The Future of Storytelling

For anybody involved in media, the arts or narrative storytelling of any kind, this course is really cool. It’s all online, all free, and can be completed from comfort of your own lazy chair. Check it out:

https://iversity.org/courses/the-future-of-storytelling?r=c6c9c

 

Each week the participants are given a ‘creative task’, potentially quite broad in its scope, so one can choose exactly how much time & effort one wants to invest in the course… I’ll be posting my completed tasks here, as well as on the course website.

 

CHAPTER 1: CREATIVE TASK

  1. Retell your favourite story by giving a short summary of what you can remember of it. (in less than 400 words)
  2. Think about (try to remember) and write down what fascinated you most about this story. What can you remember best? What impressed you most? … Its characters? The locations? The plot? The style and voice of the story? Or maybe even the surroundings of how this story was told, maybe by your parents, grandparents, or maybe in your first self-read book? Tell us the story OF the story so-to-speak. (less than 500 words)

Your answer could be a simple text/essay … or maybe you prefer creating a story in itself, a poem, an info graphic about it — Whatever suits you best!

 

 

And this is my answer (click to enlarge):

The Future of Storytelling - Task 1

 

CHAPTER 2: CREATIVE TASK

Please pick any existing serial protagonist that you know very well, and use the attached PDF/the form below to create a character profile. This profile should include his or her most important traits.

 

  1. Whether it is desires, enemies, professions, hobbies, religions, behaviorisms or else: Please copy and fill out the form with all the info you got from watching the show. (the list is also downloadable via pdf) Maybe it helps to rewatch one of the episodes first.
  2. Think about what makes this protagonist worth following through a whole series of episodes. What is it that HOOKed you?

 

My answer (click to enlarge):

The Future of Storytelling - Task 2

 

CHAPTER 3: CREATIVE TASK

Last week we have dealt with character profiles for characters that already exist. This week we build on exactly this task by using your knowledge about how to create fictional characters to create a new fictional one. This character can be entirely your own creation, for example created for a story you’ve already written or a character that you’re just inventing – or – if that’s too difficult – you can vaguely base it on a classic fictional character from Lady Macbeth to Sherlock Holmes – … it doesn’t matter as long as the character is unique and yours, with it’s own original name.

  1. Whether it is desires, enemies, professions, hobbies, religions, behaviorisms or else: Please think about who your character is, where he/she is coming from. Feel free to enlist the help of the profile sheet from last week. (that is also available as a pdf on the right)
  2. Find a “home” for your fictional character. Meaning: give him a place to be, a blog, a Facebook account, a career on LinkedIn, a twitter account or else. Create his or her identity.
  3. To clarify that this is a fictional StoryMOOC character, make this character state somewhere that he/she’s a friend/acquaintance/enemy/fan of (…well, give him ANY relation to…) a certain “Aunt Renie” (a friendly, old, world-traveling lady from Potsdam, and a character we’ll meet later in our MOOC).
  4. If you like: Connect your character to other new characters.

 

My answer (click to enlarge):

The Future of Storytelling - Task 3 (1)

The Future of Storytelling - Task 3 (2)

 

CHAPTER 4: CREATIVE TASK

Take a camera, be it you mobile phone, a webcam, … , and introduce yourself to the other StoryMOOCers, telling us

  1. who you are
  2. where you are from and
  3. most importantly: which works inspired your interest in storytelling most up to know. Pick out 1-3 works of art, literature, film, TV, game, a website or else and tell us what’s so special about it that you think it might help inspire somebody else anywhere on this planet.

If you don’t want to be in the video, and/or don’t want us to know where you’re from, that’s fine as well. Then please make it just about your piece of inspiration.

 

My answer:

[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsWRP-Wo6i0]



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