The Cut-Up technique- in which words, or fragments of ideas are combined in random combinations- has a long artistic tradition. It is popularly associated with William Burroughs (although it can be traced to the Dadaist artistic movement, who used surprise, shock and absurdity to confront the audience in new and often frightening ways). The cut-up […]
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The idea is that you can ‘use the site to read and/or write stories that take advantage of the possibilities of the digital medium by building in a lot of randomisation, so that a given story is different each time you load it.’
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In a modular story, jumps across the time frame are presumably happening for a reason- to flesh out one character through a new perspective, or to offer contrasting accounts, perhaps in a cat and mouse style story. This demands that the reader conceptually organise what is going on. The way to use time in a modular story will be apparent depending on why you have chosen the modular form!
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But one area is often missed. It’s an area of uncertainty I’ve noticed a few students enquire about- and that’s how to handle the time frame. Particularly the transitions between scenes.
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All of which leads me to conclude that the artistic art is a desire to make real the imaginary. And so by necessity employing as wide a range of mediums as possible takes us closer to that elusive goal.
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The mood board – or the visual representation of the setting of a story generally, can be a great way to help bring a story to life. It also feeds the imagination – enhancing the tale you are hoping to put across. I often feedback to students that a given setting in a story needs […]
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What struck me was that whether we were talking about getting your work published, getting the clothes you’ve designed sold, or getting the dance production you’ve devised off the ground, the similarities across fields are striking.
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I lecture part-time at Newcastle University, and in starting this night I was responding to a need I had picked up from my students- for an opportunity for them share work in progress. During my teaching I was struck by how many talented students were slaving away at novels- or saving up short stories for publication, but they seemed to hit an invisible buffer at some point. They expressed a desperate need to get published but felt unable to send their work off out into the world.
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OCA tutor Guy Mankowski’s ten tips to (hopefully) improve your sentences.
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In this blog I will turn to some literary examples of how some form of art, within another form of art (writing) can reveal our characters in a similarly deep way. Perhaps because art speaks to us on so many levels that it can offer such a fundamental insight to a character, by showing us what type of stimulus this specific character responds to.
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