 Hi everyone, welcome! Today we have with us three PolyU undergraduate authors, Sissy, Paco and Cheryl. We're going to have a peek behind the curtains at their inscribed publications and their journeys. So hi, my name is Cheryl, and I'm studying Accountancy. I wrote a piece on inscribed called The Last Triton. It is about two people finding out who they are and finding out their place in the world. You can think of it like a Romeo and Juliet, but an underwater version of it. There's some kind of forbidden love elements in it. I would like to think that it is kind of epic because it also talks about the century-long rivalry between two underwater empires. And there's also action scenes, love story scenes. I hope readers will enjoy it. I found out that in some myths, sirens and tritons are enemies, like they're totally different species. Like one of them, tritons are very upright and clean, while sirens are absolutely horrible beings. So I'm thinking it would be quite fun to have a Romeo and Juliet forbidden love story between the two characters. So that's how it came to me. So I'm Paco and I'm studying Radiography and I'm a Year 2 student. So I've wrote that laughing is a deadly matter and it's about comedy, but it's more than that. It's about how comedy relates to the freedom of expression and how important is that connection. So comedy is kind of thing that really offends people, but now people have lost sight of what comedy really is. And it actually wants to make people think about their choices, whatever, but now they respond to comedy with violence. And that's not what we want to see. So that's why I chose to write this article. Hello everyone, my name is Assi. I'm a Year 2 student majoring in Product Engineering with Marketing. And in Scribe, I wrote short stories talking about a boy addressing his biggest fears on stage with the inspiration of his greatest hero. The idea of writing short stories spring to my mind because I study a ELC course subject last semester which is called persuasive communication. And in that course, from Mr. Mossman, I learned numerous persuasive strategies and that really inspires me and I find those strategies very interesting and useful. So that's why I wanted to write a short stories and sharing these strategies to more Poly students. Yeah, I would like to think that this story has two deeper meanings. The first is to embrace who you are and the second is to embrace the reality. So for the first one, as you can see in the story, the main character, there is a part where he says he feels like he should be a different person. And I think this is sort of something that resonates with a lot of people right now. Like people feel like they are not living out their true self. They are somehow hiding themselves from other people. So I think that that is a very tiring and exhausting thing to always hide who you really are. So I would like to encourage people to not be afraid to live out their true self. And the second one is embrace the reality. In the story, there are lots of moments where the main character encounters obstacles, maybe some real realizations. Those are things that are really unexpected to him. And I would like to encourage people when they experience these sorts of unexpected situations, they could learn to embrace them and keep moving forward. Canary is this type of bird that helps coal miners to detect whether there is a carbon monoxide leakage. So the diver is allowing that coal miners to retreat and get back to safety. So comedy in a way is similar to this kind of bird, because comedy is often being, comedians are often being attacked first when there is a threat to the freedom of expression. What my first success would be talking about back to my high school. It was my first time doing dramatic duo love with my partner. And in that competition we practiced a lot, but there was no pressure. And then we just go to our utmost and try our very best to perform well with a lot of guidance from teachers. And we really did not expect to win any of votes since we just want to enjoy and try our very best. And it turns out that we won the championship among the groups. So that was quite surprising to us. And then it was one of the most like the earliest small first success that boasts my confidence and give me a big kind of hope and encouraged me to continue pursuing my public speaking dream. My style of writing isn't really based off of any authors. But I would like to say that I quite like where some authors like to make their stories seem like a movie like cinematic experience. And I quite like the idea. So I kind of merged that with there's a passage in my story, which is the part where the Triton has gone underwater and he went through this kind of transformation. I think in my opinion I'm quite proud of that scene because it really felt like a movie scene, you know, with him in the middle, you know, in pain, transforming while the sirens are surrounding him. So yeah, I would like to, you know, make readers feel like they're watching a movie. For me, I like to like re-quote and maybe like some of them I pick quotes randomly from like some authors. And then the one line that I included in my article would be George Orwell's Good Jokes. Every joke is the tiny revolution. So in his passage about it's called like funny but not vulgar, he criticised that like 1970s century that in English the comedy is not very offensive, but he states that in his article that comedy is meant to be offensive, like because it reflects the truth and like the powerful people often don't like that. And that's what makes it funny. So in that sense I would like to refer that, I would like