Authors and their Platforms

This week we 're discussing authors and their platforms. I found this week to perhaps be the most interesting. One day I would love to be a writer, I guess I should start doing my platform now!


An author needs a platform to build their image. For example you can look at Angela Meyer's website: https://literaryminded.com.au/about/
On this site she has information about herself, such as her awards and her career history. She promotes her book here. We can see her debut novel mentioned almost at the very start with a link to purchase it. Her platform is a major way for her to advertise her book. The good thing about an author platform is that you can cultivate your own image. Your can be whoever you want. You can pretend to have a personality that you don't, you can make a nice aesthetic to draw readers in when in reality your room is a mess.Your platform is like your brand. It's also a form of automedia. Emma Maguir tells us that while it is hard to attribute terms like autobiography to an avatar, for example, the term automedia fits. An author's platform is a bit like an avatar as it is how they choose to present themselves in the virtual space of the internet.


Let's talk about two different types of publishing - self-publishing and traditional publishing. Self publishing has a lot of bad stigma. People think of stories with no real plot and lots of spelling errors. I have read a book that was not self-published but had no plot, however I will not name it here. I've also read some good and bad self-published books. I think I lean more towards traditionally published works as self-published books can be hit-or-miss. However, self-publishing is by no means bad. People say that it diminishes the value of books, but I don't think so. I don't think having some bad books devalues good ones.


Bad reasons for self-publishing were brought up this week. I think the most common one we see is people thinking it's easy. But it sounds hard - making your own cover, editing, printing - it's expensive! Another reason is people thinking that publishers do not want to publish new authors - this isn't true, as some of the best novels come from new authors. Lots of people have had success with their first book, like Angela Meyer who I mentioned above. Some people also think their writing is perfect and shouldn't be tampered with. No one is perfect, except dogs.


Enough negativity. Let's move onto the good things about self publishing. In 2007 a new platform named Kindle Direct appeared in the internet. It let authors self-publish for free. They could have control over their work and pricing. This was a huge step for self-publishing. It meant that a wider range of people could tell their stories. I have heard of it being a problem that authors of a certain demographic struggle in certain genres. For example female science fiction writers tend to have more difficulty than male ones.


And finally, we got warned about vanity publishers - publishers who will prey on up and coming authors. 'Oh, we love your work, we want to publish it!' they will say, then suddenly it's 'Oh by the way give us $30000. Thanks.' Be careful out there!


I want to say thanks to everyone for a great semester, let's hope that the world will be in a much better state next semester.


Here is a silly picture of my dog to cheer you up!


\

Works Cited:
Maguire, Emma. "Home, About, Shop, Contact: Constructing an Authorial Persona via the Author Website." M/C Journal [Online], 17.3 (2014): n. pag. Web. 5 Jun. 2020
Angela Meyer. "About Angela Meyer". Literaryminded, 2020, https://literaryminded.com.au/about/. Accessed 5 June 2020.

Empathy Games

This week's topic was empathy games, a topic that I find very interesting. Games are commonplace nowadays, but they aren't usually relatable and many don't have a plot line that makes you think. Empathy games put the player in the creator's shoes. They give insight into issues that affect many people, but may not affect the player. For example, That Dragon, Cancer is a game created by the parents of a young boy named Joel Green who suffered from cancer. This game shows what it's like to lose a child to cancer, something most people are lucky enough not to experience. Empathy is a difficult thing for many people, but video games allow a new avenue for feeling empathy.

Media can certainly make us feel empathy, for example I'm sure most people cried when they watched Bridge to Terebithia. But these games allow the user to truly be immersed and feel what the main characters are feeling.

One thing this week I found interesting was in the article linked below.

https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/videogames-of-the-oppressed/

In this article the author, Gonzola Frascas makes the point that video games offer choice and a non-linear narrative. Frascas says this might not always be good if you want to instil morals as there is usually a good or bad choice in narratives. However, I believe video games can instil morals - a bad choice can lead to bad consequences. Games are a way for children to learn that their actions have consequences and to choose the course of action that deals the least harm.

The final point I want to talk about is how I share my experiences through media. I love writing and drawing. Writing is especially important to me as a way to share my experiences indirectly. While my storylines and characters are not real, the ideas behind them still come from within and are based on my life experiences. 

For a final question I want to ask how you share your stories. Through media like writing or art? Or somehow else?

Bye everyone, see you next week!

Works cited:

  Frascas, Gonzola. "Videogames Of The Oppressed | Electronic Book Review". Electronicbookreview.Com, 2004, https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/videogames-of-the-oppressed/.

