The Power of the Void

Posted in By Arif-Faiz 0 comments


The International School of Kuala Lumpur provides (silence) an exceptional education that challenges each student to develop the attitudes, skills, knowledge and understanding to become a highly successful, spirited, socially responsible global citizen.

In the ISKL mission statement, I inserted a silence between provides and an to create tension. I think that this would be a good place to insert a silence because this is where the mission statement starts to describe the school. In music, there is usually an intro, and in some songs, there are pauses inserted before maybe the chorus or bridge.
'The International School of Kuala Lumpur provides' is sort of the intro, and at that point people will be asking "What does this school provide?" or "Should I send my children there?". Then these questions are answered with '...an exceptional education that challenges each student to develop the attitudes, skills, knowledge and understanding to become a highly successful, spirited, socially responsible global citizen.'

A great way for a composer to get the listeners asking questions is by transitioning into a completely different style, quickly. For example, a song could start off with a calm, soft, and slow melody and suddenly change into this 'bumpy', fast, & strong melody, and then after the audience feels the tension, go back to that calm, soft and slow melody. The listeners would definitely be asking questions when the sudden change happens, but they would feel more settled once the music has gone back to normal.

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What I would call the story..

The Un-Lucky Draw

I would call the story The Un-Lucky Draw, because a lottery winner wins completely by chance, just the way a lucky draw works. In this case though, many people would be avoiding the 'grand prize', and whoever is drawn, is an unlucky person.

In the beginning of the story, I thought everyone would be happy, someone would win a lot of money, kids would be out playing, basically everyones in a good mood. I thought that everyone was happy because it was an important day, and everyone wanted to win the 'grand prize'. I thought that kids were out playing because they were collecting stones, which could be used for some game. Although I didn't know much, I assumed I was right, and everything would turn out perfectly.

When the end of the story was not given to me, I knew something was going to surprise me. I sat there, coming up with a list of possible happy endings, and possible bad endings. I did begin to ask questions because I was sort of confused on what the black dot meant.

After I got my mystery paper, I began to ask even more questions, maybe more than other people, considering the fact that I had the black dot. I knew the end of the story would be in there but I was hoping that something else was in there, maybe a grand prize! I remembered to open it, at around 5:45, a bit late, because I completely forgot about it after my next class started.

After the teacher took the black box out, I got excited and hoped that it would be something like a lucky draw, hoping I would get something. But all I got was a paper that left me asking about a million questions at once, and probably a million more after I saw the black dot on my paper. I thought I would be the one that might get the surprise, that Mrs. Hutchinson was about to receive.

I felt completely surprised when I read the ending of the story and a bit confused, as I didn't get why so many people showed up for the lottery if it ends up the way it did.

My predictions were not even close. I did feel even more confused, because I didn't know what type of town would actually host these kinds of lotteries.

If I knew what exactly the townsfolk were preparing for the lottery, I could've made a slightly more accurate prediction.

I guess the author left these voids to get the reader wanting to read more to finally be answered, and feel that urge to read on to find out how the story will end up.

Without the title, I really had no idea what the story was about. I don't pay much attention to the author's, so that didn't really make me ask many questions.

I didn't know what was in the mystery paper, so I just concluded that there was no ending to the story, and I had to come up with my own ending.

The foreshadowing and text clues urged me to come up with possible endings and ask even more questions after even more awkward events in the story.

The mystery paper left the most tension, because I had no idea what was in it, and I had to go through the day with that disturbance stored in the back of my head.

The delayed ending caused me to come up with my own ending and obviously I made up a happy one.

The black dot created a lot of tension because I knew that I would either get something good or bad, most likely bad.