Author: Tim

For this final sketch, I wanted to use the same thing I used for my first sketch as an ending—Taipei 101.

Throughout the semester, I felt like every exercise and assignment were little pieces of puzzles that helped me build the final product, which is my Halfa Kucha and final reflection. In each section of the building, it was an assignment from this assignment that I felt contributed a lot to my change and improvement as a writer and reader. The X-pages exercise was the foundation of everything. Jotting down ideas in my head reflected my most authentic writing. From that exercise, I realized my most original writing style and the events that impacted my writing journey. Later, visual note-taking was the beginning of my combining my ideas with drawings. Both of these assignments—one on writing and one on drawing—built the base for the rest of my work, holding up the whole building.

The same goes for all of the other sections of the building. Without a section, the building would not be complete. The skills from tracing pages helped me learn the analyze visual writings and understand the author’s purpose behind each choice. I used the skills I observed and applied them to my own project, which is the second Literacy Narrative. Recreating a movie scene helped me pay more attention to details, which influenced the changes I made to my first and second Literacy Narratives.

To construct Taipei 101, none of these elements could be ignored. Over the semester, these assignments stacked up to create the tip of the building.

When I first read the prompt, I was immediately stuck on what topic I wanted to choose. I decided to take a look at the quotes from Judith Herman, and that was when I was certain I wanted to use the three stages of recovery. When I think of recovery, the first characters that struck out to me were Teddy from Sabrina and Tillie from Spinning. I thought these characters had the most clear and complete process of recovering from their trauma, which is why I chose them as my focus for the presentation.

One of the biggest challenges I encountered was the time limit. Since I wanted to explain how the characters underwent the three stages, it was difficult for me to fit all of the information in 3 minutes. To solve this problem, instead of directly separating the presentation into three stages, I combined some stages and made changes to my focus. I decided to include my observation of patterns in these stages. For example, I remember from the Literacy Narrative Storyboard assignment we analyzed comics with the five types of choices authors utilize in their comics. Specifically, I found that subject-to-subject transitions were common in scenes when the characters were making a process to their healing process.

In terms of visuals, I chose pages of comics that aligned with the point I was presenting. A pattern I created was having one page for one of the stories, one page for the other story, and a page that included both of the stories. This is because my presentation was formatted in this way. I usually explained how Teddy was experiencing one of the stages and on the other page explained Tillie’s experience. However, after hearing everyone’s presentation, I thought it was interesting how many people included pictures that were not screenshots of specific pages. I found these pictures made the presentation more engaging, which is one of the changes I would make if I were to redo this assignment.

This was the first time I had done a more formal presentation in college and the first time using auto-advanced slides. It has been many months since I have presented in front of an audience, so it was at first a bit intimidating. Also, I had to spend extra time to practice my talking speed. Being unable to control my slides forced me to spend more thinking about what words I wanted to say. I had around 20 seconds to make a point, so I needed to choose what was important and how to express my ideas in this short amount of time. Though it was difficult, I thought it made my presentation much more insightful and compact.

Finally, I realized I forgot to include a title for my presentation, if I were to place a title, I would make it “The Power of Resilience: A Journey of Healing.”

All of the literacy narratives have helped me develop my writing as a process and think critically as I jot down my ideas for my essay and comic. The first version of my literacy narrative challenged my skills in drafting and editing. I had to plan out what I wanted to include in my narrative and turn my ideas into words. For the comic, it required my ability to translate my ideas using another form of presentation. Lastly, this literacy narrative practiced my ability to revise and reflect on my past work.
After creating my comic, I was able to identify the most crucial parts of my story that shaped my writing. Since the comic is much shorter and has more restrictions compared to essays, I left out parts of the first narrative in the comic. This allowed me to check whether these parts of my essay were expressed clearly or if enough detail was included. For example, I focused all of my revisions on the conclusion of my original narrative. I realized that I left out a lot of reasoning and insight at the end of my narrative, and the comic was what helped me to identify this gap.
Now, I see my story emphasizing the most on my academic experience. My writing has changed because of the needs in different classes; it has never been because of myself. This has led me to realize that I should try to write with my own style without the restriction of others. In terms of the narrative, I tried to develop more on the most important part of the story—how both informal and formal writing shaped my writing now.

