A6 Creative Project

This is our (Marina, Marie, and myself) project for A6! I took pictures of the letters we wrote from various angles. Just as a reminder they are letters written from Telémakhos during his childhood and the entire period before The Odyssey written to his mother and father. Again sorry about the scanning issues, I'll resolve them ASAP. Glad to have had 111 with all of you! :)

A6: Welcome to Hailsham

http://neverletmego.wix.com/hailsham

- Austin & Irene's A6 project!

Shit Oedipus Doesn't Say

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCjrRLz5ck8

--
Chloé Warehall
Janis Yue
Kelly Peretzman

A6 Songs!!

Odyssey/Oedipus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfLHeuG409w&feature=youtu.be


Hamlet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InAZVC7Ia5Q&feature=plcp


Paradise Lost:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmriSkvVDOk&feature=youtu.be


Frankenstein:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz86C2hCKx4&feature=youtu.be


All lyrics and music copyright Spencer Prescott & Jacob Lehr

Why Stephenie Meyer Sucks

Pick up a copy of Twilight and tell me that you'd want to be friends with Bella Swan in real life. Without lying! Better yet, tell me that you'd want to be friends with Stephenie Meyer. No? Ehh, didn't think so. People can say whatever they want about the writing of a novel, but the most frequent criticism people resort to will be either "Oh my gawwwwdd I hate X/Y/Z character" or "That author SUCKS". Few will pinpoint certain specific problems, as most allow one or two slip ups to pass by if they're engaged in the text. After all, Great Expectations could be retitled Great Bedtime Story because nine times out of ten the prose will just put you  to sleep, but SOMEONE saw something in Dickens' story. The technique can be overlooked if what you're reading is compelling and interesting. My number one advice for good writing?

Don't let the readers know you suck.

Or, in SMeyer's case, don't let the readers know you AND your characters suck. Keep them interested and let them know you have something new or refreshing to tell them. If it's not new or refreshing, at least tell it to them in a way they've never heard before. People will use your writing as kindling for the fire within ten words if they don't give a damn what you're saying. Make them care by making them care about you or what you're writing about - or both, in the best case scenario. Keep the narrative moving forward into new and enlightening territories, because nobody wants to read the same thing over, and over, and over andoverandoverandoverandover again. Irritated? Thought so.

However, keeping an eye out for technical issues also helps. After all, if SMeyer used one more adjective in place of more exciting verb choice, I would've just sent her back to the eighth grade because that's where that sort of lazy writing belongs. Keeping it fresh means keeping the writing equally exciting. Of course, don't be pedantic and no, thesaurus.com is not your BFF. In fact, it wanted me to tell you that it feels abused and like it's putting way more into the relationship than you ever will. Don't patronize your reader; they'll get pissed off and stop reading or have to look up every word you use, THEN get pissed off and stop reading. Vary your sentence lengths so that they're not all mind-numbingly long nor staccato and flowless. Grammar should be checked once, twice, thrice even and if you're not sure where that apostrophe or semicolon goes, it doesn't kill to ask somebody. At the very least, google it - that website was made for the lazy, needy and ashamed, and at that point you should be all three. Don't sound too stupid, and it'll allow readers to focus on what's most important: your subject matter and yourself.

I wanted to gouge out Bella's eyes for being a stupid bitch. Edward deserved to be set on flames for his sketchy and mildly abusive over protection. Sparkling vampires is a dumb idea. However, while Meyer eagerly abused adjectives and synonyms, I would've been decently intrigued if the story was decently intriguing. After all, most of the time people know what sort of material they're picking up, whether it's a research paper, literary journal or guilty pleasure. Alas, even with my full knowledge that Twilight was the latter, it still couldn't meet my low expectations.

Moral of the story is, writer, take care of the minutiae so it's not distracting to readers. However, after that, make everybody at least think you and your subject matter rock. Your reader shouldn't know you found solar energy more boring than watching snails race. To them, reading about it should be just as exciting as getting tickets to the Beyonce concert. After all, how do tabloid magazines sell so much? Mediocre writing, enticing content. You could make millions, future EL James of the world.

Writing can be judged in the way that it fulfills its purpose.

There are many different types of writing, which is why it is impossible to regulate “good” writing to rules of grammar, length, content, formality, diction, etc.  But within certain contexts, we begin to expect certain things from our writing, and we become frustrated if they are not there.  We can best understand a piece’s quality by understanding its purpose.  If a third grader gives us a birthday card, we shouldn’t criticize it for errors in spelling or grammar because it is not what we expect—these silly mistakes don’t take away from the card’s purpose.  As long as the kid throws down a “Happy Birthdday,” we should be satisfied.  The same goes for a text message.  If my friend decided to let me know that he had arrived at my house in Shakespearean verse, I would likely become daunted by the text’s length and stop reading before I absorb the necessary information.  A simple “Here” would suffice. 

            But as we move into more sophisticated contexts, our expectations of good writing grow.  Grammar suddenly becomes more important in an English analysis for a variety of reasons.  If we don’t see adequate grammar in an essay on a novel, how can we can we be sure our author even knows what they’re talking about? (I might have stolen that idea from Trimble, but I can’t quite remember.)  In a novel itself, our expectations change again.  In many contexts, authors decide to closely follow the rules of grammar, but we cannot say that this is entirely necessary.  It would be ridiculous to argue that Huck Finn or Ulysses were poorly written by only looking at their neglect of proper grammar.  They do, however, excellently fulfill their purpose of taking on different peoples’ personae. 

            The purpose of most writing is to engage us by triggering an emotional response.  Many types of writing attempt to do this in different ways.  If any of them are successful, it’s safe to say they author has achieved “good” writing.   

Blog 12

Good writing is something that you know when you see it. Ultimately, writing comes down to the enjoyment of the reader. A good sentence is one that makes you want to read the next one. Now, what does  make us want to read the next sentence? For me, the key components are momentum, concision, precision, and a vivid image. Good fictional writing puts you in the world of the story, good analytical writing gives you a clear understanding of the subject.

In my opinion, momentum is the singular most important attribute to possess in writing. You build momentum through structure, and structure naturally builds to a conclusion. Nicely structured paragraphs keep an easy thread to follow as well as a thread that we want to see resolved. We also build momentum within paragraphs through sentence structure. Generally, concision builds momentum from sentence to sentence. Nice and snappy sentences lead easily to the next sentence. At the same time, it's good to vary sentence structure so the reader isn't bored, as long as each clause is said in the most concise way possible.

Precision is also key. I know at least that I hate reading things that don't make sense to me. (Quick aside, I'm not referring to things like Paradise Lost where you can unpack layers of meanings - I'm referring to situations where the writer him/herself has not thought through the implications of the sentence). In general, I like things to be presented in a rapidly accessible manner, with as much specificity as possible.

This applies more to fiction than anything else, but being vivid is crucial to good sentences, good paragraphs and good stories. For example, I read Frankenstein a few years ago, and as I reread it this year, I found that the same moments in the story conjured up the exact same mental images, in great detail, as I had experienced in 8th grade. This sense of deja vu was made even more odd by the fact that I had not thought about the novel at all for quite some time. Yet, I could easily imagine the exact same Lake Geneva, Ingolstadt, monster, Orkney Islands, family and woods and many other things as I had before. This is because Shelley's language was vivid enough to make a distinct impression on me, an impression specific enough not to change over time.

Of course, everyone may completely disagree with me, but these are the things that strike me first when I read.