Story and Focus in Rhino: A Brief Criticism of Story Spine in Rhino. Nearly all great screenplays, novels, poems, well, just about all creative writings have a story spine, a main theme, a primary path. Authors do not wander too far from the main story. Similar to walking down a worn trail in the woods, you can take a few side trails, but even these offshoot trails must help you keep you moving toward your objective, supporting the story theme, the spine. So you’d best return to and stay on the main path or you’ll soon have your readers or viewers lost in unimportant details, lost on meaningless side trails. In Helena Kriel’s draft screenplay Rhino, the story has wonderful potential, but in its present condition, it wanders too much from the story spine, it has too many side trails that do not directly support the main story. …show more content…
Ryan’s divorced father struggles to remain successful while still trying to be a father to his daughter. Early in the story Ryan makes a few video posts and talks about silkworms “Spun from all those thousands of silkworms! That’s right, thousands of these rockin’ little stripped(sic) guys — She pulls out a stuffed, stripped(sic) silkworm toy” (1 Kriel). Ryan also talks about rabbits, and then about how she loves elephants, but later the main story is all about rhinos. Additionally, a few script pages are used to shows Ryan and some of her interactions with her mother and step-father. These scenes do help to lead into when Ryan dies while reading a text from her bio-father. After Ryan dies (inciting event), Zack realizes that he must help save the rhinos for his daughter, although she focused on elephants and silkworms. Ryan’s death causes a change in behavior in the father, as his guilt drives him to take the trip to Africa he had planned with his daughter to see African wildlife. He takes his coworker, Jason, with
sister, s now dead. Ryan is married and wants to have a child but is
Despite the book being well written, there are several parts that I would re-write; here I will describe two of them.
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design & Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
First, Ryan starts her poem with a question, “Who would be a turtle who could help it?” (1). Ryan’s question forces the reader to think about why one would want to be a turtle, and her disparaging tone in the question implies that she wants the reader to answer that no one would be. The question sets up the turtle as a weak animal and forces the reader to read the rest of the poem knowing that the turtle is a poor, miserable creature. However, as the reader goes on, he or she will realize that this is not the case.
Jason pictures himself in a world where he won’t be distracted, which will give him the opportunity to focus and achieve his goals. He started thinking about it, planning what he’ll do and how he’s going to make the best out his second chance. “He won’t be like his dad, he thinks, he won’t waste his chances. He’ll grab what comes and run with it” (Allison 34). It will be all about him and the basement, who he will become, who he was meant to become. “In the basement, they won’t feed him much, so he will get all dramatic skinny. He could learn to eat imaginary meal meals and taste every bite-- donuts and hot barbecue wings and stay all skinny and pure. He’s going to come out that basement Brad-Pitt handsome and ready for anything” (Allison 34-35). In his mind, these are all the opportunity that he’ll get to become who he wants to be.
In our contemporary civilization, it is evident that different people have somewhat different personalities and that novels behold essential and key roles in our daily lives; they shape and influence our world in numerous ways via the themes and messages expressed by the authors. It is so, due to the different likes of our population, that we find numerous types and genres of books on our bookshelves, each possessing its own audience of readers and fans. In this compare and contrast essay, we will be analysing and comparing two novels, The Chrysalids and Animal Farm, and demonstrating how both books target the general audience and not one specific age group or audience of readers. We will be shedding light at the themes and messages conveyed to us in both books, the point of view and the style of writing of the authors as well as the plot and the format used by the authors, in order to demonstrate how both books are targeting the general audience.
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
Imagery returns once more, allowing the reader to sense the nerves that were beginning to affect the narrator; preparing them for a suspenseful turning point. The turning point that follows had been the revelation of the narrator’s thoughts about stealing the book- which may have been why she must’ve lost her doubts prior. The narrator could not bring herself to steal the book, but was not ready to forget her special moment; looking to the book for an
Often, when a story is told, it follows the events of the protagonist. It is told in a way that justifies the reasons and emotions behind the protagonist actions and reactions. While listening to the story being cited, one tends to forget about the other side of the story, about the antagonist motivations, about all the reasons that justify the antagonist actions.
end. This essay will further show how both stories shared similar endings, while at the same time
Owens and Sawhill use pathos to evoke the feelings of their readers. This method establishes
In the simplest form, there is a basic structural pattern to narratives, as expressed through Tzvetan Todorov’s explanation of narrative movement between two equilibriums. A narrative begins in a stable position until something causes disequilibrium, however, by the end of the story, the equilibrium is re-established, though it is different than the beginning (O’Shaughnessy 1999: 268). Joseph Cam...
Silko counsels that the story's potential for good or ill should not be easily discounted or dismissed. She seems to understand all too well that human beings house both virtuous and vicious impulses; our stories are infused with both the sinister and the sublime. There is a unifying, mythical or archetypal realm which exists just beyond the scope of individual consciousness. Stories are tethered to and wound around this insubstantial place, and the power of each story is firmly rooted in this connection.
Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. 3rd Ed. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 2007.