Two openings I love (28/4/2013)

Asked to write about one of my favourite openings and why I decided to pick two since my favourite opening to anything is from a video game, but I also wanted to include a book so as to be relevant to the course.
You can see my choices below. 

Bioshock:

During the beginning of 'Bioshock' (2007) there is perhaps my favourite speech in existence. Andrew Ryan's speech in Bioshock is superb, the delivery is excellent as he is directly asking the player questions and therefore makes them think. Another reason why I think this speech is so powerful is because it uses the words such as 'I' and 'chose' which are strong words that make the speaker sound as if he passionately believes in what he is saying and therefore this influences his audience to think in the same way. The speech is rather like a poem and includes repetition which provides flow and encourages the player to guess what is coming up. Also good use is made with its short sentences since these are more powerful than longer sentences I find.   

The scene itself plays as follows:- the player crash lands in the ocean and has to make their way to a mysterious lighthouse they can see in the distance. Once inside they find a machine that dives taking them underwater, during which a projected presentation is put up on the screen. Atmospheric music plays whilst the player is watching. At the end of the speech at the very last line the presentation stops and the window is shown to reveal the city emerging. The player cannot fail to know that the rest of their visit in Rapture is going to be awesome since the scale of the city from this view is so imposing and realistic. Since this environment hasn't been seen in a game before the player generally gets eager and excited to start their adventure.
Said speech goes as follows. 

I am Andrew Ryan and I am here to ask you a question:
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor.
No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God.
No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone.
I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. 
I chose the impossible. I chose...
Rapture.
- Andrew Ryan

You can also listen to the speech itself below.

The Walking Dead - The Road to Woodbury:

Written by my favourtie writer Robert Kirkman alongside Jay Bonansinga, 'The Road to Woodbury' (2012) is a book in the series that I am about halfway through. I found the introduction to be very good since not only does it establish a time and place, but it also sets the atmosphere for the rest of the book since its uses smells and sounds to help the reader imagine the terror more clearly. This is very clever as most of the time it is easier for someone to scare themselves with a vivid imagination than someone else trying to. Therefore if the reader can imagine what is happening in the scene then they may be more moved by the events. Also, like my other choice the writing uses repetition to 'push its point home'. In this case the use of 'No one' to make the impending events more tense, especially when combined with the build up to what the 'biters' are.   
You can read the start of the book below. 

No one in the clearing hears the biters coming through the high trees.
The metallic ringing noises of tent stakes going into the cold, stubborn Georgia clay drown the distance footsteps-the intruders still a good five hundred yards off in the shadows of neighboring pines. No one hears the twigs snapping under the north wind, or the telltale guttural moaning noises, as faint as loons behinds the treetops. No one detects the trace odors of putrid meat and black mold marinating in feces. The tang of autumn wood smoke and rotting fruit on the midafternoon breeze masks the smell of the walking dead.    

Harvard Referencing:

• Kirkman, R and Bonansinga, J. (2012) The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury. London: Pan Macmillan.
• Unknown. (2007) Bioshock - Andrew Ryan Introduction (High Quality). Available at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J47ENHSomc8 (Accessed:28/4/2013)

Third Session (24/4/2013)

Today consisted of a lot of writing and since I wasn't suffering with writer's block this week I was able to accomplish these tasks as seen below.    

1) The first thing we did was write a story based on the object the lecturer had brought in, a china dog.
You can read this story below.

