Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas, or a combination of all of them?
I relied primarily on words as symbols rather than syllables. I first started with an outline of events and then simplified it, focusing on visual words. From there, I started to remove articles, prepositions, and conjunctions to get to the most meaningful words. To show relationships between the emojis, I added some symbols, like +, :, x, and =, to reflect the connection between 2 emojis. I was inspired to do this as I have taken discrete math where you use symbols like ∀ (for). I decided not to use too many of these symbols as I am aware that my community reading this might not be familiar, but for those that are, it is especially readable.
This process reminded me of what Hayles (2003) describes about how language evolves within new media. She explains that digital writing develops new grammars that mix words, visuals, and symbols. My emoji version felt similar to what she calls learning to “speak digital,” where meaning comes from arrangement and rhythm just as much as from the words themselves.

Did you start with the title? Why? Why not?
I actually started by making a few titles that I was debating on using. If my reader is able to identify the story with just the title, the context of the rest of my story will be easier to follow. When my other attempts began to be hard to find emojis for their storyline, I decided on this one as I believe most people would be familiar with it.

Did you choose the work based on how easy it would be to visualize?
I actually chose this piece of media because I had recently done it as a unit in my advanced ELL class. I initially chose this text as it was a great introduction to media and topics like dystopias. I think, if you’re familiar with this story, it will be easy to recognize. However, I had asked a peer who was unfamiliar and realized that context is everything when it comes to symbols. For someone to actually be able to recognize the story, they would first probably have to have already read it.
This connects to Kress (2005), who explains that meaning in modern media relies more on visual and contextual cues than on printed words alone. I noticed that same thing when I showed my emojis to others. Without the shared story or background, the meaning almost disappeared. It made me realize how much understanding now depends on what we already know before we even start to read. I would argue that this is a draw back of fully symbolic languages.

References
Hayles, K. (2003). Deeper into the machine: The future of electronic literature. Culture Machine, 5. https://culturemachine.net/the-e-issue/deeper-into-the-machine/ 
Kress, G. (2005). Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 22(1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2004.12.004