team exercise: fiction wikis

The team assignment for today has two parts.

The first part is fairly simple: find a wiki, explore it a bit, and then provide a general description (more on that below).

The second part is to compose and upload a chapter or article to the wiki you have chosen.

At the end of the exercise, please email me your description and the URL of your uploaded chapter or article.

You should find a wiki at Wikia. (Mostly because you don’t have to have a login to do so at Wikia.) Links to Wikia sites are below.

Part I: General description

Consider the following questions:

1. Who is the audience for the wiki? What kind of people use the wiki? Can you find out profile information?

2. What kind of tools are available for collaboration at the wiki?

3. What kind of fiction wiki is your wiki? (collaborative hypertext, collaborative interactive fiction, collaborative serialized fiction, collaborative world construction, collaborative faux encyclopedia)

Part II: Contribution

Again, in the second part you will compose a chapter or article and upload it to your wiki.

If you like, you can do one of the wikis that have been presented today. They are listed here:

http://engl278w.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/team-g-presents-fiction-wikis/

Or you can choose another Wikia wiki:

Fiction Wikia:
http://fiction.wikia.com/wiki/Fiction

ConWorlds Wiki:
http://conworld.wikia.com/wiki/Welcome_to_Conworlds

Imagine Wiki:
http://imagine.wikia.com/wiki/ImagineWiki

Have fun!

Team Exercise: Flogs

For your team exercise, choose one of the flogs below, browse it, and then review it using this structure:

1. General description of the flog (1-2 sentences)
2. Plot or storyline (1-2 sentences)
3. Format (1-2 sentences)*
4. Pros: What works (1-2 sentences)
5. Cons: What doesn’t work (1-2 sentences)

As part of your evaluation of pros and cons, consider:

• What aspects of the blog format does it utilize (images, navigational options, the profile or “about me” section, comments, links)? Does it utilize these elements well in terms of adding to the story and the reading experience?
• Would the flog work better in a non-blog format? What format or formats would be more appropriate?

* To determine the format, try this page:

http://blog.blogfiction.org/2008/02/blog-fiction-formats.html

* * * * *

These are the flogs you may choose from:

Adrian’s Undead Diary
http://adriansundeaddiary.com

Death’s Blog
http://www.deathsblog.com

Renal Failure
http://renalfailure.wordpress.com

Starwalker
http://www.starwalkerblog.com

Lord Likely
http://lordlikely.com

The Germaine Truth
http://thegermainetruth.net

KristenAC the ManiAC
http://kristenacthemaniac.blogspot.com

Team Exercise: Faux Facebook and Phweets

Phony Facebook and Twitter accounts, in which people take on the identities of famous celebrities or fictional characters, have become a fixture in our Web 2.0 world. Your assignment, as a team, is to find and create such accounts. It will be your April Fool’s Day exercise.

1. First, find a faux Facebook account or a phony Twitter (known as a Phweet). These search terms should yield some results in a Google search:

phony fake mock faux twitter facebook

You might have different search terms. Try those as well.

You can also look at this Mashable page for some examples of fake Facebook pages:

http://mashable.com/2009/07/26/funniest-fake-facebook/

Or this PCWorld page for examples of phony Twitter accounts:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/159492/15_fake_and_funny_twitter_accounts.html

2. Second, create your own phony account. For the sake of time, I would suggest creating a fake fan page for a celebrity or fictional character at Facebook. To do so, just go to the Facebook login page (you’ll need to be logged out), and click on the “Create a Page” link at the bottom. Be sure to find some pictures or graphics, maybe even some links, to fill out your page (along with text).

3. Writing/Analysis. I know it’s April Fool’s Day, but I have to insist that you think and write about what you’re doing. So please answer each of the following questions in a reply of 2-4 sentences.

