{"id":731,"date":"2019-04-04T09:58:07","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T08:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/?p=731"},"modified":"2019-04-04T09:58:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T08:58:08","slug":"season-xv-alphaday-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/season-xv-alphaday-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Season XV &#8211; Alphaday 10"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hi\nAlphas,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome\nto Alphaday 10, Season XV. We\u2019re ready for another full Alphaday with all the\nwriterly treats you\u2019ve come to expect, and I\u2019m confident you\u2019ll enjoy every\npart of it. From now on, and until the end of this season, however, some of our\nitems will appear for the last time until after the lengthy summer break. This\nis the case with this season\u2019s last regular challenge that you\u2019ll receive the\nbrief for today. Make the most of it and give it your all; you\u2019ll come to miss\nthe challenges before September and the new season come round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our\never-willing Alphas have once more been busy concocting today\u2019s Alphaday menu.\nWe\u2019ve all done our bit for the various slots and those in charge have sorted\nout our contributions and prepared them in an appetising way for our\nconsumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nagenda is as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>This\n     bulletin from me<\/li><li>The\n     results of the tourist article challenge from Sally<\/li><li>The\n     collated entries for the newspaper headline challenge from Zena<\/li><li>The\n     brief for Challenge 8 from Phil<\/li><li>Your\n     Log 5 news from Sally<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>What\nmore could you possibly want?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m\nhappy to leave it to Sally to deliver any news from individual Alpha members in\nthe Log. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve all got plenty of writerly excitement to share with\nthe group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>General\nnews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s\none topic I\u2019m not even going to mention! Instead I\u2019ve looked at whatever has\nhappened in the lofty realms of culture and the arts. The death of Agn\u00e8s Varda\nbrought back the atmosphere of wonder that La Nouvelle Vague \u2013 the New Wave \u2013\nintroduced into the seventh art during the last half of the last century. That\nsounds as if it belongs to ancient history. I think those films are still\nremarkably fresh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Agn\u00e8s\nVarda said that despite the fact that she and a number of equally brilliant\n(mainly) French film directors were credited for having created the Nouvelle\nVague, they had nothing in common \u2013 no particular style, no programme. All they\nwanted was individual change to something new. Somebody said that they were\n\u2018the opposite of formulaic\u2019. That, I thought, sounds perfect. Throw out\nstereotypes like John Wayne: virile, tough, macho, righteous. And Marilyn\nMonroe: vulnerable, sexy, fragile. Hollywood movies were exactly that:\n\u2018formulaic\u2019. La Nouvelle Vague is about real contemporary people and they have\na lingering, slow focus on the personal rather than some ideal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018Hold\non a minute!\u2019 I then thought. What\u2019s wrong with \u2018formulaic\u2019 in the wider sense?\nFairy tales are superbly formulaic with their princesses and princes \u2013 and so\nare westerns and crime novels. Novels have heroes and heroines. Aren\u2019t they\njust princes and princesses? Novels are supposed to have a structure, a story\narc etc. Doesn\u2019t that make them formulaic? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018The\nopposite of formulaic\u2019 is an admirable concept. Personally I\u2019d hate my writing\nto be labelled \u2018formulaic\u2019. That sounds like an insult. However, when you\nconsider the art of storytelling in a cosmic light there are certain\nconventions that underpin a good story in a basic, primitive way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Agn\u00e8s\nVarda brought a fresh, feminine input to film making. A new way of telling a\ngood story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Alphas, Welcome to Alphaday 10, Season XV. We\u2019re ready for another full Alphaday with all the writerly treats you\u2019ve come to expect, and I\u2019m confident you\u2019ll enjoy every part of it&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphaday-bulletins","tag-alphaday-bulletins-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}