So far, I have made some progress, but not as much as I expected to have made, so I feel that I need to speed up the pace of my progress for the next few weeks. I have learned that it is quite difficult to create a story and format the book in a way that is not too depressing to read; if I make it too depressing, then people will be less likely to read it. Ironically, the problem at hand is depression. Although I make decent progress during class, I notice that I like putting off working on the actual book during 20 Time in class, and choose to add details to my story instead; I think the idea of getting up and actively working scares me.
As a result, I have had a few setbacks. While working on my storyline, I noticed that I tend to put lots of details into the story to make it as realistic as possible. However, there is a limit to how long I can make my book due to both time constraints and the interest of readers, so there is no way that I will be able to fit all of my details into the book; I will have to cut down the content by quite a bit. I will most likely do this by only including major topics in the story, like the most common signs of depression and the most common risk factors.
The next step in my process would be to actually start on the physical book, by first doing sketches of all my drawings and making the captions for each picture. After doing this, I will outline the pictures and color them to make them more interesting to view.
While doing this project, I honestly have not learned that much information that is new to me, other than the statistics. Because Saratoga is such a hypercompetitive community, the entire community has had exposure to depression and other kinds of stress. At our school, we have had Speak Up For Change week every week, which spreads awareness and destigmatizes the whole topic. Hopefully I can learn more about this topic and help to deter it in the community.
Its good that you're making progress Jackie! Don't get discouraged if you haven't been working on the project yet, there is still time and its good you've come up with a good story line. I suggest you start do make some drawing before the end of the month. Good Luck!
ReplyDeleteI really like your topic. I agree that depression is probably a huge problem especially here at Saratoga. I think its great that you're trying to spread awareness to younger children. I think it would be really cool, maybe for your upcoming posts, to see some pictures so that we can see the progression of your book!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work! This is for a good cause, don't be afraid. If you want help, I think reading some examples, even like simple children's books would help tremendously. Additionally, come up with a simple story line that ends with a happy ending. There should be less character development and more emotional tugging of heartstrings. You got this!
ReplyDeleteThis is really cool Jackie! I think that your decision to leave out some details was a smart one, and I'm curious as to see how you're able to condense such a large topic into a smaller one. Good luck with your project! :)
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