Class 1:

Getting my story read by another one of my peers is daunting, and I didn’t know whether I had written a good story, or if they thought that it was good enough. I guess it was about putting my writing ability on the table for all to see, thats scary! However saying this, I thought that getting feedback from them was great! After I read my feedback I was pleased with myself, my peer had given me prompts to work off, and how to improve. At the end of the day, they are the ones who read the same articles as me, and learn the same content, I guess they know better than anyone how I am feeling, and what readings I had to draw inspiration from. While processing my peer’s work, I found it useful, I could see how someone else in the class writes, and what content within the readings they drew from. What I found interesting was how they found their inspiration, and what roads they took to reach their final storyline.

From this, I learnt that storytelling, can be nearly anything you make of it, however I saw how a short story comes together. Where is it located, how it has the protagonist, and it demonstrated what the readings were saying. Reading someone else’s story, gives you a short snippet into their creative process, and how they unlock their imagination, this is interesting. How they get from one point in the story not another, is what drives a good story. I found that when I was critiquing another person’s work, I learnt more; as I had to discover for myself why they wrote the way they did, what they drew from the readings, and how they then put this into action. This activity, overall, was very beneficial.

Class 2:

We took the 3 systems from the weekly reading and wrote down the positive and negative reasoning beyond them. From doing this exercise, I now have a clearer understanding of what they all mean, and how they work within a multi media platform situation.

• THE SUPPORTIVE SYSTEM:
  -positive- Self contained (it is in its own little world), constantly portraying specific message, always brings you back to the project, the viewer can come in at any entry point, faithful to original story.
  -negative- Becomes repetitive (can become boring), has similar content (people rely on content being the same or different, cant change it half way through), the secondary components could become more important (could also be supportive depending on what you are after).
  E.g- Adaptations, marketing, merchandising, and spinoffs.
• THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM:
  -positive- People are going to explore the world and become more investing, could make for a more powerful marketing campaign, derversify target audience, audience engagement.
  -negative- Requires further time and money, decreases efficiency, audience could lose interest because of the competitive nature, could become out of control (could become overwhelming), not as many coherent entry points (audience could get lost more easily).
• THE OMNIVOROUS SYSTEM:
  -positive- More accessible to audiences, most effective communications system, it has a centre point/anchor (it wont lose its importance), giving the audience a little extra.
  -negative- More competition, if amateur it might lose viewers, only works if you have a strong fan base, too much content, if you don’t have that strong point it could collapse.