1101 Narrative

Narrative Assignment

Step One: tell a story

first draft due to the wiki this Sunday by midnight, EST

Step Two: remix 3 peer narratives by TBA, midnight EST

One way to direct attention is to tell a story. Narrative is simply the organization of information in space and time. For example, the little musical gnome "here's a story of a man named Brady....." sets the stage and determines a starting point: the story of the Brady Bunch begins when two single parents unite forces. The Brady Bunch jingle just one example of the useful "once upon a time" catch phrase, which uses chronology as a way of organizing information: first this happened, then that other thing. Of course, on a more serious note, it takes work to sort these things out, because in web texts, many things are happening at once. Producing, analyzing and revising narratives yields and organizes important and transformative information about who we are, where we are, and where we'd like to go, so narrative is becoming the lingua franca of most projects--projects are really stories, the organization of people, tools, and resources in space and time. In medicine, Kathryn Montgomery Hunter tells us, cases are organized and communicated in narrative form; cases bring together information from diverse technical idiom and convey this information through plots as "the patient's story is encapsulated and retold in the physician's account of the process of disease in this one individual" (Doctor's Stories: the Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge, p. 51).

Basically, try and think about narrative as a potent site of self experimentation, as well as a means of expression, persuasion and information management.

This assignment asks you to use narrative as a way to explore an issue, introduce characters, plot specific examples, clarify definitions, and articulate an analysis of a particular context for a specific audience of readers.

The TV Tropes Wiki is a great tool for writing stories. TV Tropes Wiki shows how basic elements of story telling get used over and over again, and if you drop your favorite show into their search engine, you can get a concrete sense of what a "trope" is. And then, of course, you can blog about this. Yes, and, what's more, emboldened, you will select some of these narrative patterns and and adapt them to a story you want to tell, or to convey any information that you want a specific listener or reader to understand or keep with them for a while.

Blog!

1. To get started on your narrative assignment, just blog, blog, blog, and then select from the blogging you and your classmates have done so far, the first bit of writing we did for this class. Tell us a story about how you (or anyone else) were first introduced to some of the ideas, events, issues, or people discussed on your blog, or a classmate's blog (or anyhere else). Or, tell us about any project or learning experience in your past, an effort currently underway. You could even share a vision and imagine how a plan you have in mind might unfold. Sequence your information as a story with a plot. This is easy--you only need three instances to have a plot. For example, you could:

(a) Choose an event from your life, mundane or sublime, that somehow catches you in the act of being who you really are. Tell the story of that event and reflect on it to communicate to readers - your classmates and instructor - who you hope to become in the class.

(b)Choose an event from your life, mundane or sublime, that somehow catches you in the act of not being who you really are. See number 1 for details.

(b)"The Rule of Three": Choose any three moments from your life. There, now you have an itinerary. Tell the story of that itinerary and how you navigated the spaces between each moment. (The "Rule of Three" will pop up repeatedly in this course) "

2. Multimedia Composition assignment: FreeSound

Writing/Unwriting: more on cookery and medicine

Read about writing, prepare to write: Good and Bad Reasoning logical types, argumentation for beginners

read about unwriting, prepare to unwrite:

explore the "pasta-bilities"

web trope: "Copypasta" c&p done for the lulz

web trope: "free expert"

one or several definitions

JUST for the lulz?

http://www.cylegage.com/lulz/ Cyle Gage's "I Can Has Rezearch Papar?"

YTMND = multimedia composition. play the process

YTMND are "non-semantic" mashups using image sound, & text

Encyclopedia Dramatica another sort of wiki

http://www.4chan.org/

communication?

commons-formation with images

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/

Photoshop Friday