Far in a land of magic, deep in the oak woods of the fairies, past the giants' marshes and into the ancient ruins of the last wizard's tower there exists in the middle of the ruins - a dog. It's a golden retriever that shines in the sun's rays that creep through the broken roofing. However, unlike most dogs this one doesn't move. All four of its legs are straight and its head is turned towards its left. It looks for no better a word, puzzled. An odd expression for even a china dog to show and yet it does. It faces what was once a long corridor now collapsed with rubble, its once grand blue carpet mattered and grown over with moss as a result of its years of exposure to the elements. The rest of the dog's environment has seen better days as well. The once grand plaza that the dog stands in has cracked in half and collapsed sideways into the ground itself, creating a vast pond of life from the collection of rain water that has fallen through the roof. Old suits of armour that once stood in glory now clutter the floor with their rusted metal. Even the blue banners that displayed the sign of the great wizard have either falling down or hang in faded colours. Everything shows signs of aging in this room, except for the china dog. No cracks, no faded colours, it hasn't even appeared to have toppled over as a result of the crack in the ground. The dog has been here for a very long time and would continue to be if it weren't for the fact that its destiny has been entwined with the daughter of a gypsy who has now appeared from a crack in the room's wall. She wears green overalls and a long purple cloak that flows in the light morning breeze. Her band of travelers decided to rest for the night outside the once great tower and although she was told not to stray too far her curiosity has got the better of her. With a bucket clenched in her hands she is about to approach the natural pond for fresh water when she suddenly sees the china dog perched in a bed of multicolored flowers.                  

Robin Foale, 24/4/2013


Although I enjoyed writing the above story I recognise as a writer that I accidentally told the reader what the fantasy environments were before the main character (the dog) did. Therefore breaking the connection between the shared knowledge of the reader and character that I prefer to write in stories. Also I recognise that some of my sentences are too long and can perhaps be split into two. This would give a better flow to my stories and create tension for the reader. 

From doing the above task I also found out that you could base an entire story or inspiration for one on nearly anything you see. Therefore, I am glad I did this task as I enjoyed it and may well do it again in the future in order to increase my ability to write as well as to practice regularly.  

We then followed this discussion to consider how objects are used in stories and have lasting impact e.g. the lightsabers in 'Star Wars' and the brief case in 'Pulp Fiction'.

Finally we spoke briefly about the '12 steps of the heroes journey' in which we used many of the characters from 'Star Wars' before moving onto the next piece of writing e.g. Luke Skywalker starting as a farmer before joining the rebels, defeating the empire and reforming the Jedi order.   

2) For the second task we were asked to suggest words before writing a story based of any genre using the words below.

• Jordan Williams. 
• Farm.
• Belgium.
• Hit man.
• Alpaca. 
• Nurofen.
• Narcolespy. 
• Want their kids back.

The second story was written as a comedy and was as follows.

In the not too distant future the role of hit man has become almost obsolete. Every human born is given a chip that holds all their information and registers where everyone is at all times. Therefore new tactics and operatives have had to be employed in the field, ones no one would suspect. Such an operative lies in wait in a quiet little farm in Belgium. The operative's name is Jordan Williams, he's a forty five year old male who suffers from narcolepsy and is addicted to blended nurofen which he takes with lots and lots of lemon. He's an odd choice for a hit man you may say, but in a dying business you can't afford to turn away employees especially since the last time an add was put into a paper the hit man business nearly fell completely apart. Besides, Jordan is a deadly killer, the business's number one, fluent in nearly a dozen languages and martial arts. Jordan lies in a bed of straw, fast asleep from his recent episode of narcolepsy. He suddenly hears a phone in the distance. Wiping away the sleep from his eyes he picks up the phone awkwardly with his gloved hooves. 
"Yes?" Jordan says in the sort of bad ass voice a hero would speak in. 
"Jordan! We need you to take care of some FBI agents before they discover our base of operations!" a nerdy voice pleads down the line.
"I told you, I'm on holiday. Get someone else."
"But we need you JW! Your kids need you! The FBI have your kids!"
Jordan Williams grits his teeth in anger. Awkwardly putting sun glasses on he stands up and pulls a pistol from his side. 
"No one takes my kids and lives! It's JW time!"
...It is then, however that he falls asleep, again! The kids can wait another hour surely for their alpaca dad to wake up? 
That's right! He's a alpaca! The hit men's greatest weapon! Deal with it.                   

