Thursday 9 January 2014

Social Fiction De-Brief

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 Now that you've published and submitted your Social Fiction Project, I'd like you to take some time to reflect on the writing process. With your writing partner, answer the following questions.  Each question should have a paragraph length answer. All answers need to be submitted on paper to Ms.McLauchlan, but pick your best two answers and post them in the comments section below.

(1) How did your story ideas start? Where did you find your inspiration?

(2) How did your project change over the course of creating it?

(3) How/why did you select your Social Media platform? How does it link to your short story?

(4) What part of your project are you most proud of?

(5) What did you learn about yourself as a reader/writer/thinker/creator?

(6) If you worked with a partner, give me specifics about each partners work load. Who worked on what? Why?

(7) Is there anything else Ms. McLauchlan needs to know to fully appreciate your project? Special touches you put on the project?

(8) Advice to future students working on this project?

26 comments:

Unknown said...

(4) what part of your project are you most proud of?
I'm most proud of the actual written story, rather than the social media part. I've been dying all semester to get to write a short story for this class and I'm glad I finally got the chance. I'm proud because I carefully went through it, but I know there's always room for improvement.
(8) advice to future students working on this project?
My advice to future students on this project would be to write down all your ideas for the story at once. Try just in point form and elaborate a little so you remember. Then cross out or add in what you like and that's a great start.

Unknown said...

5. I learned as a writer that I can write a lot of words and not realize it. I was reading a couple other peoples story's and I thought they were really short compared to mine. But theirs was 500 words. Then when I typed up mine I found out it way longer then 1000. So if you have an idea and you keep going with it it's not that hard to write lots of words.

8. I suggest that students who do this project again should get an idea and make their social media aspect first instead of writing the story first because I think once you have a story it's hard to find pictures for it if your doing Instagram. Bent if you use pictures of what you already have then you can work it into your story

Jeremy Woods said...

4. I think the part of my story I'm most proud with is the actual story itself. I spent a lot more time writing and editing the story than I did the tweets or visuals. I think that the finished product of my story included many of the things we learned in class, such as imagery, non verbal body language and more.
8. The advice I would give to future students is to not forget about the social media aspect. In order to have a good project all around, you should always have it in the back of your mind. I think that my project could have been better if I did the social media part as I wrote my story. The tweets/timeline would have looked a lot better and made more sense.

Unknown said...

(1) How did your story ideas start? Where did you find your inspiration?
I first thought of the idea that it would be cool to have a social media profile that shows someones profile before/after their death. I then chose to base my story around the main character dying.

(2) How did your project change over the course of creating it?
My project didn't change much over the course of creating it. The only think that changed was that I was going to make a Facebook for my character and ended up not. I didn't end up doing this because I'm pretty sure Facebook caught on that I was making multiple accounts from one computer and it wouldn't let me make enough. Thats why I chose to make a Twitter account instead. Did this happen to anyone else as well?

Unknown said...

5. I found that I write material that I am more likely to read; I write things that are easy to comprehend and humorous because that's the type of thing I like to read. If something isn't entertaining, I am less likely to read it, so why write something I myself wouldn't read? I think you should write what you want to read.


8. Know the social platform you are trying to use for your character(s) - it will just be frustrating if you choose something like twitter, for example and you've never used it before. Choose a platform you are familiar with otherwise you'll be struggling to use it as well as make a new account on it.

Michelle Zhou and Bethany Rempel

Unknown said...

(3) This was great cause I created everything about the social account and it was just so fun like finding these heroic picture and just so blessed to have been in this class.

(8) to the students of the future, just have fun with the project, don't put any stress on yourself and I don't just be creative.

Unknown said...

3) I didn't want to choose instagram because then I would of had to find a lot of visuals but I lacked ideas of what to post. I also thought that Twitter would be better to showcase the story line and plot of my story.
4) I think I like the ending of my story the best. I liked the way that I finished it and I feel like the last few paragraphs contained a lot more descriptive words and phrases. I also liked the way I kind of ended it a cliffhanger.

Unknown said...

7. Is there anything else Ms.McLauchlan needs to know to fully appreciate your project? Special touches you put on the project?
I made my homeless man's character a little more sad, and maybe even a little pathetic, but I did this so that you (or anyone else who reads it) would feel sorry for him and try to connect with his character better.

