Scenes

Scenes: 

[The] human memory is made up of meaningful data... combine a complete image and emotion... evoke a complex feeling... writers who manipulate memory sets within the reader create an entire world that resonates with the reader's real emotion. -Tom Wolf in Story Craft by Jack Hart.

Ina nutshell, storytelling is spun out in a series of episodes almost like a scene-by-scene construction. It uses sensory context to create a stage where the story can unfold.

What You Learn In College by Karen Donley-Hayes

...the disgruntled wannabe party-goers in the hallway have pennied the door, tiny rounds of copper wedging door against frame... the clink of the bottle, the giggles and wolf calls...You listen to glass scraping against linoleum, the sound melding with the smell of stale beer and sweat and not-quite-clean laundry, the smell of slept-on sheets...

(Excerpt taken from: https://www.creativenonfiction.org/online-reading/what-you-learn-college)


Can it Get Anymore Festive? by Aralia Giron

The streets are bustling with crowds of the Glendora community, it is not a foreign occurrence to see groups of people chain-linked to one another as they slip their way through the jubilant mass. Various octaves of laughter and chatter drown out the rushing traffic of cars down the way but are no match for the blaring sound of the Christmas tracks that I know the lyrics to but don't want to sing. In every direction there are vendors parked out in front of every downtown stores, a line of expensive holiday couture awaiting me. Even more so, I can't resist stopping at every street corner that houses desserts. Who can resist the overpowering scent of freshly churned ice cream, piping hot cinnamon rolls, and the mouth watering thought of glazed gingerbread cookies? I ask myself as I stand in the midst of it all, can this get anymore festive? The answer is yes, yes it can. They just turned on the colorful flickering lights of the Christmas tree.

What Worked:
Karen Donley-Hayes
-Hayes is so descriptive in setting up the scene around her that I can clearly visualize her situation although I haven't the slightest inkling of how tight a cultivated college dorm can be.
-Through this scene, I can experience what the author has gone through. Her detailed encounter allows me to perceive the world as she does in that particular point in time.
-Hayes reveals the setting of the scene bit by bit much like a movie that transitions the scene through a variation of shots.

Aralia Giron
-The scene I described creates the specific atmosphere that can only be experienced through partaking in communal events. By recounting my own personal memory , the reader is able to stand alongside me in the moment and see what I see, hear what I hear, feel what I feel.
-By asking questions throughout my recollection, I am able to maintain the reader's attention and in a way, I feel this makes my article more interactive.

What Didn't Work:
Karen Donley-Hayes
-I feel that if Hayes would have used the "I" POV then the story would have seemed more intimate but since she adressed the reader as "you" I couldn't quite make that connection with her, To me, although I knew this was a personal recounting, I felt detached at one point in a way that made me forget that she was writing about herself. For a moment, the story was just that, a story.

Aralia Giron
-I feel my recounting fails to create a sense of character. Although it pieces together the much needed setting, I fail to include dialogue and outside influences that contributed to my overall experience.
-More so, even though my attempt at scene setting contains the require foundation, there is more than enough room left over to build upon it.