Category: Uncategorized

After. pretty crazy-busy week, we’re enjoying a bit of a lazy Sunday. Marshall, my seven-year-old 95-pound house-horse (he’s actually a rather handsome Doberman Pinscher/American Bulldog cross), is relaxing pretty hard in my bed, watching me type on my laptop. I’m trying to think of different stories I could live-tweet for my Digital Storytelling class. 

The bedroom window is open, letting in a gentle breeze. At the honking sounds of distant migrating geese, Marshie perks up, and stares out the window. Then he turns back to me with a whine and a look of askance: “Hey dad, it’s sooo nice today, why don’t we go for a walk?” I look at him for a long second, thinking maybe I should get outside, since I was fresh out of inspiration. “Yeah, sure thing bud, let’s go find your leash.”

After having reading, with interest, FRACTALS analysis of Buzzfeed headlines that garner more shares and likes – animal/pet stories that create joyful emotions seem to rank high – I thought of using Marshall as my furry muse.

I then put together a quick outline using the tips from the tutorial video “How to Write a Great Short Story – The 8-Point Story Arc:

1. Stasis: A lazy Sunday afternoon in November for Marshall
2. Trigger: A nice winter’s day, an open window, and the sound of geese makes Marshall want to go for a walk
3. Quest: Finding and putting on his leash, heading to the off-leash dog park
4. Surprise: The enthusiastic sniffing of things along the walking trail; sadness of being all alone at the dog park
5. Critical Choice: Leaving the off-leash area as no-one else was there
6. Climax: Meeting other dogs on the way back, saying hello!
7. Reversal: Glad to be back home because it getting colder now,, and treats
8. Resolution: A tired but content dog, happy to be back lying down on a warm and cozy bed, enjoying snuggles.

This story is a daily straightforward, domesticated Heroes’ Journey, albeit from a doggy point-of-view. I tried to use Gary Vaynerchuk’s statement on good storytelling – whether through an action or an emotion, “the true test of storytelling is how you feel or what you do after you consume it.” I also applied Kenn Adam’s Story Spine structure to help build this expository narrative.

Now, Marshall is a very strong dog and a puller, so we had to get him a figure-eight leash, which goes around his nose and prevents him from straining and choking himself. Normally he hates it, and putting it on him is the most trying part of the exercise. However, today he complied with little fuss – good boy, Marshie!

“Let’s go to the dog park, bud.” Oh yes, he wagged, and promptly relieved himself against a nearby tree.

 As Eric Goldschein writes, “social media post is an informal means of expression. It should be accessible to anyone who wants to learn more about you or your business. Stay away from industry jargon and dense paragraphs and try to have fun with it.” I have tried to pay attention to the tone of my writing, making it more reflective of how I naturally speak – after many years of writing reports, it’s hard to loosen up.

Goldshein also talks about the importance of grabbing an emotional hold of your audience, hence using lots of pictures of my really, really good-looking dog (he’s so hot right now) as the main subject – let’s hope it’s working. 🙂

Check out the Twitter/X thread below:

Marshall is excited to get back to the warmth and coziness of his home. And to one of his favourite snacks – dill pickle flavoured pretzel sticks!

It’s been a good afternoon, and now back to lounging on the bed.

On Monday, November 13, the Edmonton Oilers played their first game under new head coach, Kris Knoblauch.

What could have been an ordinary Monday was anything but after the Oilers management fired head coach Jay Woodcroft the day before. It was announced that his replacement would be a rookie NHL coach, Kris Knoblauch, who previously coached star player Connor McDavid. It was a controversial decision that many had issues with and created great anticipation before Monday’s game to see how well the team would do.

A (very) bad start

After a successful (yet not cup-winning) previous season, fans had high hopes for this year’s team. But disaster struck when they were humiliated at home by the Vancouver Canucks, losing 8-1.

The struggle continued and it was clear that some change should be which finally happened before Monday’s game against the New York Islanders.

For these reasons, I chose to live-tweet the highly anticipated event.

