A Typical Singaporean.

Why am I a typical Singaporean?

Maybe it’s upbringing, or maybe we all just pick it up naturally. Yes, the household word in Singapore: ‘Kia Su’.

Kia Su translates directly to ‘scared lose’. We are scared to lose. We are scared to be at the losing end of anything.

When we go on holidays, we want to see the best places in the shortest time possible. Our itineraries are packed chock full, from 7am to 10pm, if not beginning earlier and ending later.

When I shop, I also exhibit that fear of losing. Take photography equipment as an example. The area around Singapore’s Peninsula Plaza is infested with photography equipment shops. I spend close to an hour walking around the whole area, checking out the prices of one piece of equipment from up to eight shops, before making my purchase.

While this may sound like something sensible, I urge you to look a little closer at the picture. What are the savings like? The savings I make from this ‘price scouting’ sometimes amount to ten dollars. Mind you, this is on a piece of equipment worth about $130. On cheaper accessories that cost about $10-$12, the savings become more minimal, dipping as low as a dollar or two. Yes, this is a healthy practice of saving money, but sometimes we, or should I say, I myself, get so caught up with doing this that we spend excessive time looking for the deal that betters another by only a dollar.

I guess for me, this makes me a typical Singaporean. It’s rampant, this fear of losing. Go online, to local photography forums, and you can see many other locals, so similar to me, asking fellow photographers where the best deals (that incidentally better the others by a marginal amount) can be found. I know I am not alone. That is how I know I am a typical Singaporean; a typical Singaporean photographer, a typical Singaporean shopper, and a typical kia su Singaporean.

Reflections: Week 7

Storytelling Wk 7 Tutorial

(This is actually from the past few weeks and was covered in today’s lesson) What is the difference between a memory and an experience?
Experiences actually happen to you.
Memories linger in your mind and get processed.

Functions of Dialogue
Expression of personality, communication of emotions
It tells of past/future events.
It can reveal new information, and verify information that the audience has in their head.
It can express culture (e.g. Singlish, usage of vulgarities is evidence of upbringing etc.)

Dialogue reveals details about characters. This happens when either one of the two below happen:
1) A character talks about himself or himself. The person reveals characteristics about himself/herself “from the horse’s mouth”.
2) Other people talk about the character. Sometimes, this must be taken with a pinch of salt, as other characters in the story may have different opinions/feelings towards the character discussed.

Dialogue establishes relationship between characters.
Characters express attitudes and opinions, which are in opposition/in coherence to each other.

Good, effective dialogue will move the story forward.
I seriously doubt a story will be much of a story if everything is narrative based. Actions, characters, and the entire story is just narrated out, on paper. Good dialogue can make a story engaging. Insert a phone call into the story, but only write what one person is saying, and the reader’s mind will be intrigued so much more, as compared to writing “Tom and Dave were discussing about something hush-hush over the phone”.

Dialogue communicates faces and information to the audience.
It conveys essential exposition – when characters communicate really important plot-based information to the audience.
Character will talk about what happened, establishing the storyline.

Dialogue ties the script together.
Sometimes, a dialogue is bad when there is no visual impact; there is too much talking and not enough visual content.
This is the flipside of what was discussed above. Too much talk, no action. (Singaporean acronym: NATO – No Action, Talk Only.) Surely, no one would want to read a book that only contains conversations of two people, and not much else. Unless, of course, it’s a bed time story for insomniacs. When there is no visual, descriptive writing, the mind tends to (maybe for me) imagine two people in a dark room, faces illuminated by one lamp above, talking to each other, and that’s all. How can anyone not fail to be bored by this?

It’s like eating a balanced diet. Writing must contain a balance of visuals and dialogue.

Common mistakes
Dialogue should be used sparingly, never telling the audience what they can see for themselves. (The word is DUH!)
Dialogue should never be a substitute for action.

Dialogue should not match conventional spoken dialogue, or “real talking”.

