Improving Dialog post 18

Last Friday in class we learned some more on dialog in a story. In class we learned how to improve dialog in a story. The first way to improve dialog is to "Read it aloud" it seems like a no brainer but skipping this advice will make a major difference in a bad way. Things often sound better after reading it aloud and fixing simple grammar mistakes. The second way to improve dialog is to avoid long passages because you may lose the attention of your audience. Giving distinctive dialog for each character is the third step and can really enhance your characters and bring them to life. The forth step is to speak their language or know what they are talking about. The fifth step is to add habitual phrases so go ahead have some fun and give some of your characters a catch phrase. The sixth step is to cut out dialog that doesn’t serve a purpose unnecessary dialog can really lose a reader fast. The seventh step is to listen to people, hear how others talk and your add authenticity to your character. The eighth step is to avoid stereotypes no one wants to read or hear what others have already said a million times. The ninth step is to avoid slang because not everyone will understand what your character is saying. The tenth and last step is to model your characters dialog from similar people or see what others are doing. Thats what we learned about on Friday.

Dialog in Movies Post 17

Yesterday in class we talked about Full Metal Jacket a movie that we watched a part of on Monday. The movie had some harsh language to say the least. The dialog was hardcore and the Sargent gave a sense of authority by using strong language and a loud tone of voice. Most of what we watched was the Sargent tearing down the new batch of soldiers, which the class discussed it was to rebuild them into efficient soldiers. The Sargent appeared to be quick on the draw and very thick skinned. At times the abuse got physical as when the Sargent hit a new soldier in the stomach for having a smile on his face and at another time he had a soldier choke "himself" by using the Sergeants hand and pressing against it. I can see why some of this abuse is necessary since personally I don’t want a bunch of pansies in the armed forces of the United States of America.

Post 16

On Mondays class we learned about Dialog which "moves the story along “and is the information of the story. We learned that there are many ways that dialog can hurt your story. Some of the mistakes in dialog are

1. Having too much dialog, such as in cartoons this may be overwhelming.

2. Then the use of monologging and having one person "yacking" or all the talking.

3. You don’t want the characters sounding to real or precise because people don’t always speak in complete sentences and correct manner.

other mistakes are 

· Using someone’s name too often.

· Telling me something I already know. 

· Making all the characters sound alike is another mistake since there are many reasons why people don’t sound alike such as accents, cultures, education and age just to name a few.

So to save yourselves some trouble you should fact check and know the lingo.

Post 15

Last Friday the class talked about creativity and how it comes to writers. The first step is to "hunt and gather", what we will be gathering will be information. Writers should gather information from as many different groups as possible, and try gathering information from new and different routes. Accord to Maslow’s Hierarchy once we gather one thing we climb up the ladder and gather whats next. What writers gather are ideas. The second step is to play with your ideas, get past that first level of creativity. Have fun with characters maybe living in another universe or timeframe. The third step is to let it stew, which means exactly like what it is. Once your get tired of writing or have writers block put down the pen or step away from your computer and just let your mind be free and create wonderful ideas. After that the forth step when you know what your going to write about is the "Eureka" moment and you have your start to the story. The final step is to "just do it" avoid all negative thoughts and just write the thing out. Thats what we learned last Friday.

post 14

Yesterday in class we had a quick review of what we have learned thus far. We went over the 3 act structure, Maslow’s hierarchy, what is needed in a story such as a minimum of 2 characters, an antagonist a protagonist, conflict and resolution and that we write for an audience amongst other things. But most importantly we learned the 10 story types.

Which are

· Romance (which I learned isn’t between lovers but any personal intimate relationship)

· Success/ Failure ( This makes the characters more believable)

· The Cinderella story (Such as Rocky and Real Steel)

· Conversion ( Which at the beginning of a story starts from a I don’t need to, to I must)

· Sacrifice ( A great example is the story of Christianity)

· Family ( A story directed at families and family gatherings such as stories of holidays and weddings)

· Triangle ( This is romance with a twist such as a third character

· Return ( Such as The Lion King when Simba leaves and returns to claim his thrown)

· Crime & Punishment ( Like the movie Boondock Saints)

· Heroic

post 13

Friday in class we went over Maslows order of hierarchy again. Then we reviewed the 3 act structure but then we started to use our knowledge of the 3 act structure and came up with the beginnings to a story. The story is an old one; it’s actually a well-known fairy tale. The three little pigs is what we discussed in class on Friday. You all know the story of the three little pigs but we decided to add a twist to the story and continue it where the original story left off. Of course the story has got to have characters, so we have the three little pigs then the big bad wolf but we decided to add a few more characters into the mix. The new characters are mom pig, dad pig and of course a girl pig but that didn’t seem to be enough to we added a evil monkey that works with the wolf. So far the continuation goes as follows, the wolf is actually the protagonist who believe it or not hates the fact that he hates eating pigs and is trying to overcome his addiction as best as he can. While the antagonist is the evil monkey who is trying to entice and trick the wolf into eating the pigs because earlier he used to be the dictator over the animals until the pigs over through him. So the monkey wants them dead so that he may be dictator once again. That’s where we left the story at and where told to finish our own version of the story. That's what we did in class Friday.

post 12

Yesterday we went over the 3 act structure again, but with some new information. Inside of the structure we have the motivation or why and the goals and what power can be acquired for the antagonist or protagonist. The motivation is flowing frequently throughout the entire story. Professor Jenkins also said that structure provides pressure, I’m not really sure what that means but I think it means that the 3 act structure keeps the story moving by going through phases and conflicts. Once one conflict is settled there is a new one that takes its place from moving from the "BAD" in act break one to the "WORSE" in act break two to the "EXTERNAL" in act break 3. The pressure is always on the protagonist to keep moving and accomplish his goal. We also talked about "starting with the snake" which means to start with the action and get with the story or jump into the story, and not to do "once upon a time" type stories no background is needed right away because to be frank that loses the audience’s attention and once you've lost their attention its hard to gain it back. I think that this is why we started our short story with "it just sat there staring" it adds an element of action to begin a story like that. That’s what we learned yesterday, a new thing learned every day.

