Author: kbrandon23

Story 1: Classical Aristotelian 3-part structure

On the Bryan family farm the sheep-herding dog Jack begins to notice that some of his sheep are disappearing and no one knows why. As the sheep’s protector, Jack takes it upon himself to get to the bottom of this mystery. He starts interviewing all the other animals on the farm trying to piece together the story. During his investigation, he runs into some dangerous situations. Finally, he is able to get to the bottom of the mystery and save the sheep.

Story 2: Kishōtenketsu 4-part structure 

This story takes place on a farm in Oklahoma. In the beginning, we are introduced to the family. Then we begin to learn more about the farm, it’s animals, and their daily life taking care of everything. When one of their animals suddenly gets very sick and dies. Quickly, more animals are beginning to get sick. Worried about losing all of their animals, the farmer and his family work hard and figure out what was making the animals sick. They make the necessary changes they need to make to get their animals healthy again.

Story 3: Episodic structure 

These stories are about a family and their daily life but are told through the eyes of different members of the family: the parents, children, and even pets. We will be able to see their daily struggles and know their thoughts throughout the day, giving us insight into what each of their lives is like and how they are different from each other, even though some aspects of their day may be similar. Each of these stories will show how everyone views things differently and you don’t always know what someone is going through. 

Story 4: Surrealist or fantastic mode

Sarah comes home from school and walks into the front door of her house closing the door behind her. Only to realize that she is not home and the door that she walked in through has now disappeared. She was transported to another world and is now standing in the middle of a forest she has never seen before. After walking around and somewhat exploring this new world she comes across someone who tells her she has to help the beings in this world solve their problems in order to get back to her world.

Story 5: Personal anecdote as a fictional story

Hailey and her family were on vacation in Hawaii and they all wanted to go snorkeling because it was something they had never done before. Today was the perfect day, the sun was shining and the water was calm. They get in the water and begin swimming around looking for fish. But they had no luck, after half an hour of swimming they didn’t see anything. They started to get tired but Hailey decided that she would swim one more lap and she was glad that she did. She called her family to come over to her so she could show them what she found. 

The story “Great Rock n’ Roll Pauses” is about a family told from the daughter, Alison’s, point of view. Alison tells this story through a diagrammatic slide show. In this slide show, she goes through the past, describes the characters, and explains how her dad is struggling to understand his son’s obsession with pauses in songs. 

The conflict occurs when the dad tries to figure out Lincoln’s obsessions with music, specifically the pauses in songs. Lincoln was playing the songs with pauses when his dad asked him why he liked them so much. He didn’t get the answer he was looking for so he snapped, causing Lincoln to cry and causing him to run inside. The mom explained the importance of the pauses and followed Lincoln into the house to comfort him. The conflict was resolved when Alison and her dad went on a walk into the desert. During their walk, Alison and her dad talk about many things. But most importantly she helps her dad understand the importance of the pauses. 

The characters’ changes throughout this story are internal. Especially with the dad, after he talks with Alison about Lincoln’s obsession with pauses, we know that he changes because the story ends with different graphs of pauses that he helped Lincoln recreate. This shows that he has begun to understand and connect with Lincoln and his obsession. 

The diagrammatic form of the story expressed the story elements of the plot and characters very well. I think this format helped the reader visualize the story better. For example, when Alison was talking about her mom’s collages she organized that slide to look like a collage. Also, when she was talking about saying good night to her brother through their shared wall, she used a block in between the text to represent the wall. For my diagrammatic story, I will use a lot of visual elements like shapes and charts. I’m not the best at storytelling so I think adding these different graphics will help the reader to better visualize the story. Along with the graphics I will use colors that represent that part of the story similar to how colors were used in “Great Rock n’ Roll Pauses’. 

The short film that I decided to write about is “She and Her Cat” by Makoto Shinkai. This film shows the relationship between a cat and its owner through the cat’s point of view. The story starts with the women at the cat’s first meeting and then going through their daily life. As the story continues the cat meets a female cat who he rejects due to his strong love for the woman. Later on, the woman gets a phone call, but due to the fact that this is from the perspective of a cat, or just simply that it wasn’t important to the plot, we don’t know what happened on the phone call. We know as much as the cat knows which is whatever was said during the phone call that night made the woman very sad. The cat does the best he can to make her feel better by comforting her and eventually she is happy again.

This story doesn’t revolve around a clear central conflict. Instead, the structure of the story feels more relatable and natural, like we are looking at someone’s daily life. However, while it isn’t very straightforward, with the lack of certain aspects like background knowledge, there is still conflict. The conflict occurs during the phone call, but we don’t exactly know much about it. It is later resolved when the woman becomes happy again. There is also another conflict between the cat and his girlfriend when they argue because he has stronger feelings toward the woman.

The plot in the movie “Fargo” begins with Jerry Lundegaard meeting two criminals, Carl and Gaear, to plan the kidnapping of his wife in order to get money from his wealthy father-in-law, Wade Gustafson. Once the plan was put into action things quickly started to go wrong and problems continued throughout the whole movie. This accurately represents what Aristotle would call a well-constructed plot. To be a well-constructed plot he says it needs to “be single in its issue” and that the change of fortune should be from good to bad.

The change of fortune from good to bad shows a lot about each character. While these situations unfold we can not only see how they handle the situation, but we can also see how they interact with each other. From the start, when Jerry comes up with his plan, we can see that he is a desperate and selfish man. He continues to prove this as the story continues with each bump in the road. Then with the criminals, we are able to see that one is more emotional, talkative, and angry. While the other is emotionless, ruthless, and keeps to himself.

Aristotle explains an important aspect of a tragedy, which is fear and pity. He says “Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as cause and effect.” This is shown when the two kidnappers are on their way back with Jean and they get pulled over, which then causes a surprising domino effect of issues. Once the cop becomes suspicious of the two men Gaear decides the best solution is to kill him. But someone saw them while driving by which then led to a car chase that ended in a double homicide. This chain of cause and effects happened very quickly which added to the element of surprise. 

Hi everyone!

My name is Kendall Brandon. I am 19 years old, I’m a senior here at Washington State University Vancouver, and I will be graduating in the Fall. I am majoring in DTC, minoring in Communications, and last semester I completed my Social Media Certificate. While I am taking this course as a requirement, I’m still very interested in the class and excited to learn more about storytelling. As of right now, I am not the greatest at creating and telling stories of my own, so I hope that this class will be able to help me strengthen those skills so I can improve as a storyteller. I am also hoping that this course will help me improve my creativity because that is something else that I tend to struggle with sometimes.

The genre of storytelling that interests me the most is probably drama or mystery. I think that these genres of storytelling interest me the most because they do a good job of captivating the audience and keeping their attention throughout the entire duration of the story. This captivation makes it a lot easier to immerse yourself in the story, which makes the story itself more interesting and enjoyable.

I think that my favorite medium for storytelling is movies, but sometimes I also enjoy novels. Usually, it is a lot easier for me to fully understand and comprehend the entire story if I can watch everything unfold instead of reading it. However, I think the story also influences the medium I choose.