Robin Foale, 24/4/2013


Reading out the above a lot of people in the group enjoyed the humour and even said it was "awesome". The lecturer said that they imagined it to be set in an animated world due to the awkwardness an alpaca would have with hooves instead of hands. This is interesting considering I got inspiration for the writing from the 'Lama's with Hats' videos on YouTube. The voices used to characterise the conversation in my story were also greatly praised as it apparently helped establish the animated style of humour.  

I have written comedy in the past and therefore felt inclined to write one since I was given such random things to work from. I was told my story was good, but I personally feel that I should for now stick with intriguing and fascinating stories since I'm used to writing those and prefer to get absorbed in the world whilst I'm writing about it. However, had I been given more time I personally feel that I would have been able to make the comedy even funnier and make the delivery flow better than it did. On the plus side, I didn't give away the story too much as I made it gradually build, only giving hints to the hit man's true identity with examples such as the bed of straw and hooves instead of hands.

3) For the final task we were asked to pick between two which were given to us, leaving the other to do in our spare time. Therefore, I choose to do the one in which we had to use as many letters as we could from a list that contained words that began with each letter of the alphabet.
Here's my attempt.

It's November in India and the sun is shining down on its residents. It's like the Sahara for those on the streets; seeking shaded shelter where they can and buying cans of Tango buy the bucketful. A man who isn't native to the country drives down the empty streets. With his air conditioning on max he wipes the sweat off his forehead. Despite the heat he has decided to drive in a car with leather seats as it was the only  transportation available to him. His back clings to the seat making him uncomfortable, but he continues to drive. Soon he approaches the Foxtrot Hotel, the destination for his meeting with Coronal Yankee. An odd name for a man from India, but one the colonel takes with pride. As the foreigner pulls up to the hotel he is greeted by an employee who takes his keys in order to park the car. The sweating man agrees to this and gets out, the back of his shirt and trousers peeling off the leather seat. He looks over to the lobby where sure enough a little girl in pig tails runs up to him. 
"Papa! Papa!" she cries out cheerfully throwing her arms around the man and hugging him tightly before letting go.
"You smell!" she says with a giggle to which the father puts his hands on his sides with a smile. 
"Ha ha! Very funny child" he says with a chuckle before looking around in the empty lobby. 
Every fan seems to be switched on.                   

Robin Foale, 24/4/2013


A lot people liked this story since it was more subtle than most of the other stories during this task as others tried to include all the words one after another instead of spread out as I did. I agree with this since I did decide to not force the words into the story and make it more mysterious and casual, thus avoiding trying to be comedic I just told a story that people would enjoy as they wondered why an otherwise casual looking foreigner was going to see a colonel of the country he is in.
Overall I enjoyed writing this piece as I decided that I wanted the events in the story to be snappy and flow from point to point. A style that I haven't written in before and therefore enjoyed, especially since the story felt as if it was writing itself without me really working out in advance where it was going to go.        

Side Notes:

For a side assignment we were all asked to look up an opening to any medium that we enjoyed and explain why. This I plan to do in another post alongside the other task that is required which was to carry on with the story of an extract given to us from an existing piece of writing.
Also next week should focus on environments which I look forward to since this may help me describe places in better detail without using as many words as I sometimes do.

Second Session (17/4/2013)

These are my notes for the second session of complimentary studies. 

First of we all had to write down three words that expressed how we felt that morning. Since I was looking forward to the session and had woken up on the right side of bed as it were I wrote down 'excited' and 'cheerful' for my first two words. My final word however was 'indecisive' as I was sadly suffering from writers block that morning. 

Afterwards we then made a list of things we felt made a good character. Such words that were added to the list included mannerisms, charisma, background, entertaining, their actions and making them more human by giving them human flaws.
When talking about mannerisms I decided to use Batman's villains as examples of such characters. For example, Two-face flips his coin, the Joker laughs a lot and the Penguin has both the stance and movements of a penguin.   

