musings on the concept of "story"

I don't normally do these kind of posts on this blog - the sort of posts where I just ramble and rant on about something. I don't even really do these on my personal blog anymore either. But today I feel like this has been a recurring thought on my mind, one that might interest you, so I'm sharing it. 

It's just about 10pm on the dot right now, so if I can get this out of my system and onto the screen by 10.15pm so I have time to hop on the treadmill (I call it the dreadmill) and do a spot of creative writing before bedtime that would be awesome. 

The thing I wanted to talk about is stories. The concept or idea of the story. What a story is. The shapes and forms we find stories in on a daily basis.

Yesterday in my tutorial class for the creative writing English unit I'm doing, the topic of "story vs narrative" was discussed. Our tutor was trying to explain the definitions of 'story' and 'narrative' and their relationship with one another. It's still a little hazy in my head, even though I wrote notes down. But anyway, what I got from that discussion was that a story can have narrative but not every narrative is a story. It's one of those confusing things. 

And this afternoon as I was watching the latest episode of So You Think You Can Dance, Nigel (producer/judge) was saying how amazing it was that Mia Michaels (choreographer) could create a story in only a minute and a half. Which is so true, and made me realise you don't need a plot to tell a story, and there's no need for any arc or methodical structure when it comes to story and storytelling. I believe it's the 'telling' part that makes it a story. You can put a couple people up on a stage and turn on some music and suddenly you're watching a story unfold before your eyes. Or you can sit down on your living room sofa, open up a book and there's a story sitting there patiently on your lap. It could be a montage, a sequence of images, a movie. Or a TV ad, or one sentence.

I've been finding it really, really difficult to start on my creative writing process. For this unit I'm doing we have to submit a folio later in the semester, featuring a few poems or a short story within a word limit. I want to tell a story. And I'm starting to figure out just how ambiguous my task really is, and how percolated the concept of stories is. There's a struggle within me - one voice is yelling at me saying that is exactly what makes telling a story easy, and another voice telling me that it's for this reason that I'm finding it so hard.

I don't know. I'm going to try my best to get this concept of story rooted in my mind and rooting for me to just go for it, jump in, and tell a story. 

Book Blog Do's/Don'ts : Formatting (my preferences)

These are just a few things I look for on the home page when I'm visiting a book blog for the first time and I want to gauge whether or not I should bother following. 

(NB: this post is similar to the post I did last December entitled Book Blog Pet Peeves. It covers different things though.)

1. CONDENSE THE HOME PAGE: Please don't make me scroll down the page for yonks and yonks in order to look for certain info/widgets. This probably means the size (or quantity) of your posts need to be reduced. Use jump breaks so I don't have to scroll through long posts, or limit the number of posts that show on the home page to about a dozen. Otherwise it's just way too much content for a first-time visitor like myself to look through.

2. ARCHIVES: Have them somewhere I can find them easily! I want to know what kind of posts you put out - some book bloggers do a crapload of reviews, some only post about books they are pining for, some tend to mainly post about books they have bought, and some bloggers post a lot about the publishing world. The easiest way for me to see what sort of stuff you like to write about is to have an archives widget that allows me to see post titles, not just dates. 

3. I LIKE PRETTY THINGS: But don't over do it. I respond well to things that entice me visually. However, too much of anything is a bad thing, so if you want a fancy background, don't use lots of bright colours or too many graphics. It's possible to have funky or ornate backgrounds but you can mute the tones so the focus is still on the content. Also, when I see an awesome header I'm more likely to follow the blog. Possibly shallow of me, but nevertheless true.

4. DON'T OVER BUTTON IT: Too many banners and buttons will give me a headache! Promoting friends/challenges/contests is A-okay with me, but don't sacrifice the integrity of your blog for any reason - whether it's for showing everyone how active you are or for getting a couple extra entries in a giveaway. All I'm saying is, as long as it's important to you and aligns with the purpose of your blog, it's alright. But if you really must have a lot of buttons down your sidebars, think about the placement of them.

5. BLOGROLLS: I like to see your blogroll. Especially if you're an Aussie blogger - there are less of us, so it's interesting to see which other Aussie bloggers you like.

Well that's about it for this round of Arielle-whining-on-about-book-blog-stuff-as-if-it-would-actually-help-someone-ha-ha-but-really-it-makes-her-sound-so-critical-who-is-she-anyway?

image source: cherryblossomgirl

update: new look + last chance to enter my international giveaway!

So guess what! 

Chimneys and Magic has a new look! Do you like it?

I was getting so incredibly tired of the old way it looked, so yesterday I changed a lot of things. 

The colour scheme is better, and so are the fonts, I think. What do you think? 

Do you remember the ugly pink hues and the weird ass fonts I had? 

Anyway, now I have social network buttons down the sidebar too! I'm really excited about those. There are also more pages across the top. 

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In case you haven't been around, please remember to enter my giveaway for Friendship on Fire by Danielle Weiler!! The link to it is at the top of the left sidebar. It's not just Australia wide but international too! The giveaway closes in less than a week, all you have to do is leave a comment on that particular post. :) 

Hope you're having a great week so far. 

Stay tuned for the rest of my 30 Day Book Meme posts and some mini reviews for several classics I've been reading. 

Here's a random old photo I dug up from Andy at style scrapbook.

Book Blog Pet Peeves... via The Story Siren

Last month Kristi (The Story Siren, duh!) posted '10 things I dislike about your blog'. I thought I'd jump in and do a little ventilation myself. If you haven't read Kristi's post, go click that link and read it! 
NOTE: I'm going to risk sounding unappealingly pretentious in this post, so I hope you don't hate me after this!
Here are some of my pet peeves when it comes to reading book blogs:


1. NOISY WIDGETS
These score 10/10 on the annoying scale, and the thing that makes it worse is when I can't even find the bloody widget to turn off the sound! Kristi mentions this too, so every blogger should be wary of this. Automatic sound in widgets does not a good blog make. What it does is make me close your page faster than 100 fast things running a race.

Welcome, Take Two!

Almost immediately after posting that first welcome on Friday, I had a revelation for a new name for this blog!

Chimneys and Magic. 

I do believe I have Oh Land to thank for that. 

A new banner for the top of the page is required but almost every part of this blog is under construction at the moment so I suppose it doesn't make much difference.

It's almost 3pm and I'm going to take a nap now. :)

Much love!

Arielle