story-telling techniques: (MUST USE AT LEAST 1 TYPE, YOU CAN MIX AS WELL)
1. journey / quest or goal-achievement / education: Indiana Jones
2. rivalry / testing: Rocky
3. discovery / coming of age: Big
4. love / forbidden love: The Lake house
5. problem-solution / question-answer: Fahrenheit 9/11

6. characters: Spongebob Squarepants
7. situations: Dumb and Dumber
8. location/sets: The Chronicles of Narnia
9. scenarios: Seinfeld
10. atmosphere: Planet of The Apes
11. colours: Primary Colours
12. costumes/hair/make up: Wizard of Oz
13. props: Barney
14. language: Mind Your Language
15. music & sound effects: Once

Words

Genre:

The type or categorization of a subject

Cliche:

A term used to express something that has become too common, predictable and not unique

Stereotype:

A word used to generalised a certain typed of character

Antagonist:

The villain of a story (the bad guy)

Protagonist:

The hero of the story (the good guy)

Supporting:

A subject that supports and can either enhance or not enhance a story

Characterization:

The main subject of the story

1 Sentence Summary... All 35 of them... So there's 35 1-sentence summary...yup

STEP1: CREATE & CRAFT 10 STORIES INTO THE 1-SENTENCE SUMMARY

Story1 - Character driven story

: A small young toddler in a baby care center, who is easily intrigued by the simple things around him, is discovering the world while a very jealous and lonely baby is trying to stop him from achieving any sort of excitement, not knowing that they are both cousins.

Story2 - Story driven by a location

: Two strangers who work in two different offices share a window-to-window visual communication and it begins to grow, until one day, one of them didn't turn up to work anymore.

Story3 - Story driven by an item

: Two brothers find a magical necklace in their grandfather's old safe and uncovers a whole new meaning to the world as we know it, not knowing how this magical artifact might bring such evil.

Story4 - Story driven by a situation

: Life was going the way Hank had planned, until one day, he accidentally lost his children while his wife was away one day.

Story5 - Story driven by Character's motive(s) or conflict with another Character

: Even though they are twins, Henry has always been in Katherine shadows but he tries to find a way to get the spotlight

Stories 6 to 10: Combination of above points for your stories

Story6 - Situation+Location

: Jean, a lonely single parent had lost her way while heading back from visiting her Grandma in Glasgow and finds herself in a whole level of relationship with her Grandma's helper.

Story7 - Situation+Item

: After discovering his dead mother's long lost secret totem, Stan goes on a journey to find the truth behind his mother's death and the life he could have had.

Story8 - Item+Location

: Not knowing the truth behind this artifact, Mike unlocks a whole new world with his magical key, only to find tragedy with every knob turned.

Story9 - Situation+Character Driven Story

: After leaving her whole fortune behind, old Grandma Jackie goes on a journey by herself, hoping to find a new life and a reason to live.

Story10 - Situation+Character Driven Story

: Paul has left his entire family in hopes of achieving his dream in Japan, and uncovers that the life he was meant to live and the one he's been dreaming is not the same.

STEP2: CREATE STORIES FOR THESE GENRES: (1 sentence summary)

Story11 - Drama

: After running away from her step parents, Alice finds a place to settle down in a busy city, where coincidentally where her real parents live, in hopes of achieving her dreams.

Story12 - Documentary

: While traveling through out the South East Asia, Charlie Green personally explores the unexposed side of the slums in places like Vietnam, Brunei and Thailand.

Story13 - News/Current Affairs

: An exposure on the recent train breakdowns and how a group of investigators are finding out the truth behind this disruption.

Story14 - Comedy

: A group of friends were enjoying their stay in an old hotel, but they woke up the next day 50 years into the future, however things get in the way and getting back home doesn't seem to be important anymore.

Story15 - Horror

: Based on an old mystic tale, Isabel made a wish on the haunted wishing well for her to be rich, but with the price of her family's death, but now things get even complicated when she wished for her dead family back to life.

Story16 - Action

: A retired spy goes for her last mission to save herself from the society that had raised her to be the perfect killing machine.

Story17 - Mystery/Thriller/Crime

: Judy is serving her last day as a doctor but a troubled ex patient of hers is back to settle the score when he found out that Judy accidentally killed the man's wife 20 years ago in the emergency room

Story18 - Teenage Drama

: Quentin had a thing for Margo ever since they we both young, and when Margo invites him on an overnight journey of madness and crazy doings, he couldn't be happier but things go bad when Margo doesn't show up to school anymore the next day.

Story19 - Romance

: Celest tries to find her first love by hiring a private investigator who happens to be her old school mate of hers and the two search together, not knowing that what they were looking for might have already been found.

