Reaction to McCloud's Stages

McCloud's Path for Arts Steps

1. Idea/Purpose
2. Form
3. Idiom
4. Structure
5. Craft
6. Surface

The first step gives a motivation to the ideas, emotions, philosophies, and purpose of the content of the work.

The second step will take you to decide what it will be like.
Ex. A Book? A chalk? A folder? A pencil? A picture frame?

The third step is to check your vocabulary styles, gestures or subjects matter. Also the genre that your work will be placed in.

The fourth step is putting it all together. Cutting out the unnecessary and adding the necessary. The arrangement and composition is also important for the structure of  your work.

The fifth step is constructing the work, applying skills, practical knowledge, invention, problem-solving and getting the job done.
 
The sixth step is producing values and finishing the aspects most apparent on first superficial exposure to work.                                      

A goal that I would like to achieve as an artist is the fourth step, structure. I need to work on this step because I need to learn how to cut out the unnecessary parts of my writing pieces. I need to learn to not add words and sentences that do not have a symbol or meaning to the story/poem. When I kill the extra words, I change them into necessary ones. The necessary ones add  description and necessity because it catches the readers attention. That's what I need to do! Add the words that catch the readers attention and take out the ones that are just there taking space and have no meaning.

Ex. Katrina was soon going to get married with Bobby. Her mother had bought and planned everything ahead of time, so everything was already ready. Even though there were only two weeks left, her blue eyes had feelings for someone else.

This seems like a great story, but why do I care if she has blue eyes? Good to know that, but is it really necessary. When you add words that shouldn't be part of the story, it makes the story basic and simple. Sometimes it is great to add what the characters look like, but most of the time I like the readers to make up their own movie while they are reading and for them to pick how the character looks because it will make them like my story more since they are being part of building it up. Let's try this better version of the story!   

Ex. Katrina was soon going to get married with Bobby. Her mother had bought and planned everything ahead of time, so everything was already ready. Even though there were only two weeks left, Katrina did not feel ready because she was in love with someone else.

This new example made the story sound a more interesting. Many thought came to me while I even read it myself. Who does Katrina still love? Will she still be getting married? Will Bobby find out? How will her mother react to this? As you can see, this creates a story because it is saying something interesting that catches the readers attention. It also doesn't have simple words blocking the path of the story to build something with greater imagination.

I will be achieving this goal by revising my work with more than two drafts. I will also need to take Stephen King's advice: after you are done with a writing piece, leave it alone for at least six weeks and don't worry about it. Then, come back to the writing piece and read/revise it. You will see what you should add and what you should take out. The school teachers could help me reach this goal by setting time after a long time, to revise work and give me some questions of what else they would like to know about a part of the writing piece because it will help me know what should I press the 'delete' button and/or continuing typing.

I am hoping that this new writing program helps me put details step by step and how to know which words are needed and which are not. Sometimes I have so many ideas, but I make them into one boring part of the story because I want the process to go fast since I want to get rid of it and get going on with a new idea for the story. I want to learn to be patient and write things descriptively with structure. If I lose the thought, it means that it did not belong there. I just want to handle my ideas in a patient way in order for the character to fluently express itself instead of me pressuring the character.