Blog post 11

On Monday we learned about the 3 act structure. It looks like a baseball field and is the basic structure of a story. The points that look like the bases of a baseball field are called acts .First at what would be home plate there is the hook, the hook is the part of the story where the action begins and gets the audiences attention. Now in the middle of what looks like the homeplate  and the first act you have the introduction this is where information about the protagonist and antagonist is given along with the back story. Then we have our first break which introduces the first conflict of the story. That small conflict is resolved in between the first act break and second act break. But the in the second act break there is an even bigger conflict that must be over come. When this occures the next event that happens is the the overcoming of the internal fight of the protagonist here the character defeats his or her fear. Then the third act break occures and the external fight happens with the antagonist.After the third break the resolution is solved and the protagonist is forever changed. Thats what we learned on Monday this week.

Blog post 10

On Friday we learned the essential facts about characters, basically meaning the qualities the character should hold. First thing is that they must be real or believable you don’t want the audience to loss interest in your writing because the characters seem fake. Being real and believable doesn’t mean that they can’t be unique; you don’t want them to be cliché or generic. Make the characters to have special qualities that make them different to others. Next you must make the characters someone the audience can connect with, you don’t want to write about a billionaire playboy when your audience is made of middleclass teenage girls, the characters must also have emotions that the reader can relate to. Finally the character must want some sort of power he or she must have a goal or motivation for their actions. Those are the essential facts about characters.

Now to go along with making the character believable you must do fact checks. If your character is a race car driver and you don’t know anything about racing then that’s going to hurt your characters story line. If you need to know and acquire more knowledge don’t be afraid to ask someone who does know about the subject. Learn the jargon and procedures about your characters background. If you didn’t learn much from the expert then do some research online or through books.

Thats what we learned about essentail facts and characters.

Blog post 9

The last class period that we had in Comm-St 351 was over characterization and characters. Characterization is different from characters in general. Characterization is what is seen and understood about a character from the surface, many might be clichés or first level characters, there also may be many writers working on characterization. Characters on the other hand are more complex and deep. Characters show there true self’s under pressure; an example of this that was used in class is Rocky from the movie Rocky. We see Rocky’s character come out under pressure during his last round. In class today we also did some characterizations of two people one a woman in a station wagon with cleaning supplies and the other a well to do man driving a porche. For the woman we found out that she was a Hispanic illegal immigrant and right away the class came up with some pretty good comments about her being a hard working mother. While the man had received many negative statements about him being narcissistic and full of him. I think these characterizations where made because nobody wanted to be politically incorrect. It’s funny because at first when I heard that she was wearing a bandana and had cleaning supplies I thought that she was a meth producer and I’m Hispanic, but as more information about her started to unravel I figured she was a worker who meant no harm. That was Wednesday’s class.

post 8

In class today we learned about the most important aspect to a story and that is the characters. We learned how they can be either active or passive. To be active means to control the situation and to react to what is happening in the story. To be passive is to allow what is happening to continue and not doing a thing about it . The passive character will let others walk all over them and not react. You never want the protagonist to be passive he must always be on the move and handling what has to be done. Think about Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, he didn’t just let the Death star destroy planets, no he went on to study how to be a Jedi and destroyed the Death star. The next thing we learned about is to create motivation for the characters you got to ask why he or she is acting and why is it important to them. To find out why the character is acting the way they are you can use Maslow's hierarchy of needs which from importance start as follows, the need to exist, security, love. Esteem and self. A person isn’t usually willing to help others until they have meet all their personal needs first. The hierarchy will help explain why they are doing what it is that they are doing. This is what we learned in class today.

cliché characters

It's never really a good idea to be cliché, people stereotype cliché characters and mostly in a negative manner. You must try to remain and be yourself, that doesn’t mean that you must not go out and do what other people are doing because we all do that to some extent, however you must try and put your own personal twist to it. We are all different and that’s what makes us unique and beautiful. Having things in common with other people is fine just don’t overdo it and copy or imitate someone to be cool or liked, be your own person. Being cliché is not just about looks either but a combination of looks and attitude or personality. Be yourself because no one is better at being you but yourself. These are something’s to think about when writing and creating characters. Don’t create a character that has already been used and created millions of times. Don’t use the example of the dumb henchman for an evil scientist or the evil twin or clone, add some spice to the creative process think beyond the 1st level. Talk to and watch as many different people as you can to get ideas for characters, everyone will come up with something different and go deeper into the personality of the character maybe expand more on their past. Brainstorming is another idea on how to avoid cliché characters just sit down and write about as many characters as you can, and they don’t have to obvious it’s all a product of your imagination so don’t hold back.