Been a bit hectic the past few weeks. Finally have a free day. Here’s my attempt to catch-up on some of what I have missed. These are bits and pieces from other students’ blogs that I’ve scavenged and collated and am now trying to interpret. These notes will be added to.
UNSYMPOSIUM 0.3 & 0.4
- Discussion about story worlds, comparing fiction and non-fiction/documentary. Fiction = stories about a world. Documentary = stories about the world.
- Story vs. plot. Story = order in which events happen. Plot = order in which events are presented. When a plot is presented to the audience, the audience must engage in and interact with the plot in order to re-structure it into a logical sequence of events (assuming the plot is a re-structured version of the story!).
- Authorial control = 0. We interpret the texts of authors, not the authors themselves. So, authors have no control over how audiences ‘read’ their work. I agree with this to some extent, but feel that there are more sides to it than are mentioned. 1. Authors often have recognisable styles of writing, and their writing is – in effect – a product of their own thinking processes. So, yes, in reading their work we do get some sort of insight into their mind. 2. Authors can adopt different personalities in their writing. So this adds another buffer between the author and ‘reader’. (I assume this discussion wasn’t exclusively about books?)
- Elliot’s quote – “All narratives have some diegetic environment. Even if you can’t control the structure, you can control the world – so first create the world.”