Story20 - Fantasy/Sci Fi

: Two long lost brother find themselves fighting a lost war in a futuristic world and decided that the only way to win is to travel back in time to prevent the third world war from ever happening.

Story21 - Children

: The evil Professor Evil is plotting his revenge on his arch nemesis, Captain Hero, after many failed attempts to take over the world.

Story22 - Adventure/Swashbucklers

:

Story23-25 Combination of any genre from above

STEP 3: GIVE ONE OR TWO EXAMPLES OF A BLOCKBUSTER / SUCCESSFUL MOVIE THAT FITS THE ABOVE 25-GENRE-DRIVEN STORIES.

Examples of Blockbuster/Successful Movies for:

Story11 - Drama

: The Lake House

Story12 - Documentary

: Super Size Me

Story13 - News/Current Affairs

: Fahrenheit 9/11

Story14 - Comedy

: Dumb and Dumber

Story15 - Horror

: Dawn of the Dead

Story16 - Action

: Taken

Story17 - Mystery/Thriller/Crime

: Constantine

Story18 - Teenage Drama

: The Breakfast Club

Story19 - Romance

: A Lot Like Love

Story20 - Fantasy/Sci Fi

: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Story21 - Children

: Toy Story

Story22 - Adventure/Swashbucklers

: Indiana Jones

Story23-25 Combination of any genre from above

What makes a good story?

1) Character w/ motive, conflict

2) Motive - Conflict (conflict makes the 'drama') - Turning point (decision, *motive will change)

*every character has a motive

2) Theme, so the reader/viewer can get a rough idea what the story is about. It is also a way to prevent the story from drifting away.

3) Plot

4) Story Structure

5) Climax

Sixth Blog: X-Ray (Mind Reading) Glasses

Hank was a very simple little boy. He had simple little dreams and a simple little life. Hank was 13 years old when he encountered a very mysterious power. This is a story of how a weird and not-so-normal young kid trying to be normal.

The story began one day after Hank had finished his first Common Test of his secondary school. His friends all decided to eat lunch together after school at a near by mall. There were a total of five people there. Hank were close to his four friends ever since day one of school. However, within his circle of friends, he's the one that alway get to be joked at. Kind as he is, he obliged to all those jokes they had of him.

So there they were, having lunch at a BBQ restaurant, relieving their stress from the previous examination, laughing away. They were all laughing so hard that at one moment, Hank had tears in his eyes. He took off his spectacles, put them on the table and wiped the tears off. Hank's friends had encountered a chance to prank him, so one of them hid his specs and acted normal, as if nothing had happened. Realizing that his specs went missing, he panicked. He searched the table, under the table, in his bag and in his pockets but it was no where to be found. The rest were trying to hold their laughter.

Hank, panicked, stood up from his chair and then bent down to check below the table once again. He found a pair of spectacles just like his under his chair. He took it, wore it and said, "Nice job guys! Now my spec are dirty!".

Surprised, the guys just kept quiet, knowing that Hank took the wrong specs. Everyone was quiet about this and didn't tell Hank about it.

However, Hank had realised something. He knew the spectacles he wore definitely was his as the degree was perfect. But somehow, he could hear the voices of people, their thoughts, even when they're not moving their mouths. Hank had realised that he could hear people's thoughts every time he wore his specs.

With his new found 'power', he tried it on his family first. He found out that his brother had been thinking of his crush all day long, his mother had been thinking of doing house work even during her sleep and his father was thinking of work and watching TV all day long.

Hank wanted more. He wanted to know what people think of him. He tried it on his friends, asking them questions about him. But what he found out wasn't quite what he expected. They were not friendly to him, behind his back and even in front of him.

With this knowledge, he uses them to his advantage. Changing himself to fit in to other's view of him. He talked differently and acted normal from that day onwards. However, his friends were very suspicious of his new behaviour. They felt that Hank wasn't the same and they didn't find a liking to this 'new' Hank.

Hank was having headaches from hearing thoughts all day. He had stopped and took off his specs once in a while but had no reason to stop using it. However, Hank felt that he needed to fit in with his friends.

Hank was slowly wearing out. He felt tired of it and of course he was scared that people will start to be suspicious of this. Hank was feeling down. He did everything he could to please everyone but he wasn't pleased with himself. One day, his friends all confronted him and talked about his behaviour. They told him that he was becoming more of a jerk and not a friends. Hank left his friends without a reply. Mad, he went off by himself.

That night, Hank broke his spectacles and threw it away. He couldn't take it. He's rather be lied to then be told the worst truth. He felt that the worst enemy was he himself and that by trying to fit in, he ended up destroying himself. He gives up his 'power' because he wanted something that he already had in the first place. Friends.

