Gregory Crewdson's Photography

Through distinctive images composers develop interest, drawing the responder in and thus providing insight into the experiences of others. This is demonstrated in Amanda Lohrey’s novella ‘Vertigo’ as Luke and Anna find themselves in a new and disorientating environment as they attempt to build a new life and in the ‘The Red Tree’ composed by Shaun Tan, through the nameless girl’s journey as she attempts to find herself and her place in the world. Meaning created by distinctive images creates interest thus permitting the responder to gain a greater understanding on how the experiences help shape one’s self.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Brian Selznick, 2007) tells the story of a mysterious young boy named Hugo, living in the walls of a Paris train station in 1931. It follows Hugo’s adventures, dreams, thoughts, and most of all, his quest to answer the many questions he has about his past. The Invention of Hugo Cabret “is a graphic novel that successfully alternates slabs of written texts with pages of black and white illustrations” (Lawn, 2012, Para 4). It is discovered firstly, how words and images work together to portray action and suspense. And secondly, how the words and images together arouse emotion from the reader and draw in the audience. These tools and techniques

Making full use of imagery, Dashner manipulated my brain into generating complex images and scenes, creating a realistic depiction of how every character thought and acted. This book was able to create an illusion of the Scorch world using words alone. The characters’ thoughts were also well presented adding a fourth dimension to this story. Everyone kept his or her unique personality, but their thoughts also gave us insight on what happens behind the scenes. By aiding the imagery with metaphors, paradoxes, and juxtapositions, Dashner created a truly stunning masterpiece. These simple tactics can also be applied to enhance my own writing. Stitching together original ideas with these simple devices, I can easily step up my writing. I can use juxtaposition to introduce a unique character, use a paradox to add emphasis on a scene, and use a metaphor to exaggerate certain aspects of a character. Though simple in concept, Dashner was able to take full advantage of it and I quickly learned some of these techniques while reading The Scorch Trials.

The Graphic Novel, “What It Is”, by Lynda Barry expresses the idea of creativity in the perspective of the author. By gradually discussing her childhood experience, we were given her own reflection about how creativity is formed. However, it wasn’t a gentle and smooth road for Barry. A section of this book titled “Two Questions” deals with one of the many obstacles Barry had to face throughout her life. This section is useful for understanding the creative process.

The editors of “Flash Fiction” asked themselves the question, “How short can a story be and still truly be a story?” (11). With this in mind, they settled on a maximum word count of 750, with a minimum of 250. They debated keeping it as “one story to a page, just a little book of little stories,” but soon realized that, without the turn of a page during a story, the reader is easily bored (13). Instead, they allowed the stories to begin and end naturally in the book’s layout.

The author of this book did make use of literary elements to tell the story. These elements are also used in other picture books such as lines, shapes, color and speech bubble. The book is a graphic novel and dialogue takes majority of the writing in the book. The dialogical and concise style of writing of the author including the pictures

Through the use of techniques and themes, a composer is able to create distinctively visual images when describing the setting and characters in detail which help us to understand and form meaning of what the composer is trying to convey in their texts. The use of techniques such as body language, symbolism, lighting, music and photographic background slides create distinctively visual images same with themes that are being used within the texts such as truth which is evident in the dramatic text ‘The Shoe-Horn Sonata’ by John Misto, the song ‘Lose Yourself’ sang by Eminem, and the film ‘The Eye’ directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud featuring Jessica Alba. These three texts demonstrate how the responders are impacted and what is

Through the use of distinct visual images and techniques to intensely place the audience in the personas experiences, to confront the fear and hopelessness, intimacy and emotional understanding of the characters can be enhanced.

Distinctively visual texts aim to manipulate the we perceive images critically affecting our interpretation of events and people we meet in our lives. Distinctively visual techniques are utilised in the ‘Run Lola Run’ directed by Tom Tykwer and the picture book ‘Red Tree’ written by Sean Tan. The way the distinctively visual is shown throughout these texts is through the use of motifs, different angle shots, colours, lighting and reading paths. These techniques aim to show the important themes in both texts such as time, hope and love.

Beautiful imagery laced amidst a wondrous storyline, accompanied by memorable and lovable characters are all elements pertaining to enjoyable works of fiction. Tales that keep one up late into the night forever reading just “one more page” forever propelling the intrinsic imagination for a novel enthusiast. Yet, at times there are deeper meanings hidden between the lines. Symbols, analogies, and latent parallels all connecting to real life events and situations being portrayed by the author. Using literary theory can bring a more profound understanding of the reading material at hand, as well as unique insight as to what the author was feeling or intending to portray at the time of writing.

In the story The Veldt, Ray Bradbury uses vivid imagery to transport the reader to a lush African veldt and describe it in rich detail. This imagery describes the characters in the story as well as it does the locations. Listening to The Veldt, your imagination crafts a picture of the characters and their home. Other readers may argue that this story has a different meaning. There are many ways to interpret why Ray Bradbury has used crafts to enrich his writing. However, there is only true reason that the author has used these crafts to communicate the writing’s true meaning. This reason is to provide a more realistic story to his readers. And by using this imagery, he is able to create a detailed image in each reader’s mind of the story, its characters, and, most importantly, the settings.

Alex Kotlowitz met Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers in 1985 while working as a journalist. He was interviewing them for a photo essay in Chicago magazine on children living in poverty. The violence that occurred every day where the brothers lived in Governor Henry Horner Homes, or Horner, disturbed Kotlowitz. Lafeyette and Pharoah are 12 and 9 years old at the start of the book but have experienced more than many kids their age. The boys did not seem sure of what life held for them. Lafeyette told Kotlowitz, “If I grow up, I’d like to be a bus driver,” Lafeyette was not sure that he would grow up at just 10 years old (x). Kotlowitz wanted to show what it is like for children growing up in urban poverty after seeing the brothers’

Have you heard about ‘Flash Fiction Rodeo Contest Five?’ I jump right in, don’t overthink, quickly going ‘live.' Eleven nine-word sentences, character limits to keep in mind. All to be tweeted, and completed, by October 29.

“The Boat” is an interactive graphic novel that takes an extraordinary tale of a young Vietnamese refugee to new heights through the use of interactive elements and sound effects. Employing a simple, easy to use scrolling method the reader is immersed in the world of the narrator, the website adopts a number of elements, the most striking; however, is the sound effects which transform the two-dimensional story to a three-dimensional landscape. Immediately readers are encased with sounds of lightning and rain, setting the scene for the tale and heightening the drama of the tale. Diegetic and non-diegetic sounds have a continual presence throughout the website, as the reader scrolls down sound effects that match the pairing stills and moving

Maurice Sendak’s use of visual elements helped make this story set a realistic setting of the real and imaginative world Max believed in. His use of line, rough texture and color throughout