Square #3--fitting ourselves into the sketch
A Dialogue
Some sketches from our developing narratives:
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| Lauren's character |
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| Krystin's event |
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| Sandra's event |
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| Sandra's character |
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| Megi's narrative collage |
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| Martha's event |
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| Lauren's event |
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| Joe's character |
The protagonist of our community
Working ourselves into the narrative is probably both easy and really hard. If there is anyone we want to remain faithful to, it is a character based on ourselves. But we will only limit ourselves in the creation of our character if we insist on verisimilitude. Aim, again, for narrative truth, not necessarily psychological and physical actuality.
So let's try to get at this character called "you" in a more oblique way. We can try to do that by creating a dialogue. Our goal is to learn about you-as-character by the things you choose to talk about in a dialogue.
Here's the challenge, and again there is a written and a visual part:
- Imagine that you are making a movie of your event.
- In this scene of the film, two characters meet (your character from challenge #22 and "you").
- The topic of the discussion should be the event, but . . . . neither character wants to address it.
- What would they talk about with each other as they circle around this event that is so obviously something to discuss, but they are pulling out every trick in the book to avoid the topic.
- Would this become a funny conversation? troubling? sad? weird? paranormal (in cases where one character no longer exists)? surreal? starkly real?
- What might you have to do to adjust yourself-as-character to accommodate this conversation?
- Make this a relatively developed, though brief, scene that can fill the page with the conversation dialogue. Write it in standard dialogue form, so it looks like a script from a play or screenplay.
- Visually, define the page with images of the things they are talking about, those things that serve as distractions from the event itself. Use collage or whatever medium you wish. This will give you a chance to think meaningfully about what these characters would turn to to discuss when trying to avoid the obvious.
To get started, just let them talk in your head. Don't edit, don't try to force things. Just see what they would do if they, for example, chose to avoid talking about dad's death by discussing pizza, or choose to talk about a murder in the neighboring town rather than discuss someone's new job, or commented mundanely on the Red Sox or the weather rather than address the real issue.
My guess is that this one might need some adjusting and reworking to accommodate all the different types of narratives developing out there. Try to remain true to the spirit of this sketch, but adjust to fit your needs. As an example of such an adjustment, the character you created in #22 may need to be tabled for this sketch and another character might work better. That's up to you.
I am really glad to see how powerful these writing/sketching experiences are for people as you work through these narratives.
Keep the images coming, and thank you to those who are sharing, especially when these images and stories are often very personal. Please do not feel you must share, but when you wish to, I can speak for everyone, we are thrilled to see your images.
Send to thassele@bryant.edu
My guess is that this one might need some adjusting and reworking to accommodate all the different types of narratives developing out there. Try to remain true to the spirit of this sketch, but adjust to fit your needs. As an example of such an adjustment, the character you created in #22 may need to be tabled for this sketch and another character might work better. That's up to you.
I am really glad to see how powerful these writing/sketching experiences are for people as you work through these narratives.
Keep the images coming, and thank you to those who are sharing, especially when these images and stories are often very personal. Please do not feel you must share, but when you wish to, I can speak for everyone, we are thrilled to see your images.
Send to thassele@bryant.edu
My movie scene was inspired by the movie 21. I like the intensity of the movie and what goes on during the poker game. In one minute you could win it all and the next minute you could walk out the door with nothing.
ReplyDeleteI based mine on a love story. I based mine on how conflict starts early and could be solved if people simply communicated better.
ReplyDeleteThis was difficult I might be changing my whole story but I'm not initially sure yet. But I went with it for the sketch and made my my scene of me and the other character running into eachother on the cafeteria line back in elementary school.Its based off of how your first time you encounter with someone new it can change your life
ReplyDeleteI found this hard as my character was a group of people rather than an individual. I chose to choose the quintessential member of the group to write into this scene, which worked out in the long run. This challenge was creatively stimulating in a different, non visual sense.
ReplyDeleteThis array of challenges is very fun for me. I like how creative it is as we base all of this off of our own lives. It's a very freely guided challenge which has made it much more enjoyable for me.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this. I love writing and especially in this format. I liked adding visuals to enhance the written scene.
