‘Show Me Your Slugune and I'll Let You Have the Firstlook’: Some Thoughts on Today's Digital Screenwriting Tools and Aprs

2014 ◽  
Vol 153 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Batty
Keyword(s):  
Writing Process ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
Industry Standard ◽  
Digital Interventions ◽  
Final Draft ◽  
Writing Practice ◽  
The Way

Today's market is inundated with digital screenwriting tools and apps. From the introduction of formatting software that promised to give writers access to industry standard screenplay layout (Final Draft, Celtx) comes an era in which technologists are seeking to influence screenwriting practice itself (Scrivener, Slugline, Plotbot, StorySkeleton). Although perhaps not as explicit in their claims of success as the plethora of seminars by screenwriting ‘gurus’, digital tools and apps do in some ways promise a range of solutions to everyday screenwriting problems, at the very least by assuring users that they will help manage the logistics that often get in the way of creativity. But what do these digital interventions actually do? Do they shape creative practice, or merely provide tools to format a screenwriter's existing ideas? Do they help the writing process, or the processing of writing? This article examines some of the digital screenwriting tools and apps on the current market, and examines what they offer script development and writing practice. By reflecting on my own involvement in an online screenplay assessment platform, the article also suggests how embracing pedagogical aspects of screenwriting might give digital tools and apps the opportunity to help shape creative practice.

HERODOTUS BECOMES INTERESTED IN HISTORY

2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
David Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
The Real ◽  
Final Draft ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Greek World ◽  
The Way

At 3.60 Herodotus tells us that he has dwelt at length on the Samians because ‘they are responsible for three of the greatest buildings in the Greek world’: the tunnel of Eupalinos, the great temple, and the breakwater that protects their harbour. As successive commentators have pointed out, that is not the real reason for the length of his account. We hear about the tunnel for the first time in this chapter (60.1–3); Maiandrios escapes down a secret channel at 146.2, which may or may not be Eupalinos' tunnel; we hear about the temple of Artemis, not of Hera, at Samos in 48; dedications in the temple of Hera are mentioned in passing at 1.70.3, 3.123.1, 4.88.1, and 4.152.4, but the temple itself cannot be said to play a major part in Herodotus' narrative; naval expeditions sail from Samos (e.g. 44.2, 59.4) but there is no emphasis on the harbour or its breakwater. What Herodotus should have said is ‘I have dwelt at length on Samos, because I am interested in the island's history; and, by the way, they are responsible for three…’; but it is not our job to tell him what he ‘should’ have said. As David Asheri remarks, ‘We can explain it [the length of the Samian logos] most simply by supposing that the logos already existed before the final draft of the book’.

Haunted by ‘Lenore’: The Fragment as Gothic Form, Creative Practice and Textual Evolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-147
Author(s):  
Kirstin A. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Creative Practice ◽  
Critical Gap ◽  
Narrative Device ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

This article examines the processes of fragmentation and haunting surrounding the explosion of competing translations, in 1796, of Gottfried August Bürger's German ballad ‘Lenore’. While the fragment has become known as a core narrative device of the Gothic, less attention has been paid to the ways that the fragment and fragmentation operate as dynamic, living phenomena within the Gothic's central processes of memory, inspiration, creation, dissemination and evolution. Taking ‘Lenore’ as a case study, this essay aims to redress this critical gap by illuminating the ways that fragmentation haunts the mind, the text, and the history of the Gothic as a process as much as a product. It demonstrates that fragmentation operates along lines of cannibalism, resurrection and haunting to establish a pattern of influence that paves the way for modern forms of gothic intertextuality and adaptation. Importantly, it thereby locates fragmentation as a process at the heart of the Gothic mode.

scholarly journals In the Tracks of the Reindeer: The Emotional Effects of Digital Information on Raindeer Herders

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Kajsa Kuoljok
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Gps Data ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Grazing Area ◽  
Emotional Effects ◽  
Partial Relation ◽  
The Way

Through a story about a reindeer that wandered off from its grazing area, this article explores the emotional effects mediated by digital technology. It concerns the way in which reindeer movements are made visible through the use of digital tools. As reindeer movements are documented by GPS (Global Positional Systems) technology and transformed into inscriptions, the movements become easier to observe. It makes a difference when herders can follow reindeer movements from above, instead of from the ground. New knowledge emerges with increased amounts of information. As GPS data makes reindeer movement visible, it creates a new, partial relation between seeing and knowing. The strong emotional effects that are induced by this relation on the herder are observed and described through a narrative of the reindeer that wandered into another Sámi community.

