Recently one of my great uncles decided he’d die.
Tag: musings
How smart can you sound?
What is Twitter?
No, I’m not here to talk about the immensely successful IPO that they did earlier this month. But as a user, what is Twitter?
According to my Creative Writing for New Media class, here are the four basic things people tweet about:
What do I think Twitter is for personal users? Basically, it’s like a test to see how smart you can sound in 140 characters or less. It’s a lot harder than you would think. Which is why my tweets usually go something like this:
I guess it depends on who your target audience is. For me, it’s a random place for me to say something that I don’t actually expect anyone to read. I don’t have a lot of followers, so I don’t really have to keep a particular audience in mind. I use it to jot down either spasms of enlightenment or thoughts that I feel I must share on public– but not so public that it is on Facebook where people actually know me.
But if you have really good one-liners in real life, it sounds like you’d make a great Tweeter.
At the same time, I sometimes forget the importance of what those 140 characters can do– and just how public social media can get. Here’s a list of people who got fired over what they tweeted. http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-fired-2011-5
Of course, aside from personal accounts, there are plenty of good ones out there. You guys ever read @RealCarrotFacts‘ tweets? This account never ceases to make me laugh!
Elliott Holt also did an interesting story through a series of tweets (from different fake accounts), and they can be read here in its compiled form on Storify. It’s like a murder mysteries game.
So how will/do you make your 140 characters mean something?
– Karen
When we die…
When we die, the weight of our ashes will roughly equates to how much we weighed when were were brought into this world. It’s funny because after the ashes are scattered and we become a part of nature as fertilizer, we’re back to being basically nothing in this big big world. Physically anyway. A full circle?
References:
http://www.rukfuneralhome.com/qa/cremationfaqs –> Average weight of ashes (without urn) = 4-5 pounds http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site1281/mainpageS1281P0.html –> Average weight of newborn= ~7 pounds
Post inspired by:
http://therumpus.net/2013/05/improvising-a-bone-graft/
Musings After Sandman Volume 3– Gaiman’s Scripts
I felt the need to just ramble about how I felt after reading Sandman. And here are my unfiltered thoughts (though I edited for grammar)– just thought I would share it with you guys! You may notice it is a bit different from my usual style of writing, but that is because I was just pouring out everything that went through my mind after reading the volume!
—————————————————————–
I have nothing better to do on this fine Tuesday afternoon. I have braved through all my classes, and am now waiting for my HR meeting.
Anyway, I was at the gym earlier (shocker!) and instead of bringing my usual iPad to watch an episode of Supernatural while I run, I read volume 3 of Sandman. The stories were okay. Like the first book, I found myself loving certain parts of the book a lot more than the rest. I remember for book 1, it was when we were introduced to the Sandman’s sister– Death. She is amazing. Dare I say perfect? We see her again in one of the short stories in this volume.
I still don’t entirely get Sandman. But I respect Neil Gaiman as a writer– a lot. He has that dark vibe to him, much like how you would expect Tim Burton to write if you got a chance to read his scripts. What was my favourite part of this graphic novel was the very last section of the book. Gaiman told us he would allow us a peek behind the curtains of how he writes his graphic novels. Actually, I’m wrong in saying that. He explicitly told us that this was not the Neil Gaiman style of how to write graphic novels, but simply how he writes The Sandman.
I did not think that writing the script for a graphic novel would be so intense. It seems like it would take ages to finish a page (I’m sure it does). I know I breezed through the pages of the novel, spending 2-3 minutes max on them. But the effort it takes to write one of these pages is commendable. He included notes from both him and his artist, Kelley Jones, in the margins of the script.
Gaiman writes his script out in a manner similar to writing a letter. To introduce each page, he would write to Kelley how he wanted the page to go. Additionally, he would also add random thoughts that he happened to ponder on. One of these included how he had a strange phone call the night before and it freaked him out. I loved this. It personalized the script, and made it so much more inviting to Kelley (or at least I would think I would feel that way if I was him). You are no longer reading stone cold instructions, but something from a friend.
After taking Creative Writing 203, we were told that we were not supposed to give the artist too much directions in our children picture book drafts. I wrote my story (which I was not satisfied with– and neither was my TA judging from my mark), and the only instructions you could get from what I wanted the illustrator to do was which page I wanted the text on. It was important that you allowed the artist freedom. Gaiman’s approach was completely different..
If you could read how detailed he makes each scene, it really is amazing. He not only tells the artist roughly what he wants the character to be doing, but he goes as far as to say that outside the window, we should get a lighting that suggests “early summer or late spring”. Each page’s panels have about half a page of text instructing Kelley on what he should do. Gaiman also says that he’d send Kelley reference pics (which us as the reader does not get to see). Gaiman does say that he has to first know who his illustrator is before he writes his scripts, so I am assuming he keeps in mind what he believes Kelley can produce.
I think this is amazing, but of course, I am thinking through the mind of the author. I would love for my artist to paint exactly what I imagined in my head. I wonder how Kelley feels. I wonder if this is the approach many other comic book/graphic novel writers use when they write their scripts. Or maybe it’s because Neil Gaiman is a such a big shot, so he gets to do things this way. Or maybe it’s a neutral agreement between solely Gaiman and Kelley. It’s weird how I refer to Gaiman by his last name and Kelley by his first. But I like it like that.
Seeing the script, I no longer think of graphic novels as very short pieces with several hundred words. Sure, each chapter may come in a small little compact booklet, and yes, we may only see the few hundred words that the writer chose to express physically with words in font.
But it is so much more than that.
But it is so much more than that.
-Karen
Can you…
Can you…
Explain the difference between left and right?
Think of a colour that does not exist?
Tell me what water tastes like?
Describe sight to a blind person?
Define the word “word”?
-Karen
P.S: “Ghoti” is pronounced as “fish”.
Inspired by (x)
Karen K. Lee 