Q1: What is the URL for the mock Facebook or Twitter account?
Q2: Why did you choose this particular account?
Q3: Do you find it convincing, or is it just ridiculous?
Q4: What is the URL of the fake Facebook page that your group has created?
Q5: Why did you create the page your created?
Q6: What are the positive aspects, and the negative aspects, of creating fake Facebook or Twitter accounts or pages? (That is, what’s the difference between Facebook fiction and identity theft?)

Please send your answers to those questions to me at: byrnejo@umd.edu

Have fun!

Team Exercise: Visiting the MOO

For this week’s team exercise, you will be visiting and playing in a MOO.

Choose one of the MOOs below. Follow the instructions. Have fun. Then answer the questions below.

Hogwarts MOO
http://moo.echoduet.net/address.php?id=29

Cybersphere (RPG MOO)
http://cs.vv.com/

Harper’s Tale MOO
http://www.harpers-tale.com/

Ghostwheel MOO
http://fazigu.org/~quinn/ghost/

Discussion Questions: (Please answer and email to me at byrnejo@umd.edu)

1. Does the MOO make an effort to define time and space for the user? How? Does this make the MOO more immersive?

2. Does the MOO offer interactivity? How? Does this make the MOO more immersive?

3. Does the MOO offer the user interactions with other users or groups? How? Does this make the MOO more immersive?

4. Does the MOO make an effort to make the user forget that he or she is on a computer (does it offer “transparent immediacy” as Bolter and Grusin define that term)? How?

5. Does the MOO demand “a willing suspension of disbelief” in order to get into the experience?

Team Exercise: Playing Interactive Fiction Games

Today, as a team, you will be playing an interactive fiction game (two if you have time). Then you will consider, and answer, the questions at the bottom of this page. Then you will send your answers to me at byrnejo@umd.edu.

Everyone should begin with Andrew Plotkin’s “Dreamhold” which was designed as an interactive fiction tutorial. (Be sure to click on the “how to play” link at the top of the page, or type “help” a few times at the beginning of the game).

http://www.eblong.com/zarf/zweb/dreamhold/

Then, if you have time, choose one of the games from the sites below. To save time, you should probably choose a game that you can play online, rather than install.

Emily Short. My Games:
http://emshort.wordpress.com/my-work/

Dennis Jerz. Online Gallery of Interactive Fiction:
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/gallery/

Interactive Fiction Database:
http://ifdb.tads.org/

Interactive Fiction Games presented by Team D:

http://engl278w.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/interactive-fiction-research/

Here are the questions you need to consider and answer:

1. Identify and describe your game.

2. Describe your game play, both individually (different tasks) and as a group.

3. What problems or insights did your encounter in your play? (Any technical difficulties?)

4. Was your game really a game? Was it literature?

Team Exercise: Reading and Writing Digital Poetry

The team exercise for today has two parts.

In the first part, you will do a collective reading of a digital poem, chosen from one of the websites listed below.

Please note the title, author, and URL of the digital poem you have chosen to read together. Also, include a few sentences describing your collective reaction to the poem. Finally, determine whether your poem is an example of a computer poem, a graphical poem, and/or a hypertext/hypermedia poem (based on the descriptions by Christopher Funkhouser; URL below).

In the second part, using the poem you’ve read together as a model, you will collectively compose a digital poem.

I would suggest each member of the team compose alternating lines. You might even do it “telephone” style. This means that your poem will be a hypertext/hypermedia poem.

You may want to do a graphical poem instead. That means you’ll need to arrange the words to form some kind of picture or series of pictures.

If you’re interested in doing a computer poem, you’ll need to describe it instead of actually compose it (unless someone on your team is a very fast computer programmer). But you shouldn’t do a computer-generated poem if you don’t know how to make one.

Also, unlike when your team composed a hypertext together, I would like you to at least consider how to integrate images and sounds (or other media) into your poem.

You might even want to download some images (or sound files?) and send them to me (as URLs or attachments) along with your poem and your analysis of a digital poem.

