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What does storytelling mean? If I were to pick someone out from a crowd and ask him/her this question, most likely the thought of mothers reading bedtime stories to their kids or teachers reading fairy tales to the students come to the mind. The mind, though how powerful it might be, will always tell us the obvious answer to a question.

Apparently I, like all others, did not think past the module called “Storytelling”. Like a mask hiding a murderer or a cloth masking a basket of kittens, I did not know what the module held for me. What was worse was that at 9 a.m. in the morning (YES! 9 AM), my mind, no matter how amazing it demonstrated to be in the past, was still in “sleep mode” by the time I entered the class.

Something happen the moment I stepped into the class that jolt me back to reality. You could call it a cultural shock, as when the class started, I did not expect Mr. Ryan to have us write our names and facts about us on a card. A silent yet potent way of getting to know us more? How wrong was I. As it turned out, it was apparently for comic relief. I totally had the wrong impression of Mr. Ryan. (Maybe due to the fact I had a strict teacher called Ryan in sec sch) Another “Cultural shock” was when he told us to form a circle and play an icebreaker game… AN ICE BREAKER GAME! This was when I realized our lecturer is not boring! (No suck up intended) The icebreaker game we played was the name and action game. (Was kind of hoping for wacko instead) Mr. Ryan went with Rapper Ryan! Now that’s something you don’t see everyday.

After the ‘fun and games’, Mr. Ryan explained that Storytelling had NOTHING to do with telling stories to little children. It was to tell to (of all people) the Directors and Producers. So Storytelling = Script writing. Go figures. The next few minutes, we were learning how to kick the habit and write in present tense. As you can see, my typing is mostly past tense as writing from young, we get the impression that stories are in the past tense. From nursery rhymes to compositions, the ‘past tense propaganda’ has been at work, wiring into our minds that past tense is the way to go.

We also learnt the First, second and third ‘person view’ way of writing. As scriptwriters, we must write what we want the audience to see. Quite hard, as we are used to summarize stories and not to spam lots of action words together. For me, I would prefer to draw comics to express my ’script’ but writing it seem so much more…. flexible. Also behind all these teachings, one element helps bonds the script together. Without it, a script would just be a bunch of words with no feel to it. This element of mine, called imagination, was almost killed due to the dullness of O level English papers. (Reviving it would take some time, but for me, a steady dosage of anime did the trick)

Writing a novel is so much easier as you need not use much imagination into the actions as the readers can imagine it themselves but with a script, all will be looking into the way you want it to be. To me, a script is so much more rewarding as I can see what I imagined come alive on film and share it with others. (Novels can disappoint those who imagined what happened differently)

In actual fact, I HATE writing essays as its so dull but now this module has revived my inner child. Mr. Ryan has really made English fun again. Hope this is not for lesson 1 only…

Ok for those who don’t know why I have called my Module blog Peanut Butter is because my Mac name is “ピーナッツバター”. Its Japanese, pronounced by Piinatsu Buttsu or Peanut Butter in English! Will post my assignments for module: Story Telling.