Week 6 Lab

For my Storytelling Lab, I went to the WritersWrite website and went through a number of their most popular articles. My favorites were:

One of the body langue "cheat sheets." Source: Amanda Patterson.

1. "Cheat Sheets for Writing Body Language": This was a really neat article that dealt with "showing" emotion, rather than "telling" it. Sure, you might be able to just let your readers know that a character is anxious, but it paints a far more vivid picture if you describe her "fidgeting with a ring" or "chewing on a pencil." There are guides for almost every conceivable emotion, and they help to craft engaging, visual prose, rather than dull writing that says exactly what it means.
   
2.  "37 Ways to Write About Anger": Tension, conflict and high-strung emotion are staples of the mythology scene. After all, no good stories came about from Gods and Heroes all agreeing on a matter. How though, do we represent anger -- a natural reaction to conflict of interest -- convincingly in our writing? Patterson poses a number of questions that can add to the complexity of a character's ire, rather than just labelling everyone as "angry" all the time. For example, motivation (i.e. confusion, jealousy, embarrassment, etc.), passive vs. aggressive tendencies, subtle body language indicators and more can add new depths to an otherwise shallow emotional description.
   
3. "20 Myths to Use as Writing Prompts": This one was a no-brainer. If someone has already curated a list of mythological concepts that are well-suited to spin-offs, I'm going to give it a read. What a perfect article for this class especially!
   
   Patterson's suggestions are pretty naturalistic (e.g. "Write a myth to explain why volcanoes erupt.") but they still provide good ideas for writing. Simple explanatory concepts formed the basis of many ancient myths, and they can continue to form the basis of modern day blog posts for class. There are 20 total on the website, if you're suffering from writer's block.