The Storymatic for Teachers
The Storymatic is an ideal classroom tool. It's portable, easy to explain, flexible enough that students can use it independently or collaboratively, and it offers a fun way to establish a creative community. You can use The Storymatic for five minutes, or you can use it for a solid week. It is easy to extend activities using The Storymatic so that students revise and publish their work in class anthologies.
When students share their work after using The Storymatic, they are often amazed at the different paths they all took. They will also likely be curious about each other's work and encourage each other to share. This is all wonderful positive reinforcement to hear from one's peers, and it builds confidence like little else can do.
But The Storymatic isn't just about writing. It's also about reading. The Storymatic helps sharpen students' skills at literary analysis. Because The Two Laws of the Storymatic push students to think about what is involved in making their own fictional characters change, it becomes considerably easier for students to discuss how characters in literature change and grow.
The booklet that comes with each Storymatic is filled with prompts, suggestions, and games that you can use in and out of class.
Not merely a children's game (though they like it too) the Storymatic has changed my teaching. This amazingly simple, yet brilliant little box has taught my students at both the undergraduate and graduate level how to unearth the bones beneath their stories. It is not only a huge help to teachers, it is a help to all writers who are struggling with structure and plot--and may have been foolish enough not to pay attention to what really MAKES A STORY. Thank God for Storymatic. I am using it in class, my students are buying it for themselves--and hey, it keeps the kids happy too!
Rebecca Chace; author of "Chautauqua Summer" (Memoir, Harcourt);
"Capture the Flag" (Novel, Simon and Schuster0,
and recently produced film, summer 2009),
and the upcoming novel,
"Leaving Rock Harbor" (Scribners, June 2010).
Faculty at City College of New York,
MFA Creative Writing Program:
Advanced Fiction and Dramatic Writing;
Bard College, Visiting Professor in First Year Seminar.
"I introduced The Storymatic to my Friday writing practice group at the Carnegie Center here in Lexington and it was a hit! It gave all of us a much-needed boost of creative energy. For a few of us, The Storymatic has helped uncover some promising ideas that could be developed into more formal writing. . . I work at the University of Kentucky, and I plan on showing the Storymatic to the folks on faculty in the English Department. And I'd also like to show it to the faculty over at Transylvania University, the private liberal arts college here in Lexington. What a perfect tool for creative writing classes!"
Bobbi Burns
University of Kentucky