We then talked about how characters develop throughout numerous stories depending on the situations they are put into and shared example characters from movies. Therefore our lecturer used John Mcclane as an example since he wants to get on well with his family (a human side to him), but has to stand up to the bad guys and learn to work well with others (the side to him that stands for what is right). 

Finally we moved onto the main task of selecting one of the characters given to us and then putting them into one of the provided story settings.   

I first of all started of with Carlton Taylor who had this original descriptor:  
41 years old, 6 ft tall, with sea green eyes and blond hair. He is resourcheful and dependable but can be self centered and is scared of commitment. 

I then continued his description with the following:
Carltyon came from a poor background and was brought up bootlegging things off the back of vans and doing the odd job for cash. His mum having left him after he was born he was brought up by his father who cared more for antiques and people who had been dead for a thousand years than him. 

I was unable to write anything else about this character after these first few lines as it was clear to me that I wasn't interested in him and therefore didn't have a clear idea of who he was. I was debating between making him an explorer at first, thus making the comparison to Indiana Jones and his father more obvious as I used that as inspiration. The other idea however, was that he killed his lover by accident and as a result went into hiding for years, thus explaining his fear of commitment. 

Deciding to change my character I chose Chris Saunders who had this original descriptor: 
19 years old, 5 ft 6' tall, with pale brown eyes and mousey brown hair. He is sentimental and reliable but can be boastful and is scared of thunder and lighting. 

I was perhaps more interested in this character because of our similar ages so I continued his description with the following.  
Being brought up by a single father, Chris was always told that loyalty and friendship were the two most important things in life. Therefore Chris has done all he can to fit in. Whenever something needs to be done or a secret kept Chris is the one to rely on. He also developed a fondness for old trinkets and gismos people would otherwise throw away. Therefore his room, which is situated at the top of his house in a tower, is filled with gears hanging on strings, old autumn leaves in glass jars and even a tattered button eyed teddy bear that he owned as a child. However, even though he is full of good intentions he finds himself not so subtlety proclaiming his high grades to his class and even his neighbors. 
He also wears a collection of badges on his jacket which, if asked about he will describe in detail how he got each one. His biggest fear however, is thunder and lighting and therefore whenever it strikes he finds himself clinging to the nearest thing possible. Living in a tower doesn't help this fear. Therefore he finds himself hiding in the cellar when storms approach the quiet little island that he lives on. With not much to do on such a small island Chris has gone into opening an 'odd jobs' shop. 'Does something need fixing or found? Then Chris is the man for the job!'. Although business is slow he finds the odd job here and there that opens up a whole range of adventures for him.        

Thinking of the above as a Studio Ghibli character and imagining that he would live in an environment similar to the one in 'Kiki's Delivery Service' I enjoyed writing this piece more than the last. You can tell that the film and myself had an influence on the character as Kiki delivered goods as a way to make money (a contrast to Chris and his 'odd jobs' business'. Whereas I came into the character as I am a big fan of steampunk and even though I don't collect as much stuff as I made Chris out to, I just thought it would be cool for him to have lots of cool gears and such scattered around his room.
Looking back over what I wrote, I think I did a good job and that I must have had a block on Wednesday when I was feeling unsure. Odd, but I should be fine next session (I hope).

After writing we shared our ideas with one another. I decided not to for this session as I personally felt that my writing wasn't up to scratch on that day since I was suffering with writer's block. However, we were all provided with sheets that look useful in terms of creating characters, therefore I will use these in the future to help me when I have another day like today.

Other notes on the session are as follows:

• Writing down how a character feels or may feel during certain situations may help us write a character's personality and reactions more easily when it comes to those scenes e.g. do they dislike confrontation and how do they react when put into that situation?
• From an opening scene you can sometimes tell what a character will be like during the rest of a story. This can also provide build up and foreshadowing for later scenes. 
• Environment should have an impact! It shouldn't just exist for the sake of existing.  
• "Its always too early to quit" was a nice quote and decided to copy down. 
• Someone in the group was praised for using voices when reading his work. Therefore I could do this when I next read my stories. 
• Try and decide on the story that I definitely want to write during the rest of this module in advance. That way I can become my usual confident self during the rest of complimentary studies.    

