Post #3: Diagrammatic Storytelling

Dramatic Writing & Great Rock and Roll Pauses:

The Great Rock and Roll Pauses story focuses on the relationship between a family. Sasha Blake, the mother; Lincoln Blake, the brother; Drew Blake, the father; and Alison Blake, the one narrating the story. Alison, the narrator, explains that Drew does not understand his son Lincoln and through the story he sounds worried about Lincoln not having a friend come over, and he is also worried about his son’s obsession with music. The conflict I believe is Drew not understanding his son and being worried about him, which caused that conflict between both of them and Sasha as well. At the end Alison talks about the walk she had with her father outside in the desert. Drew starts to understand that he needs to accept his son just like he is not to worry about him obsessing with music. He wants to understand his son, and try as many times to be able to do so. For me, the format of this story was an interesting one, I have never read something like this before. All the colors and arrow, and graphs, and shapes, everything made it look well coordinated and intriguing to read. The narrator had a great way to demonstrate when someone was talking and thinking, and which colors represent each character. That was a lovely detail from this diagrammatic form.

After reading Dramatic Writing and Great Rock and Roll Pauses, many ideas for creating my own diagrammatic form have come to mind. From the story Great Rock and Roll Pauses, there were many colors used, especially vibrant ones, which in my case I don’t enjoy using myself. But, they can work if they are well integrated, just like in this story. I would prefer pastel colors and black & white to do my own diagrammatic form. The Dramatic Writing reading has some great examples of how I can experiment with my font size. I liked this quote from that reading, “A diagram is an image that works (23).” Which made sense for me after reading the story Great Rock and Roll Pauses.

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