Soundscapes

Let's start with defining what a soundscape is. It means an array of sounds that makes you feel like you're in the place where those sounds are playing - for instance inside of a story.

This week's class focused on sounds and how to make sounds for our third remediation of our story. This meant, for example, that we would find a stock sound of a toaster dinging if there was one in our story. My story is a bit dialogue heavy so I'm not exactly sure how to go about it - I'm thinking I will need some swings creaking in a deserted playground (spooky), police sirens and... I'm not sure what else, but I'll think of it!

I noticed that the program we're going to use is Audacity, which reminds me of my primary school days. We used that program for some of our projects, though I don't remember exactly what we did with it.

Now let's talk about the impact of sounds. Music is one of the most important factors in films and television shows. A horror movie has spooky and foreboding music while a comedy will have brighter and more upbeat music. Scary music can add to the tension that we usually feel when watching horror, while funny music can make something that would normally be scary into something lighthearted. For example a parody of a horror movie but with someone doing a silly run from a silly villain, with ridiculous music playing.

Think about the soundtrack to your favourite movie - what mood does it evoke?

What about sounds from real life? What sound makes you the happiest? For me it's when I hear my dog's claws clicking on the tiles - it means my dog is around!

`

The hardest part will be trying to make it sounds organic. Often artificial things seem... well, artificial. The soundscape will need to be immersive as if the listener were actually inside the story! It will be a challenge, but a fun one!

Electronic Literature

This week's discussion focused on Electronic Literature. First we should talk about hypertext. During the break we made Twine Games which use a lot of hypertext. This means clicking on one link to take us to another place. For instance when you read a wikipedia article you usually find yourself clicking on hyperlinks to find out about other stuff. I'm sure this has led to many late nights reading about the eating habits of Pandas or something random like that.

By Xtina Yu, retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/mf94VWJlMwU

The twine games we made this week were very basic so mostly just used hyperlinks to connect decisions to different parts of the story. It was like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. For instance, in my story you could choose whether to move in with a girl named Victoria, or with the main character's mother or father. Each decision led to a different ending.

Hyperlinks are a way of navigating. As Jessica Pressman says in her essay Navigating Electronic Literature, navigation gives each user a unique perception of digital texuality. Since electronic literature is not physical in the way a book is, navigation leads us to different parts of a story that would not exist for us without that decision, unlike in a book where everything is physically written on a page. The input of a command affects the digital world. For most people, the most familiar example would be video games. In World of Warcraft you can experience the entire world differently just by choosing a different type of character at creation. Some characters are on opposite sides to one another, some are strong and wield swords while others are spell-casters. You could also choose to run around and pick flowers instead of slaying dragons. Your experience of the game as a heroic flower picker would be different from someone who chose to play as a dragon slayer. This is not like a book or TV show in which every reader navigates the world in the same linear way (Of course every viewer may have their own interpretation, but they still see the same content).

Sergeant Soup is a professional flower picker AND dragon slayer.
All rights to Blizzard Entertainment. 

While on the topic of games, here's an artwork of an elf I finished recently.

Interactivity is important for these types of things. Interactivity doesn't just mean clicking on something - it means that the reader/user is engaged. Having the decisions that the player makes affect the story is a good way of doing this. Having a challenge for users to overcome is another way. This is advantageous in many ways as it gets the reader participating. Especially when it comes to children, who generally have short attention spans, interactivity can transform learning experiences. For example, I'm sure many of us who grew up during the 2000s know of Cool Maths Games. These games were a fun way of getting children engaged in maths, which most children think of as being something exceedingly boring. However, making maths into a game engages children's attention so they can learn faster.

There are many more things I would love to discuss but sadly I am running out of words. Leave a comment about your favourite video game or non-linear narrative! Ciao!

Works Cited:

Pressman, Jessica. "Navigating Electronic Literature" Retrieved from https://newhorizons.eliterature.org

Twine Games

First of all I want to wish everyone well. These are difficult times and I hope everyone is all right!

This week the focus was on twine games. Twine allows games to be made by a wider variety of people and therefore cover a wider variety of topics. While video games have advanced significantly throughout the decades, as Anna Anthropy says, 'the video game industry has spent millions upon millions of dollars to develop more visually impressive ways for a space marine to kill a monster'. This isn't a concept I entirely agree with because I love to play video games with strong story lines like the Dragon Age series, or games that allow you to write your own story like the sims. However, the stories told by games are often ones normal people cannot relate to. As much as I would like to be a shape-shifter or an alien, none of us can relate to that (as far as I know, my friend does have a cat who looks suspiciously like an alien).

