How To: Write A Good Story

Many people enjoy telling tales of adventure, horror and other exciting genres that keep the reader or listener want to keep reading more and more. To actually create a good story, you need some basic story elements first. The most obvious story elements you may have heard of are; characters, setting, plot, etc. You need all of those, but you need to go in depth within each of those three categories. For instance, characters; You need the name of the character, define his/her personality traits, what he/she looks like! Making a character is somewhat easy and also very fun, too. You've got to step inside the character's shoes and imagine what they would say according to their personality and their looks. An example, a very fat kid who eats a lot, could say he is hungry while he is constantly eating chocolate. Another would be, a muscular guy, who thinks he is very cool, could say good comments about himself constantly. Remember, the character's looks and traits should match. You cannot have a skinny kid who is fat. That wouldn't make any sense. If the skinny kid says he is hungry, why doesn't he just eat? That is a terrible character.

The next required element is the setting, time period, place, etc. Setting can be one of the most easiest to think about. Some examples, are Canada, 2005 or Germany, WWII time period. The settings can explain where the character lives and maybe the setting can be changed throughout the story. For example, Chronicles Of Narnia, C.S Lewis, switches between the normal World and Narnia, because Narnia is part of the main plot line.

The last element is the plot. This is usually divided into three different parts, beginning, middle and end. The beginning can explain the following; who are the protaginists (hero) and antagonists (evil character). What leads to the main problem that the protaginist must solve. The middle is where the hero would face the problem head-on and mostly be struggling to fix it. The ending is where either the Hero ends the conflict or maybe, if you wan't a bad ending, where the Hero dies. The ending, can be a very huge twist or just a normal ending like any other. Endings can hugely impact the whole story just by killing a character or maybe explaining that a new conflict has been created after the ending of the first conflict. The ending is all up to you, just like everything else in the story you make. Good luck in creating a jaw dropping story!

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Who's Got The Best Ice-Cream?

There are dozens of ice-cream flavours available and they are all delicious. Well, actually that depends on your opinion. So far, I've tasted chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, oreo, smarties, butter scotch, caramel, kulfi, sprinkled, eminems and the most recent one I ate was a Rolo chocolate cone. The Rolo chocolate cone is chocolate so it's not that new, other than that fact that the whole ice-cream, including the cone, is made out of pure chocolate. I'm sure many of you have tasted the three primary ice-cream flavours, chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. They are all delicious, but I've got my best pick out of all three. Chocolate is the most sweetest flavour, strawberry tastes a bit like fruit and vanilla is just plain. I only eat vanilla ice-cream when I have rainbow sprinkles or chocolate chips to put on top of it. The new thing that I tried putting on vanilla ice-cream was Nestle's Ice-Cream Chocolate Syrup. IT WAS FANTASTIC! Absolutely brilliant! The syrup hardens on to the ice cream quickly and tastes wonderful. This syrup just proves that Nestle does know how to make good chocolate products that can compete with Hershey. As the chocolate syrup hardens, you can still easily eat the ice cream with your spoon. It just hardens enough to stay on the ice cream.

So, vanilla has a wide variety of other products that you can add on to it, which will make it taste much better than it already is. I've never put any "toppings" on my chocolate or strawberry ice-creams, but I might try it. Who knows? Maybe it will create a taste that is out of this world. I know I haven't ate a large variety of ice-cream flavours, but those are the ones that are available to me at the time. The new flavour I do want to taste are the assorted popsicles. I've seen the boxes at Food Basics, but I have never actually bought a pack. I have tasted the watermelon popsicle before, and it was very fruity. It did not taste like watermelon but it had a sort of a sour kick to it, which made it delicious.

I've been to Dairy Queen's two or three times, and have ate the same oreo chunks ice-cream. It was not that bad, but would have been better if they served the ice cream in a cone instead of a cup. I will go to DQ and buy a new totally different flavour. The new place I will go to this summer is Baskin Robbins, the flyer was very convincing. It was coloured pink and blue and showed its best cakes and ice creams on the front and back. It also had a Mother's Day cake special coming up, which looks fantastic as well. The cool thing about BR is that they let you put in as many scoops of ice cream in a cone as you want. Of course, keep in mind that it costs a dollar or two for every scoop you put in. I have ate some Chapman brands of ice-cream and it was OK. I mean, it is very cheap so it's pretty much you get what you pay for type of thing. All in all, let's hope to try out some new ice cream flavours this Summer!

P.S: Chocolate is the best.

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PSP Slim: Success OR Failure?

The kind of new Sony PSP Slim has a ton of great features, but has some flaws that make the portable gaming system average. It has a wide screen, mini control stick and D-Pad, and some nice buttons on the bottom of the screen. Those buttons on the bottom of the screen control the screen brightness, volume level, exiting a game, and the start button. You can buy it in a pack that comes with a memory stick, system, game and movie. I did not buy that package, because of its price at $220 canadian. I bought a used PSP Slim with free game and memory stick. Mine fortunately, came with Daxter and a 1GB SONY memory stick! Yours might be different depending on what package you are buying. Anyways, the PSP Slim, as the name suggests is a little bit skinnier than its older version, the Phat PSP. BUT, none the less, it is still bulky in weight and size. You can play games, watch movies, listen to music and even surf the web. There is also a built in radio too. There are also many firmware upgrades from SONY's website which give the PSP Slim more features.

Let's start with its games! The PSP Slim's graphics are very similar to Playstation 2's, so, it is kind of like a portable PS2. Some of the best games I've played and heard of are, God Of War, Daxter, Syphon Filter, Medal Of Honor, etc. It does not have many great titles, only a few are great. So don't buy it, if you just want to play God Of War, it is not worth it. It has built in WiFi for multiplayer gaming. Infrastructure mode which lets you play live with anyone on the network or Ad-Hoc which is just between you and a friend who is nearby. The WiFi does use up a lot of battery space, so expect only about 2 and half hours of multiplayer gaming. Medal of Honor 2: Heroes is one of the best FPS multiplayer games for the Slim, due to its graphics and replay value of course. Other than that, not much to say about the game list.

You can play mp3s and AAC tracks, I have not tried any other file format for the PSP Slim's music player. You can watch videos also, but they must be in .MP4 format AND the video must be in the correct folder, or else it will say corrupted file. The Slim has a TV-Out function which is new and is a function that boosts the PSP Slim's rating a little bit. Please note, that if you want to play a video game on your TV, you need the component AV Cable and you must have the component hookups on the back of your TV. You can play music and movies on your TV with the normal AV Cables which is good, but not great. The PSP Slim has a internet browser built in, but it is too slow. It does not matter if you have a good router or an expensive internet connection. It will always be slow, no 3G networks on PSP Slim.

Those are pretty much all the features of a PSP Slim, I would only recommend buying it if you are going to hack your PSP Slim.

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