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'.