Overall Reflection

Since taking this course, I find my writing has improved in becoming more attentive to the reader. With the reflective questions for the short story and the fairy tale, the focus on the audience’s reaction to the story pushed me to bear them in mind when writing and allowed me to keep everything more streamlined so as to avoid confusion with unnecessary details. Moreover, all of the writing exercises and pieces studied in class have allowed me to refine my storytelling skills by demonstrating the importance of showing instead of telling. Prior to the course, I had a tendency to over describe and explain every single small action or detail instead of letting my characters and their behaviour speak for themselves. Learning the different elements of various genres also improved my writing, once again for the purpose of keeping things clear. Knowing the conventions of each genre granted me the ability to adjust whatever I was writing into a more consolidated piece, preventing me from jumping back and forth in tone as I often found myself doing in the past.

The unit that I liked the most was the fairy tale unit, because we managed to study a great variety of them in class which all ended up being quite amusing to read. It also happens to be the unit where I produced my best work, but that’s besides the point. Reading the dark origins of the Disney-fied tales which I grew up with was very eye-opening, and provided a lot of interesting social context for the time period in which they were written. It was particularly fun getting to analyze the problematic depictions of female characters and subverting gender stereotypes in the unit writing task. Furthermore, I believe the fact that we had the chance to use an already-existing fairy tale as a starting point and twist it made the unit much less stressful than the others. It allowed me to focus more on the actual quality of the subversions I made and improve upon the original fairy tale which annoyed me so very much. Therefore, the writing was more enjoyable for me as opposed to having to create a whole fairy tale from scratch or create a new piece entirely by myself like in the other units. However, the short story unit comes for a close second, since the stories we studied in class were some of the most captivating I’ve read in my life.

The techniques that I have used to make my writing appealing to all readers are mainly composed of literary devices. Those have greatly enhanced the quality of my writing and have given more energy to the texts, thereby creating a more entertaining read. Among the ones that I found myself using the most throughout my written work this semester were imagery (particularly kinesthetic and visual) and metaphors. These added a nicer dynamic to the stories and kept the narratives less stagnant for the readers, in addition to being more mentally stimulating for me to write about in the late hours of the night. Another strategy I used that was mentioned above was the act of showing instead of telling. This allowed the reader to think for themselves regarding the characters and what is going on in the story itself. In the place of describing everything in the text, letting the reader interpret things makes the reading experience more enjoyable for them.

Finally, the written word holds power as it is a medium for sociopolitical ideas to be transmitted to a substantial amount of people across time and place. Through the use of plot and character depiction, authors may send out messages as a way to criticize the society in which they live, or they may encourage their readers to take action. For example, the short story ‘G-String’ can be interpreted as being a tale of a woman’s empowerment, thereby encouraging female readers to find liberation for themselves. Moreover, the written word can be cathartic, not only for the reader but for the writer as well. The reader can come across a piece of writing which resonates with them greatly and contains characters with whom they can strongly identify, while the writer can write of their own experiences as a method of moving past them. Thus, the written word proves itself to be an emotionally powerful form of art for all parties involved and serves as an essential medium to convey important social messages.