"What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person"

Paper Towns by John Green

I have chosen the main character, the protagonist of the story, Quentin Jacobsen for my character analysis. Quentin Jacobsen, also known as ‘Q’, is a seventeen year old boy who lives next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman, whom he believes is the love of his live. Basically the whole story began when Margo invited Quentin out on an adventure at night, doing stuff so morbid, so unimaginable and even down right gruesome, gruesome to Quentin at least.

Quentin duly obliged. After a night out with Margo, she disappears the next day. Leaving Quentin clues to her whereabouts, and all of this, weeks before their high school graduation. Thus, Quentin was left searching for Margo, and finding clues that were left specifically for him.

Quentin is a very nerdy and quiet young boy with the same problems faced by any young nerdy kids. His parents are both therapist, hence he didn’t seem to care about his problems at all, not to even share it. He has always admired Margo, ever since he was young. However, both of them seem to have different views and personality. When both of them were 9, they found a dead body at a near by park. While Margo questions the situation, taking a step forward, Quentin went to tell the grown ups, taking a step backward (pg 5). Quentin wasn’t the heroic kind of guy. He was the total opposite of that.

The real story began when Quentin started his search for Margo. Margo, being in the whole book for around 2-3 chapters, left little clues for Quentin. Quentin felt that she wanted him to know of this. Quentin showed the amount of admiration he had for Margo by not giving up on his search. An example would be a clue Margo had left him. A poem entitled, ‘Song of Myself’ taken from a book called, “Leaves of Grass” written by Walt Whitman. Quentin had read this poem over and over again, countless times, trying to catch anything that Margo would have wanted him to know.

Quentin even pulled his two best friends along with him on the search, Ben and Radar. One clue Margo had left Quentin was that she would be staying in a ‘Paper Town’. A so-called ‘town’ that only exists on the maps. Quentin searched and went to every pseudo vision, or ‘paper town’ there is in America. He would ‘borrow’ his parents’ minivan for his journey.

Quentin would sometimes stop his search to save her and start living a normal life, for the sake of his friends, but only for a little while. This on and off search kept on going until he made a breakthrough. Some clues, not even clues, it’s the traces that Margo left behind, for example the pins she would place to hang a map on the wall would show the locations she was heading or had past. These small little traces Quentin had believed to be clues for him to find her.

However, during this ‘journey’ to find her, and reading ‘Song of Myself’ over and over again, Quentin had realized that Margo wasn’t the girl he thought he’d knew. He had only admired the idea of her. He not only realized this but he slowly began to learn about himself too.

“…you listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you’re trying to listen to,” (pg 216).

In this poem, Quentin also learns that one cannot become another. Or a better way to phrase it, he could not have known who or what Margo is. He could not have a slightest clue to where or who she is because he could not become her. Because he is not her.

Quentin then went on a 22 hour-long journey, skipping his graduation and bringing along his friends including Lacey, who (was) a good friend of Margo. He had found the location she would be in and had hoped she’ll actually be there. But when he got there and found her, things weren’t exactly how he wanted them to turn out. It turns out Margo didn’t want to be found, even though she left clues and only little clues. It was Quentin’s love for Margo than made the search possible and successful.

“There is that in me… I don’t know what it is… but I know it is in me…”- A line taken from ‘Song of Myself’, it shows how human we are.

This I believe is a mistake or something Quentin has taken granted for. He has put not only Margo but also everyone he knows on a pedestal.

“What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person,” (pg 282).

Quentin always had an idea of a person, thinking of them being more human than human. And when that person is Margo, he’ll even worship her. Quentin sees that seeing someone as more than a person is actually a terrible thing.

In the end, Margo shared Quentin her true self, that she too was admiring Quentin and that she had to leave home to live her life. They both shared their love, something Quentin and Margo had dreamt of since young but Quentin can’t be with her, and she couldn’t possibly go back home.

“I hope this is the hero’s errand, because not following her is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” (pg 304)

And Quentin has to let it go. Quentin, who had thought of Margo every single day, every single night looking at her window would have to let her go. I honestly think that this is the hardest part for anyone in general.

Quentin had shown his maturity throughout this whole story. I believed this book shows how human we are and that we should stay that way. Imperfect. Quentin showed that quality. Quentin had the readers (me), wishing that Margo was a goddess, a girl whom he puts up so high, a girl he respects so much but in finding her and her true self, Quentin found himself, and I found myself. I feel that there is a connection between Quentin and me. The way Quentin talks about the people and his friends in almost every single sentence. Judging them.

The whole story doesn’t really show what happens after that, nor does it show whether or not Quentin and Margo get to be together. What I find interesting about this book is that, the character did not gain anything much like other literature books. He learnt about himself, he did gain knowledge and Margo’s love in the end but it was more of a learning experience then an actual ending. But I guess to Quentin, Margo’s love is worth more than the paper towns he searched. They’re even worth more then the poems in ‘Song of Myself’.

