Character & Voice - A Thinking Note
Thinking Notes are short reflections on elements of craft that are meant to trigger further thought on the subject, or to direct you to reassess your work through focusing on specific elements. They work best if you make your own notes as you read and reflect on your work critically as you do so. This note focuses on Character as the focal point of a story, and Voice as the source of its distinguishing features.
Digital file1 fileBy Nii Ayikwei Parkes
Simplifying Plot: Amplifying Character
Plot is widely described as the sequence of events that make up a story. Theorists from Gustav Freytag (who considers plots to have five parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution) to Christopher Booker (who contends that there are seven basic plots: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy and Rebirth) largely agree with this theory, which derives from Aristotle's Poetics, in which he puts forward the idea that a play should have "a beginning and middle and end. I advocate that the notion of plot should be simplified, that a series of events can not make a story without the particular (and peculiar) responses of a character to those events. Thus a plot is essentially an intended direction that can lead to infinitely unique stories depending on the social and societal vocabulary of the characters in the plot. To put it simply, as a writer, the plot is yours, the story belongs to the characters.
CourseBy Nii Ayikwei Parkes
Text & Performance
Thinking Notes are short reflections on elements of craft that are meant to trigger further thought on the subject, or to direct you to reassess your work through focusing on specific elements. They work best if you make your own notes as you read and reflect on your work critically as you do so. This note discusses the elements of craft in writing and performance, using the story of the recording of the jazz album "Kind of Blue" as a starting point.
Digital file1 fileBy Nii Ayikwei Parkes
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