Storytelling festival.

 TUESDAY 28TH NOVEMBER 2023 20:00

Hello there! I am a little bit sad because this is the last blog that I will publish and the last activity that I will do in this amazing course. Let me tell you that I really loved writing in this journal because it made me realize that I found an easy way to share my feelings, emotions, and experiences. Personally, I am not good at sharing my feelings, but I discovered that writing is a good way to do it. I will really miss this activity as I enjoyed writing, and what I will miss the most is reading my classmates' blogs. 

Today, I will share with you my experience at the storytelling festival. 

To begin with, we decided to change our short story "Olenka by Anton Chekhov" to "On the train tracks by Salarrué". Even though we loved the first story we chose, we decided to work with a new one because we thought that the first one was going to be complicated to dramatize. Honestly, I loved the stories written by Salarrué and I really enjoyed reading his book "Tales of Clay" as it represents our Salvadoran society. I consider that it was not difficult to work with the second story because it was shorter, it didn't have many characters, and the main idea and the message were easy to understand.

After that, my classmates and I decided what costumes we were going to wear to play the characters. In my case, I played the role of the station's chief, so the costume wasn't complicated at all. I wore a long-sleeved black shirt, black jeans, a red handkerchief, and a black cap that I made myself. Getting this costume was simple because I wear these clothes every day and I didn't have to look for something special to wear, so it was a great advantage that our story included these types of clothes. 

Besides that, the scenario to record my video wasn't difficult to create either because the only thing I used was a long green cloth that I put behind me. Let me explain to you why it was the only item I used for this activity. First, the scene that I had to record included some natural settings like a garden, a plow field, and others, but unfortunately, I don't have those places at home. Second, I decided that I was going to use a green screen to create those places on a program. Third, I knew that if I used a green screen, I was going to be able to add many details to my video. After having prepared my scenario, I recorded each scene, which was really challenging because I wasn't satisfied with the videos, so I recorded many of them until I got the perfect ones. It was actually sort of exhausting since I had to record 5 or 6 short scenes. As I already mentioned, I am not good at acting, but I am really sure that I did a great job. I guess. hahaha

Finally, the most frightening part of this activity was the editing of the video. I will say that editing the video was the most difficult part of the storytelling because it took me so long to join all the scenes that I recorded. For editing my video, I decided to use Filmora where thanks to the chromatic key I could add many details to the video. I added landscapes and some objects to the video. I also added some special sounds to improve the narration. 

In summary, it was a wonderful experience. I really loved it because I had fun recording and editing the video, and I loved the final result.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING MY POSTS.

I WISH YOU THE BEST!

THIS IS THE END OF THE SEMESTER. 

Writing a short story

 SUNDAY 26TH NOVEMBER 2023. 17:00

Hello everyone! How are you doing? I really hope that everything is okay. I'm really sure that you are very excited to finish our courses this month as much as I am. Today, I will tell you more about my experience writing a short story for our Literature course I. Let me tell you that it was an experience that I really enjoyed a lot. 

First, writing this short story was quite difficult at the beginning because I was not as creative as my classmates. Honestly, I didn't have any idea what to write about it. Even though I had written some short stories before, or at least I had tried to write some, this time was totally different because I knew what a short story was made of or what elements had to include, so I needed to make sure we were following the correct steps to create a short story. Knowing about the elements of a short story helped me a lot in creating it since I knew that I had to develop the setting, characters, message, etc. As you know to write, we usually start by brainstorming what we did and what was the most important step in our writing because it was useful to decide what we were going to write about. 

After brainstorming for some hours, we finally decided that we wanted to write about romance. From my point of view, writing about romance was not difficult at all as we were really familiar with it, so it wasn't challenging to imagine different possible scenarios we could write about. I will also say that romance is a literature genre where we can clearly share our feelings. It is a genre that allows us to share the romantic experiences we have gone through. We sometimes do not find a way to share our feelings or emotions; however, writing becomes a means to get rid of our thoughts. That is why, I can say that when we wrote about romance, the ideas came to us fast and easily. 

Second, writing in a group was an amazing experience. I realized that when we write in a group, it becomes easier because everyone has different ideas, experiences, or perspectives, so when we were writing, everyone contributed to creating the story with their ideas. I remember that all the members of the group were writing their ideas on a document, and then we read them and decided which ideas we were going to use. Of course, before writing the complete story, we first created an outline of the scenes we were going to develop in the story. Having an outline is important when we write because it is a guide that helps you to remember the points you have to develop in your writing. Once we were done with our outline, we began to write in depth. For this, all of us worked on a different scene since we knew what the story was going to be about. When we completed this step, we read the story together to edit, revise, and check the ideas. It was a long process that took us some time, but working in a group made this activity effortless. 

Third, recording the audio of our story was the most difficult part of this activity. I have never been good at acting, so whenever I have to role-play, it becomes complicated because I do not like acting. I didn't know how to narrate the story with emotion. I wasn't sure how to play the role of the character. I wasn't sure what the tone and pace of my voice had to be but in the end, I did my best recording the audio and I tried to transmit the emotions and feelings that the story evoked. 

To sum up, writing this story was a great experience. I really had fun working on it with my classmates. Of course, I loved the story that we created and I think we should publish it. Maybe one day, we will publish our book "The True Love Book". 

Thank you so much for reading. Have a wonderful day.