Quentin is a character that is so simple at first sight but when he is put in these situations, he’s more than just a character. He is more that just the protagonist. He is the main character, he is the hero, he is the antagonist, he is reader, he is the author and last of all he is simply Quentin.

So basically, Quentin is a quiet teenage boy who keeps most things to himself, especially his thoughts of others. Since his parents are both therapist, he doesn’t quite have a normal teenage life as he had to survive many countless remarks and observations of his life. Thus, he frequently questions everything and even questions his own self. He doesn’t share much and also doesn’t express his feelings well. He is a boy with low self-esteem and doesn’t think he could do much in his life. He loves Margo and will do absolutely anything for her and this shows how true and romantic he can be.

However his friends see him as a kind and humble guy. They think of him as a respectful and responsible person who is very shy but also funny in certain ways. Especially to Margo, Quentin is a hero at heart. He shows himself to those important to him and lets himself out to those whom meant more to him, that being Margo. He is a good friend to them and they would do anything to help him, especially in finding Margo for him.

Weirdly, I feel like I am Quentin, not in the story but just him himself. His character is relatable and the way the author created this character is so realistic. Realistic in such a way that the character speaks to himself the same way I would. So before I start to argue with myself, like what Quentin would normally do, I’ll end this essay with a quote from the book, not one of my favourites but it fits in with the whole story and Quentin’s love for Margo.

“The town was paper, but the memories were not.”

Fifth Blog: "Johnny and the Three Bars"

The city was filled with shining bright lights and many wild attractions. There were a number of strip clubs within 2 kilometer radius, and there were countless of bars there too. But Johnny was already sick of it. He was in the back alley, sitting down and leaning against the wall. He was so drunk that he couldn't even straightened his legs to see his feet. Looking back at the memories, Johnny had a smirk on his face, a self-satisfied smirk.

Johnny left home that late afternoon to meet his friends in the city. Knowing that tomorrow was a Sunday, he planned on getting back as late as possible. He meet Will and Tim at the train stations. The three of them knew each other from work and had these nights out together to relief their stress, and they really needed to relieve the stress they had after months on working on a project.

So Johnny and the gang were set and walked to the first bar from the train station. The first bar they went to was called the 'Eski Bar'. Having a their first drink of the night, the three friends toasted to a night of fun and adventure.

However, they only had a few drinks there and even though they were craving for just a drink and a night of relaxation, the extreme sweetness of the drinks there were not fit for their liking. So Johnny put down his second glass of beer of the night, with only three quarter of the glass empty.

All three of them headed towards the dance floor. This time again, the mood of the bar wasn't to their liking. Only a few people were on the dance floor, so few that they could even count. 15 people there, standing, some dancing and others walking by to get to the bar. Unsatisfied with this, Johnny and the guys exited the bar and went on to find another near by.

So they went on and entered a bar a few shop houses away. The bar was called, "The Green Light". However the queue to get in to the bar was quite long. They had to wait approximately 15 minutes to get in. So after waiting, the guys entered and ordered drinks and sat at the balcony. The gang then toasted to a night of fun and relaxation.

After a few drinks and laughs, the bar was getting a bit too crowded. The drinks too were a bit too sour. Johnny just kept this to himself as he tried to focus on enjoying the night. Ten minutes later, the bar was packed. So packed that when someone wants to get drinks, they have to wait a while, and if they wanted to go to the washroom, they had to wait even longer.

The three of them looked at their watches, and then each other. Johnny nodded and pointed to the door with his eyes. They knew what he was trying to say and headed towards the exit. Sure enough, it was hard passing through a room full of people.

Finally they were out of the bar. Johnny was starting to get pissed off as they only wanted to have a night of fun but got held up due to the bad drinks and small and big crowds. Not giving up, the three of them went on to the nearest bar which was actually quite a distance between the second one.

The third bar they went to was called 'Start the Machine'. They had doubts about the bar as the experience they had with the previous one and the one before that did not go well. However, optimistic about it, Johnny and his friends went in. At first sight, the bar was pretty decent. It was not empty like the first one and definitely not crowded like the second. And the drinks too was a surprise. It wasn't too sweet like the first bar nor was it too sour like the second.

So finally Johnny and his friends were enjoying the night. The had laughs here and there. Talked about works and family. It wasn't until late at night when they were drunk. Johnny and Tim were too drunk to even order anymore drinks. Somehow, Johnny and Tim were so drunk that they started a fight with a group of men.

They and thrown a few punches here and there and had a huge argument. In the end of it all, the three of them got kicked out of the bar and was not allowed back in. Johnny and his friends were left out in the back alley, with a bottle of beer in his hands. However they were quite satisfied as they had a fun night. Johnny leaned his back against the wall and sat down. He had his last sip and was knocked out.