8. Advice to future students working on this project?
To take your time, do not rush, and your first draft/idea will probably not be your last one either.

Taryn Wichenko said...

Social fiction debrief

3. We chose Instagram because not only do we both use it frequently, therefore are more familiar with it, but we had so many pictures from Paris that could relate to our story. We also thought the pictures gave us more ideas of what to write about. With using pictures, it helps to tell a story and they even create one of their own. Our Instagram account ended up being fairly believable with many random followers and comments!

7. Our story starts when Instagram account starts. However, 12 pictures in is when our story ends. We decided to use the last pictures of our Instagram account to act as an epilogue to give the rest of our story without having to write another 1000 words. We thoughts it could be a creative way for anyone who wants to know how the story ends, to go in travelingtamara's Instagram account!

Unknown said...

1) I fount my inspiration by my cousin actually. She's super smart and one day she was telling me about Neil Armstrong and his experience on the moon and just fun facts about it so I decided to create the first woman to land on the moon. Mostly because no woman had ever landed on the moon before. My story ideas started with her but I made it up and added a little twist to it! I didn't want to create a typical story.

5) As a writer the I learned that once I start writing, and if I'm really into the story, I can write forever. As a reader I learned that I'm the same way as a writer, always reading in if I'm interested. As a thinking I realized that I run into a lot of writer blocks but as a creator I've realized that by overcoming those writer blocks really makes a good story.

Unknown said...

3. I chose to create a blog for my project. My character would be able to express how he feels on a blog and post posts about where he is at with his family. In my story my character doesn't like to express his feelings out loud to his parents and friends. On his blog these feelings are expressed without his parents seeing.

5. After writing this story I figured out that I'm the type of writer that needs to take her time and have a clear head. Before I put pen to paper I have to have a clear idea beginning to end, everything else comes as I write, details etc. After I start my story I can't wait to write the rest. A week is way too long of a break and I lose interest and lose the ideas I had in mind.

Rebecca Roger said...

1) We found our writing prompt on one of the suggested websites and it really appealed to us because it was easy to build a descriptive story off of. We started off our writing just by writing the ideas down that were flowing through our minds, and basing the weird events off of strange things we've heard or experienced. From there we just snowballed our ideas and tweaked the story to make them flow better.

2) We started by writing one persons idea, and the next class gave it to the other partner to finish writing and went back and forth until we both got stuck. We left it for a while, and finally went back and rearranged the events of the story and it was easier to finish after that. When we originally started writing, we had the dinner at the beginning of the story. Once we continued writing, we found that it was too hard to write a smooth ending, so we moved it to the end to give it a better resolution.

Unknown said...

(4) I,M proud of the story because I did a lot of work in the story. I,m most proud of is the end part because unexpected and I wanted to shock people.

Unknown said...

(4) I,M proud of the story because I did a lot of work in the story. I,m most proud of is the end part because unexpected and I wanted to shock people.

Unknown said...

(8) A device I will give in the future is to have fun. It is hard work but don't be scared of how hard it is. The last thing I will say is work hard.

Unknown said...

(8) A device I will give in the future is to have fun. It is hard work but don't be scared of how hard it is. The last thing I will say is work hard.

Casey raback said...

(4) I am very proud of finding the link to the io9 website for the image we used for our project.


(5) I enjoyed having the opportunity to work in the sci-fi genre.

selena said...

2. In the beginning, I was expecting to make my character kill themselves despite what the bystander did or didn't say, because for people who are feeling suicidal, it can get to a point where nothing anyone could say might change their mind. However, when I got to the end, I decided to inject a little bit of hope into the story, because while I was trying to convey a sense of loss and hopelessness, I didn't want the story to have such a concrete ending as death.

7. One thing that had a strong influence on this project was the fact that I was reading "The Bell Jar" while I was working on it. It was an excellent read and a book I strongly connected to, and the ending of it was part of the reason I chose the ending I did for my story.

Unknown said...