A new beginning

For Oilers fans, the enticement to follow the story was already there. I first tweeted that the puck would drop in one hour as suggested by Hayley Dorney in “How to use post threads“.

Sixty minutes later the entertainment began and I tried to enhance the emotion by tweeting about a clip of the new coach tearing up in an interview.

The Islanders scored after only 40 seconds which made this seem like it was going to be a sad story to relay. But by the end of the first period, it was tied 1-1 so it only made sense to play up the suspense in my live tweets.

I made sure to include when the game was half over and signify the middle of the event so that it has the proper story arc. In that tweet, I also wanted to emphasize the importance of the team needing to work harder to overcome their challenges.

There was a conveniant cliffhanger in the game after the second period as the game was still tied and could go either way. Thankfully, for fans and this live-tweeting experience, the Oilers scored three goals in the third period. It was a fun time to live tweet the goals, keep the story enticing, and in the end a successful first game for the new coach!

Since I haven’t had much opportunity to get out of the house this past week due to illness, I thought I would rewatch Suzanne Collins’ film “The Hunger Games”!

This Twitter Thread is a live-tweeting commentary on my rewatch of this movie. I gave a brief overview of the storytelling components and filmmaking methods. I also underlined my favourite scenes from the film and how they have stuck with me ever since I watched “The Hunger Games” for the first time!

Twitter Thread:

As I was creating this thread, I was careful to use language that was equivalent to the way that I talk! According to The Non-Writers’ Guide To Writing Better Social Media Copy, writing in the same language and tone that you would typically use to communicate makes your writing seem more genuine and natural. Since it makes a piece of writing more enjoyable and easier to read, I made sure to incorporate this idea throughout my thread.

Additionally, I used GIFS to make my thread more visually appealing and fun for the reader, maintaining the reader’s short attention span with images that are relevant to the message I’m trying to convey, creating a more entertaining piece. Using hashtags related to the story is also a technique I used to reach maximum impact and to target the sort of demographic I was attempting to capture.

In conclusion, I loved the idea of live-tweeting a Twitter thread to showcase my experience of rewatching ‘The Hunger Games’! The use of Twitter allows authors to write in shorter chunks, creating a more engaging platform to tell stories on! I would definitely consider embarking on this journey again and live-tweet some of my other experiences.

In one of my many jobs as a secretary for a local church, we brainstorm regularly how to engage the community as Sunday Church is certainly a thing of the past. We came up with the Hallmark Christmas Festival, trying to recreate the scenes of the movie, where the actors go into a Christmas Festival and string popcorn garlands or enjoy a deluxe hot chocolate and so on. We realized quickly we wouldn’t be able to pull if off all by ourselves, so we reached out to community organisations and business asking if they would like to offer a station in exchange for advertising for their business or organisation.

We decorated the church and were super excited when we had 4 other groups commit. In the end we ended up with even more! We advertised with flyers and on social media and we were happy with over 80 people showing up to participate in our #HallmarkChristmasKillam. Hopefully the “First Annual” of many more to come.

Here is my live tweet as we were getting the hot chocolate going, ponies arriving and people starting to set up their stations. Live tweeting a story is definitely not as easy as I expected! Follow along here:

Embarking on the journey through Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic masterpiece, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” my Twitter live-tweet thread aimed to capture the essence of suspense and unravel the dark tapestry of the Usher estate.

Twitter Thread: x.com/sa125559/status/1725638128105623968?s=20

Initially inspired by the Wilde quote in this week’s TEDTalk video, I thought about recounting someone’s first reading of The Picture of Dorian Gray. But, this would have been far too ambitious. A natural, and maybe easy, way out was to take the intrinsically imbedded suspense built into the horror genre as the framework for my live-tweet saga.

The live-tweet thread commenced with a sense of anticipation, reflecting the excitement and trepidation of exploring a classic work of literature. This opening was to capture the audience’s interest from the start, aligning with Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice on hooking the audience.