Staircases, fires; bombs, milk, wombs, wax, hangmen, sleep, rabbits, stew; a Mars Bar, pinpoints; lovely peaches

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-70
Author(s):  
Deborah Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
World Views ◽  
Writing Prompts ◽  
Dylan Thomas ◽  
The Way

Dylan Thomas often described his writing process as one of putting-in: poems are ‘“watertight compartments”’; he was ‘tightly packing away everything I have and know into a mad-doctor’s bag’. To be sure, Thomas’s writing has in it a lot of containers, the escape of whose contents constitutes a threat or a promise or an enacted drama: rooms, houses, mouths, towns, tins of peaches, dead dogs, world-views, stomachs, keepings of secrets and guilts. This chapter offers an approach to some of these things, and in doing so reveals another peculiarity: the way in which Thomas’s ‘tightly packed’ writing prompts in his critics an urge to explain, unfold, and unpack his ‘mad-doctor’s bag’, combined with an anxiety and embarrassment about the propriety of seeing and touching what’s in it, which they might even turn out to have illegitimately smuggled in themselves. A poem is a can of worms; opening some of Thomas’s, this chapter explores ways in which criticism could be something more than a worm-tidy. The chapter looks into numerous cans of worms, including ‘The Conversation of Prayers’, ‘Request to Leda (Homage to William Empson)’ – the chapter touches on Empson and pastoral – and a short story called ‘The Peaches’.

Translanguaging and Digital Technologies in the Realm of Language Learning

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-148
Author(s):  
Anastasia Olga Tzirides
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
The Way

In the globalized world that we live in, people communicate by using not only their primary language, but all the languages they know complemented by the use of multimodal elements, like images, videos, emoticons, memes, and more. This idea of using the whole linguistic and semiotic repertoire for communication is called translanguaging. This chapter focuses on the notion of translanguaging and explores its implementation in relation to digital tools. It offers an evolution of the definition of translanguaging, and it continues by analyzing it as a theoretical and pedagogical approach. It also explores, based on the literature, the way that translanguaging can be practically implemented in educational practice and in combination with digital technologies. This chapter provides cases and examples of digital translanguaging, and it concludes by determining the gaps in the literature and the potential future steps in this area.

From Cagliostro to Imhotep: The Writing Process

The Mummy ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 29-42
Author(s):  
Doris V. Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Writing Process ◽  
Department Head ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Public Mind ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Commercial Opportunity ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines how The Mummy (1932) took shape at Universal Pictures, and the significant transformations that it underwent along the way. When Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in November of 1922, he started a wave of cultural enthusiasm for all things ancient Egyptian. ‘Tutmania’ had peaked by the start of the 1930s, but it was sufficiently fresh in the public mind for Universal's head of production, Carl Laemmle Jr., to sense a commercial opportunity. And so, in early 1932, Laemmle decided that Universal's next horror film would have an Egyptian theme. The first requirement was to produce a plot, and Laemmle handed this assignment to a pair of writers: Universal scenario department head Richard Schayer, and established novelist Nina Wilcox Putnam. They responded with a nine-page synopsis entitled Cagliostro. Despite its glaring differences from the finished product, the synopsis planted the seed for what would become The Mummy.

The Philosophies of Software

2011 ◽  
pp. 326-342
Author(s):  
Lindsay Grace
Keyword(s):  
Digital Art ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Art Production ◽  
The Way

Software is philosophical. Software is designed by people who have been influenced by a specific understanding of the way objects, people and systems work. These concepts are then transferred to the user, who manipulates that software within the parameters set by the software designer. The use of these rules by the designer reinforces an understanding of the world that is supported by the software they use. The designer then produces works that mimic these same philosophies instead of departing from them. The three axes of these philosophies are analogy, reductivism, and transferred agency. The effects on computer-based artistic expression, the training in digital art production, and the critique of art are evaluated in this chapter. Tensions between the dominant scientific approaches and the dominant artistic approaches are also defined as destructive and constructive practice respectively. The conclusion is a new critical perspective through which one may evaluate computer integrated creative practice and inspire fresh creative composition.

Scaffolding multimodality: writing process, collaboration and digital tools

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Howell
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Multimodal Composition ◽  
Argumentative Writing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Formative Experiment ◽  
Process Collaboration ◽  
Tenth Grade

Purpose This study was conducted in ninth- and tenth-grade classrooms with the goal of studying effective scaffolding for improving argumentative writing, both conventional and digital/multimodal. Design/methodology/approach The author conducted a formative experiment in two high-school classrooms to study ways teachers integrated forms of multimodal composition in their classrooms and provided associated scaffolding. Findings Findings regarding scaffolding included the embedding of scaffolding in the writing process to blend conventional and digital forms, the use of collaboration as a needed, though resisted, part of this scaffolding, and the consideration of digital tools that mediate students’ argumentative writing. Originality/value This study explored the implementation of a multimodal literacies intervention, providing empirical findings to a field that has remained largely theoretical.

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