“Keep or Kill: Story Structure”

Reading Summary:

The comic talks about how you piece things together when writing a story. It starts out by showing some of the stories that a flight attendant has. It talks about taking a bunch of unconnected anecdotes and forming them together is hard. Narrative suspense is when you put things in chronological order, and it is the default. But sometimes you want to put an anecdote at the beginning to capture attention. It also discussed how scenes can simply fade out into other scenes. For a scene to work, they say that you need to create a vivid image in the listener’s imagination. You should use an active voice, because it helps to create a scene and is easier to follow. The comic strip also talked about the importance of collaborating while writing. It also discussed how radio shows and podcasts can be seen as writing, just in a different form. Additionally, sometimes you need to signpost things, or basically say what’s important, so that the listener can follow along without being confused.

Outside Example:

When I read this, I thought of a lot of indie films that have really bad transitions. You don’t really notice when a film has good transitions, because it flows naturally. However, I have noticed that there are plenty of indie films with really bad transitions that just go from one scene to another. For example, I watched a film called Flower, and it had really bad transitions and absolutely no flow. I couldn’t find a video online, but it would basically cut from scene to scene with no transition. For example, one time they were driving to Mexico, and then the next scene the girl was making out with her step-brother.

Reading Connection:

This connected to the reading, because it talked about the importance of scene transitions and one scene flowing into another. The indie film is obviously did not have very good film transitions. Because scene transitions are expensive, the indie film could have probably used another technique, such as using the narrative/chronological method. However indie films are good at being very descriptive, which makes you feel like you are playing a role in the movie. There is a great deal of vivid imagery throughout the film and in each individual scene.