Reflection:

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Flow of narrative/does it make sense?

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I believe this drabble makes sense in its relatability. Depression is a topic that isn’t light at all and it keeps weighing down at your being at any given opportunity. It starts with ‘nothing’ and ends with the same amount of ‘nothing’. It’s true to what real life experience is with it and, in that, I believe the flow here is of how depression is a constant and doesn’t quite let up at all once it’s in full effect.

 

Visual/emotional impact:

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Following on from the previous question, I think it’s relatable to those who would have had this mental illness, and so the emotional impact may be somewhat strong. Starting with nothing and ending with nothing gives quite a hopeless feel which is exactly what depression is: feeling like you’re going nowhere. With this piece, there’s nowhere to go and so it’s something of a full circle in the end. The visual impact doesn’t quite tie in as strongly here as the first week’s drabble but there’s still imagery given of a bed not having managed to get up from it. Another part, ‘as if sand weighs down his limbs’ gives an idea of what it feels like and thus given some amount of visual impact.

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Was the original intent conveyed/changed in any way?

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This was conveyed in quite a simplistic way: given the idea and the way this circled around and ended up in the same place, I believe I managed to illustrate the experience of depression well enough. Of course, it’s different for everyone, but the general concept I wanted to demonstrate is still here. I think at first I wanted to give the narrator some amount of hope: it wasn’t going to end with nothing but instead it would lead into something hopeful. However, I went with the idea of going back to the start just in the attempt to deliver something more impactful and meaningful in regards to a real life problem many people have today.

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What was different about the second draft process compared to the first?

 

It was different in the way that the emotion didn’t drive the narrative the way I wanted it to drive it. However, I think it’s because of the way I personally interpret sadness that it stuttered to a halt on visual impact and instead settled on basic impression. The first week’s drabble on this same prompt was quite colourful with lots of imagery supporting the emotion of anger. However, anger is a very motivating force that can become quite unstoppable in it’s strongest state whereas something like depression makes the narrative come to a standstill given the nature of the illness. There’s no progression, no tangent to get lost in, because the feeling just is and it’s incredibly demotivating which can be proven by the fact that one of the signs of depression is lacking interest or feeling too overwhelmed to deal with anything.

 

Was it easy or difficult to implement changes based on the first draft’s criteria?

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I mention in the first week’s drabble that I did want to keep the same state of emotion both in the beginning and at the end which was achieved rather easily. I still had some difficulty with the smaller sentences mostly because I wanted to deliver some kind of impact but I wasn’t too sure how. The paragraphs were awkward to write but that, I think, is because of the emotion being explored.

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Am I satisfied with the second draft?

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I’m pretty satisfied with it, mostly because now I know I can do some amount of emotion exploring and whereabouts on the spectrum I can have a go at. I’ve also learned that going into a certain emotion can change the tone or motivation of the piece itself depending on both experience and the nature of the emotion. While this isn’t really the proposed learning outcome I detailed in the first place, this was still enlightening to find out.