The Lottery

Personally, I would have called this story 'the black box' because it makes the reader wonder about the story whereas 'the lottery' sounds pretty straightforward. the title 'the black box' would catch attention and it would get people asking questions and that would create tension. I thought that someone would win money in this lottery because that's what a lottery normally is until the author told us that the people were hesitating and that they didn't want to see their result, "there were men holding the small folded papers in their large hands, turning them over and over nervously." At that point, I was unsure about my prediction and I had a feeling that the lottery wasn't about winning money but about something bad, something people weren't looking forward to. I felt really angry when the end of the story wasn't given to us because I had so many questions to ask and that got me frustrated. I became very curious when I was handed the mystery paper and I was confused at what was happening. I had no idea what was inside it, I was totally lost. I failed to follow the instruction because when I got home, I totally forgot about it and I had to open it the next day. The black box actually made me feel nervous because I didn't know what to expect from it and when I got a blank piece of paper, I felt so satisfied. The ending of the story was sad because I didn't like the idea of sacrificing your life for no reason at all. My predictions were correct because I knew that something bad was going to happen but I never expected to end like this. If I had re-read the story before reading the end, I might have made a better prediction. The author clearly left voids in this story and she did this because she wanted us to ask questions and engage with the story. Not having a title or the information about the author really made me wonder about what was going on and the fact that we weren't given an ending truly frustrated me. And the text clues made it worse because it got me thinking about the story in many different ways and deep down, it confused me. The mystery paper made the story come to life and it annoyed me because I didn't know what was happening. The delayed ending, and in my case the really delayed ending, caused lots of tension and after reading the ending I was truly satisfied. This was a great discovery for me because I never knew that I could get so frustrated over a story.

Power of the VOID (band)

The Mission Statement:

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

I chose to put my silence/void there because it creates a lot of tension. You are just about to reveal what ISKL provides and all of a sudden there is a stop, this gets the listener asking questions in their minds. Then tension is released when all the questions are answered after the silence. This is an excellent way to create tension because you hold the information back and this catches the listeners attention and gets him thinking as well.

One of the easiest ways for a composer to create tension in their music is by putting a pause in the piece. Just before the pause, the composer could use crescendos and accents to create a bigger tension during the pause. This would allow the listener to ask questions and engage with the music and thus a void is created.