To sum up, this is what you will send me at the end of class:

• the title, author, and URL of one digital poem
• a few sentences describing your collective reaction to the poem
• a determination whether your poem is an example of a computer poem, a graphical poem, and/or a hypertext/hypermedia poem
• a digital poem composed by your team
• ideas on how to integrate images and sounds into your poem
• (optional: actual images and sound files, as URLs or attachments)

* * *

Christopher Funkhouser: “Digital Poetry: A Look at Generative, Visual, and Interconnected Possibilities in its First Four Decades”

http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/view?docId=blackwell/9781405148641/9781405148641.xml&doc.view=content&chunk.id=ss1-5-11&toc.depth=1&brand=9781405148641_brand&anchor.id=0

Digital Poetry sites:

Poems That Go: http://poemsthatgo.com
Electronic Poetry Center: http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry
Word Circuits: http://www.wordcircuits.com
Glass Wings (Archive): http://www.glasswings.com.au/modern/index.html
Bits of Poetry: http://media.poetryinternational.org/bop/indexx.html
Jason Nelson’s Digital Poetry Interfaces: http://heliozoa.com
Hypertext Poetry and Web Art: http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/hypelink.htm
Deena Larsen’s Web Bookshelf: http://www.deenalarsen.net/webshelf.htm
Deena Larsen’s website: http://www.deenalarsen.net/

Team Exercise: Reading Patchwork Girl

In your group reading of Patchwork Girl, please consider and answer the following questions:

1. Is there too much information? (the content of the hypertext novel)

2. Is there too little information? (on navigation, etc.)

3. What is the best way to navigate Patchwork Girl in order to produce a satisfying reading experience?

4. Are the separate sections more cohesive and comprehensible than the work as a whole?

5. What, if any, are the main problems with Patchwork Girl? If you were the editor of a new edition, what, if anything, would you change?

6. How does Patchwork Girl use or remediate Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?

7. How does Patchwork Girl compare with Marge Piercy’s He, She, and It?

Please be sure to include your navigation history with your answers to the questions above.

Also include the text of three margin notes.

Team Exercise: Creating a Hypertext Story

For this team exercise, your task as a team is two-fold.

1.  Your team will compose a hypertext story.  Each member of the team will compose a segment of the story separately, and email it to me. I will put the parts together and create a menu for your story. The completed story will be posted to the class blog for the entire class to read.

Each individual segment should be a paragraph of 5-7 sentences. Each individual segment also needs a title.

Like any other hypertext, your story will not have a set beginning or end point. The reader will be able to enter the story at any point. In order to give your hypertext story some coherence, I would suggest that you decide on a few things before writing.

1. Characters. Who are your characters? Is there more than one? Will each of you write from the point of view of one character, or different characters? Or is there a single narrator who discusses the characters?

2. Time. When does your story occur? How long does it take to transpire?

3. Place. What is the setting or your story? Is it one place or many places?

4. Plot. What basically happens in your story? Is there action or just a narrator or characters reflecting on past or future action?

5. Images. Do you wish to illustrate your hypertext story, or incorporate images into it? If so, what kind of images?

If you have trouble as a team coming up with a story concept, you might want to fictionalize a current news story. You should be able to find something at Yahoo News or Google News:

http://news.yahoo.com/

http://news.google.com/

2. Your team will write part of a hypertext story composed by the entire class. For this, I have come up with a scenario. In order for it to work, I need to assign each team a character.

The scenario is this: Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter are playing Jeopardy versus Watson the computer. The place is the IBM campus in upstate New York. The time is February 16, 2011, and the story occurs over the span of an episode of Jeopardy (a half hour). In the story to we get to see what each character is really thinking.

Each team segment should be a paragraph of 5-7 sentences.

Here are the character assignments:

Team A: Alex Trebek
Team B: Watson the computer
Team C: Ken Jennings
Team D: Brad Rutter
Team E: David Ferrucci (head of the Watson team)
Team F: John Q. Luddite (member of the audience who is thinking of sabotaging Watson)
Team G: S. Holmes (head of security who suspects sabotage)

Team Exercise: Building the Perfect Frankenstein

In this team exercise, you will design a new version of Frankenstein. Like many before you, you will take the parts you like and leave the parts you don’t.

