Assignment #4: Chain Writing and Metafiction

 Hello Students,

Our last and final assignment for GLPS is a fun one.   As most of you have already done, we have completed the "Chain Writing" exercise where you passed essays and stories around the room to hopefully complete a fun and interesting piece of collaborative writing.   Sometimes it turns out wonderfully, sometimes it ends up a mess.  In the next part of this exercise, you will have to find a creative way to add to the brilliance (or clean up a mess with your talent).

Once you have the paper you started back, you have to transfer it to your blog in a post that is clearly called "Chain Writing."  If you wish to color each paragraph written by a different writer, you can do that.  Here is an example from the last GLPS camp:

Chain Writing by Vanessa Shin

As you copy the writing to your blog, please correct the grammar and mistakes, but DO NOT CHANGE THE CONTENT.  At least not yet.

Once you have completed putting it on your blog, you can read some of the stories or essays you participated in on other blogs.  Now, you can choose the one you want to use for Part 2 of this assignment: Metafiction. 


What is "metaficiton"? Look it up on Wikipedia here. It's basically a "story inside a story."  Or a story about telling a story.  Or a story about someone encountering someone else's story.  Basically, it's a story with multiple layers - like the layers of an onion.  Alice In Wonderland is an example.  She falls into a rabbit hole and a BIG story happens there.  BUT there is also the story outside the rabbit hole.  

Here is an example in a popular film called "The Never Ending Story."  This is a story about a boy reading a story.  The events in the story are interrupted with his own story - a mix of reality and imagination:

 

So, once you've found your favorite Chain Writing (it can be the one on your blog, or you can copy and paste from a classmate's blog), you have to re-frame the story and add a layer that encapsulates it somehow.  The possibilities are endless.  A message in a bottle.  A speech.  A student writing a diary.  A student who found a diary.  A conversation with someone.  Take the material and re-shape it into something new with an added element.

• In terms of formatting, try to use different fonts for the original work and the stuff you introduce.  You may also want to use different colored text.  
• You are also encouraged to add pictures, and you may also want to comment (at the start or at the end) about your strategy to employ Metafiction around the original work.
• Think of this as film editing.  You don't have to use ALL of the stuff from the Chain Writing. If a student in your class decided to get silly and mess it up a little, you can take that paragraph out and not use it. 

Here is an example of Metafiction I just wrote for fun.  Ironically, it's about a teacher reading an essay: 

Mr. Garrioch sat down at his desk, and began to look at the essays that his students wrote.  There was a new student named Chuck Brown who had just arrived the day before.  He had blue hair, two earrings in each ear, and a tattoo.  He seemed to be strange, and Mr. Garrioch didn't know much about him.  He was very curious to read his essay.  He sipped his coffee and began to read Chuck's awkward handwriting:

Many things must be stopped. First of all, abbreviation in language must be stopped. Nowadays, many people use abbreviations in language. The most famous are "CU" or"LOL" which are abbreviations of  "see you" and "laugh out loud." Since so many people use abbreviations, people are getting confused. Sometimes when I use abbreviations speaking to my mom, she gets confused and doesn't know what I am talking about and keeps asking me stupid questions. Also I think abbreviations are destructive to  language. It is erasing the original meaning that it contains. 

Mr. Garrioch agreed with Chuck's logic.  This student must be very brilliant, he thought. He continued reading.


Abbreviation has made our communication hard to understand and also destroyed the essence of the Korean language - Han-Gul words are being shortened beyond recognition and polite form.  So who is to blame? It is mostly by students. Students or young teens wants to make long words shorter to pronounce easier. Also, they think they are cool when they use it.  For example, an elevator in "elva" or teacher  is just "ssam."  This is also a problem in English - not just in Korean.  Texting and spoken words are becoming the same. How will anyone communicate???

Suddenly, Mr. Garrioch was interrupted by a knock at the door.  It was Chuck, poking his head in.  "Hey Mr. G! Can you spare a few ticks?" 

"What? What do you mean by ticks?  Ticks are insects, are they not? What do you want?"

"LOL!" Chuck replied with a big grin.  But while he did say "LOL," he didn't actually "laugh out loud."  Mr. Garrioch was old, but he still knew what LOL was.

"NEway,Mr. G, ma peeps is w8in so I gotta holla lata.  TTYL about ma essay. I hope u think it's gr8!"

And just like that, Chuck disappeared, leaving Mr. Garrioch with a bemused look on his face.  He continued reading:

This is also a problem in English - not just in Korean.  Texting and spoken words are becoming the same. How will anyone communicate???
 
That's a good question, thought Mr. Garrioch. How WILL they? And then he wrote an F at the top of Chuck's essay.