My senior capstone needs to culminate aspects of my major and what I've learned in COR. Honestly, I'm not even sure if COR is "COR," "Core," or "CORE." For the purpose of this entry...it's going to be "COR."
But I feel that my capstone should not only incorporate ideas of COR and my major, but also from every other class that I have taken. Outside the Professional Writing Major curriculum and COR Classes, I've taken Screenwriting, Interactive Storytelling, Digital Interactive Design and 2-D Motion Graphics. Honestly, I've wanted to work on my story in such an interactive way where I become the director. After taking Screenwriting, I've realized that the writer has very little to do other than write the script. Same as Interactive Storytelling. Both classes revolved around script writing (as in action/dialogue, not computer scripting). Since I can see my story fairly well in my mind, I want to be a pioneer of the visuals in my story.
Although I've been working on my story for some time, I want to change the basic plot of it to something I have been looking at in my COR-330-03 ICS Morocco Class: lack of womens' rights. My story revolves around environmental issues, and while we've touched a bit on that in the same class, it's not as demanding as womens' rights. The difficulty with this is that I have a lot of editing to do (just the first chunk of the book...and the rest) which really takes away from the finalized dialogue of the main character. Mind you the main character ONLY speaks in iambic pentameter (10-syllable sentences) and that's more antagonizing to change than the plot. It does make more sense to try killing the secondary female character when womens' rights are an issue instead of environmental actions. Besides, everything is environmentalism. Al Gore anyone? How about Pandora? When's the last time we actually saw something on Women's Rights? My story already has a HUGE religious premise around it (Secular and Sacred???) which is more about defying the existence of God by one character (who is in fact an Angel) and his ignorance towards why humans believe in a fictionalized character God. At the same time, I guess this could also be related to Scientific Revolution (going from steam power to fossil fuels?). Yeah I've been working on this story for a while...
So my Capstone Idea: Finish and edit the book NOW and get going on animating the first few chapters (Aesthetic Expression?). Even creating a trailer of the book and have it interactive somehow. A small scale multimedia project where I create another blog and Twitter account to keep a log of what's going on and how I'm progressing. With this, ANYONE can participate with the progress of my capstone (Concepts of Community anyone?).
I know that the idea Playgrounds for the World would be the most ideal and inclusive way to incorporate COR, but that idea would be better off with someone in the International Business department. Which would be cool if I could work with someone in the IB department who doesn't have a capstone idea: give him/her this idea and work with the individual to get it going in China.
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You seem to really have the COR connection down. Congrats! I really only see one other connection you may be able to make, and this is with Concepts of Self. I know is was so long ago, but I think the readings we did all the way back then might be able to help with character development. Especially because it looks like you're using characters who may think differently from yourself, knowing a bit about psychology might help you write really believable characters.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, your connections look great! I look forward to reading the iambic pentameter dialogue.
The only thing about my iambic pentameter is that there is no real rhythm. It's not like Shakespeare where it's:
ReplyDeleteda-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM
Mine is just...10 syllable sentences.
Okay--so you had me at Cor330-03: Morocco! Just kidding--but as Julia says, you have the connections thing down pretty good. Clearly when developing a novel, so many ideas and themes are going to rear their heads, that it is no surprise that many actually connect to themese and ideas touched upon in the Core! I want to see a preview of this book so I better understand where you are going-- and where you have been.
ReplyDeleteOn the gender issue, I do want to encourage you to see and connect issues from multiple perspectives. As we have been talking about in Core 330, our perspective from the outside is biased, so in terms of character development, be sure you think 360 degrees, so to speak, and appreciate cirumstance from all angles. But I bet you were already planning on doing that!
I think the multimedia approach to the final project is brilliant (although quite a huge undertaking). I do have a general question for you: what do you ultimately hope to achieve with this project? Who is your audience and what do you hope for them to get out of enganging with your work? Or does that even matter?
BTW: Nice refernce to Shakespeare above, and yet another Core connection?
Hi Cyndi...um, well let's see. I've been trying hard to rework the theme of gender roles into my plot without having to change much of the story, and it is VERY hard to do so with a character who speaks in iambic pentameter. Mainly because it is time consuming and hurts my head to think of 10-syllable dialogue...
ReplyDeleteUm...the first prologue of my book is up there somewhere. I'm only posting the prologue because the story right now is 113 pages...and reworking 113 pages is very tiresome...
I think the entire notion of an author considering the ethical and political implications of his plot and character choices is wonderful. I'd hate to see you give up on that notion just because it may require revising some blank verse.As a fiction writer, you need to get used to (a) thinking through your plot and characters over and over again, and (b) revising to go along with those acts of re-thinking. You can't afford to cling on to what you've written, especially once you've begun to doubt its rightness. Whatever you do, don't give in to the temptation to rationalize what you've written just to avoid the work involved in making it better!
ReplyDeleteTim
Right now...or about 2am last night, I finished the preliminary research on the Moudawana (Morocco Personal Status Code)and have a much better understanding of women's rights and reforming religious and cultural norms. I think one of the conflicts I was encountering was that I don't have a strong concept of what is means to fight for women's rights. But since I began talking about this about a month ago, I have been editing the work from the beginning. I know that I've made the correct choice, although I still doubt my ability to persuasively approach such a political topic. I don't know if I want to be persuasive with confronting the lack of women's rights; I just know that the topic is much stronger than environmentalism.
ReplyDeleteI think "2am last night" should be "2am this morning"
ReplyDelete