The tweets strategically unfolded with the plot developments; the escalating tension within the tale transferring to my own reception and recounting. This technique was used to keep the audience engaged and eager to discover the next twist.

The thread followed a (somewhat) coherent structure, dividing the story into clear sections—beginning, middle, and end. Each tweet contributed to the overall narrative and provided a progressive flow while maintaining suspense and intrigue.

Applying the principles of the 8-point story arc from the Educational Tutorials, the Twitter thread’s tone highlighted the heightened stakes and suspense in the story. Elements of the crumbling mansion, Roderick Usher’s parallel fate, and the foreboding prophecy added layers of interest.

I was expecting Eric Goldschein’s article to hammer home the importance of plain language, but was pleasantly surprised with his advice that resonates with my writing philosophy: Writing for your readers. I also tried to include visual elements, a most fun perk of the writing assignments for this course.

Live-tweeting Poe’s dark tale allowed me to experiment with storytelling in a condensed format. The challenge lay in capturing the atmosphere and suspense of each plot development within the character limit. The thread aimed to bring the haunting narrative to a digital audience, combining classic literature with the dynamic nature of online storytelling. Digital advents like tagging, gifs, and hashtags foster a sense of community and engagement, an additional layer to storytelling I think Poe would have enjoyed.

For the full experience, check out the live-tweet thread here.

I read to to try to understand the world around me, to find out the why of things. With all the conflicts and schisms taking place both in our country and abroad, a colleague of mine recently handed me a book by Thomas Sowell, “A Conflict of Visions” that discusses the ideological reasons of political struggles. “You should read this,” he said. “Things will start making a bit more sense, from a 30,000 foot view.” So I am doing as he suggested.

Now, I’m still in the early stages of this admittedly weighty book, but it increasing has my attention and is fast becoming a favourite. In the book, the author discusses how political controversies arise from many sources, but the long-term, generational conflicts seem to adhere to remarkably consistent patterns regarding the nature of reason, justice, equality and power. Sowell distinguishes between the idea of a “constrained” vision, where human nature is seen as “enduring and self-centred” and the “unconstrained” vision, in which human nature is “malleable and perfectible.” 

Visions are necessarily abstract and simplistic, he writes, and form the foundations upon which theories are built, a “pre-analytic cognitive act”, something we sense or feel before developing a theory concerning it. Sowell writes that the ancient Greeks ascribed volcanic eruptions, storms or other natural phenomena to spirits or gods, and as our understanding evolved, our vision of the world changed. Issac Newton had a different vision of the world, Darwin another – and so it goes. 

The author uses the Story Spine structure effectively, using a beginning, middle, and an ending to guide the reader through his argument. In the beginning he outlines the roles of visions, with a particular focus on the many social visions that relate to our political and civic lives, and how these affect governance models. Then in the middle, he discusses the ongoing conflict of visions taking place in our society (think Culture Wars) and around the world, by grouping them into constrained and unconstrained visions, with each vision coming to “conclusions that are the logical consequences of its assumptions” leading to repeated conflicts. Sowell ends with a wide-ranging discussion on the actors involved with promoting either vision, their biases and ideologies and social/emotional attachments to their points of view. 

The author also uses the Persuasive Story Pattern throughout the beginning, middle, and the end sections, first laying out the current state (what is) and then outlining what could be, and provides plenty of facts and examples from the social/political sciences and social philosophy to back his claims. The language used, while academic, is fairly straightforward in presenting complex ideas in a relatable, easy-to-understand fashion, which I appreciate.

Thus far, I am finding this book to be quite illuminating; however, I do have a mild criticism. I feel the author would have likely create a more persuasive series of arguments if he had used identifiable characters, settings, and better utilization of the classic narrative arc to establish his arguments – to give them more emotional weight in order to drive his point home

I am looking forward to finishing this book to get a more nuanced insight into the current events taking place around us, and to avoid getting drawn into “taking sides” or polemical thinking that seems to be all the rage these days.