventually, she was able to read African literature. This helped her reframe her view of books. She then talked about the concept of a "single story" that leads many to misunderstand people from other parts of the world, including her college roommate in the United States. People may be well-meaning, but have a skewed perception of countries like Nigeria--just one country in the diverse, complex continent of Africa. "Single stories," framed by people in power, can paint entire people groups in one way repeatedly. Ultimately, Adichie concludes in the lecture that a single story "robs people of dignity." In the talk, she highlighted how stories can be used for both bad and good. I really enjoyed learning from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and hearing her powerful perspective on the importance of stories. It definitely changed how I conceptualize stories as a society-affecting tool.

The next talk, called "Imaginary Friends and Real-World Consequences," was given by Jennifer Barnes. Barnes is (or at least was at the time of the lecture) a professor and psychologist from right here at OU! She notes the massive amount of time and money that humans consistently spend on consuming fiction, whether books, TV shows, or movies. She also examines how fictional stories and fictional characters end up affecting us. The relationships between humans and fictional characters (or even real people in general that we only know from media) are called "parasocial relationships." She also discusses the philosophical concept of "alief," which I thought was fascinating. I learned a lot from this lecture! She also talked about the effects of having fictional friends being comparable to having real friends in some ways. Knowing how people engage with characters psychologically will help me in crafting stories and characters going forward in this course. 

Fan art representation of Lupin from the Harry Potter series, one of my favorite fiction characters. 

Artist:  Mademoiselle Ortie aka E. Tihange. Source: Wikimedia

Week 6 Lab: TedEd Videos on Style

For this week's story lab, I watched the eight TedEd videos about creative writing and style. Here are some of my observations and key takeaways from my two favorites!

I really enjoyed the video on creative constraints. I learned about how some restrictions on tasks actually help us produce interesting things and help our brains better process what we want to do. In some subjects, like science and engineering, certain constraints are inevitable. These constraints can be especially useful though in helping humans achieve our goals and invent interesting devices. Constraints can guide our decision making in many critical ways. Many extraordinary scientific inventions that have impacted multiple fields were the product of facing creative constraints.

Another video that I especially enjoyed from the set was "What 'Orwellian' really means." I've heard this term a lot and read parts of George Orwell's book 1984, so I had some base knowledge before watching. I learned from the video that "George Orwell" was just a pen name for author Eric Blair. The video explains that reducing the term "Orwellian" to simply be a synonym or substitute for "authoritarian" doesn't fully capture the author's message in the classic 1984. In fact, the video asserts, lazy use of the concept "Orwellian" actually relates to a passion of Blair's: the use of words and how language can shape societal ideas. The state in 1984 dramatically alters the English language to discourage critical thinking, thus altering the populace's perceptions of reality. Orwell was concerned about a form of this occurring in not only authoritarian states, but also in democratic societies. The video also introduces the concept of immoral actions and evil concepts being disguised in complicated, scholarly language to obscure how bad they are. Even the language used in basic marketing ads and normal speeches by politicians are crafted to make us think certain things and in ways. Additionally, the urge to mindlessly regurgitate certain phrases and sentences we hear in modern media actually can discourage us from insightful critical thinking. The ability to communicate complex thoughts with clarity and sound structure is an essential component of mental freedom.

Headstone of Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) in All Saints' parish 

churchyard, Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire. Source: Wikimedia

Story Lab: Crash Course Myth Videos

For this assignment, I watched the three Overview of Mythology videos from Crash Course on Youtube. 

In the first video, I found it interesting how the Crash Course teacher described the study of mythology as drawing upon elements from many different fields including religion, literature, anthropology, and history. He then goes on to note that in mythology readers will often encounter several different versions of the same story and also several different interpretations of certain stories.  Defining the term "myth" can be quite difficult, which is discussed at length in the video. Crash Course decides to define a "myth" as a story having "significance" and "staying power." Finally, the teacher points out that there are several different theories involving the academic study of myths.

In the second video, the teacher describes different theoretical approaches to mythology and ways of analyzing myths. He mentions that the critical analysis of myths has been going on since about the mid 500s BCE! Some early thinkers (including Plato) conceptualized myths as falsehoods. Some early Christian leaders latched on to this idea and fit it into their religious views. Others thought of myths as simply a form of primitive science, which seems to be much too narrow of a definition. The teacher then goes on to tell us that mythology as a study didn't began to really grow until the 18th and 19th centuries. Many modern anthropologists attempt to connect myths to the lived experiences of humans in unique cultures. Some psychologists have seen myths as human projections of the unconscious. Other modern scholars tend to look at myths by focusing on their structures. 

The final video covered heroes and the hero's journey. Heroes are included in the myths of almost all societies, and "hero" can be a hard term to even define. The Crash Course teacher discusses scholar Joseph Campbell's theory of "The Hero's Journey" and it's notable influence on the field of mythology. One of Campbell's central ideas involves the notion that heroes can tell us a lot about ourselves.

I really enjoyed learning more about mythology, defining myths, theories of mythology, and the concept of a "hero" from these videos!

Public domain image by Wikimedia user "Salamander724"

Source: Wikimedia