Overview

I am really excited about reading these epics because I have very limited knowledge of the country of India. I have a very good friend who is from India so I know little things about culture and religion but I have never gotten the opportunity to study the country very much. Also, I am very interested to see how creating a storybook goes as in the past I have done a little creative writing but nothing like creating a storybook of my own.

Flag of India 

Source: Wikipedia Commons 

Storybook Favorites

My three favorites that I found in the Storybooks were: Law & Order: SSU, Epic Brothers, and The Karma Times. Starting with Law & Order: SSU, I think I mainly like this storybook based on the title since Law & Order: SVU is one of my favorite TV shows. However, I also really like the way this author took the characters he was using and placed them into another plot such as the one from Law and Order. I think it is a very unique way to grad the attention of your audience and at the same time still tell the story of the characters that you want to tell. The second one I liked was Epic Brothers because I thought that the layout was very clean and accessible and that each individual tab was very easy to read. Also, in their work they told their story without a lot of stuff from the outside so it seemed very simplified. The last one i liked was The Karma Times, I really liked it because of the way it told the story. It was another very creative approach to explain the story they wanted to tell by using somewhat of a first-person newspaper approach. The only thing that stood out to me that I do not like is the background of The Karma Times, it seems to be very distracting as I am trying to focus on reading the content. The other two used a much simpler background that allowed the content to be the dominant part of the page. I would definitely use a basic background that allowed attention to focus on the content. Also, all of the basic setup functions on the side with the simple title and menu seem to look good and be very accessible to unfamiliar visitors.

Original Law & Order Picture 

Source: Law & Order: SSU 

Introduction: Bill Johnston

My name is Bill Johnston. I am a Letters major with a focus on Constitutional Studies. This past fall I was accepted into the University of Oklahoma Law School and will be attending there next fall. Luckily, I will be attending with two of my best friends so I am very excited for that next step in my life. I was born and raised in Oklahoma City, OK and cannot imagine a better place to call home. I graduated from Heritage Hall high school in 2011 and have been at OU since. My father and older brother are both also Sooners, however, my mother is unfortunately and Oklahoma State alum so Bedlam is always interesting at our house. We have a small Maltese dog named Sugar, which is a very poor name for a male dog but it is an extremely long story.

More than anything I love sports. I am an avid fan of football, baseball, basketball and hockey. However, my favorite teams all have bizarre back stories as to why I cheer for them that take way too long to discuss but my favorite teams are the Chicago Cubs, Washington Redskins, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Chicago Blackhawks. As I mentioned in my blog about favorite places there is not much more I enjoy than a trip to Chicago to see the Cubs play at Wrigley Field.

After Law School, I am not entirely sure what I want to do with my life but I do know that I want to stay in Oklahoma. Oklahoma is and always will be home to me. This state has such wonderful people with so much to offer. I cannot imagine living in a big city filled with traffic all the time and lines everywhere you go or a Starbucks on every corner. I would like to practice law for an oil corporation in Oklahoma because I believe they are responsible for the great strides the state has made in the last fifteen years and that there is so much more they can do for this great state.

There is everything I like, so here is everything I dislike: Starbucks, Batman or any other superhero movie, Harry Potter or any other ridiculous fiction movie, and Dallas Cowboys fans.

Week 1 Storytelling: The Holiday Nightmare

Bill Johnston

“Holiday Home” Map Story

            Jerry and his friends could not wait for finals to end as they had finally planned the ski trip of their dreams for their senior year. They were traveling to an old cabin in the mountains of Alaska for two whole weeks. This trip was going to be one of those stories they would tell their kids when they got older and talked about “The Good Ole Days”, or at least that is what they thought. However, once they arrived at the cabin they soon realized their holiday home was not at all what they had expected and was in the middle of a deserted mountain with only the bare essentials inside. Jerry’s best friend Ford decided that he would go out and search the surrounding area for any other homes or visitors that were also skiing the mountain over the holidays. The first thing he noticed was relatively close to their cabin, in the distance it looked like an old Native American teepee, however, it was actually a very small replica of the Egyptian Temples. Engraved above the front doors read “Temple of Doom”. All of the sudden he began to hear the echo of screaming from inside the temple, naturally this freaked Ford out and he went running back to the cabin informing the guys they needed to leave immediately. The third man on the trip, Blake, did not believe any of this. He decided he would go and find the nearest people so they could have people over to the cabin that night for a kickoff party to their trip. Blake went stumbling pretty far down some old trails and came upon a mansion up in the mountains. From the outside it appeared to be an old castle of some sort. Blake knocked at the front door but it appeared to him that it was abandoned. He decided to go exploring on his own and soon realized the castle was haunted. As he made his way through the castle doors were slamming behind him while items began falling from the ceiling and off of the walls. Screaming and running through the castle he eventually made it out alive and ran all the way back to the cabin. Jerry, in disbelief, listened to his friends recite these ridiculous tails. He figured his friends were playing a sick joke on him so he went to prove them wrong. He could hear a man’s voice off in the distance so he followed it. He found a nice man with an axe chopping down trees. He assumed the man was chopping firewood and they began talking. Jerry was telling the man about the trip and his friend’s ridiculous stories. The man chuckled and asked for some help carrying the firewood back to his house up the trail. Jerry gladly helped the man. When they got back to the house jerry noticed the axe was stained with blood and the house was actually a slaughterhouse full of chains and other axes. Jerry turned to run away when the man grabbed him from behind. The man tied him down to a table and then grabbed the axe. He swung the axe high in the air, as Jerry lay there helpless. The axe was beginning to come crashing down on Jerry when their flight landed in Alaska and shook him awake. Now Jerry was ready to have the best holiday season of his life.

Author's note: I honestly just kind of made this entire thing up while sitting on my couch and started typing. Most of my motivation came directly from the map because I thought it just naturally setup for a terrifying environment. However, the idea of making the entire story a dream is just something that i have always like in movies or in novels. I am a big fan of movies that throw a big twist in at the end to say the entire plot was fake or made up for some reason.This is a tool that is very thought provoking in storytelling because it allows the author to be extremely out of the box with his or her creativity. Along with the creativity it really makes the reader think about what the author was intending to do with such a big plot twist. Then you have the question, was the entire reading of the story just a big waste of time since it was all a dream or since the entire plot was made up, or is it that more interesting? A huge influence on this story was the plot of my favorite movie, "The usual Suspects". It is an outstanding film that I would go into detail about but will not in fear of giving away anything too specific. Referenced Tom Gauld's Holiday Home for: Axeman, Haunted Castle, Slaughterhouse, and Temple of Doom. 

Old Log Cabin 

Source: Wikipedia Commons 

My Favorite Places

I have two favorite places that are very different from each other. The first is Wrigley Field on the north side of Chicago and the other is Playa Del Carmen which is on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Wrigley Field is one of the most historic baseball parks in the country and home to my favorite sports team the Chicago Cubs. I have enjoyed traveling to Wrigley almost every summer of my life with my family. There are not many more places that I enjoy being besides sitting in the bleachers of Wrigley Field watching the Cubs play. 

Wrigley Field

Source: Flickr

My second favorite place in the world is Playa Del Carmen in in the Yucatan. It is a much smaller version of Cancun and provides a very peaceful vacation. It is one of the most amazing places in the world i have ever been, 

Beach in Playa Del Carmen

Source: Flickr