Specifically, you will create an edition with at least 10 chapters. You will provide a paragraph (4-6 sentences) summary of the edition as a whole. You will provide short chapter summaries as well, of 1-2 sentences. Feel free to borrow text and analysis from the online Cliffs Notes Frankenstein page (URL below). If you do so, please give credit to Cliffs Notes by including the initials “CN” in parentheses after the material that has been borrowed. Like this: (CN).

You can put the chapters in any order you like. You can leave out any chapters you like. You can add chapters if you like, based on material from other versions of Frankenstein (including film and television versions), or taken from your imagination. In fact, your version might be radically different than any other version. But that means you will have to compose your own chapter summaries, rather than rely on Cliffs Notes to do it for you.

You have the option of adding illustrations to your edition (found online, etc.). If so, please provide a sentence-length caption explaining each illustration.

All the groups will be presenting their versions of Frankenstein to the class today.

Below is the URL for the Frankenstein page at Cliffs Notes. It provides a summary of the book as a whole, and chapter summaries including analysis and the original text (1831 edition).

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Frankenstein-Book-Summary.id-112,pageNum-1.html

If you need to refer to the Romantic Circles hypertext edition, here is the URL for that:

http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/

Team Exercise: Book Publishing

In this exercise, your group will come up with a plan to re-publish in print a book that has been digitized.

The menu of all the possible elements of such a book are below. All of them have a price tag. That’s because you must publish your book on a budget.

Your budget is $300,000. Spend it wisely! You will asked to provide a final total of expenses at the end of the exercise.

Below are links to sites where you can look at a digitized books. Pick one and then decide what menu items you want for your published book.

Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org
Google Books: http://books.google.com

Menu Items:

1. Procuring copyright. If your book is still in copyright (published within the past 80 years), you’ll need to pay $50,000.

2. Desired page count. If you expect your book to have over 200 pages, you’ll need to pay an extra $25,000. (Remember the size of the book will affect how many pages in your book).

3. Book binding and size. If you publish your book in hardback, you’ll need to pay $100,000. In paperback, $50,000. And if your book goes beyond stardard size (for hardback), you’ll need to pay another $50,000.

4. Apparatus. What do you need beyond the text of the book itself? Do you need an introduction? An index? Appendices? For any of these items, you’ll need to pay $50,000. (Remember some people will pay more for these extras).

5. Illustrations. These are always an expensive item in a published book. If you illustrate, you’ll need to decide: black and white or color? As chapter headings, mixed in with the text in the chapters, or in a separate section of the book? $100,000 for color illustrations, $50,000 for black and white.

6. Audience and price. Who is the target audience for your book? And what is the price of your book? These two questions are very related. The price, depending on what it is, will either limit or expand the pool of buyers for your book.

7. Sales locations. Where will you sell your book? In a large retail chain bookstore such as Barnes and Noble? In small independent bookstores? In supermarkets? Sales location is also intimately related to your target audience. $25,000 in extra costs for selling at a retail bookstore, $50,000 for small independent bookstore.

8. Publicity. How will you advertise your book? Television commercials (add $100,000)? Book tour with the author (add $100,000)? Ads in newspapers and magazines (add $75,000)?

9. More publicity. Would you like your author on talk shows? That will cost you $100,000. On Oprah? $150,000. As an Oprah Book Club selection? $200,000.

10. And more publicity. Would you like some blurbs from famous authors? That will cost you $50,000. Good reviews? Obviously you can’t pay for good reviews, but it does cost something to get good reviewers. That will cost you $50,000.

There are a couple things that cost a little in legwork but pay major dividends in publicity and sales, in effect adding to your budget. They are book awards and selling film rights. As part of this exercise, an esteemed judge (me!) will decide whether your book is worthy of such honors and windfalls.