Twine games can let people tell more relatable stories without needing millions of dollars to develop a game. Stories about simple everyday things like a mother caring for a child can be told.

Player agency is something interesting that games can offer in a way books and film cannot, with the exception of choose-your-own-adventure type books. However in games the player can see the effect their decision has on the game world. This can be seen in games like Dragon Age where characters will like or dislike you depending on your actions, and earlier choices impact later ones. Some games even have alternating ending depending on the players choices, such as the Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, which if I recall correctly has 8 possible endings. An example of player agency done poorly is World of Warcraft, in which there is a quest where you defeat an elf called Sira. The player can decide to finish her off or can refuse to on moral grounds, in which case she is killed by another character and story is exactly the same either way. This decision is also nonsensical as previous quests have you kill many living beings so it would be strange for the player to only now object.

The lecture this week also spoke of something else important - MDA or mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics.

Mechanics are the mathematical rules, such as how many games have a health or lives system. They govern how the game is played are basically the bridge between the player and the game world.

Dynamics are the actions the player takes, such as fighting or racing. An example of this is the exciting dynamic that defines the Assassin's Creed games - parkour, which allows the player to explore locations and times like Florence during the renaissance from the rooftops.

Finally, aesthetics are why we go to a game. Is it for the challenge of defeating a difficult monster, or to explore a beautiful world? Maybe it's for the fantasy of being able to do things we cannot do in real life - like magic or driving a spaceship.

I am looking forward to working with Twine over the holidays and might post an update on it as I work over the holidays. I cannot wait to expand my story by adding choices to make it more dynamic and exciting! 

Till next time! Tschüss!

Multimodal Texts and Remediation

The first thing that should be mentioned this week is the difference between a medium and a mode.

Mode = means of communication
Medium = the means through which it is communicated

5 modes include - gestural, audio, spatial, linguistic and visual ("Multimodal Literacy").

One of the focuses of this week is multimodal texts. A text is multimodal when it uses more than one mode. For example, dance uses spatial, visual, gestural and sometimes audio.

Another of the focuses for this week is remediation. This means moving a work from medium to another. For example, a written story could be changed to one consisting wholly of images. This is an example of a straightforward representation, a type of remediation without irony or critique - just a representation of the work ("Multimodal Literacy").

For example, the start of my story has a young child who is lonely and sad because her mother won't let her interact with other children. She is hidden from the outside world. To depict this I chose this image of a sad looking child.



This photograph was uploaded to the site Pexels by Mateus Bertelli.

This remediation also altered the mode from the linguistic form of writing to the visual form of images. The effects that this has on the audience also changes. The emotion can be conveyed through writing but many people are more affected by the emotional impact of images. However, this also serves to shorten the story and it loses some of its original meaning. Because it is now in images, it is up to the viewer to interpret what the story tells. Everyone who reads it will have a different interpretation so a different version will exist in each viewer's mind. Words achieve a greater accuracy than pictures.

Straightforward representation isn't the only form of remediation. There is also enhancement, which seeks to pay homage to the original work while also improving it. Transformation refashions the work while maintaining the original feel or 'vibe' of it ("Multimodal Literacy").

Thanks for reading this week's blog entry!

Works Cited:


"Multimodal Literacy". Education.Vic.Gov.Au, 2020, https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/multimodal.

Databases

What is a database? It means a set of data inside a computer. This set of data is usually accessible via an interface, the means with which a human interacts with the data. For instance, a webpage serves as the messenger between data and a person, and vice versa.

Databases shape the way we see the world in the modern era. The dominance of the internet is a major part of this. The internet first appeared as a way to store information, then became a 'world wide web' where databases from allover the world became linked. This was similar to a spider's web, thus the name. Nowadays the internet has more independent sites than linked ones.

Databases can be transformed into a narrative. The way this was explained in class was a bag of marbles. In the bag they are jumbled and we have no way of knowing which ones are where. However, if we take them out of the bag and put them in a line they are now in a sequence. This is a good analogy for how raw data is transformed into a narrative. The process of this is called an algorithm.

In traditional narratives such as novels, algorithm-like behaviour isn't required from readers. However, in a digital art form (see the previous post for information about digital art), there is an algorithm. An example of this is video games. The raw data information is converted into something humans can interpret via an interface. In a video game such as the popular role-playing game Skyrim, the player's narrative is not limited by what is there. The narrative is non-linear. This is different to a novel where the narrative is limited by what is physically there.

As technology develops we as humans are able to do things that were not imaginable before. We can interact with other humans who live on the other side of the globe in less than a second with greater accuracy than ever before. The increasing developments of databases and technology have had a profound effect on humanity.