Writing exercise:
Middle-aged man
Went out after work with his friends
Comes home, but didn’t tell his wife he would be out
Wife cooks dinner for him

1st Scenario
Man: I’m home
Wife: Why are you home so late?!
M: Huh?
W: I cooked dinner for you, and you didn’t come home to eat!
M: Hey, I’m sorry. I thought I told you I would be out late.
W: I try to make tonight special by cooking dinner for us, and you go out late, without telling me too! Huh!
M: Look dear, I’m really sorry. Sometimes I just go out till late.
W: Out late? What the heck do you do every time you’re out late, huh?
M: I…I go out with friends.
W: Friends, friends, friends. Who knows what kind of friends you have!
M: They’re just my old army buddies. What’s wrong with hanging out with them?
W: You always tell me the same thing every time you come back at this time.
M: And you always bring it to this about friends, every time I forget to inform you I’m not having dinner at home. Don’t you trust me?
W: How to trust you if I can’t even trust you to tell me whether you’re coming for dinner or not?

There is no way my parents would do this. They’re just so peace-loving. No seriously, they wouldn’t.

Realistic (my own family) scenario:
M: I’m home.
W: Aiyoh, why didn’t you tell me you’re not coming home for dinner?
M: Oh, I forgot to tell you before I left the house.
W: Ok, next time I better ask you every time before you leave the house.
M: Okay. Thanks.

That’s more like it. Three cheers for family peace.

Week 5 & 6.

I know this is kinda late. I’ve been kinda overwhelmed with everything. Well enough complaining.

I decided I’d roll week 5 and 6’s reflections into one.

Week 5:
Notes:
Plot or Character?
Character:
A story starts with a character. When you understand the character well, you can form a story quite easily. The character is what’s going to be the heart, soul and nervous system of your story.

It’s through our characters that the viewers experience the emotions the characters do. It’s through the characters that the audience will be touched.

Without character, we have no action. When there is no action, there is also no conflict. Without conflict, there is no story. Without story, there is no screenplay.

When you develop a character, ask yourself
Who is my character?
What does he want?
What is his quest?
What drives him to the resolution of the story?

3 dimensional character.

Memory:
Memory can serve as a useful reference when it comes to writing.
Your memory can build up very excellent material.
These memories are point of references of your own past.

“Write what you know.”
Vs.
“Write what you don’t know.”

I felt the last portion, about writing what you know and what you don’t, really rings true for writing. I feel all authors, even the most ficticious ones, write from a little of their memory.

Take Andy McNab for instance. His novels are so absorbing because of the realism of his writing. That realism is very likely taken from all the times he spent in the British SAS, the memories of which allow him to write with much attention to details like weapons, injuries, and combat experiences. His protagonist in his series of books is also an ex-Special Forces member, which comes as not much of a surprise.

“Developing a character”, the four questions are really important, as well. Imagine, if you had the best-described character, detailed in 120 words, from head to tail, and he had no purpose. That would be really sad. It would of course, not lead to any story. I mean, who wants to read about a handsome young man. I think everyone would rather read about a man and his adventures, not how handsome he is.

Week 6:
I’ve fallen real sick. Throat infection, the doc said. I seriously don’t know how I’m gonna mug in time for tomorrow’s quiz.

Anyway, last week we learnt about:
Writing For An Audience
Screenwriter = storyteller
The cinematic experience is not just made up of words you might put on paper, but the audiences’ emotional reaction to that information.
Your writing can’t just please yourself; it’s for everyone. We have to figure our what our audience wants and connect that into something we can tell them and something they can identify with.
It’s people to people.

The writer’s job is to only connect. It’s to take something and to connect to our audience. We need to connect story, our intended emotions, a little of ourselves, messages that you want to tell the audience.

A writer’s purpose is to connect themselves, their unique vision, the material, the drama and others, like emotions, story, bits of themselves and their identity, and messages they want to hide in their story.

People want to be transported by a screenplay, whether it means they connect with the movie, have a good time, or just feel a certain sense of magic when a movie works well.

Where do we look for a story: inside ourselves.

After that, we need to figure out how to connect to it.

Experience: a storytelling tool.
All of us have various fragments of stories in our lives because of experience. These potential ideas make us want to know more.
We end up responding emotionally and intellectually to what we hear, see or remember.
Good stories are born in the heart, not the head.
We need to put yourself in the role of the audience, so that your story connects with the audience. This should be easy because for most of your life, you are the audience.

I thought I’d add in my stuff during note taking, so these notes are kinda different from other lesson notes in that I added in my personal touch to them. I added in words that weren’t in the slides, nor mentioned by Ryan.

In addition to this, we watched this short film called Intransit.
Intransit
Written and directed by Mike Daly
7 minutes long
Made in Australia.