ReplyDeleteThis activity was challenging for me. It was hard to think of dialogue that these two characters would be saying back and forth to each other although I enjoyed creating the two characters!
ReplyDeleteI like how all of these activities relate to one another. I liked adding pictures to the words to create a story.
ReplyDeleteI really did not enjoy this activity at all, it was more of an English assignment than a art assignment. It was difficult for me to come up with a dialogue with a person that I do not even know.
ReplyDeleteDeveloping this event has been fun. I love how my story is coming together without me over thinking it and the visual images really help brighten the dialogue page.
ReplyDeleteI liked this challenge a lot, it was different from the other challenges by actually putting dialog in and creating my own movie/story
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was interesting because my characters did not address the event directly, but they both knew what was going on in the scene.
ReplyDeleteThis was a challenge at first because it was hard to come up with a story line based on the event and make it seem like the characters do not want to talk about it. In the end, it turned out great.
ReplyDeleteThis was a little challenging, nevertheless, i tried making the conversation funny. The fact that my friend and I were on our way to the same tuition classes that day, I tried making conversations about that.
ReplyDeleteI liked this challenge and it is nice to see the story starting to come together. It was a challenge at first to come up with the story though.
ReplyDeleteThis was difficult for me to decide how to integrate a conversation into a group so widely effected. I think that rather than including a dialogue, leaving the sketch wordless would broaden my imagination if I were ever to go back and look at it.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was different and fun but it was kind of hard to do since my character was made up! I enjoyed the doodling around the dialog.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was very difficult for me! Hard to integrate a conversation into a big group of people. Since my whole town was involved it was a hard challenge.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was a little difficult to strike up a conversation between the two characters in my narrative, but it was fun to make it up because i like writing narrative pieces.
ReplyDeleteMy scene was more about what my characters did in response to the actual event. I like making this into a narrative as well as conjuring up how to make it happen.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge confused me at first and I had to re-read the directions several times. I'm still not even sure if I did this correctly! However, I still loved the challenge because it gave me control of a situation I previously had no control over.
ReplyDeleteThis sketch was probably the most challenging thus far. At first, I really had no idea what to do, but then that eventually worked itself out. Overall, this challenge was tricky at first, but I am happy with the outcome.
ReplyDeleteI love the progression of the story-telling challenges. This one in particular gave me an opportunity to close my eyes and really try to evoke memories of my story, and more creatively, select which ones to emphasize. I recalled which parts of the story meant the most to me, and which ones might not have been seen or known by everyone. It was a powerful visual exercise.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was pretty difficult, but I still enjoyed the process of putting everything together. I liked that we were able to add images to the narrative. I also liked the idea of us creating a movie through writing the script and adding images.
ReplyDeleteWhat I loved about this challenge was the progression from the other pieces. To be able to build upon the others was a unique perspective and able to have a starting point and a scenario to build off of.
ReplyDeleteThis was amazingly and wonderfully challenging for me--to imagine a conversation that never happened. Once again, I found the details that emerged when creating this dialogue a replay of some of my childhood imagining of a talk just like this. I was tempted to revise these but that would have damaged the story. In another version I could have written, I could have raged but that wasn't our conversational style. Too many kind-hearted gestures for that. This was an interesting exercise because it engaged a different format for story-telling for me, making the narrative fuller and actually much harder for me to write than my usual memoir mode. What's next?
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was a little difficult for more. I had trouble trying to come up with a scenario that I would like to use. I asked some friends for advice, which definitely helped my creative thought process.
ReplyDeleteI had to reread the instructions a few times to grasp the idea of this challenge but after putting my time and effort into it, I was able to conclude with two characters having a humorous conversation. The result look great.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was a little more difficult than the first written one we did but I still enjoyed it once I got into it. I liked just thinking about my characters before I wrote about them
ReplyDeleteIt's cool to further develop in stuff that we've already created, but I don't think I really enjoyed this activity. I like being able to flip through my book and see it all come together, but actually building upon one another and making them cohesive is difficult,.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of this challenge was interesting, but it was difficult to create a story through visual images because I didn't know how to start it.
