Deborah Corrupts 8th Graders
Feb. 23rd, 2011 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahjrossJust in case you missed my blog on "Radcon Part I), here's what happened when I visited a library full of 8th graders (Radcon does an awesome job of youth outreach).
Okay, I said, let’s use something from that story to get going on our own. What should we use?
Kidnapping!
And who shall we kidnap? Anna!
Who are we? Movie stars!
Where are we holding her? At the zoo!
Why are we kidnapping her? For ransom money so we can make a movie! A zombie movie! No, a ninja zombie movie! (I am not making this up.)
Okay, what happens next? Rosie, her best friend, er, trusty sidekick, decides to rescue her! (Now both Anna and Rosie are getting into the act.)
So Rosie sneaks into the zoo…what goes wrong? She lets the Siberian tiger out of its cage!
About this stage, we ran out of time, which was really too bad because the kids were on a roll. A couple of kids, usually boys, kept wanting to kill off characters, which is something to watch out for if you try this collaborative writing yourself. They don’t yet have the sense of a whole story unfolding with rising tension and complications, but they respond pretty well if you show them how that just ends the story before it gets going. They also get it that it’s more fun to torture characters than to just kill them.
Okay, I said, let’s use something from that story to get going on our own. What should we use?
Kidnapping!
And who shall we kidnap? Anna!
Who are we? Movie stars!
Where are we holding her? At the zoo!
Why are we kidnapping her? For ransom money so we can make a movie! A zombie movie! No, a ninja zombie movie! (I am not making this up.)
Okay, what happens next? Rosie, her best friend, er, trusty sidekick, decides to rescue her! (Now both Anna and Rosie are getting into the act.)
So Rosie sneaks into the zoo…what goes wrong? She lets the Siberian tiger out of its cage!
About this stage, we ran out of time, which was really too bad because the kids were on a roll. A couple of kids, usually boys, kept wanting to kill off characters, which is something to watch out for if you try this collaborative writing yourself. They don’t yet have the sense of a whole story unfolding with rising tension and complications, but they respond pretty well if you show them how that just ends the story before it gets going. They also get it that it’s more fun to torture characters than to just kill them.
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Date: 2011-02-23 07:03 pm (UTC)As for ninja zombies, you're on! Would it be more fun if they were ninjas that got turned into zombies, zombies that got trained as ninjas, or a clash of the two? Or maybe zombies who hire ninjas for the athletic parts of taking over the world?
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Date: 2011-02-23 07:07 pm (UTC)