Exporting Reminder & Help

http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15426v1004

Closure II -- Apply to Your Picture Choices

Thanks for your efforts last night. I liked how you listened to each other, how you listened to your own stories, how you asked questions -- all of these are skills needed in any language, in any job, in any country, no? Listening, thinking, questioning, modifying-- minds at work.

Think about how a picture and text can work together. Work alongside one another. When you write "I left home", for example, you do not have to show a picture of you leaving home. You CAN think about the idea of leaving, of growing, and ask yourself what kind of picture you want to symbolize this growth ... maybe a tree bud, symbolizing the potential for growth. This requires your audience to think about meaning--"What? she was talking about taking care of an orange tree, but she showed a picture of two hands, fingers entwined ..." The audience then has to figure out the meaning of the story, perhaps about helping one another, comforting one another.
Listen, nobody really needs to see a lot of pictures of people they will not ever meet. Okay, maybe one picture. But the rest ... use closure as a means of teaching something important in your story.

Closure I -- The concept

Closure
Comic theory (although it is known by other names in other fields)
Coined by Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics, the term "closure" refers to the act on the part of the reader of adding in information or detail not specifically articulated in a passage of a comic book. These details can take many forms, for example visual details left out by the artist or temporal details of events which happen between a pair of panels. These details the reader fills in and completes from his or her own experience forming "closure" with the narrative.

Gestalt Psycology
The human perceptual process of attributing more qualities and meaning than are present onto or into a stimulus which employs reduced detail. The missing detail is fleshed out subconciously by viewer using past experience and cultural knowledge to make sense of what is being percieved.
Source-- http://www.allcatsaregrey.co.uk/glossary.php?#Closure

An Open Letter to Ricardo: Zoom in on a Story

Photo by Phil Hilfiker [CC by-nc-nd]

Which photograph is better: One of the man or one of 3 million people?

The answer lies perhaps in who is looking at the photograph and also in the purpose of the photograph. The same factors would help determine the answer to your question: Why write a personal story?

Perhaps another important question is, should the skill of personal narrative be taught to agricultural engineering students? Should you be able to articulate a passion, a problem, a situation? Or is it all science and analysis?

If an employer already knows you can do the job, another critical answer you must provide is in response to this: Why do you want to do this job? Why do you care?

The employer wants to know if you've got anything inside you other than the some skills and a desire to collect a paycheck. He or she may want to know that what you've learned besides numbers, formulas, systems, and names of plants is held together by a belief in something more than money. Are you more a collection of cells that processes equations, senses the outter world and processes it, eats, drinks, defecates, and dances to music? A consumer. You're much more: Let's go there. Not just cells, but stories we think about, cry about, laugh about, are inspired by.

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The power of story is unmatched as a learning tool, a tool to convince, a tool to inspire, even entertain! Personal story, especially. But sure other kinds of stories too. We are biologically programmed to receive story too. Trace it back to mankind gathered around fires and gnawing on bones in caves, we were painting stories on cave walls and sharing what happened on the way to the river. Watch commercials: So many tell stories now. Tight, short stories so readers will remember and take action. Your stories, I think, will do something even more important. They can raise the level of awareness and passion for similar ideals and values. Take a close picture or two so this can happen.
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When you are talking in the cafeteria today or walking to class, people are telling stories. People love them. I'm asking you to write something that honors your identity and your purpose. I don't know what that is unless you tell me. I do know when you are still searching for it, when you are shying away from it. That's when I push. That's when you resist. When you find it, we all win: audience and you.

Feedback & Second Drafts: 3 steps

Thanks for your work on your first drafts. By now everyone should have received feedback from me. --- IF YOU DID NOT, PLEASE contact me as soon as you can via email; send me your draft again. ---If you have any questions, let me know!
You are all busy, but we need to push forward soon!
In a nutshell, feedback centered on these ideas:
1. What memory is pressing forward today?
2. What are you doing today at EARTH that is making you recall this story?
3. Reflect on the challenge, the problem. "reflect" means to think about, struggle with words to find meaning.

Second Draft: The "Why Now?"

Once I was hiking and ran out of water.
The day grew hot and I grew dehydrated.
I found a stream and bent to drink, and as I did
I remembered a story read to me by my grandmother.
Perhaps you know of it, this legend of the king and his hawk
out hunting and the king grew very thirsty. He found water
running down the side of steep hill. He put his chalice
to the water and his hawk swept down and batted
his golden cup away. The king tried it again and then a third time.
Each time the hawk flew down and knocked his cup out of his hand.
On the fourth attempt, in frustration and delirium, the king
felled the hawk with his sword. He climbed up that hill to the source
of the water to drink. There he found a poisonous snake.
The hawk was trying to save its friend.
As I bent to that stream, I remembered this story read to me by my parents. Then a breeze shifted
directions. A foul smell found me and thirsty as I was, I walked up stream
a short ways and found a dead cow decomposing in the stream.*
***
Stories have a way of finding us as we face challenges. Why tell your story
today? This is a powerful question I've been asking you. That your story
that comes from the past is made powerful by what it says about today,
what you are facing, what you are becoming. Keep writing.
*story used by permission from Kim Stafford