Tim O'Brien identifies story truth and happening truth in his novel "The Things They Carried". He also provides many stories that are examples of these terms. The most important one he uses to demonstrate story truth is is the story "Ambush". This is the story where he kills another soldier from their enemy's side. In reality no one knows who killed him, there were many soldiers firing at the enemy at once. He also provides another example which is his story about the soldier jumping on the grenade to save the other soldier he is with. Happening truth is in his story when he is at the river debating on what he should do. And he chooses to stay and go to war. Another story is when the young boy goes over hopping to them on the one leg he has left to ask for chocolate. He mentions that a true war story is not a true war story is it has no story truth in it.

There is a big difference between story truth and happening truth. Even though story truth may not always be real, I would definitely prefer it over happening truth. That is because story truth puts you in the story. You get a gut feeling. I really enjoy being able to experience what I am reading so that I can better understand it. I think without story truth many stories wouldn't be the same or as interesting because if there's no emotion then it's boring. Happening truth is just the simple truth of what happened. Most of the times that's not enough to grab our attention. We need some action or some kind of hook to keep us reading.  That's exactly what story truth does; it adds the hook to pull us into the story and feel what the writer wants us to feel.

Blog 2: 

On page 480 in Signs of Life in the USA, Ian Daly talks about how online popularity has gotten out of control. And that's not the point, what's even worse is that we know that we are addicted to social media and even then we cannot resist the urge to go on them and dedicate ourselves to them. The most pathetic part is that we actually believe that we are accomplishing something. Daly also talks about how we are not in control of who we are on Facebook once we sign up for it. It could deceiving because our friends on Facebook can manipulate our personality and the kind of person we are. That's another thing he talks about: friends. These are people, who we wouldn't even want to hang out with, are what we call our friends. These friends of ours are only people that we know by whats on their page. 

I partly agree with Daly, only because when I had a Facebook all of my friends would always post selfies and be addicted to attention. Many of them had thousands of friends and I thought how do you know all those people. On the other hand I can see how Facebook is used for positive things such as being able to communicate with friends and family living far from you. But I also feel that a lot more people use it for all the wrong reasons then those who use it for its intended purpose. 

Blog 1:
In part one of "They Say I Say" the authors point out two important parts of response papers. What the author is saying, and what you are saying need to be distinguishable and need to make sense so that the reader can easily understand what your position is and where you stand. Also  a very important part is starting what the "they say" part first. This way what you are saying is what the reader reads last and they keep in mind. In this reading quoting is also talked about. It is important to quote your sources so that you do not make it seem as if you are wanting to take credit for someone else's work.

A successful paper is easy to understand and perhaps might even make the reader agree with you. In this reading I believe that they have a point and it has even helped me on my papers. Being able to differentiate between the author of the paper and his/her sources makes the paper much more understandable and less boring to read. You should always start off with what others are saying and end with your point of view. This allows the reader to transition between the two and also by using quotes it makes it easier for the reader to know who is saying what and who believes what. By just using these simple steps as guidelines you could more easily organize your paper.