Character goes into the subway and sees a dead body, which is most likely that of himself (vague though, as the dead body is wearing the same sweater as his father later on). He then gets flashbacks of his father watching a tape of the protag when he was little. He tries to get his father’s attention, but his father doesn’t respond. Then there is some frantic static and the next thing he knows, a cricket ball hits him, and his dad is rushing towards him, trying to hit him with a cricket bat. He blacks out to the sound of a car crash. He turns to his left and sees the dead body of his father. The next transition brings him back to the train platform, this time on the track. Strangely, he embraces his dad and the train collide with both of them.

The character was basically in transit from life to death, and having flashbacks of the important parts of his life.

I found the concept of this film really cool. Frequent jump cuts make it illogical at first. However, if you piece it together, like our class did, and talked and thought over it, you’d probably realise that there is a story behind it.

Also, this week’s writing assignment is probably the most fun one yet. Write one true and one untrue. I hope many can’t guess, then the whole point of the assignment will be achieved.

Tata.

Week 4 and the movies.

This week began on the tail of a very hectic weekend. From Friday to Saturday, I was shooting project photos. Don’t get me wrong. I love photography, but it’s just that shooting for extended periods of time really wears you down. Your hands start trembling and your shirt becomes sweat-soaked. Even composing a shot in the viewfinder seems like such a chore.

However, it paid off. I felt a great sense of relief after the familiar sound of film rewinding was heard. Anyway, I’d rather clear the shoot earlier than later.

Anyway, on to the actual reflection:

It was a little chaotic moving from place to place, and changing location. There were quite a few technical difficulties. It was a little disorganised. All in all, it was a very colourful, eventful lesson.

The movie wasn’t too bad, if not a little too indecent for my liking. I didn’t like some of the explicit scenes. There was a dash of comedy and humour, and the plot was good with quite an unpredictable closure to the story.

The ending was a little two-sided. In one sense, it was a tragic ending. The protagonist lost his job as a teacher in the high school, and had to switch states and find a new job.

Yet there was still a sense of satisfaction, like the story was somehow complete.

I felt that the statement Tracy Flick mentioned earlier about there not being a point in trying to change destiny if it was going to happen anyway was quite true, and it did happen in the end. The teacher tried, and failed to change destiny. I felt that sentence was the catchphrase, and it was the underlying plot of the whole story.

I noticed, also, that Mr McAllister went through the exact same thing his close friend and colleague went through a few years earlier. It felt like the whole story unfolded in two cycles.

Well, that’s about it for this week. I can’t wait for my photos to be developed. Oh, and I customised the sidebar to include my “Flickr” page, where you can find some of my photographic work. Do check it out! =)

Cheers, and have a good week.

On Week 3.

Hello again.

Last week, we learnt about Aristotle and the various aspects of his work and how it related to us.

I thought the idea of each group preparing a presentation on a different aspect of Aristotle.

My group was tasked with finding out about Aristotelian Tragedies, the Three-Act structure, and the definition of a ten-dollar word: Anagnorisis.

Our tragedy research was, well, a tragedy. We ended up not finding what we were looking for. Instead, we accidentally found what other groups were supposed to find. All in all, it was quite a disaster. Still, our 3-act structure was decent.

I notice that nowadays, Hollywood films seldom follow the three-act structure. Plots are not more complex, with many more twists and faux-resolutions. The completion of the story is usually left to the very last moments of the film. For us as future scriptwriters in this post-modern age, I wonder whether it would do us good to adapt to this structure.

Of course, our ten-dollar word, Anagnorisis, had an equally ten-dollar-isque definition. At least, it looked that way on first impression. In reality, it wasn’t that tough. I’ve learnt a lesson from this (not just the definition) that is not to completely trust first impressions. Rather, it sort of backed a lesson I learnt a while back.

On the whole, I did think last lesson was made more “colourful” with the intrusion of a fire drill before class could even commence. However, the presentations did not do much to make it more interesting. Somehow, the Aristotle lesson was just a little duller, and drier. I do look forward to today’s session though. I really hope last week was sort of a one-off.

Cheers!

Week 2.

My holiday was unebelievably dysfunctional. I did work during the holiday, which, in the sense, takes away the whole purpose of it being a holiday.

Thus, part of my reflection today is: what is a holiday?

Is it a day whereby nothing productive happens? That cannot be true either, considering rest is essentially productive, because by resting, you are preparing for the day(s) ahead.