(1) I got my idea from many shopping trips with my mom like for over 3 years. We had always talked about how different a story about people who only spoke in a "text language" would be. So when this project came up I put the idea to work to see if it wasn't as impossible as it seemed. I got inspiration from my older brother on our vacation because he was on his phone ALL THE TIME. Also the previews for the movie 'Her' helped me out because it how I envisioned these people acting about their devices.
(3) I picked twitter because it is the second most used social media platform in the world and if it's that popular now it could only get bigger in my story which does take place in the future in a society that doesn't use full words. Quite often like twitter today. so it seemed to fit my story perfectly.

Unknown said...

(4)The part of the project that I'm most proud of is the ending because it makes the short story ironic and more interesting. You don't expect the story to be all just a dream.

(5)I learned as a reader that you never know what's going to happen in a story. I learned as a writer that if you use all the five senses at once then it makes your piece of writing more interesting. I learned as a thinker that there is always a different way of putting things. I learned as a creator that writing an interesting short story is actually fairly difficult.

Unknown said...

1.) As awkward as this might be, I was inspired by something that happened/ is still happening with my brother, "Tanner". This girl has liked him for a while, but always said that she didn't like him 'like that'. His choosing to date a girl did not go over well with this girl that likes him.
8.) -Take an idea and run with it, even if it sounds lame, you'll find a way to make it interesting
-Writing extra isnt always bad, especially if it will make the story "complete"
-Some people will really like what you write, others won't.
-Don't get discouraged just because you can't get passed a little writers' block.

Unknown said...

1. My idea for the story started with the writing prompts site. It was much easier to base a story off of a picture. It allows you to expand on something pretty basic and make it your own. My story has a science fiction sort of thing going on. My inspiration came from different books I've read, and I thought I'd like to write a story in that style.

8. I would recommend writing all your ideas on a sheet before starting to write. Sort of a brainstorming activity just to give you a better idea of where you want your story to go. I wrote down multiple different ways my story could go, and I just ended up picking my favourite one.

Unknown said...

2. I chose Twitter for the story because Twitter is one of what people do when they sit down and relax by looking at their old Tweets or other peoples Tweets. It links by the story by this person relaxing and looking at his phone going at Twitter to check some Tweets.

4. I'm proud of the story of the project because it took time to think about the plot of the story.

colin said...

(3) How/why did you select your Social Media platform? How does it link to your short story? The story wasn’t really based around a very social boy so it was kind of hard to accommodate the social media aspect. So our character chose twitter and he uses twitter as more of a blog because he knows not a lot of people will follow him and he’s able to speak his mind freely . In that sense it doesn’t really link to the story but considering Franklin was the kind of kid that he is this would be the best kind of social media for his personality. We thought about using Instagram or something like that but we thought it might be hard to capture Franklins interests with pictures.

(4) What part of your project are you most proud of? I think I’m most proud of the story. I drew the visual and it didn’t come out as well as I wanted it to and the social media aspect was kind of hard to tie in but I thought the story itself was good. I liked how it was simple and easy to follow unlike a lot of stories nowadays. The only thing that I wish I had done more was lengthen the story a little because I thought that it kind of ended abruptly. But it was fun putting all of your ideas onto paper and making a story.

Carly Bretecher said...

1) My story ideas were developed through a series of events. First, I was going to write from the perspective of a serial killer, but that really wasn't going places, and I wasn't feeling the story line. I kind of had the thought of a girl on the run, but I wasn't sure who she was running from. Then I saw my visual, which reminded me of Slumdog Millionaire, which somehow brought me to sex trafficking. And from there, things just kind of took off.

5) I learnt that I write a lot. It's hard to keep things short for me. I also learnt that the editing process can significantly enhance your story, especially when it comes to taking out parts that aren't needed, and adding imagery. I also learnt that I will write for hours, and then when I stop, it's a challenge to start up again.

Unknown said...

4. I think I'm most proud of my social media aspect if my project because it gave me a chance to incorporate one of my passions, art, and it made the project a little more bearable for size I don't enjoy writing. It helped me grow a new appreciation for writing and encouraged me to try something new and find a more creative way of writing.

5. As a reader I gained a whole new respect for writers of any type. I learned as a writer to know what I like and enjoy to write a better story, if you hate romance stories, it's going to be a lot harder to write about romance. I also realized how much reading has made me a better thinker which really helped me to write my story.