First Session (10/4/2013)

These are my notes of my first session of complimentary studies. For starters we introduced ourselves then wrote down words we loved and hated:

About the course:

• Course hopes to make us overall more confident at writing and to broaden our ideas.
• The plan is to give us exercises so that we can continue them at home.
• The final deadline for this module will be on the 5th of June, and our work can be featured in a gallery if we so wish to share it by the end of this module. 

Top tips:

• Publishing our stories online can be great way to improve our skills at writing and to get feedback on our work. This is good to hear as I have experience with role play sites online where you take it in turns to write the actions of your character in the story.
• Can use a selection of words in order to produce a story idea or even write one.
• ‘Show don’t tell’ is a great story telling method in any story telling medium as it doesn’t just explain everything to the audience, but instead maintains the drama and also allows the atmosphere to build up. 

Reminders for me:

• Perhaps get myself a note book in order to write down ‘on the fly’ story ideas. Whether that be a picture in my head, characters, saying, location, setting etc. 
• As I am always coming up with ideas I might as well write down any stories I have in my head as I can expand upon them later, or put them into a book about short stories.

We went on to read from four examples of writing which included 'Into the darkest corner', 'Gone girl', 'No country for old men' and 'Brave new world'.

I especially enjoyed the extract from 'Into the darkest corner' as it decided to start with a death, similar to my idea for a future story I hope to write during this module.  

I then wrote and read aloud the following biography of myself in which I decided to put a ‘spin’ on it since our lecturer said we could. It is best to read this as if you were talking to yourself or performing a piece of dialogue in order to get the full affect of the writing.


Dust, dust is what they say caused it all. The change, the miracle, the curse, whatever the hell you want to call it. I am one of the lucky, well, if you can call it that to survive the dust. I'm also lucky to still have parents that still live and love me. Because my 'change' wasn't anything serious. The military said I could stay with them, my mum and dad that is, as well as the cat if you're counting her as well. I just had to agree to regular blood transfusions and a drug. It's a small pill, pink in colour and round in design, it looks like a bubblegum ball. Thus its not surprising we call it that, bubblegum. After all, it makes taking it a little bit more easier when we don't call it by its true name. But enough about that, I would rather not remind myself of that this morning. Speaking of which, I should be waking up in a minute. I know the sun will rise and its rays will pass through my paper thin curtains. They will proceed to wake me up at the usual time, precisely 6:27. Why that time? I never understand. It's not like I want to wake up early and it's not a well rounded time. Not an hour, or a half, I count the seconds until I wake.
20 seconds, the sun starts to rise. 
40 seconds, the sun shines through my curtains and hits the bottom of my bed.
A minute and the light has hit my eyes. 
I am awake.  

Robin Foale, 10/4/2013


The above idea started simply as a story of me waking up. However, I decided to add the idea of dust affecting the world in some shape or form as I have had my parents complain in the past that I wasn't dusting my room enough. 

Overall I am very pleased with my writing as I was able to get a lot done on a very vague idea and it ended up being popular as I got the following feedback. 

• I created a lot of interest with the concept of dust as the group wondered what could it mean? Volcanic ash? Nuclear fallout? Regular dust? And in what quantity? Since dust can be many different things it made them curious to what it meant. I am glad to have received this feedback as I made sure my opening was like the Hollywood tagline I did last term in which you get someone's interest with one line, therefore I feel my first line accomplished this. 
• Someone HAD to know what the drug did, however I sadly didn't have an answer as I was just writing the story with the concepts I had and was just more than happy to let my writing flow from my hand. Although I probably would have gone on to explain in the story that the dust had provided individuals with powers, some of which were controllable and some of which were not. This explains the reason why the military is involved and the mention of parents still loving the character regardless of their 'change'.