Fiction Writing Blog Assignment #8 - Writing and Work Shopping and Blogging... Oh my!

It's nearly finals week, which means that the end of the semester is almost here, and final projects are to be handed in soon.


So our final blog assignment is on writing, work shopping, and blogging. Work shopping was interesting. I have never work shopped before this class and it was cool to get feedback from your peers. It helps you to see things that you wouldn't necessarily find yourself. Blogging for a class was interesting, as well, and I hope to never have to do it again. Just kidding. It was cool to blog about things for school after I stopped blogging personally. Blogging is also a different kind of writing. It forces you to be more concise and write to grab people's attention. Overall, I think blogging and work shopping are both very helpful in helping to shape someone's writing and I've learned a lot.

Well, this is it, probably my last post of the semester, but hopefully not forever.

Fiction Writing Blog Assignment #7 - Point of View

Okay, so for this assignment we have to talk about point of view.

Point of view is basically the perspective from which a story is told. There are two points of view that are the most often used and one that is rarely used.

The two points of view that are used most are:

First person
A story using this point of view is told by the main character or protagonist. It often uses the pronouns "I", "me", "we", "my", "mine", "ours", and so on and so forth.

Third person
A story using this point of view is told either by someone close to the main character or by an omniscient narrator. The main character is referred to by his/her name or using pronouns like "he", "she", "they"... you get the idea.

Now the least used point of view is one that I'm sure most people haven't read since they were kids. Well if you don't read self help books that is.

Second person
A story using second person point of view uses the pronoun "you" to make the reader the main character. Some of the best known examples of this are Choose your own adventure stories. One of my favorite books that used second person view when I was a kids was this book:

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this blog. I mean, how couldn't you enjoy it? There's a picture of a monkey wearing a lab coat and mixing chemicals in front of you.

Fiction Writing Blog Assignment #6 - The Pink Institution

I think it's kinda funny how we have a week long break from papers and stuff, but before the break more assignments are given. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a break. Anyhow, for our Fiction Writing class we had to read The Pink Institution by Selah Saterstrom and do a short blog about it. This was actually one of the only things I didn't mind doing for school over the break. I read through The Pink Institution the first Saturday of the break before my shift at work and was thrown off a bit because of it.

The Pink Institution is a story about a multi-generational family and all the fucked up ways they damage their children. If I could give this book a subtitle it would be The Pink Institution: A How-to Guide On How Not To Raise Your Children. There are suicides, attempted suicides, drunken debauchery, children watching sexual events unfold in front of them, and all around weirdness. The Pink Institution is darkly unsettling and it paints a twisted portrait of a dysfunctional, Southern, white trash family, which is I guess the point. I just wish the story was a little easier to follow. There are so many characters that I don't quite remember the names of people, just some of the events.

Overall, this was an interesting read and I wouldn't mind checking out some more of Selah Saterstrom's work.