Indian Epics Story Retelling Assignment

Each week your assignment is to tell one of the episodes from the week's readings in your own words, telling the episode in a way that makes it new and different. I hope you will want to try out lots of different storytelling styles; one of the Growth Challenges you can set for yourself each week, for example, is to try out a different storytelling style! Here are some stories so far this semester: Indian Epics Storytelling.

NOTE: To do this assignment, you must have completed at least one Reading Diary post this week. So, if you did not do the Reading A or Reading B reading assignments, you cannot write a story based on this week's reading; I'll contact you with information about your options for getting caught up.

THE STORYTELLING ASSIGNMENT:

In order to come up with a new way to tell the story or episode that you have picked out, you might want to think the characters and setting of the story itself, and also think about the storytelling scene, the storyteller, and the audience. In many of the readings, there is often no explicit storytelling scene; you just have the "raw" story so to speak, and you might want to try re-imagining the story in a storytelling scene of your own invention. One of the best ways to get ideas for story styles is to look through the Storybooks (past or current), or to look at stories other students are writing this semester by browsing the blogs. The main thing is to let your imagination run wild as you think about possible plots and characters along with possible storytellers and audiences.

Storytelling Post Guidelines

Please read these guidelines carefully so that you will be able to complete the Gradebook Declaration when you are done:

• Title. You need to include the words "Storytelling" and "Week ___" in the title you give to the post, along with a specific title for your story — for example, "Storytelling for Week 2: The World of the Rakshasas." (It is important to include the week number in the title of this post so that other students can find the right story to comment on in any given week.)

• Blog Post Label. Make sure you label your post with 'Week __" and with the word "Storytelling" as labels. That will allow you to see your blog post as part of the week's work, and it will also allow you to look at all your Storytelling posts for the semester on one page together.

• Length. Your Storytelling post needs to be a minimum of 400 words long and a maximum of 1000 words. Most people have more trouble with the maximum than the minimum, so if you need to shorten your story, here are some tips: Short and Sweet Writing Strategies.
  Why the word count limits? I know that they are arbitrary and even difficult sometimes, but they serve two purposes: for those of you who are shy about writing, the minimum is to help encourage you to stretch farther and write more, and for those of you who are wordy writers, the upper limit is there to help you learn how to revise and share only your best writing with your readers.

• Author's Note. You need to include a brief author's note in which you explain the storytelling style you chose, why you chose that style, and what your main goals were for this story. You also need to provide a link to the story that you have used as the basis for your story (or, if you are using a printed book or ebook, a link to the page about the book), along with a description of how you changed the original to create your own version.

• Bibliography. Along with the link to the story, you need to include bibliography for your story source: author, title, year of publication. For more information, see the Bibliography Guidelines. If you have having trouble finding that information, let me know and I'll be glad to help.

• Image. Please include at least one image with the story, along with a link to the webpage where you found the image, plus Image Information. Here is more information Finding and Using Images Online.

• Proofreading. Make sure you do a spellcheck and a word count, and be sure to proofread your post by reading it out loud.

When you are done, complete the Gradebook Declaration.

(from World Literature Today at Twitter)