Tuesday, 22 July 2008
A Good Day
I had a surprise when I got home from work today when I had a letter informing me that I had received a royalty payment. This was totally unexpected so made me very happy. Then when I was getting changed, out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a couple of pieces of paper in the bottom of thw wardrobe. When I fished it out I was amazed to see that it was something I had done about 6 years ago. It was a grid that I had filled in following an article that I had read about Iain Pattison and how he came up with ideas for his stories. It 's a forerunner of the Cally/Sally story generator. So now I have loads of ideas for stories. Two lovely surprises in one day.
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5 comments:
Intriguing. How does this grid thing work?
Hi Gonna Be
Glad you had two lovely surprises... story generators are such a great idea.
You're right Annie they do get the brain cells working. I'd forgotten all about the grid. The way that it works is that you make a grid that has four columns. You head the columns "main character, minor character, location and situation." The you randomly fill in the grid with whatever comes into your head and then you have the basis for your story. For example one of mine is a bride and a spaceman eating ice cream down a coal mine. Mmmm!!! I wonder.
When I 'put my other hat on' and do author visits to schools I take my Magic Box with me. It's a small index file box - the index cards have headers: Beginnings, Middles, Ends, Characters, Problems, Objects, Weather etc. I write one sentence on each of the dozen or so smaller cards behind each index card - the children pull out one card from each section and have to use all the info in their story. And they can make up a 'proper' story every time.
So it's much like the grid except you can't see what you're getting 'til you get it!
What a great idea Pat. I might give that a try myself. I'll bet that the kids come up with great stories.
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