Summer Reading Review

My thesis writing class is having a quiz on the summer reading today. Since I did the reading in June, I felt that I had to re-read everything. In doing this, I took some notes on the reading, and tried implementing a few of the techniques to my current concept. I found the reading useful and it made me feel more confident about writing and speaking about my idea. I pulled together my ideas into a little slide show while I was writing. Although I did this because I didn't have any note paper around when I was reading, I did find it helpful. I do have a few questions even though the reading packet was VERY thorough. For one, I am unsure how the "iterative writing process" works when I completely change my concept. Do I go back? According to the reading, I don't because that is recursive. Also, I am still a little unclear on how much I need to document in my interviews. I conducted 4 phone interviews the other day. I had a hard time writing every single thing that I said along with the responses down, am I supposed to document every part of this communication?

Rio's Great Wall

Article from Wall Street Journal on a wall created in Dona Marta to protect trees.

Going to the Library

I am in the process of making a reading list but since the overall topic of land preservation is HUGE- I am going to try to break it down to what I need to research in order to have a good enough understanding of the subject to build the narrative.

LAND PRESERVATION : specific details about the kinds of issues involved in preserving land so i can work them into the narrative
- what are the real threats?
-what kinds of environments are being threatened?
- is modernization an issue?
- is housing an issue?
- what kind of development is really happening?
- how are animals effected?


CURRICULUM: what are 8th graders learning on the topic?
- what is the current didactic materials being offered?
- what kind of in-class discussions are taking place?

REAL LIFE CASES: what is really happening?
- case studies?
- American case studies?
- statistics about virgin land in America?/ world?

PRECEDENTS: what has been done on the subject?
- animation
-psa's
- games
-literature
-art
- other

Cave of Time

I finished reading Cave of Time a few weeks ago and didn't get around to posting about it until just now. I think that I wasn't jumping to post this because I felt what Simon Cowell would call underwhelmed by the book. The book is a "choose your own adventure," "tree book", "game book" and/or "interactive narrative". The story was written in Each story is written in second person and so the reader became part of the story by dictating the choices and actions that the protagonist would make throughout the narrative. This was achieved by simple directives that followed at the bottom of a page where the character was at a crossroads- for example- if you choose to go into the cave go to page 5, if you decide to go on a horse ride to a castle go to page 11. In theory I thought that the concept was fun - but I felt that the resulting story was a little bit boring and sort of like clicking link after link in your browser following a whim. The plot lines were weak and I think the novelty of having say in the future of your reading is what added to the success of these books. I would also add that each reading of the book took 20 minutes maximum. Maybe this is what also appealed to its readers.

Although I am speakingly negatively about my experience, I do think that these are all things that are important to consider in regards to my potential audience. I need to remember that it is a game and that it needs to be fairly quick paced and to- the- point in order to be successful.
So, I do need to keep in mind:

• TIME: keep each portion of the narrative short and decision making limited
• PLOT: the plot doesn't need to be wildly complicated to be interesting/fun
• INTERACTION: a choice can be as simple as deciding to go left or right
• FUN: the novelty of the game playing interaction or core mechanic will provide a certain element of fun- not to be overlooked.
• AUDIENCE: keep the game appropriate to the age of your reader/player

I did read that some of the other books in the series dealt with more historical fiction and/ or political type topics. I am going to try to get my hands on one of these books, however I do feel that these books are like a one liner joke in that you get what they are about within 5 minutes.