Week 6: Story Lab - Styles

Lab coat styles. Source: GettingtotheMD

This week I chose to watch the TedTalks over creativity and style in stories. These videos were interesting because it told me what the readers want to see and know. From many comments and watching these videos, I have learned how to understand the readers perspective. I hope to use this in future stories to look over my stories and ensure that my reader is engaged in the whole story. It is difficult as a beginning storyteller to hit all of the marks for such stories, but it is worth it to develop this skill and make these stories better.

I began with watching The Power of Creative Constraints video. This video was interesting to me because it changed my perspective on "bumps in the road". Rather these bumps in the road should be inspiration to find our way around it. The constraints we encounter in writing or in life are simply foundations for creativity. The creativity that stems from these constraints allows us to address these constraints and better our own methods. In a story, this is useful because maybe we feel as if the story is not going somewhere or we do not know how to start. But from there we can take inspiration from what we have: the foundation of the story.

Next, the How to Write Descriptively TedTalk stood out to me. When writing creatively, we as the writer can obviously see what we envision. But that does not mean that the person reading can see what we are indicating as well. It is important to understand that descriptions in our stories must be written in such a way that the reader meets us halfway. The should be engaged with every sense and feel, see, and understand what we are portraying. Emotional investment is a major part of a story! But what is important to understand is that writing a good, descriptive story takes time and must not be rushed. These stories for our blog but also for our projects require more effort than word-vomit on a page. It is important to get our writer-envisioned message out there in a creative way.

The "Beware of Nominalizations (aka zombie nouns)" TedTalk also sparked my interest. When writing creative stories, some words sometimes happen to be made up or jumbled together to create emphasis or capture the meaning of a word. However, too much use of these types of words can lead to confusion and reduce creativity drastically. Reading a confusing story is frustrating and no fun to get through, so it is important to be direct and clear with the sentences we use. It is fun to be whimsical when styling our stories; however, there are many ways to do that without using a splurge of zombie nouns.

Overall, stories require a perfect balance to create just the right effect. As beginner writers, we must take into account al of these details, but we must not beat ourselves up for not hitting every aspect. That is the part of growing and learning as a writer to continuously better ourselves through such labs!

Author's Note: I chose the image above as a joke since this story lab was about different styles. Hence, lab styles. I hope someone caught that reference.