Fall 2020
CONCEPT AND STORY
Montgomery College catalogs the course of Concept and Story as an introduction to concept development and storytelling methods through a variety of writing assignments by emphasizing the creation of meaningful narratives for engaging media content.
This page therefore will serve as my 'file cabinet' where to post several samples of my writing for this course.
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Assignment #1 had us writing a fiction/non-fiction short piece about a topic we touched on during our introductions, but that had nothing to do with the Television/Radio programs.
Here's what I wrote:
One quarantine, lazy, Saturday afternoon I fell asleep catching up on the 3rd season of Netflix’s mystery drama Dark. As I felt myself drifting into a light sleep, I could hear in the background the show’s characters arguing about trying to go back to their own time. And boom, all of a sudden, I’m there too. I’m at the same caves featured in the show in the same small German town, and it’s now 1986 too.
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I think I know I’m dreaming but, heck, I don’t want to wake up. I don’t speak German and my penguin-patterned PJs would probably give me away as a foreigner. So, I decide to venture into the caves and somehow try to travel back to the future, back to 2020 and hopefully back to the U.S.
Although I don’t know how Dark ends, I know from season 1 and 2 that in order to get to that magic time-travel door, you really have to go deep into the caves. I don’t have a flashlight, but I get lucky and find a headlamp strapped to a helmet along with other tools. I put on the helmet and start to slowly walk further into the caves.
Everything turns darker and darker, and soon the only visible light comes from the headlamp. The air smells dry and dusty and I find it’s getting more difficult to breathe. There’s also a peculiar odor in the air that’s making me choke. Soon after, I start coughing uncontrollably to the point I’m convulsing and fall to the ground, hitting my head on a rock.
The pain startles me and suddenly, I wake up on my comfortable couch and realize that I’m choking on my own saliva. I sit up quickly and I’m able to swallow and continue breathing normally.
I think, from now on I’ll start watching sports in case I take another unexpected nap on any given quarantine, lazy afternoon.
For Assignment #2 we took the theory recently learned when deconstructing a typical story structure, with its stages and chain of events, and applied it to analyze 3 different types of media:
a short film, an episodic program and a commercial. Check it out.
Assignment #3 was all about choosing a storyteller we would want to feature and doing an in-depth research on their life to write a profile. The profile should include the basic treatment format of Title, Log Line, Audience, Plot Summary and Key Characters. Once finalized, we turned that written profile to an 'audio profile', turning the script from print to sound, making it as compelling as possible for the ear. Here's mine on American playwright Arthur Miller.
In Assignment #4 we learned about the Paradigm template. This one-sheet template helps us distill and break down a story before its conception to have a clearer map when writing a script. We also delved into creating an A/V (audio-video) script for a Public Service Announcement.
Our next Assignment #5 was to take a published short story and turn it into a screenplay. The idea of using a published work, whether famous or not, was to have a strong reference and already established story when working it into a screenplay format. I chose a short story by Costa Rican author Carlos Salazar Herrera.
Assignment #6 was actually pretty fun to work on. We were given 4 different pictures and based on those images we had to write a short story that had a beginning, middle and end. Additionally, we had to apply the previously learned story structure of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. Also, a paradigm sheet had to be filled out detailing the elements of the story.
Throughout the semester, we started a writing journal and digital folder with articles, pictures, and miscellaneous media to 'keep track of our ideas and unlock our creativity' a per our professor. For the next assignment, we picked items from these sources to write a story. Additionally, in this module, as we further learned how to apply the proper story structure to our writing, we also incorporated the use of sound. The use of sound is a powerful tool to engage your audience. So, Assignment #7 was about crafting a story from 4 items of our choice of media and adding sound cues to enhance it. Here's what mine 'sounds like.'