Is it a day to spend with family? Perhaps, but not all holidays are public holidays, such as the already-past-us Childrens’ Day.

Then maybe, it is a day to spend with friends, perhaps old friends that you have not met for some time? Possible, but friends I have not met in some time are in Secondary School now, and life in Polytechnic is quite topsy-turvy. When the poor Secondary School people have their exams, we are enjoying life in the midst of our holidays. Two weeks into our school semester, they begin their holidays. Talk about making it difficult to plan family holidays if one child is in Polytechnic and the other is still having Primary/Secondary education.

Anyway, on with the main reflection.

I thought working without actual contact was difficult, but it was actually quite easy. I got the content for the presentation and compiled it. Later today, we’re gonna get together to have a short rehearsal for the actual thing.

I wrote my fifty word stories before, and after sending a friend off at the airport. It was quite strange; I wrote three at Pacific Coffee Co. located near City Hall, then wrote the last two at Pacific Coffee Co. at Changi Airport Terminal 2 Arrival Hall, and yes, a few of us camped overnight at Changi Airport.

I felt workload this week was quite heavy, with the presentation, then the weekly reflections, and finally the 5 fifty-word stories. Nevermind the stories, as I enjoy writing. Well, that’s about it I guess. Goodbye.

Week One.

For ease of reading and understanding, lecture notes, and key points from tutorial are gray in colour. Reflections, and actual blog post body will be in black font.

Proper writing format: Assignments should contain present tense, refer to third person, and be in active voice.

It took me awhile to realise that the purpose of doing the above-mentioned was to practice the writing style that scripts usually come in.

To me, it’s very difficult writing like this because I am so used to writing in past tense. I’ve been writing recounts for so long that I can’t adapt. Everytime I blog about the day, about the week, about anything, it’s usually in past tense. This is a departure from that. It will be difficult but I certainly hope I will get used to it, and that it’ll become second-nature.

Present tense: I type at a computer.
Third person: He types at a computer.
This style (third person) of writing is commonly used in scriptwriting.

Passive vs. Active voice

Passive voice uses weak verbs, tells rather than shows, and distances the reader from the story. We want to avoid this, and rather want to make the reader feel close to the story.

Active voice uses strong verbs, shows the action, uses immediate sentence structure and conveys the story in a lively manner.

We’re gonna attempt to avoid the passive voice, writing in the active voice as much as possible.

Passive: The sky was blue with a lot of white clouds.
It seems like nothing’s happening.
The clouds aren’t doing anything, and neither is the sky.
In a passive voice, the subject is almost always not given anything to do.

The subjects should be engaged in something.

I motivate myself to work by telling myself to just get it over and done with.

Tips – might not be foolproof!
If you have something going, don’t stop even if you’re stuck.
Always solve the problem and keep going till you’re in safer water and you’ve gained momentum. Sleeping on problems is a myth.
If you can’t get started, just start anyway.
It doesn’t matter what you write. Soon you’ll begin to think and move with your own rhythm.

Example writing:

Louis puts on his hula girl outfit and enters the temple.

The temple is large, with a sprawling, open-air outer complex, coloured primarily red and green. The main temple building occupies only a small portion of the vast compound. Everywhere, there are people, young and old, short and tall, in a myriad of colours. To Louis, these people all pass in a blur. He is focused on finding his target, and it is in this main building, planted in the centre of the temple courts, hidden in the smoke of burning altars and candles, and looking mysteriously surreal, that he will find what he is looking for.

Upon entering through the high double doors, he seeks out his target, swiftly and stealthily. He darts quickly in the shadow of the temple structure, shrouded in the shadows of the high, arcing columns and the smoke from the incense sticks. Before anyone takes notice of this visually appalling occurrence, he finds what he is looking for.

“Hi mom, the performance was a blast.”

This practice piece of writing was really fun to write. I intended for it to have an anti-climax ending, as if to build up suspense for nothing. I’ve seen many writers do that, and I thought that this story might be a good place to try doing it myself. All in all, very fun.

(These were in-class reflections.)
What were two or three questions that crossed my mind during the writing process?

Should I write a short one and enjoy the rest of my time or maximise it to get the most content I can get?
What should I eat for dinner?

What should I ask?
“Whose story am I telling?”
“What is the point of the story?”
“How can I engage the attention of the audience?”

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