Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

Among the six stories, I found Nancy’s dad’s story the most entertaining and Robyn’s dad’s story the most interesting.

The reason why Nancy’s story was entertaining to me was because of her song, which caught my attention from the first part of its lyrics: “What do you do with a canal to the moon, when the railroad gets to there a lot more soon?” I thought that was an ingenious and funny line that she played off of what Craig Williams said, “They were building a canal to the moon.” Just imagine a canal that stretches to the moon, and then a railroad next to it; I saw quite an image imagining the race through the use of these two transportation methods. Moreover, I especially like that she decided to sing about the dull topic of the Erie Canal. But with her song and the use of country music, it became entertaining. It liven me a bit from Lisa’s story about Funny Funerals, which I thought was ponderous.

What caught my interest in Robyn’s dad’s story was how curious and inventive Robyn’s dad was, and the fact that he never got tired of telling the story simply because he wanted to tell his family of something cool he did. It was relatable. We were all young when we wanted to do things that are impractical or outrageous. I know I once did, like that time when I was five or six and thought I could fly if I ran really fast and jump with all my might at a decently high place. I was flying, for a second, and then fell hard on my knees. In any case, building a panel to have all car functions was unique – out of a phone dial too! I wanted to know more about how his dad did it and what happened, which was what Robyn told us and more. He turned the story of his dad’s invention into a story about that by interviewing people who also heard his dad’s story. Linking his dad’s perspective with the multi-perspectives of others’ impression of his dad’s story was difficult. But he pulled it off effectively. I enjoyed that story.

What makes a story interesting may be how entertaining and/or unique the topic is. If it’s something soothing to our ears like a song or a good tune to how the story is convey, it can be interesting. And if the topic is something we would usually not think of or do like Robyn’s dad’s invention – one switch, it can be interesting. Because a radio show is a talk show, the speaker must do his/her best to create an image of what is happening and do well to present that image to the audience for any story to be remarkable. If we can visualize what the speaker is talking about, it makes us want to listen and be amused. I think those are essentially what make a story interesting: entertainment, uniqueness and visualization.