After reading several comics in class and interpreting these pieces of works in a brand new perspective, it was refreshing and interesting to create my own comic.

When I was planning my own comic, I wanted to try out different types of panels just like Stitches and Spinning did, so my readers would comprehend rather than simply read. Though in the end, I did not try out as many as I anticipated, I do think the change in style of panels gave the comic a different rhythm that helped the reading process. Another aspect I tried to include was the “choice of moment.” Since there were barely any actions or actual events that required me to use several panels to explain, I used “moment to moment” for most of my panels. In my opinion, these intentional choices has helped my ability in writing through revisions and editing. The more revisions and edits I made to my comic, the more details I was able to add to the final product. I no longer only cared about the words; I paid more attention to the drawings themselves, adding more information that words could not describe.

After finishing the comic, I realized that the process was distinct from writing my literacy narrative. First, the focus and details emphasized on each were not the same. The literacy narrative required me to include details with words. I only had one way to express my ideas, which was to describe with vocabulary. However, with the comic, except for words, I could include drawings. Instead of trying my best to narrate a situation, I simply drew the situation. With this change, I even saw my own story with a different perspective. I was able to identify the key moments in my life that influenced my writing. I composed some of the events in the essay to a few panels in the comic. Every time my writing style changed, it was under the influence of a teacher: my third-grade English teacher, 10th grade chemistry teacher, and my senior year English teacher.

The one thing I wanted to do in my comic was expressions, however, due to my lack of drawing skills, I was unable to translate the pictures in my mind to my comic. The first thing I would ask an illustrator to do is to draw out the expressions on my characters. I did not include expressions because I thought the original drawings I had were too misleading and did not match with my purpose. Thus, the characters did not have expressions. Also, I would want the illustrator to make my drawings easier to understand. For example, on the last page, there was one panel that I intended to draw a shadow of myself. However, I do not think it is easy for the readers to interpret this panel because of the drawing. With these changes, I believe it would make my comic more complete.

Link to literacy comic

The thesis of my essay was about how the authors used different techniques to express changes in the characters’ eyes and the transformation of time. David Small and Tillie Walden both used these elements when they were describing a major moment in their life when they realized a truth. Though the techniques may be different, the purpose and effect of these techniques are similar.

The tracing process was a unique experience to me. The last time I had a project similar to this was an art class in middle school, so being able to do this again was refreshing. While I was tracing, I left out the dialogues because I thought it would have been difficult and would take too much time. However, without the dialogues, I found out it made me focus on the images themselves, which helped me observe more minor details that I later used in my analysis. For example, the subtle changes in the eyes of David on the page I chosen was a detail I did not notice before. The annotations I made supported me when I was forming my argument. I tried to write down everything I thought about the scenes in my annotations. Whenever I ran out of ideas or explanations for my argument, I would take a look at my annotations and find more evidence.

For this assignment, I tried using the inductive reasoning technique. Unlike my previous essays, I did not write my thesis first; instead, I kept it as the last thing I wrote. Even though the process felt unnatural, I realized it gave me more freedom. In the past, I felt constricted when writing my body paragraphs since I had to connect it to the thesis. However, in this essay, I did not have a thesis to follow through. Thus, I wrote down every idea I had in mind, and only worried about the thesis in the end, which was able to include all of my arguments.

With this assignment, I think it helped me a lot on understanding this secret language of comics. Instead of skimming through, I feel that I am able to read the hidden messages placed within or between panels. At the same time, the stories seemed much more in depth and complete after understanding how to analyze comics. The single biggest insight I gained about the two books during the whole process is that childhood experiences do not fully shape who we are.

Link to Analysis

Link to Prompt