Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas or a combination of all of them?
Because the novel that I chose is one that is admittedly light on plot but heavy on ideas, I relied heavily on these ideas when “writing” out my emoji story. In my initial attempt I tried to rely on words, however I quickly found that the choice of emojis simply wasn’t sufficient to communicate the plot in any meaningful way.
Did you start with the title? Why? Why not?
I did start with the title because I felt it would be the most straightforward way to begin. The title of my chosen novel is two words, both of which are relatively easily communicated using emojis. As a matter of fact, once I got the title down I thought to myself “this might be easy” but once I began translating the rest of the work in earnest, I quickly discovered this was not the case.
Did you choose the work based on how easy would it be to visualize?
No, in keeping with the task instructions, I simply chose the most recent book I read, which also happens to be my favorite novel. I will say that this particular novel, and the works of the author as a whole, have a reputation for being somewhat minimalistic- light on plot, but heavy in terms of theme and ideas. As such, I think the works lends itself well to the excersize, even if I did have some difficulty putting it together. Central themes of the work include death and mortality, consumerism and paranoia in the media. As these themes are recurring throughout the novel, I felt I didn’t have to have too many emojis. The work itself can be a bit difficult to follow even written in plain English, so I quickly discovered that any attempt to convey the actual plot using emojis was more or less fruitless. That said, I think this shows that there is more than one way to communicate information- you can try being specific, which didn’t work well for this task, or you can use “broad strokes” to convey general ideas and themes, which I felt was far more appropriate.
3 Comments
Hey Jordon, I wasn’t sure what your book is (but then again there are a lot of books out there!). I’m going to therefore take a wild guess and ask is it something like Space and Sound?
Hello! No, but good guess! The answer is White Noise, by Don DeLillo- it’s a book about a University Professor in the midwest who is obsessed with death and consumerism. It’s mostly a book of dialogue and ideas, not heavy on plot, so it was tough to write out with emojis 🙂
Hi Jordan,
I wasn’t sure on your title either… was going to with blank sound. I thought it was really great that you went with big ideas instead of the plot. I thought the emojis that you chose represented the big ideas of academic failure, consumerism, death and toxic families. I wasn’t too far off! Well done!