Story Elements
Congratulations! You should now have your topic, which means you have gotten through the toughest part of creating your story. However, before you can actually begin creating the final story you will need to look at the elements that will make it up. Each of these story elements will work together to create a foundation that you can build off of. By deciding on and establishing this information early on you will be able to create solid set of guidelines for yourself to help guide your work through the rest of the unit. As you read you will also be creating what is essentially an outline for your story's form. The guidelines for that response are:
- In your response file address each element listed below with a 4-5 sentence decision and explanation for your choice. The purpose here is to help you throughout the rest of the unit, so please don't take any shortcuts and really give these elements a lot of consideration. You'll be thankful you did later.
Point of View
Point of view is very important for a story and, generally, should remain the same throughout. Here is an explanation of point of view as well as a list of the types of point of view. You are to explore your options and decide upon a point of view to use for your story. if you choose to use more than one be specific as to why and how that will aid the story.
Emotional Engagement
How emotional engaged do you want your audience to be? Your story can engage the reader from a variety of standpoints; being overwhelmingly emotional or objectively detached, that is evoking strong emotions in your viewers or just telling a story that is entertaining. Explain in this section how emotionaly engaged you want your audience to be and explain why.
Tone
Tone is at its most basic definition the attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, objective, etc. For this section I want you to read over this explanation of tone and its types and then write about what tone you want your story to have. Make sure to explain your reasoning as well.
Spoken Narrative
In your Digital Storytelling the spoken narrative is often a very important element. The spoken narrative can be roughly defined as the spoken word aspects of the story, whether they be an audio recording or just speaking as the visual aspects of the story are being displayed. Spoken narrative is not required for you stories. However, for this section I would like you to think about how important you want spoken narrative to be to your story. How much of a focus will be on it? Make sure that you write as much on this as you need to in order to effectively communicate your ideas and opinions. This is meant to help you work through your story, not to hinder or control you.
Music
Music will most likely play at least some role in your Digital Story. Music has the ability to add a whole new level of experience and engagement to your story. For this element I want you to read the short explanation of music and storytelling here and then begin to think about how music will be involved in your story. For your response address how important a role it will play, whether you believe it will be distracting or supportive, and why.
Video
This is pretty similar to the music sections. Your Digital Story does not need to have video, but it is definitely a tool you could utilize with great effect. Provided here is a little discussion about video storytelling and what issue come up with its use. For your response address how important a role video will play in your story, whether you believe it will help or distract, and why.
Creativity and Originality
An important element to understand and address is how much you are going to value creativity and originality as you are creating you Digital Story. There is nothing wrong from drawing from outside sources or imitating other stories you've seen. What is important here is for you to understand what choice you are going to making and to be able to defend it. This activity and the response continues here with a list of quotes to consider.
Story Length
Your story length is an important aspect to figure out now, as a long story will require less details or more hassle and a short story may require extra visuals and details to have the same effect. Provided here is an abstract of an article about how story length and certain aspects within it can affect a presentation. You only need to read the abstract of the article. For your response address how long you would like your story to be and provide any details or reasoning as to why.
Time Spent on Project
A very important aspect to consider. How much time will you need to accomplish what you set out to do? Here is an article about time management that you should read just to get an idea of how to use your time well, which especially includes our time in the computer lab. For your response I want you to sketch out how much time you think the project will take you and how you will make sure to use your time in the classroom and computer lab wisely.
Now that you are done developing the story elements move on to the Graphic Organizer.