Xanderian Forum

Text file: Download PDF file Authors: National Open University Of Nigeria Video Lecture: Not available Text size: 143 pages Preview: What is Literature? Literature springs from our inborn love of telling a story, of arranging words in pleasing patterns, of expressing in words some special aspect of our human experience. It is usually set down in printed characters for us to read, though some forms of it are performed on certain social occasions. There are a number of different branches such as drama, poetry, the novel, the short story; all these are works of the imagination arising from man’s capacity for invention. The primary aim of literature is to give pleasure, to entertain those who voluntarily attend to it. There are, of course, many different ways of giving pleasure or entertainment, ranging from the most philosophical and profound. It is important to note that the writer of literature is not tied to fact in quite the same way as the historian, the economist or the scientist, whose studies are absolutely based on what has actually happened, or on what actually does happen, in the world of reality.

Text file: Download PDF file Authors: Andrea McCartney Video Lecture: Not available Text size: 44 pages Preview: Project 1 Thinking visually Think about your favourite films. What immediately springs to mind? Most likely you’ll conjure up an image or a scene. It may be the frog-like Gollum creeping behind Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, or Baby sprinting towards Johnny Castle in the climactic scene of Dirty Dancing, or Donald Sunderland as the bereaved father reaching towards the small, sinister red figure he thinks is his daughter in Don’t Look Now. If you do remember a line of dialogue, you probably won’t think of it in terms of words on a page; you’ll remember the way the words were spoken by the actor and the expression on their face as they delivered them. You’ll remember the story in images because film is a visual art form. And yet all films begin with a script. Words on a page, certainly, but words with a purpose: to create pictures in the mind that will eventually (depending on the interest of a director, finance and luck!) end up on screen. You may have come across the phrase ‘show don’t tell’ in relation to storytelling. In writing for screen it is arguably the single most important phrase to remember as you sit at your computer or notebook. While a novel or short story can take you inside the mind of a character, with the words revealing opinions, dreams, thoughts, psychological insights and feelings, a screenplay has to show what a character is thinking and feeling through images, action and dialogue. Dialogue, perhaps surprisingly, is only one element of your screenplay. Dialogue can certainly help reveal what a character is thinking and feeling, whether it’s an exchange between two or more characters or a voice-over (a device used in American Beauty and Apocalypse Now, for example). Unless you are Quentin Tarantino, however, you risk losing your audience’s attention with a screenplay overloaded with hefty chunks of dialogue. When you’re writing visually you also need to decide what your character is doing within a given location – and describe the action in your script.

Text file: Download PDF file Authors: Faber and Gwyer Video Lecture: Not available Text size: 104 pages Preview: Definitions and Examples When words are selected and arranged in such a way that their meaning either arouses, or is obviously intended to arouse, aesthetic imagination, the result may be described as poetic diction. Imagination is recognizable as aesthetic, when it produces pleasure merely by its proper activity.