Author: Brayden

Brayden Sathrum

2/7/23

DTC 354

5 Story Summaries

1. Classic Aristotelian 3-part structure 

A teenage boy wakes up in a basement with no memory of how he got there. He quickly realizes that he is trapped inside and must find a way out. He encounters a mysterious entity that is trapping him inside and, after many failures, devises a plan to kill the monster. By the end, he discovers more about himself, for better or worse. The story would have thriller and horror elements with a twist at the end. The characters would be morally gray and forced to make difficult decisions. I think it would translate well to different kinds of digital storytelling with a few tweaks to the plotline. 

2. Kishotenketsu 4-part structure.

  A lighthearted romance between two ghosts that meet each other in a library that they both haunt. They encounter a few issues, such as trying to scare the librarians and students, but they learn how to work together to accomplish their goals. Over time, they fall in love and become a couple. The story has a spooky atmosphere while still being warm. I would want the plot to be light on conflict and to mostly focus on the relationship between the two main characters. Their attempts at becoming good ghosts would also allow for personal growth. I think this fits best with the 4-part structure as it has a longer development period than that of my other story ideas.

3. A story in an episodic structure.

A young transgender woman on her deathbed looks back on some of her key memories, structured as different episodes of her life. They span different time periods but contain similar themes. I want this to be a thoughtful exploration of time and death, but largely being a character study. I also want to illustrate how real world events impact the lives of marginalized communities. By using an episodic structure for this story, I can find unique ways to structure my mini arcs so that the plot becomes a full circle. In this way, seemingly unconnected pieces clearly form a picture by the end. I think this could be an interesting way of creating a character study. 

4. A story in a surrealist or fantastic mode

A young man living alone in an apartment discovers that a ghost is haunting his apartment complex and targeting his neighbors. He has to overcome his fears in order to save them and himself. He ultimately succeeds, but at a high cost. I want this story to have a lot of mysterious elements to it and possibly a twist. Along with this, I’m hoping to build strong characters that give the storyline an emotional core. By using this idea, I could practice more with horror, which I haven’t explored too much. Creating this digitally would also grant me additional ways to explore the plot and be more creative.

5. Personal Anecdote 

An examination of my relationship with my oldest sister and how we went from being best friends to strangers. I would want this story to focus on specific memories that span several years to indicate how things changed. My sister and I communicated frequently over text, so I want the majority of the dialogue to be from these conversations to add a greater sense of realism. Building off of this, I would want the story to be structured like a text messaging system with a few breaks for other illustrations. I think this would make my story more unique and give it a compelling structure. I also want to make sure that the focus is fairly narrow so I can dig deeper into the concept and the themes that arise from it.

Brayden Sathrum

2/6/23

DTC 354 

Visual Narrative I

“Understanding Comics,” by Scott McCloud, digs deep into the origins of comics and how they can be defined and manipulated to create extraordinary stories. Comics are an excellent way of exploring visual arts because they rely on a blend of pictures and text in order to tell the tale. After reading about how comics create the effects that they do, there are a few key takeaways that I will apply when creating my diagrammatic writing piece.

One part that stuck out to me was when McCloud describes how “less is more” and that finding a balance between subtracting and adding content is key. I believe this fits well with all types of storytelling because knowing when to allow your audience to infer information can elevate their experience. Especially in genres like horror, granting the reader the ability to let their mind generate some of the imagery can be effective. In terms of the diagrammatic writing assignment, I think it shows how using intentional language in a simple sentence can have more depth than a descriptive paragraph. 

Another piece of this book that I took note of was when McCloud talks about gutters and how the space in between comic book panels tells its own story. To me, this is beneficial when considering how I want to tackle my diagrammatic story. Knowing that my tale will be told through slides, there will be empty space around the content. When deciding how I want to structure my story, I want to take these gutters into consideration. Leaving spaces blank intentionally could, at times, leave readers with a better sense of the story than if I had a slide full of content. I believe this fits well with the idea of “less is more” as well, since having space left open is a minimalist approach to writing.

 By combining these two concepts from McCloud’s book, I think I will be able to create a story that is intentional with every slide. I want to ensure that every piece is strategically placed and has its own meaning. McCloud’s guide to comics also shows how this medium has a lot of crossover with other kinds of writing and, as such, uses similar rules to create a strong piece. I think learning from other visual arts is an incredibly helpful way of improving your own writing style. Overall, I’m excited to take these ideas and apply them to my diagrammatic story as I think it will strengthen the storytelling.

The short story “Great Rock n’Roll Pauses,” by Johanna Drucker, follows a young family living near a desert and the struggles they face in their relationships. Through each slide, we’re given different details about each family member and the ways they feel about one another. The conflict revolves around the son, who has a special interest in the pauses in songs. While the family supports this, the father struggles to find it useful and snaps at the son, causing him to cry. The mother comforts him, while his dad, embarrassed, goes on a walk with their daughter. In the end, the father learns how to embrace his son’s quirks and illustrates this by creating graphs of different pauses in songs. 

The changes the characters go through are internal, particularly the father. He learns how to accept his son the way he is and to encourage the different hobbies he enjoys. The diagrammatic structure of the story allows for exploration of its plot and characters in a unique way. Facts and quirks about each person are revealed through small blocks of text that allow the reader to envision the character without long, detailed paragraphs. Each piece of information and where it is placed feels intentional. I think this is a benefit of diagrammatic writing that shines through in this piece. You can choose specific, vivid pieces of detail that paint a picture for the reader and organize it in a way that quickly tells you about a character or storyline. 

A few ideas from this piece that inspired me was the way that the information is laid out to tell you something about a character. One example of this is on the slides about the mother’s annoying habits, clearly written by the daughter. The numbers attached to them, such as bad habit #48, tell the reader a lot while saying little. We can see from this that the daughter is critical of their mother and is often irritated by some of the little things that they do, even if they’re not important. Aspects like these make each person multi-faceted in just a few words. Overall, I found the story to be a fascinating exercise in the different ways that you can structure a plot and how that influences the tone and emotions it delivers.

One short film that caught my attention was “She and Her Cat” by Makoto Shinkai. The movie follows the relationship between a woman and her cat from the animal’s perspective. Given its four minute run time, the story is simple but is explored in a unique fashion. We’re only given access to the cat’s thoughts and perceptions of what occurs around him. The limited scope makes exploring the narrative interesting as we’re never given all the details on the conflict that unfolds. An example of this is when the girl receives a phone call and becomes upset afterward. We don’t quite know what the subject of the conversation was or what exactly causes her to feel sad. We are only privy to the cat’s perspective on the event. In a way, this reminds me of Fargo as it takes a similar approach of deliberately leaving out information. It only includes what we need to know in order for the plot to make sense. For this short, I felt as though the creator left out the cause of the woman’s emotions because they don’t necessarily relate to the overarching storyline. In the end, the plot explores the relationship between the owner and her pet, so the backstory doesn’t feel needed. All that matters is the cat’s reaction to the woman’s feelings, not what actually happened to her.

I thought the events that led up to this moment were also well-placed. The relationship between the two cats at the beginning establishes how the main animal has feelings for their owner and is solely focused on that. By placing this early in the video, we know why the owner’s reactions to events matter so much to the cat. The film avoids the Aristotelian plot structure by building its outline around their relationship rather than a central conflict. Both the cat and the woman reach their own conclusions about life by the end of the video, which gives the movie its ending. Overall, I thought the film was a cute, wholesome way of exploring the relationship between humans and animals while illustrating how not every story should be told the same way.