Aristotle – Anjuelle Floyd

Of Memoir, Climax, and “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”…

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Writing teacher and mentor, Clive Matson, always said that if a writer found her or himself wanting and/or needing to explain her or his story that the reader might gain the author’s intended message, the author needed to revise their story further.

Completing a manuscript requires more than simply writing the story, editing and revising it for clarity regarding grammar and typos, or even for development of plot.

Within each story or novel lives the narrative of that story, and how it came into being.

The author’s understanding and exploration of this process informs

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Of Colombiana, Contagion, and Miracles…

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“If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it.
Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.”
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I saw two movies this weekend. Contagion, for the first time, and Colombiana for the 2nd.

Viewing a movie for the second time, much like reading a book, allows the opportunity to evaluate and inspect what either makes the story work, or remain vibrant in your mind, or the memories of its plot and characters, if you can recall them, slink into the recesses of the forgotten.

I was not excited at the thought of seeing Colombiana a second time.

Yet now as I write, I realize my hesitation came not from the quality of the movie itself, but quite the opposite.

The story of a young woman, who in losing her parents to a villainous killing at the age of 9, then seeking revenge, Colombiana is clearly a character driven story.

Contagion on the other hand, involves many characters whose roles work to tell the story of not a person, but rather display the effect of

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Of Silence, The Three-Act Structure and Death…

Leave a Comment / Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

Dreams are but stories that possess a beginning, middle and end.

Recognizing this Aristotle superimposed this organization of dreams–his three-act structure onto that of plays and stories to render them more comprehensible.

Dreams, like stories and plays, hold drama, and their trajectory of plot often includes a dilemma, even if the problem is one of overwhelming joy.

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