ReplyDeleteI thought this challenge was hard. Thinking of a story line was difficult. I like that it incorporated the challenge previous to this though!
ReplyDeleteOnce I began writing, it was pretty easy to imagine a conversation between my two characters. It was interesting how placement of pictures on the page relative to the words could alter the emotion behind the conversation.
ReplyDeleteagain, I enjoyed this activity because it was another opportunity to give reasoning behind our art and behind what effects us emotionally and why.
ReplyDeleteIt was good to use my imagination in this challenge and i was very creative for this one.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was an interesting way of exploring exploring the minds of the characters in my event. It was also emotional to explore our relationship again.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was really cool. I liked being able to create my own story line. This was a different kind of creativity that we haven't worked much with and I enjoyed that.
ReplyDeleteI had to reread the instructions, but I finally got it. It's definitely unique to think of the characters and a scene and than add writing.
ReplyDeleteThis was a little difficult to think of a dialogue, especially the first few lines. Once I got going, it was pretty easy.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very cool activity thinking of a conversation with only small talk was challenging but I really liked how my story turned out.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a while to decide how I wanted to create the conversation and after about twenty minutes of no thoughts that I loved I decided on going with the first idea that came to my mind.
ReplyDeleteI found this challenge to be difficult because I worked with a group of characters. I tried to make my conversation funny. I am starting to like how the story is beginning to come together
ReplyDeleteFound this challenge difficult. It was hard for me to think of a dialogue for this event.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge used a different side of creativity that we haven't real touched on yet which was really cool!
ReplyDeleteI like this challenge. All of my "art" for these challenges have dialog. I actually got the chance to write the dialog down for a change.
ReplyDeleteThis activity was difficult as far as being able to create a conversation between the main character and myself, since we have never spoken before and most probably would never. Although it was challenging, it was still fun to think of possible interactions in different situations.
ReplyDeleteI did not know exactly what I was going to do for this sketch. I felt like the dialogue was forced and I just said to my character what ever came to mind first. once I started sketching the visual I did not know what I wanted to draw. I ended up using the water colors to paint a street with my character and I.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't to fond of this challenge because it took a long time to decide what I am going to do.
ReplyDeleteWhile writing the dialog to this scene it was crazy to feel the emotions between the two characters even though I really do not know much about the main character I am talking to.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was very difficult for me. At the same time I liked how we use previous challenges to create new ones. At the end it turned out to be very fun to create a dialogue.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was pretty difficult and I didn't enjoy it as much as the others. It was hard to think of dialogue that these two characters would be saying back and forth to each other
ReplyDeleteLike a lot of other people said, this challenge was difficult for me to finish. I found that because my event was an enjoyable one I had difficulty in creating a conversation where they would want to avoid it at all costs.
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was a little harder for me than most because I had a hard time coming up with a creative story line from my event.
ReplyDeleteMy movie scene was inspired by the tv show 'How to make it in America' and it is about my future ambitions and career aspirations. I enjoyed this challenge
ReplyDeleteA bit confusing, but I was eventually able to figure out a way to effectively do it. I had to change characters to fit the right event and it eventually turned out okay after a lot of drawing.
ReplyDeleteThis was a bit difficult only because of having to draw two characters and a scene without taking an hour or two but it came out good.
ReplyDeleteI liked this challenge a lot. Actually it was probably one of my more favorite ones if the one i have completed already. Great being able to connect to characters with only words
ReplyDeleteThis became difficult writing down this conversation on paper. The event that it was supposed to speak about was a tough topic for me. After I wrote it out, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. It was as if I was releasing some pent up emotion from years of the pain of the event. My imaginary character faced the event head on and made "younger me" face reality of the situation.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a while to decide a setting at first. But eventually I had fun playing with my imagination!
ReplyDeleteThis challenge was really fun. My story was a basic one that told the other to stay above the influence and to not do drugs.
ReplyDeleteAnother time consuming task but it really made me feel creative.
ReplyDeletei rewally enjoyed putting myself into a story and the character
ReplyDelete