Plagiarism, Projection, and Imagination

First things first:

Keep the blogging up, you're doing great!

A note on Plagiarism:

1) What is it? Taking the ideas, expressions, language, or ideas of someone else's work and passing them off as your own, not giving appropriate credit where it's due. This is academic dishonesty and it's a pretty serious offense.

2) How do you avoid it? Whenever you're going to use the ideas of someone else either by paraphrasing or directly quoting, you must give proper credit to the original author.

3) Is this really a big deal? Um, yes. It doesn't only apply to research papers, it applies to creative writing as well. You've probably been told there's a policy at SOTA regarding academic honesty and plagiarism. My favorite quote from this document: "If you handed it in and didn't do it on your own, you've probably violated the policy."

4) Seriously, just don't do it.



Brace yourselves, things are about to get weird. Last week we looked at pictures and wrote stories from them. This week, we're going to crack open some of the "why" behind creative storytelling. Learning some of these stranger ideas will help you as you go forward writing, reading, and creating. 

Projection

As much as I know you'd love to read all about the psychological concept, it can be broken into much simpler terms. 

1) Everything comes from inside us, even though we might not recognize it. 

2) We put familiar masks on things we don't understand. This is why human beings often relate things to their own lives. 

3) Oftentimes, our creative writing is just us projecting some part of ourselves into words we can make sense of. 

When you're writing, it helps to be aware that this is completely normal and that creativity begins within. There's a small article here that considers the writer's struggle between Projection and Imagination. 

In the coming classes we're going to look at all manner of strange stories with the end goal of creating our own worlds. This is a pretty thoughtful video on creating your own fictional world. 

Today:

Bouncing off the idea of projection and the creation of your own world, you're going to brainstorm on Padlet. This is a brainstorm, so you're just getting your ideas into the provided space. Whilst brainstorming, remember you can use, say, write, post, whatever helps you create the world you want. Talk with each other, post pictures, ask questions, start getting creative. This is the first step in the Writing Process. 

At the end of class, I want your Padlet brainstorming links to be posted in my blog's comments along with your names. 

Homework:

Zerrrroooo