Week 12 Lab: Telling a Story

For this week's story lab, I opted to read the second chapter in EmpoWord about telling a story. The chapter began with a nice quote from Doctor Who that got me engaged in the reading. I am a fan of Doctor Who, but unfortunately, I am not up to date with the latest doctor. Either way, this began the chapter off on a good note. The writer really wanted the reader to consider how one quote can mean several things depending on the mindset of the reader. This is reflective for all reading in life. Each person that consumes ideas will put together their own thoughts about the matter.

Next, the chapter went into more specifics about storytelling that I had already learned in previous classes in high school. These basic concepts covered items like narration, point of view, and mood. The explanation brought together that depending on how you approach each item, the writer can greatly alter how the reader engages with the material. Scope of a story was also brought up. The writer mentioned that some writers try to put too many events or details into a story when really they should be focusing on what is the most important. I find that I struggle with this a lot myself. I like to include a lot of details and make sure the reader understands what I am trying to convey, but I think that sometimes I just cloud up everything even more than I should have. This past week, I have tried to focus on doing short and straight to the point writing.

The technique spoke about next in the textbook was pacing. In result of including too much detail, I think I slow down the pace of my stories a lot. I like to elaborate on creating the setting when, really, the setting is usually not the most important part. If I could get down a basic description that can set the scene, then I need to work on just getting to the events of the story that I am writing.

From this chapter, I think that I have learned that I need to work on scope and pacing the most in my writing. I understand the basic fundamentals of creating a story, but working on these points of writing could easily help me become better.

Bibliography

Telling a Story, EmpoWord

Image Information: Writing, PxHere

Reading Notes: Beowulf, Part B

The second tale that I found worth mentioning from the Beowulf unit was the story named "Seeking Grendel's Mother." This story had Beowulf and his group of warriors in hot pursuit of the terrifying mother of Grendel. Grendel was a monster from the first half of the unit that was a giant and had the ability to put all people within a certain range into a sleep from which they could not easily wake. Beowulf was the only one able to fight off this sleeping spell and was able to fight Grendel. Unfortunately, when Grendel returned back to his cave, his mother wanted revenge for the damage Beowulf had inflicted upon Grendel. So she went on a rampage in the hall and stole back Grendel's arm. Beowulf followed her trail all the way to an evil looking lake. Here, he departed from the rest of his comrades and decided to embark into the pool of liquid on his own. On his way down, he found a multitude of weird deep sea monsters that eerily watched him. Throughout his descent, Beowulf had to fight off many of these creatures before he finally made it to the cave where Grendel's mother lived.

The setting of this part of the tale is through the woods to the lake and down into the lake. The writer of this story did a beautiful job of creating an eerie atmosphere that Beowulf had to face when he decided to go into the lake. Each sea creature is new and different from the rest. I appreciated the phrase, "evil glance from its glowing eyes of red or green or sapphire blue," as this showed me what Beowulf was seeing. I imagined dark nothingness fully surrounding Beowulf, but in the midst of everything, I could see glowing orbs of various colors watching Beowulf in the deep water. Being able to visualize something like this shows that I was able to get fully into the words of this tale which is why I think it was successful.

Bibliography

Seeking Grendel's Mother, The Story of Beowulf by Strafford Riggs with illustrations by Henry

Pitz (1933)

Image Information: Deep sea fish, Pixabay

Reading Notes: Beowulf, Part A

From the first part of the Beowulf unit, I chose the story called "Beowulf Lands in Daneland." This title caught my attention as I have recently been watching a show on Netflix where the characters in that show go to Daneland. In the story from the unit, Beowulf and his companions are crossing the sea to get to their destination of Daneland. There are many terrors in the sea that they must pass through on the way there. When they finally got to the beach of Daneland, they were approached by someone guarding the beach. The guardian of the beach asked them who they are and where they came from before allowing them passage in the land. When being investigated by the guardian of the beach, the group told him that they were there to help the king of Daneland. In this same exchange, the guardian told them of Grendel who came to raid the land. With this, they were able to proceed.

The tale of this part of Beowulf’s story was very descriptive in a lot of ways. The main way that stood out to me was all of the detailed visual descriptions. These descriptions created a useful setting for me, so I could understand what the group was going through during their travels. The details about the monsters in the sea stood out to me initially when I was reading through the story. Mentions of “slimy coils,” “shaggy manes,” and “horny claws” definitely painted a picture of the horrors this group was experiencing during their long nights on the sea. Luckily, this group was able to make it safely across the sea without any harm done to them. I would like to be able to write stories where the words create feelings in the readers. I do not want to just tell them how the characters reacted to something I am describing; I want them to feel what the character does.

Bibliography

Beowulf Lands in Daneland, The Story of Beowulf by Strafford Riggs with illustrations by Henry
Pitz (1933)

Image Information: Beowulf sailing to Daneland, Wikimedia