Aaron Harmon
WordShots.com
Wordshots is a social networking site for creative writers.
http://www.wordshots.com/
If human interaction is life's greatest treat, then story telling is the sugar. This is a place that will let you keep your storytelling skills sharp. WordShots is a place to meet writers and develop the craft of storytelling. At Wordshots you can: write a story based on a weekly prompt designed to sharpen story telling skills, submit your own prompts to help others learn how to tell stories, read stories written by other people and submit your own original short stories. Best of all, you will be able to meet and receive feedback from other people interested in creative writing.
Ira Glass, creator and host of This American Life, suggests that the reason individuals give up after failure is because they have good taste. “You’ve got really good taste, but there’s a gap, for the first couple years of making stuff you’re making stuff and it’s not so good. But your taste is a killer. Your taste is so good that what you’re making is disappointing to you. A lot of people at that point, they quit.” Glass goes on to argue that the solution to getting past this phase, and continuing with creative work is to “do a lot of work, do a huge volume of work and put your self in a situation where you have to turn out work.”
The emergence of Web 2.0; where the internet is used as a platform for individuals to contribute, communicate and cooperate; now allows places to be built which can create an environment where an individual develops creative work, receives feedback on that work, and presents a constant challenge to the development of their work. This observation led to the development of Wordshots.com, a Web 2.0 site that offers creative writers the opportunity to develop their craft and close the gap between taste and ability mentioned by Glass.
Amateur Writers
Angela is a college student at State University. She has taken a creative writing course and enjoyed it. She has started a couple of blogs, but ended up giving them up after a few weeks of posting. She likes to read. She had too much to do between homework, her part time job, boyfriend and her on campus activities.
One day, while slacking off from homework and reading one of her favorite blogs, she finds a link to our site. She clicks it and visits. She quickly glances at the site, bookmarks it, intending to return to it later. She gets back to her homework. A few weeks later, she goes opens her book marks and realizes they need to be cleaned up. She starts visiting them one by one and lands on our site again. She remembers she wanted to look at it, and begins to read a few stories. One in particular, a story about a boy and a girl in a supermarket, makes her smile. She decides to congratulate the writer and decides to comment. She realizes she has to register. She fills out the short registration form and leaves a comment. She opts out of receiving a weekly email. Once she submits the comment she reads another story, and then closes the window. A few days later, she receives an email. It is a response to the comment she left the story teller earlier. She goes back to the site and reads the response. For the first time she sees her account\'s admin page.
She realizes she hasn\'t written any stories, so opens the first set of constraints up. She reads it, but the stylistic constraint is not to her liking. She wants to choose it. There is a link next to it offering her the ability to choose what type of story she wants to write. She clicks it, and a menu opens up. She glances over her options, and begins to imagine the story she would write in a few of them, but ignores most of them. She selects one she would like to write about, and clicks on it. She begins to read over the narrative constraint again when her boyfriend calls. She agrees to go out with him, minimizes the window and then gets ready for and goes on her date. She returns home with her boyfriend, and they spend some time together. She goes to her computer to put on some music. She sees the story page staring back at her, and smiles. She turns and asks her boyfriend what sort of story she should write. He goes to the computer and reads it over, and makes a few suggestions.
Together, they spend about 10 minutes typing something up. She clicks submit. However, her session was timed out. The system asks her to login again. She does so. Luckily, the system stored her story. When she finishes logging in, she is taken back to the submission screen, and the contents she typed are waiting for her, ready to be submitted once again. She submits her story once again. This time, it is successful. Her boyfriend asks her what it is. She gives him a rough explanation. He asks her to email him the link. Ignoring the box allowing her to invite someone to the site, she copies and pastes the URL into the body of an email, which she sends to him.
Uses PHP/MySQL to generate a dynamic web pages and accept user generated content.
Ira Glass, creator and host of This American Life, suggests that the reason individuals give up after failure is because they have good taste. “You’ve got really good taste, but there’s a gap, for the first couple years of making stuff you’re making stuff and it’s not so good. But your taste is a killer. Your taste is so good that what you’re making is disappointing to you. A lot of people at that point, they quit.” Glass goes on to argue that the solution to getting past this phase, and continuing with creative work is to “do a lot of work, do a huge volume of work and put your self in a situation where you have to turn out work.”
The emergence of Web 2.0; where the internet is used as a platform for individuals to contribute, communicate and cooperate; now allows places to be built which can create an environment where an individual develops creative work, receives feedback on that work, and presents a constant challenge to the development of their work. This observation led to the development of Wordshots.com, a Web 2.0 site that offers creative writers the opportunity to develop their craft and close the gap between taste and ability mentioned by Glass.
Amateur Writers
Angela is a college student at State University. She has taken a creative writing course and enjoyed it. She has started a couple of blogs, but ended up giving them up after a few weeks of posting. She likes to read. She had too much to do between homework, her part time job, boyfriend and her on campus activities.
One day, while slacking off from homework and reading one of her favorite blogs, she finds a link to our site. She clicks it and visits. She quickly glances at the site, bookmarks it, intending to return to it later. She gets back to her homework. A few weeks later, she goes opens her book marks and realizes they need to be cleaned up. She starts visiting them one by one and lands on our site again. She remembers she wanted to look at it, and begins to read a few stories. One in particular, a story about a boy and a girl in a supermarket, makes her smile. She decides to congratulate the writer and decides to comment. She realizes she has to register. She fills out the short registration form and leaves a comment. She opts out of receiving a weekly email. Once she submits the comment she reads another story, and then closes the window. A few days later, she receives an email. It is a response to the comment she left the story teller earlier. She goes back to the site and reads the response. For the first time she sees her account\'s admin page.
She realizes she hasn\'t written any stories, so opens the first set of constraints up. She reads it, but the stylistic constraint is not to her liking. She wants to choose it. There is a link next to it offering her the ability to choose what type of story she wants to write. She clicks it, and a menu opens up. She glances over her options, and begins to imagine the story she would write in a few of them, but ignores most of them. She selects one she would like to write about, and clicks on it. She begins to read over the narrative constraint again when her boyfriend calls. She agrees to go out with him, minimizes the window and then gets ready for and goes on her date. She returns home with her boyfriend, and they spend some time together. She goes to her computer to put on some music. She sees the story page staring back at her, and smiles. She turns and asks her boyfriend what sort of story she should write. He goes to the computer and reads it over, and makes a few suggestions.
Together, they spend about 10 minutes typing something up. She clicks submit. However, her session was timed out. The system asks her to login again. She does so. Luckily, the system stored her story. When she finishes logging in, she is taken back to the submission screen, and the contents she typed are waiting for her, ready to be submitted once again. She submits her story once again. This time, it is successful. Her boyfriend asks her what it is. She gives him a rough explanation. He asks her to email him the link. Ignoring the box allowing her to invite someone to the site, she copies and pastes the URL into the body of an email, which she sends to him.
Uses PHP/MySQL to generate a dynamic web pages and accept user generated content.