(no subject)

[elucreh]

Here's the thing about my Teaching English to High Schoolers class: what I want to do for my big project is teach them to write fanfiction.

Good fanfiction, I mean. I don't want to say, "write about the characters from Romeo and Juliet being attacked by zombies." Because then, before you know it, they're saying "Juliet hauls out a chainsaw and kicks ass."

I want to give them an activity sheet that says, "Find three problems Juliet faces. What does she want that she can't have? How does she attempt to achieve her goals? Does she succeed? Does she learn from not succeeding? Does she always try to solve problems the same way? What do her problem-solving methods say about her as a person?"

And then I want to say, "Zombies attack Verona. Knowing how Juliet approaches problems, what does she do next? Is she the kind of person who tries to save herself, the kind of person who tries to save herself and her family/friends/beloved childhood pet, or the kind of person who tries to defeat all the zombies and save the city and its orphans and thieves and beggars and annoying Aunt Marges who once told her she should marry a fat old guy because she won't get a better offer? Whatever it is she tries to do, how does she try to do it?"

And yeah, I'd be teaching them a lot about how Shakespeare tells by showing, about characterisation, about finding motives, about how stories are driven by problems and the people trying to find their solutions.


But mostly, I intend to be in fandom for decades yet, and I want the upcoming generations to write good AUs.

Comments

[elucreh.livejournal.com]

See, it's not a new idea--there are, like, seven examples in my textbook--but A) most of them are Mary Sue scenarios (ie, self-insert, which, I mean, I realise my brain chemistry is fucked up in a lot of ways, but I hated those) and B) most of them just say, "Zombies attack Verona" which ends in Juliet yelling "yee-ha" and firing up the saw. The textbook appears to have avoided what they should be learning from this, which is dumb.

[reni-days.livejournal.com]

I don't care for self-insert either, though I acknowledge that, if I got my way about life and got to teach a "Literature/Creative Writing Through Transformative Works" course or whatever, there are probably perfectly valid lessons I would stumble across along the way where that might be a useful tool? But that's not where it actually has the most impact. Your thing about "knowing what you know about Juliet, how would she react to the zombie attack" is an excellent and important question. There's a POINT to that. Also, my ex-husband accidentally invented fanfic, before we knew it was an actual thing, as a series of writing exercises to help me with individual issues I was having with original work. I bitched to him that my characterization tended to wander throughout a story; he said, "Write me an episode of Buffy. You don't have to invent characters, you don't have to invent a universe or whatever. You know these characters. Just write, and if they start out looking like themselves and they end up looking like themselves and they look like themselves all through the middle part...you win." And it helped. We did that exercise when I was having trouble keeping my stories on-task, and when I was having a hard time wrestling with handling multiple plot threads in a single story, and even when I needed to learn to create stronger characters myself.

Idk. That kind of wandered into what is probably actually a little beyond your average creative-writing unit in a high school course, but my point stands: Fanfic in schools. Someone needs to make more of this be happening. =D

[kaalee.livejournal.com]

Sorry to crash in this thread, but I really enjoyed reading this. I think your ex-husband's idea for you to write your own episode of Buffy as an assignment in character is brilliant. It really took away all of the other variables that go into original writing and let you focus on just one aspect. In that circumstance, the plot mattered, but simply as a means for exploring the characters and not as something to hold you back. And like you said, it is a perfect exercise to let you work on different aspects of writing within the confines of something you know well and don't have to invent yourself.

It makes so much sense. This is going to be in my mind for a long while; thanks for giving me something to think about. ♥

[reni-days.livejournal.com]

LOL. Not at all, I thought he was pretty brilliant, myself!