Reflection on a failed final draft


General reflection
I don’t know what quite failed with this piece but something did. I must have gone through 8 drafts trying to get the emotion and soft to come through and it just never did to my satisfaction. I tried to create a three act structure but I wonder if a 5 or 6 act structure might have worked better. I wanted to add in so many more moments that just didn’t fit and I would add them and cut them and add and cut them again. In the end it was Sunday night and I just had to stop writing and record the dang thing. I was fairly impressed with audacities ability to remove the crappy quality of my laptop mike most of the way and also remove the fuzz of the falling snow just outside the window. Even with a lot of noise reduction it still didn’t have the best quality and this needed a


·         If you were to revise your draft, what problems do you need to solve? How might you solve them?
I would add more reelection and record with a better microphone
·         After listening to other pieces this week, what  are the features of a good sound story? What makes one work better than another?
A balance of action and reflection and music that emphasis emotion or moments of importance without being intrusive.
·         How did you feel doing this project? What was particularly rewarding?  What was especially frustrating, and what did you do to push through the difficulties? How could you have approached things differently?
I found it really frustrating to find a structure that told the whole story I wanted in a concise way that still had a focus on scene rather than summary. I enjoyed adding music but it was hard to find music that fit the mood well

Comments

  1. Lainey AMarch 1, 2018 at 3:12 PM

    In my personal experience this semester, I've found very similar struggles when looking for the 'deeper meaning' aka SOFT aka Truth of my written pieces. Slowly, a realization has dawned on me that you cannot force 'meaning' into a piece. It is something that must be found. A lot of the troubles I have come from stressing myself out so much that I can only see the small details and not the big picture. I've found that writing a piece simply to tell a story develops a deeper SOFT than coming up with your SOFT first.

    It doesn't always work, but I'm hoping that in my world of homework combined with circumstantial writer's block that I will be able to look at the bigger picture more effortlessly. In class we put a lot of focus on what the creator of a piece 'really means' (What are they trying to say here?), when in reality we should be looking to the story first and then FIND the meaning that's already hiding in there.

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  2. UnknownMarch 3, 2018 at 11:08 AM

    I think this comes back to what my reflection was after the first assignment: sometimes the story you want to tell might be a good story, but still not be a good fit for the project at hand.

    I had a story I really wanted to tell in our intro project, about how I went to a giant hippie festival called the Rainbow Gathering in 2001, and it was a monumental, life changing experience. Then, in 2013, I went again, and it was awful. I'd changed, the event had changed. "You can't go home again" and all of that. There was no way I could tell that in three minutes, though.

    So I actually got as far as doing the first sketch on it for this assignment. But while I did and do feel very strongly about the story, it was still more than there was space for even in this longer narrative project.

    It is important, I think, to not only find a story you want to tell, but to be willing to not tell the stories we want to tell most if they don't fit the brief, even if it means the pain of a last minute change when it isn't working.

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  3. UnknownMarch 4, 2018 at 10:52 AM

    Sam,

    I understand your struggles as we were working with new aspects and different structures for these pieces. I think a lot of us struggled with trying to get right down to the story. I think ultimately what you want to look for in your piece specifically is the narrative side. I remember your piece being one with action where you were talking in the moment and that for the most part felt functional. If you were to revise it would likely require expanding on the small things in those moments so you could get to that SOFT without having to be the reflective narrator. I do remember your opening line though, and thought that it was a great and sharp pull in moment for the rest of the essay. Good luck on revision and your documentary project.

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