Week 5 Portfolio Styles

Personally, I think it is kind of hard to determine what styles I will be using for my portfolio because I haven’t read all of the stories I plan on writing about yet. I think a journey or tour guide style would be good to use on the Canterbury Tales. This is what I had planned on doing for my storybook, and so I think I could still use it here. In the journey or tour guide style, I could narrate and discuss the characters as they’re on their way to Canterbury. I would be able to incorporate landmarks and relate them to the characters. I would probably only have enough time to briefly discuss two or three of the characters though. Because of that, this may be a weakness of the style.

Another style I really like is the diary style. I noticed that one of my classmates had used it for the Tales of a Parrot section, and I really liked the way they did that. I think it would be interesting to use that style on another story and tell it from a main character’s point of view. It makes the story very personable and easy to relate to. Since I haven’t read enough to determine where I would use this style, I think it may be interesting at this point to rewrite one of my stories about the Women Saints. I would choose one of the saints that dressed like a man, and write a diary about how hard it is being accused of crimes and being exiled when you atomically could not commit the crimes you are charged of. So far, that is my idea on how to use the diary style. But if another story presents itself and I think this style would work, I would love to use it then.

I also really like the inanimate objects as narrators. Had I thought about this sooner, I think it would have been really interesting to tell the story of Aladdin from the point of view of the lamp. The lamp is a desired object and is very powerful because of what it contains. Because of this, I think it would be interesting to use this style. I will keep this style in mind as I continue to read through more stories.

I think another really fun storytelling style to use would be the bedtime story style. I think this style is perfect to use because many of the stories we read in this class are fables and stories like that. Because of this, I think the bedtime story style would work well with the stories themes, and just generally flow well. It will be easy to work with this theme, and it makes the story more exciting. I will probably read a fairytale or folktale section within the next two weeks, and I think those types of stories would be best geared toward this style. Even something such as Alice in Wonderland would be the perfect fit for a bedtime story style.

The last style that I think would be interesting to use is the therapy session style. I like this style because I feel like there are several characters that I have read about that just have many problems. I think it would be interesting to share their thoughts and feelings from the stories in a therapy session. I am not quite positive which character I would pick for this, but I am sure I will come across one within the next few weeks in my readings. If all else fails, it wouldn’t be bad to use a therapy session with the Sultan from the Arabian Nights section. He was very messed up from his first wife cheating on him, it could reflect his feelings on that, his feelings of killing a new wife every night, and his feelings on his new wife who is continuously telling him fabulous stories every night.

Overall, I think it is very hard to determine which styles I want to use for my portfolio because I haven’t read enough of the material to make a decision. However, I think I have some great styles that I can consider as I continue to read throughout the semester.