Too Much Success

[Ryan002]

So the week got started as per normal. I got another contract to teach a writing course at a girls' school, and the topic was scary stories, especially centered on local folk tales (we have a lot of that). I had enough time to hit two angles: traditional horror and psychological horror.

Now when I first went in there I expected the worst; I was told that these were triple science students with almost no exposure to literature. I had seen samples of their creative writing, and it was toe curling. In a bad way. There was little beyond hearing howling ghosts and running away from creepy buildings, and they all sounded alike.

So I loaded up some film clips and tried a little experiment. Instead of structure, I just hit on all the tropes I could find. Stairwells, staring into mirrors, lethal road trips, the one locked door in the house...a lot of it borrowed from how King scared me as a kid.

The effect was surreal.

I got the feeling parents didn't know whether to protest or to praise it, because the results were stunning. After some basic imitation, they took off all right. It resulted in some of the strangest reports and discussions I have ever had, the most memorable of which was this:

"See you say the body swings like a pendulum, but that it turned around. If you want to swing a corpse for effect you should swing it against something hard, like metal or stone, or like the clapper in a giant bell. Then the impact will cause blood to splatter and rain down. Unless it's rotting, then you can stick to the whole 'slowly rotate and reveal the face' trick".

As I was saying this, the kid's mother was nodding vigorously and saying that "yeah, next time do that", and all the while I was thinking "Did I just say that?!"

It drew some sidelong glances alright.

The most unusual success story was one kid who, previously, churned out sentence-verb-object statements and lousy dialogue. After some effort, she sounded like a young Anne Rice. Unfortunately, her imagination now allowed for a deranged newspaperman who makes dolls. Out of children. That ending stunned me, but so did the improvement.

Toward the end of the week, they had learned to decorate the text with pictures. From Biology class. The dissected frog pictures, with accompanying text, were unnerving to say the least.

On the last day I had to climb up a ladder to holler at one of the students who had made gone up a fifth floor air conditioning duct to take the precise picture she needed. There was another who was bothering people with putting their hands on door handles, because she had figured out that half a horror story can rotate around "don't open the doors / windows".

They had fun, they improved tremendously, and it was blessedly surreal.

[GNTLGNT]

UUUUHHH-OOHHH, now you've gone and done it...geeks to ghoul-lovers in 60 seconds...Congrats, you da man!!!

[lovely1]

So the week got started as per normal. I got another contract to teach a writing course at a girls' school, and the topic was scary stories, especially centered on local folk tales (we have a lot of that). I had enough time to hit two angles: traditional horror and psychological horror.

Now when I first went in there I expected the worst; I was told that these were triple science students with almost no exposure to literature. I had seen samples of their creative writing, and it was toe curling. In a bad way. There was little beyond hearing howling ghosts and running away from creepy buildings, and they all sounded alike.

So I loaded up some film clips and tried a little experiment. Instead of structure, I just hit on all the tropes I could find. Stairwells, staring into mirrors, lethal road trips, the one locked door in the house...a lot of it borrowed from how King scared me as a kid.

The effect was surreal.

I got the feeling parents didn't know whether to protest or to praise it, because the results were stunning. After some basic imitation, they took off all right. It resulted in some of the strangest reports and discussions I have ever had, the most memorable of which was this:

"See you say the body swings like a pendulum, but that it turned around. If you want to swing a corpse for effect you should swing it against something hard, like metal or stone, or like the clapper in a giant bell. Then the impact will cause blood to splatter and rain down. Unless it's rotting, then you can stick to the whole 'slowly rotate and reveal the face' trick".

As I was saying this, the kid's mother was nodding vigorously and saying that "yeah, next time do that", and all the while I was thinking "Did I just say that?!"

It drew some sidelong glances alright.

The most unusual success story was one kid who, previously, churned out sentence-verb-object statements and lousy dialogue. After some effort, she sounded like a young Anne Rice. Unfortunately, her imagination now allowed for a deranged newspaperman who makes dolls. Out of children. That ending stunned me, but so did the improvement.

Toward the end of the week, they had learned to decorate the text with pictures. From Biology class. The dissected frog pictures, with accompanying text, were unnerving to say the least.

On the last day I had to climb up a ladder to holler at one of the students who had made gone up a fifth floor air conditioning duct to take the precise picture she needed. There was another who was bothering people with putting their hands on door handles, because she had figured out that half a horror story can rotate around "don't open the doors / windows".

They had fun, they improved tremendously, and it was blessedly surreal.

At least you got them to be creative, but you may have given them nightmares too.

[Sigmund]

Hi Ryan! Kewel! Now the little brainiacs have a sense of imagination and creativity. Good for you and GREAT for them.

[hipmamajen]

Love it!

It makes sense, science geeks have some of the best thinkers out there. So, if you get them thinking in a new way it would seem like they could really surprise you. Heh heh heh, cool...

[Billiards Girl]

This is really fantastic! If you don't mind me asking, do you ever do seminars for the general public where one could pay to come drink of your knowledge? Or perhaps a video that could be posted on line? I'm very curious to hear more of what you have to say.