Watching the Vonnegut “Shapes of Stories” reminded me of a similar story structure that I was introduced to by Mark Benno – the Pixar “Story Spline”. It (like Vonnegut’s) is simple enough to use with my elementary students, but allows for complex and engaging storytelling. The Pixar structure is basically Vonnegut’s “Man in a Hole” curve:
Once upon a time…
And every day…
Until one day…
And because of that…
And because of that…
And because of that…
Until finally…
And since that day…
The moral of the story is…
Combining the two, # 1-2 are when Vonnegut’s curve begins at the top, 3-7 are the plummet and recovery of the curve, and 8-9 the curve is back on top. Take “Toy Story”:
Andy’s toys lived a happy existence, lead by Andy’s favorite toy Woody.
Every day the toys played happily with Andy, and Woody was secure in his position as favorite.
Until one day Andy got a new toy, Buzz Lightyear, and Woody feared that he may no longer be the favorite. (Cue the drop of the Vonnegut curve!)
And because of that Woody was uncharacteristically mean to Buzz, and ended up pushing him out the window.
And because of that Woody had to go after Buzz and return him to Andy’s room which began a series of adventures.
And because of that, Woody and Buzz had to work together to stay safe and return to Andy, which began their friendship.
Until finally they made it back safely, and became best friends. (The curve rises again!)
And since that day they coexisted and played with Andy together.
And the moral is… well there are a bunch, aren’t there?
My students and I have used this structure to map out all sorts of stories – and now I have Vonnegut’s curves to help map out others.
First I would like to say I have survived week 2. The pace is fast and keeps me motivated. A care package would just be lovely!
It is now the second week of camp, and does time fly by (too) fast. Our camp counselors ramped up the amount of daily creates we do this week. I took a picture of the sky one day on a very dark and gloomy day. I uploaded this to my Flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/79114434@N05/. The other daily create I took apart in was take a picture of something relative to “destruction.” The third daily create was repeat DS106 ten times on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/user/TDC136fatherthelegen can be found on my channel.
I watched an interesting video on the summary of story telling, instructed by Kurt Vonnegut. He pointed out that most stories; movies, books, and so on all follow a few types of different plot lines. I worked on a plot line that is based on a hero who lives an ordinary life but then embarks on an epic journey in order to save something or fulfill something. This not only is good for the world (typically) but it makes the hero grow as a person too. The hero usually has a moment of weakness but then overcomes it with the help of a sidekick. The hero then fulfills their duty and returns back to their life, but have grown as a stronger person. I decided to do a comic strip of the Lord of the Rings. It is skimpy on details but shows the adventures Frodo goes to in order to destroy “the one true ring.” This comic strip can be found on my word press site J .
The campers, including myself also read works from Bryan Alexander. He wrote about digital storytelling through the years. A blog is a form of an online diary. This is something I’m going to try and work on during my next few weeks at camp!
Miss you both! Can’t wait to bring back blogging knowledge!
Bryan talked about numerous ways stories are created and how other perceive the storytelling mode. The one I wanted to elaborate on is “Character Blogging.” Character blogging is when the blogger is a character and their personalities are shown overtime. The story I read in detail the “The Tweeted Titanic.” ”The Tweeted Titanic is a series of events that took place during the sinking of the Titanic and it feels as if you are actually there during the horrific event. I think this falls under character blogging because overtime it shows how people felt about the Titanic. I also feel that since it was told bit by bit with emotion and there are a lot of details present in the “tweets” that help you stay interested.
I feel that blogging a story is much more effective than creating a book or some sort out of the event. First off the “tweets” are short and simple, so you don’t have to read on and on to find out what is going on. Secondly, using this type of blogging allows us to compare our emotions to the emotions of the person/people telling the event and it gives us a special little view on the event. Thirdly, it allows us to see the crisis and the resolution. We seen read about what happened before and how the passengers handled the aftermath.
I attached 3 images of a comic strip I made based on Kurt Vonnegut’s story telling techniques. I did mine based around Lord of the Rings. It’s skimpy on details but you may ( or may not) get the point.
The Family Food Story was an amazing digital story, and one that hit close to home for me. It really displayed Bryan Alexander’s take that digital storytelling is so multifauceted and can grasp the emotion of the person viewing it so much stronger than words. The video is a collection of family pictures, old snippets, moving frames, and audio narrative. All of those things took me on a journey through history, and really made me feel for what he was attempting to share about his grandfather.
The story seemed to go into a cycle… ending with Brad saying “just look at us”, exactly how his grandfather and great aunts used to say. He in a sense becomes the ‘grandfather’ to be of his family.
Following the plot of his Grandfather Josef’s life I plotted the ‘shape’ of the story in the manner seen in the Vonnegut video about how stories are structured relative to good and ill fortune as the story progresses…
It was very interesting how personal the story was, I have a tendency to blog my emotions or expereinces in a more vague manner. Usually expressing mself indirectly through quotes, photos, etc… but this was so DIRECT and personal. Very interesting, and dare I say, brave manner.
Whew, made it through another week of camp. This week I become more accustomed to the routine of camp. We had to do 3 daily creates. The first one I did was recording a sound that I basically hated, and I did styrofoam rubbing together. You can hear the sound here : http://soundcloud.com/kavon-lechae/sounds-from-tuesday-afternoon
Then for the second daily create I did was posting a picture of what the sky looked like and on that day the sky was semi-dark but the sun was shinning through a little. You can see that picture here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/kanonnie24/7302458906/
The last daily create I had to to was say “I love DS106 ten times.” It took me awhile because I kept getting tongue tied, but I finally mastered it. You can view that here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY-tDwJ8OdA
I also had to write a review on a movie or story based on a presentation by Vonnegut. He spoke about how stories are shaped and gave several example. The one I chose to talk about was how a low person starts off badly, but good things start to happen and continue to happen until they have that one memory that will last a lifetime. The movie I instantly, thought of was “Another Cinderella Story” and I did a review on that. We have one more assignment due, and I’m having a really hard time understanding exactly what to do. This is why I’m writing you now, so I can work on getting this assignment due before it’s due date..
I love you bunches and I hope everything is well at home..
P.S I receive the camper of the week award for week one = )
In an effort to keep pace with Week 2 of DS106‘s Camp Magic Macguffin, I jumped into The Daily Create cycle. It was a busy week, so I only got around to finishing the required three. Also, I did create … Continue reading →
So after watching the short clip I decided to make my own graph of the movie Gladiator (if you have not seen it don’t read this post, I don’t want to ruin it for you!). I chose this movie because it is one of my favorites and I have seen it countless times. So the movie starts out on a high note with Maximus winning a battle and then told he will be the caretaker of Rome when the Caesar dies. Then as represented by the graph below there is a terrible drop where he is betrayed by Caesar son from this his wife and son are murdered and he is eventually sold into slavery. Once a slave he becomes a gladiator which accounts for the rise in fortune but there is a small drop when his plan to take down the new Caesar is foiled and he is caught. At the end of the movie he gets to fight Caesar and although he does die it is good fortune for him because he believes he is joining his family.
Water, Clouds and ROCK! Carley’s version of Purple Rain. Daily Create 147: Make a photo containing stone, water and clouds. (Taken with Instagram at Salem Fields)
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Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