to reinforce that kind of idea in my article as well. Most of my writing process are quite similar. It all starts from a basket of messy ideas. In InScribe the short stories I wrote were they I really want to grab all the interesting and useful strategies that taught by the teacher in the course. And I also want to include my personal experience in public speaking and resonate the stories using the reflection of Chris. And in that process what I struggle a lot would be there are too many, there are too much information on that basket and it's kind of hard to filter and select the best of the best information and effectively deliver to the readers. When I was writing the short stories as I mentioned before it was very messy but through lots of help from the editor he trimmed down my long chunky paragraph to short punchy paragraphs and that makes the whole overall reading experience more engaging and make it more bite-sized for readers to read. As I said before the reason why most of my stories are unfinished because I don't really know the full process of writing a story and getting published on InScribe actually helps me to learn the full process of writing a story from beginning to end. During the editing process there's a lot of times where I notice that there are very small details we need to focus on which is something that I before I didn't know about and details as in plot details, language sort of details and this has helped me with my own writing as well. So for me at first I would just write to myself like my writing is not only for myself now that I kind of create something that people want to read and the student editors actually help me in like providing a perspective from the readers perspective and showing us that oh how can we improve by like considering more from what they want to hear what maybe from their perspective as well so that ELC helps help a lot. I would say I learned the importance of a readers perspective because when I'm writing on my own I usually have this whole story planned out in my mind but then after having a discussion with the editors about my story I realized that the readers are not in my head they don't know what I'm thinking about even though in my head it seems like really logical the whole story but for the readers perspective they might not understand what is going on for example like maybe there are some plot incoherence in between so I learned that the readers perspective really helps the story go smoothly. For me it would be the interactions with editors because my original idea is about like comedy and then I approach them and they say why not make it bigger like something bigger of itself so that's where the freedom of expression part came in and then I think oh it would be a good idea very good idea so and then I restructured it and then talked to them a few more times these kind of interactions they actually helped me to improve my article and give me more inspirations along the way and that is a very good experience that I've had with Inscribe. As one of the social media managers I find the whole Inscribe journey very fruitful and transformative. Firstly I really like helping the organization of social media since during the social media management we need to keep writing stories or like making a post and that really pushes me to be organized since I was kind of tends to be more messy a lot of time besides I also like working with people a lot so in being in the role of social media manager I get to communicate with many of my teammates and they are all very kind and lovely people and then in that communication process I learn to effectively addressing their concerns but also deliver what they want to say on social media Last but definitely not least due to my marketing background I do think this Inscribe journey provides me a valuable opportunity to manage social media which is beneficial to my career development I think of course if you have passion I would definitely encourage you writing a story of your own because for me writing is sort of a medium of me escaping from reality you can immerse yourself in this imaginative world that you built for me it is a very good way of just releasing pressure but for those who might not dabble much in writing I would say you can try because for me it is really a very pressure releasing experience writing I believe that everybody has a life that has many stories to share so if anybody is willing to tell their stories that would be very impactful to the people around so I do think as long as you are willing to give it a try please don't hesitate and be afraid and try to write stories to share your thoughts try not to think about how would it turn out since writing is a surprising journey and then there are many interesting thoughts and ideas popped up in your mind along the way so do enjoy that process and give it a try you will always get something out of it I think writing is a part of reading and thinking all combined together because in order to write you first have to read a lot and know what you have to write and then that's where the thinking part comes in so it really is a good process of combining all your thoughts together to construct a coherent passage and other than that it's also a medium of expression for me I like to express my feelings in writing so that I can record them and maybe save for later to see what I have written maybe this year in time or whatever but if you have time or if you really like to try out maybe reaching out to readers or see how others evaluate or comment on your passage just feel free to join Inscribe and join our team and they will be very grateful and very helpful as well