Styles Brainstorming: Karma and Social Media

Topic:
My storybook will be about how the personified character version of Karma would be like. For  this storybook I would like my goal to be to choose a story from four different sources dealing with some main characters. From my readings so far I would like to use the story of Ravana and Sita. I think the episodes involving this story will make a great Karma story as Ravana “gets what he deserves”. Another story I would like to use is Indrajit from Public Domain Editions Ramayana. I think this story would be interesting from Karma’s perspective because the actions of Rama may have led to him being saved by Garuda.

(Ravana, Sita, and Jatayu)

Because I am using Karma as my character I do not think I will have trouble finding stories to use, in fact, I think I am going to have more trouble on deciding which stories I would prefer, which may take some thought. My main criteria for choosing stories will be stories that have an already strong Karma presence. This could include stories which feature a character with ill-will or bad intentions or maybe a story where someone is making a very difficult decision.


Bibliography:
1. Ravana and Sita, from Public Domain Editions Ramayana, by Romesh Dutt (1899). 
2. Indrajit, from Public Domain Editions Ramayana, by Romesh Dutt (1899).

Possible Styles:

First-Person Storytelling: I like the idea of using this style because it would make the character Karma, an actual present character. By using the first-person storytelling style I would be able to access Karma’s inner thoughts and dialogues which would be great for the social media component  of this story. With this style of storytelling I would be able to really delve into Karma’s thoughts and understand why “it” is making the decisions the way it does. 

Courtroom Style: I think this style would be great for Karma. May people view Karma as a cosmic justice type entity. Maybe I could set up Karma as a judge and the plaintiff and defendant as characters from which every story I am retelling. I am very excited about this style. 

Blogging/ Social Media Style: For this style I would like to incorporate the Diary of Karma with Karma’s Social Medias. I think this would be great to get the real emotion behind Karma and its decisions. I like the idea of a blown platform to convey the ideas of Karma. I think this story telling style would take some work to make it “look” nice online. I would have to figure out how to set up fake social medias and other accounts, but it could be successful. 

Bedtime Stories: I like the idea of a bedtime Karma story. Something you could tell your children, a life lesson, that would help them fall asleep, but also be a really good read. I think this could make some really excellent Karma stories! 


In addition, I like this storybook!

Storybook Topics - Week 2

I am really in live with the idea of doing something with Karma. I love this topic in Indian culture and it is so unique to me that I think it would be a mistake to choose a different topic. So I definitely want to start here. For my storybook favorites I read the Karma Times, which I enjoyed very much. A second topic I would like to incorporate is Reincarnation! I also find this topic very interesting. Again I read the storybook titled Reincarnation in Indian Epics, and I thoroughly enjoyed the storybook.

I am very interested in attempting to ties in various social media platforms, even if they are just for fun, into my storybook project. My thought is one page could be twitter, one Instagram or Snapchat, one Facebook, and one a blog. Maybe these different social media accounts could have the same user “Karma” or Rama!

Topics:

#1 - Karma’s Social Media Adventure
In this topic I would like to explore some events where Karma came into play for India Epic characters. I know Karma as a “you get what you give” thing, but I want to learn more about it. My question is can I turn any story from the Ramayana or Comics or other readings into a storybook story... can I simply inject Karma into the story even if it was not an original part of the story? If so, I think it will make my storybooks funnier, but not as adhering to the original story. You can see from above that i have already looked into previous storybook project about Karma and I think they are really fun! I think in my mind this is the project I really want to do, so I hope it can work out, but I think I can make it work.

http://ouocblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/pde-ramayana-dasharathas-karma.html

#2 - Rama’s Tweets from Ramayana
For this topic I would like to set up a twitter or other social media for Rama as the posting entity. I think it would be interesting to read his thoughts in a tweet about his adventures in the Ramayana. For week 2 readings I read the Ramayana Public Domain version and I really enjoyed the readings. For this project I would like to pull from multiple versions of the Ramayana, but I would want to follow a story. I want to storybook to be a cohesive overall story about Ramayana, this may include leaving less significant parts out?!? I’m not sure. It would be fun to have other characters tweeting like Rama’s wife and his father.

#3 - This is getting hard ha ha. Reincarnations of ...
For this topic I would like to talk about the reincarnations of a character from the stories from Ramayana... probably Rama. Again using the social media aspect I think it would be exciting to have the character talk about their experience being reincarnated. I am not sure how I would do this project, but I love the subject of reincarnation. This would definitely require some outside reading to better understand reincarnation.

#4 - Comic Books
I really like the new addition of the comic books and I would like to add them into a storybook project, however I am a little lost in thought about how to do that... Do you have any suggestions? I may hop over to the library and just check them out for some inspiration. I think it would be fun to use the stories from the comic books. I wonder if they are set up in an unusual way with their own particular speech use and images? Maybe for comics I could compare Gods/ Goddesses of India!