Storybook: Brainstorm Storytelling Styles

This week, your Storybook assignment has two parts: identifying your Storybook topic, and then brainstorming about ways to "frame" your stories, tying them all together in a unified Storybook.

PART ONE: Identify your topic. Based on the feedback I sent you about your possible topics, you need to choose a Storybook topic now. If you are not sure about which topic to choose, please get in touch with me about that before you proceed with this assignment. You need to have a clear definition of your topic, and you need to have identified at least one story that you know you want to retell in your Storybook. By the end of the semester, your Storybook will contain a total of four stories (or just three stories, depending on whether you do all the Storybook assignments or not). You need to write a few sentences about your Storybook topic, including Bibliography. (Note: If you are in the Indian Epics class and plan on just using the class reading for your source, you don't need to provide Bibliography here.)

Here's a sample topic statement:

My Storybook will be about animal stories from Africa. My goal is to find four different animals from four different African storytelling traditions. One story I know I want to include is the Ugandan story, "The Story of the Hippos." I do not think I will have any trouble finding stories about different animals from the different African story collections which I have found online.

Bibliography: "The Story of the Hippos," from The King of the Snakes and Other Folk-Lore Stories from Uganda, by Mrs. George Baskerville (1922). Web address: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/baskerville/king/king.html

 

PART TWO: Brainstorm AT LEAST FOUR possible storytelling styles. For some ideas about the many different kinds of storytelling styles that people have used for their Storybooks, visit this page: 50 Storytelling Ideas, and take a look at some of the examples. You are certainly NOT LIMITED to the ideas listed there on that page - in fact, if you read through those ideas and get some completely new ideas, that would be great! You can also look at some previous Storybook projects to see the different approaches students have used; each style has a page of its own with one or more Storybook samples for you to look at. 

You need to identify at least FOUR possible storytelling ideas (either ideas from the list or completely new ideas you come up with on your own), and write a brief paragraph for each one where you explain just how this way of telling stories could be useful for your project. Some of them might overlap: for example, you could use a therapy style combined with modernizing, or combine cooking with travel. Feel free to do more than four ideas if you want! The idea is to BRAINSTORM some different ideas, and then I'll send you feedback... and in Week 4 you will be ready to start writing.

The assignment you turn in should have five brief paragraphs (one paragraph about your topic, plus the four brainstorming paragraph) for a total length between 400 words (minimum) and 1000 words (maximum). To make sure you are clear about this, take a look at this SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT.

When you are done, cut-and-paste your assignment into an email to the instructor. Do not send an attachment; just cut-and-paste the text into the body of the email message. If you are in the Myth-Folklore class, use the Subject Line Myth-Folklore Storybook Brainstorm; if you are in Indian Epics, Indian Epics Storybook Brainstorm; or for World Literature, World Lit Storybook Brainstorm.

NOTE ABOUT TURN-AROUND TIME: As these assignments are turned in, they go into a stack, and I read and respond to them in the order that they are received, Monday through Friday. I do not respond to assignments over the weekend. Just how quickly I will get back to you depends on how many items there are in the stack. You can check on the contents of the stack if you want to make sure I have received your assignment. If you want comments back quickly, turn your assignment in early! If you turn it in the day that it is due, I will be much more slow in getting comments back to you because of the large number of assignments that will be in the stack.