Style Guide 1
The Tape. Storium. Scene 3 https://storium.com/game/group-4–2/act-1/scene-3 (Links to an external site.)
The Tape. Storium. Scene 3 https://storium.com/game/group-4–2/act-1/scene-3 (Links to an external site.)
Through several writing assignments, I came to learn that describing and maintaining a person’s character can be extremely challenging. However, in “The Tape”, Storium Scene 3, the writer, Sophieahn, excellently accomplished that part. In the passage, the descriptions of Stacy’s character development highly contributed to the greatness of the story. The writer, simultaneously, describes the changes in character that Stacy undergoes during the story and her usual behavior. The passage was well displayed through the use of pathos and imagery that insisted in illustrating character development.
To quickly summarize the story and the passage that I admired. Stacy, the mother, with her two children, James and Mecca, living in a wooden house in the middle of nowhere. After watching a horror movie, James and Mecca, went to bed where they had a nightmare of a monster which extremely frightened them. Subsequently, they woke up and searched for their mother, whom they found in the dark behaving very oddly. As a single mother, Stacy has always been strong and brave, mostly in front of her children. The passage that I admired the most was when they found her in an unusual state of manners. Her unusual behavior expanded the frightening that they initially approached her with. The descriptions in this passage illustrate the drastic change in Stacy’s behavior.
I like this passage mainly because of how Stacy’s strange manner was portrayed. The first sentence reads, “There is a heavy weight, almost like a fog, surrounding my body.” This sentence acts as a starting point to Stacy’s atypical behavior. The use of imagery in this sentence was greatly effective: words such as “weight” and “fog” as a way of describing her internal feelings. The strongest line here is “heavy weight.” Although, she is perceived as a strong mother, the heavy burden that she has been carrying is about to explode, thus she developed new characters. This line acts as a foreshadowing to show that she will change manner soon. From this line, one can also notice Stacy’s usual quality of being strong. To Stacy being strong required her to hid her true feelings and they added up to become a heavy weight. Additionally, The writer effectively used the “show, not tell.” which created pathos to the story.
Another reason why I liked the passage is that through Stacy’s development of character, the writer indirectly illustrated her usual behavior. “I wanted to comfort them and say something to ease the stress evident on their faces but I could do nothing.” this sentence shows a comparison of what she would normally do which is to comfort her children and due to her new strange behavior, she cannot do that. The writer’s choices of words keep amazing me. She used “I wanted to” to display the person that Stacy was, and “but I could not” to describe the current state that Stacy is in. This shows how her behavior is being created. It shows that Stacy is a loving mother who is there to comfort and ease the stress and worries of her kids. Later in the passage, it also says, “ Maybe I need rest, but even with these thoughts in my mind, I continue.” The word choice again is very effective, the phrase“I continue” illustrates her Stacy’s characteristic as a strong woman, regardless of how she is feeling.