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Why the Future of Writing is in Audio

8/1/2020

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by Dina Folgia

When I was a child, I existed in a world ruled by print. If I wasn’t consuming media that had a front and back cover, chances are I wasn’t consuming it at all. I indulged in the occasional cartoon, maybe a movie or two every now and again, but by the time I was twelve my library of books far outweighed my library of DVDs. I was insatiable, unshakable, and I couldn’t picture myself growing up to craft anything besides literature.

​As I entered into my college experience and began to study writing as a possible career path, however, I was faced with a dilemma. After spending four years studying and dedicating myself to the craft, I began to grow complacent in the area of print media. It seemed like all my creative writing-based classes were teaching the same things, and that was based in creating publishable material and helping writers grow a thick enough skin to brave the cold, uncaring world of print writing. It wasn’t until I added on a media writing concentration and took several Radio, TV, and Film classes that I began to realize why I—and many of my peers—had grown so incredibly tired of print.


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Crowds Of Characters Make Storytelling Suffer

5/1/2020

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by Christopher M. Comparri

The appeal of books, movies, television and any sort of story-telling platform can be boiled down to two key components: having a great story and having great characters to fill out said story. As viewers and readers, we often find ourselves rooting for certain characters and despising others to the pits of our very soul. This can be for any number of reasons: rooting for the underdog, finding a character that is relatable, finding one that embodies the essence of what we feel is right or wrong with the world. Finding the handful of characters that you feel strongly about builds an emotional tie between the content produced and the individual consuming it. However, the trend of incorporating huge casts of characters into stories is now having an adverse effect. People are finding too many characters to like or hate in passing. These characters are being masked as huge markers in a story, but the reality is quite different. In literature, sometimes less is more.


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White Vernacular English: The Boss of Student Writing

6/1/2018

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PicturePhoto: 12news
I’ve taught freshman composition courses for almost two years now, expecting my diverse body of students from multicultural backgrounds to all coalesce and perform to one standard above all others: White Vernacular English (WVE) or White American Vernacular English (WAVE). As writers, we pride ourselves on being open-minded yet authentic, and we hope our students do the same—as long as they adhere to what we consider valid style of writing. Why have the rigid, outdated principles the foundation of college composition was built on not shifted to accept other vernaculars?


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Trouble in Paradise: Dystopian Distaste

2/1/2017

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by Amanda Rennie
​

The world is dark, dismal, messy; there is a teenager who is, believably, old enough, clever enough, mature enough, independent enough to make life-altering decisions. 16 or 17 is a good age because then they can rebel against adults, not go to school, and have an intense and passionate relationship. This teenager isn't like all the other teenagers. This teenager can make a difference.​
Yawn. It started with the vampire craze, but the publishers of young adult fiction have fully submersed themselves in Dystopia: everywhere and everything is terrible, and only one young person has the ability to change it and make the world a better place. Young adult authors, lots of them, have been churning out trilogies (ALWAYS trilogies) with the same stock characters and fabled ending for years now. And guess what? It's only becoming more generic.

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"How Do I Love Thee?" Let me count the sequels

5/1/2016

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Picturephoto: Goodreads
by Gabrielle Lund

Argue that the love triangle in The Hunger Games was unnecessary (and I’ll most likely agree with you.) Guffaw at the tension, both “sexual” and aggravating, of Edward and Bella as he refuses to turn the one girl he loves into a vampire (and I’ll probably wince at the memory of the writing in these scenes.) But do not disclaim their success. These books are all members of The New York Times Bestsellers’ List for a reason and it has little to do with their contrived plots. Stephanie Meyers and other YA authors have continuously proven that an idea which involves one girl, in a vulnerable, desperate situation (where she happens to look like the pretty girl next door, but not a model), and two guys (bloodsuckers or tributes fighting for their lives) who love her, will, nine times out of ten, fly off the shelves.




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Research in the Age of Instant Gratification

8/1/2015

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by Leslie Martinelli

A few years ago, I read that Encyclopedia Britannica no longer would be printing encyclopedias. Add that to the list of things from my childhood that no longer exist.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not anti-progress. Where would we be without air conditioning, microwave ovens, and cell phones?  And some of those extinct items deserved to go, like cars without seat belts and manual typewriters. But every now and then technology interferes where it doesn't belong, and I just have to say: Stop!  Enough!


Encyclopedias are a case in point. Those printed volumes held many fond memories for me. The first set to enter my family’s house came by way of a door-to-door salesman. That set caused some conflict between my parents. My father had warned my mother time and again not to let salesmen in the front door, let alone buy from any of them.  They were, he said, like seagulls - once you fed one of them, you couldn't get rid of the flock. Our house was testament to that caveat; we owned a top-of-the-line vacuum and enough brushes and cleaning products to supply the whole neighborhood. My mother stood by her latest purchase, though. As she saw it, that set of encyclopedias was an investment in my and my brothers’ educational futures.


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Multi-modal: Right Under Our Noses

6/15/2015

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Picturecredit: TypeMoon
by Michael Nusspickel

Multi-modal art has been gaining popularity among artists for the past decade, and it would be hard to argue that video games aren’t a means of creating a multi-modal experience for an audience. Within the genre of video games exists a niche sub-genre that logically should be the answer to many writer’s problems with choosing a medium, but it has barely been noticed (if at all) outside of the gaming community: the visual novel.


Visual novels are novels that use visual and audio cues alongside text to communicate their content. A mix between graphic novels, video games, and pure prose, the visual novel allows a writer to have a product with visual art as an integral part of the storytelling but without sacrificing one’s prose for it. Text is delivered through speech boxes, backgrounds and characters are drawn, and sound and music add to the experience. Visual novels offer everything a graphic novel does, but with the ability to ignore a graphic novel’s layout limitations on word count. They originated in Japan but have been around for well over a decade at this point, so the question becomes: how come they haven’t caught on with Western writers?




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The Coming Successes of Literature, and How They May (or May Not) All Include Bondage

2/16/2015

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by Kevin Coopersmith

Their names alone are enough to make you sigh profusely.

Here, watch: Twilight. Fifty Shades of Grey. To most lovers of words, the only thinking they inspire is in answering the question – what about them frustrates you more? Is it the endless conversation that breeds whenever a film or new saga of either set is released? Is it the way the books fly off the shelves and are quickly devoured by your friends who still seem to have failed to get around to reading that awesome Neil Gaiman book you recommended to them years ago? Or is the fact that these books, and their subsequent movies, have turned countless millions in revenue while the rest of the industry struggles to keep its head above water?


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It’s a hard truth to realize, but that doesn’t make it any less real – America is reading, they’re just not reading anything of substance. As a matter of fact, the average American spends most of their day reading – 11 hours a day on average with digital media alone, according to a Nielsen study conducted last year. That’s 11 hours of channel surfing, Facebook walls, Twitter feeds, refreshed Reddit pages, and underwhelming Buzzfeed articles.

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    thoughts on  writing, art, & new media by glassworks editorial staFF

     


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