Final Performances: Behind the scenes of the Literary Lab!

So EGrumer and I worked with dglasser to help flesh out her idea of Literary Labs a little more!

Some of the things I was responsible for were:

• Finding a decent book list
• Finding a good character profile
• Making a playlist of music (more on this later)

I linked to the websites where I found both the list and character profile in case anyone wants to see them again.  The book list was something dglasser knew she wanted when she originally designed the labs.  The idea, and she can correct me if I'm wrong, was that you would be able to draw inspiration from these various works.  The character profile is something that I (and EGrumer) had used before when acting.  Normally they're used to help people in the chorus or minor roles flesh out a character for themselves so they can put more into their performance on stage.  I liked this one because it was really detailed and I thought it would be useful to help writers develop characters if that's what they wanted to work on in the lab. 

We didn't end up using the playlist that I made (which is fine) but I actually had the most fun making it.  I like to listen to lots of different kinds of music; from country to Evanescence to JPop and anything in Spanish.  Sitting down to make a playlist that would have a least one useful song for each person in the class.  It was hard and I don't know if I was successful but it made me think a lot about the difficulty behind genres but also how useful they can be.  If I had a genre for everyone it may have been easy to pair music with them, but people surprise you.  So yeah, let me see if I can link to some of the songs that were on the playlist I made! 

Abridged Playlist!

Antologia - Shakira

Anywhere - Evanescence

Be Okay- Ingrid Michaelson

Goodbye Earl - Dixie Chicks

Goodnight - Evanescence

Hotel Song - Regina Spektor

I'll Cover You- From the movie version of Rent

Fukai Mori (Do as Infinity) - From the anime Inuyasha xD

Passion - Utada Hikaru (From Kindgom Hearts II video game)

Sadness and Sorrow - From the anime Naruto XD

Vanilla Twilight- Owl City

So these were some of the songs on the playlist.  It's a random collection, and hopefully everyone would have like SOMETHING on this list.  As for being inspirational; if the songs had words in languages most of us understand than I wanted the words to be...meaningful in a way.  Then there was more space for someone to find inspiration.  The songs in languages like Japanese maybe would remind someone of their childhood or a particular friend and that would inspire them.  Otherwise the songs were just instrumental like Sadness and Sorrow and would theoretically make someone feel something that could inspire them.  Overall I had fun making the playlist, and I wanted to share a little piece of it with the class!