Audio Literacy Narrative
Written Draft:
This may sound odd coming from a Journalism major and someone who now thoroughly enjoys reading books and articles, but before the end of Junior high and the beginning of high school, I used to hate anything to do with reading and media. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed a select few television shows and movies in my younger years, but literature and anything more than cartoons were not under my definition of media or entertainment. I used to never read anything other than required material for school courses and once I was done, I wished for no more. Back then, reading and learning was a task to me. I can confidently say now, I was ignorant and wrong at that point in my life. I credit J.R.R. Tolkien, the news, and Peter Jackson with helping me find my love for literature and media. The reason I say this is because of the success of the Lord of the Rings series of novels. I never knew such books existed until I heard of the success of the movie adaptations via the news. Hearing that these movies were very successful and entertaining peaked my interest with the series, so I went to see the first film with some friends. The film blew us away. Never before had we seen a movie of that caliber. The cinematics and story flowed so well together, and the lengthy and immersive story opened up a whole new world of entertainment to us. Following the movie, I was told by a friend of mine how, even given the fantastic movie, the book series provided a much better outlet for the story. I felt compelled to read these books to actually see if they could really one-up the movie. I went in being very wary, because my experience with books thus far had been as a tool to teach me lessons and I was not too fond of them because of that. After getting off too a slow start, the novel got into the heart of the story and I was captivated. I could not put the novel down. Any spare moment I had was dedicated to reading that series, and I had never enjoyed any form of entertainment as much as that. After that point, I really found how, contrary to my beliefs, books didn’t have to adhere to a strict lesson, and that not every story had a moral to teach, but sometimes just provided entertainment. Ever since that time, I have read many more books, and in more recent years, have learned to love news, and other media. My high school English teacher, Mike Steidl (with whom I still keep in contact with), taught me what it meant to be aware to what is going on in the world, and took my love for literature and evolved it into a love for not only journalistic writing, but into media as a whole, and I believe it is because of him that I am where I am now and doing something with my life that really means something to me and that I can be proud of.
Overall I really like your narrative. It tells a good story and is a good representation of how so many factors can go into changing someone’s perception of something. There is one thing I might suggest but this is based more on my personal opinion. My one piece of advice would be to be a little more laid back with your language. By that I mean, it sounds very official with the way you put things. Maybe be a little more lax. I say this because one of the advantages to writing a story is that people can relate to it, and I think that using simpler language makes it much easier to relate to. Now granted, maybe you just talk that way and therefore don’t see what I’m getting at (In which case you should probably disregard this completely) but if not maybe think about it. Like I said though, this is more my personal opinion so don’t take it too seriously. Its still very good.
I really enjoyed this narrative its very simple and the forward. Its not at all hard to follow and it would be neat to have little clips from the LoTR movies in the background of your narrative. I too have a similar background about only reading what i had to in school and developing my interest in reading and writing post high school. I like your writing style and look forward to hearing the finished product.
I too enjoyed this narrative. It is tightly-crafted and unified. I also agree with temple100 that you could mix-in sound clips from the movies to contextualize your account. Another thing that you could do is read passages from the series to provide a contrast to the movie clips. In some ways, you could do the old compare/contrast thing in order to accentuate the differences across media, and how these differences contributed to your “awakening” (so to speak).