The Curious Key
The first CYOA project has landed:
Carl Graham's "The Curious Key"I have built a permanent home for our electronic projects
over here. If you would like to have your project online, email me and I'll be more than happy to hook you up.
Reminders
We're getting closer to the end of all things here, so keep the following in mind:
1) If I haven't talked with you about your CYOA project yet, that needs to happen. Like now. Email or drop by my office sooner than later.
2) Review #2 is due to me next Wednesday (May 31). Bring it to class with you or email it to me (Rich Text or MS Word format, please).
3) There are only two workshops left, and the schedule will be packed both next week and the week after. It's imperative that we start as close to 6 pm as possible if we're going to get everyone in who needs a second (and, in some cases, a
first...) workshop.
4) We decided last night to have an informal reading/presentation/performance of our CYOA and/or portfolio pieces during Week Eleven, and I'm very excited to see how these texts ultimately manifest themselves. Let's go out not with a whimper or a bang, but a catyclism. Should be fun.
Comments? Questions? Concerns? Now's the time...
Hypertext's Influence on Traditional Print
David Foster Wallace's "Host"
Updates and Modifications
First things first: I want to see a draft of your CYOA project no later than May 26 (by the end of Week 8). I'll talk more about this in class tonight.
Appended: I am considering allowing you the option to combine your portfolio grade with the CYOA project grade. In other words, you can elect to submit *both* a CYOA project *and* a final, 15-page writing portfolio; or, you can throw all 60 points in one heap. We'll also discuss that more in class tonight as well.
See you soonly....
Hypertexts
A few of you are interested in publishing your CYOA projects as hypertexts. Here are a few examples that might be of interest/inspiration:
-Gavin Inglis's
"Under the Ashes" and
"Mr. Tokyo"-Shelley Jackson's
"My Body"-just about anything at
born magazineIf you know your way around Microsoft Word, it's not at all difficult to make something like "Under the Ashes." I'd imagine, too, that some of you have probably even fiddled around with HTML in the past. As you have questions or concerns going forward, don't hesitate to post them here or email me.
The Clackamas Print...
...is planning on running a feature article on our class and the CYOA project. Katie Wilson is writing the story, and has asked for anyone interested in being interviewed or commenting to contact her at
newsed@clackamas.edu. She will also be scanning this blog, so feel free to add comments to this thread.
CYOA proposal due next week
As discussed and decided in class last night, a short proposal is going to be due next week. This proposal should describe what you want to do for the choose your own adventure project, in particular:
1) Who you'll be working with
2) A brief-brief summary of the story you want to tell
3) How much control you want to afford the reader in your story
4) What the final form of the project will look like---a manuscript? a website? a hypertext? a Flash animation? print-on-demand book? e-book/PDF? etc?
You can post your proposal here,
email it to me, or bring it to class with you next week.
About.com's oversimplified take on CYOA
Here's a short primer on creating choose your own adventure stories...
Storyspace
Here's a link to Eastgate software's Storyspace website...
welcome...
...to an informal electronic space that will hopefully see us through the class project. You are encouraged/expected to contribute ideas as we move forward; you can do so by clicking the "comments" link to any of the posts you see here. You will be redirected to a screen where you can type, edit and post your ideas.
I for one am greatly looking forward to getting this off the ground. Let's get started already...
Reading Review #1
Here's a friendly reminder that your first reading review is due in class next week. While you've already attended a reading this quarter (last week's reading/visit with Lance Olsen counts...), I highly recommend you check out the
Wordstock Festival this weekend. Dozens of amazing writers will be participating, and ticket prices are very, very reasonable at $3.
Spring 2005 project
Since I've mentioned last year's WR244 publication project so many times in class already, it's probably a good idea for me to show you what I'm referring to. The 2005 advanced fiction writing class undertook editing and publishing a collection of student writing, which we chose to call
Synthesis. This anthology featured a wide range of short stories, as well as an experimental novella titled
Yield; the collection also published the winners of the 2005 Writers' Club Contest.
Synthesis was initially published as an e-book, and can be downloaded from the English Department's
publications webpage.
After the course ended, several students voiced their interest in having it also appear as a print-on-demand book. For this to happen, a complete reformat and proofing of the e-book was necessary. Randy Thrall took up the challenge and delivered an updated PDF version of the anthology that was then proofread by myself and Ben Tiffany. Once finalized, the anthology was uploaded to CafePress.com, where
hard copies can be ordered and purchased. As this project was a non-profit enterprise, the books are priced at cost:
