THE EXPERIMENTS
An explanation of what the Experiments are, a description of my Origin Piece, and a sneak preview of my Final Project
How to Navigate this Page
This page contains a writeup about my Origin Piece that I made for class, as well as brief explanations of the Experiments and my Final Project. If you would like to skip ahead to certain sections, please click on the following navigable links (the links are labeled with the name of each item), but I recommend viewing each of them in their current order.
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an explanation of the Experiments assignment and an orientation for these sections/tabs
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the Origin Piece is the inspiration for all of the Experiments. What did I choose, and why?
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an introduction to these projects and what you will be finding on subsequent tabs
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learn more about which of the three Experiments I chose to "finish to completion"
WHAT ARE "THE EXPERIMENTS"?
The "Experiments" are a series of three projects I completed for class that allowed students to learn more about different genres of writing and different mediums of communication.
Each student picked an "origin piece," which was the document that would inspire each of the three Experiment projects, and then selected three genres (preferably ones they had never tried before) in which to re-interpret their origin piece/its subject matter. For example, after I had chosen my origin piece of a novel I had started writing, the three Experiment genres I selected were sound essay, book trailer, and book website.
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For each Experiment, I was asked to make a proposal of the project, do research, provide a detailed outline of the entire project (were I to complete it), provide only a small "sample" of the unfinished project, and then do a reflection on the assignment. You can find these pieces of writing under each of the "Experiment #" tabs under this "Experiments" tab.
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For my final project, I was asked to then take one of my three Experiments and finish it. In other words, take the sample I had started and finish the rest of what the sketch had talked about. For my final project, I chose to "fully realize" my Experiment 3. You can read about this under the "Final Project" tab under this "Experiments" tab.
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Please read on to learn more about my origin piece and my experiments, and thank you for taking the time to look at my E-Portfolio!
ABOUT MY ORIGIN PIECE
For my Origin Piece, I have selected a novel I have started for middle-school-aged readers titled “It’s Pronounced Pegasus.” The novel is a first-person narrative featuring a quirky high school teen named Logan Ceallaigh who deals with a bullying scandal after one of her teachers mispronounces her last name on the first day of class. Logan’s unlucky fate eventually changes, however, when Wes Cameron, the golden boy of the high school, starts to pay her some attention. The two form a fast friendship and pseudo-romantic relationship that catapults Logan into the ranks of the popular, but she soon comes to find that being on the inside of the social bubble isn’t exactly what she thought it would be. In other words, “It’s Pronounced Pegasus” is basically your average coming-of-age tale packed with plenty of humor, suspense, and high school drama, made even more fun by our charismatic and unreliable narrator.
While I only have about the first three chapters of the novel written so far (and they are relatively short chapters due to the target audience of middle-school-aged readers), this short piece (and future plan for fulfillment) engages me in several ways. First, I love Logan’s voice as a narrator. She’s funny, self-deprecating, and very dramatic/overblown. She’s outwardly a pretty awkward and subdued person, but she narrates like a total drama queen, and I find that dichotomy fascinating. I also find the subject matter engaging. For starters, I relate to Logan’s experience of growing up with a constantly-mispronounced last name. In fact, I think Logan’s “different than the rest” high school experience, combined with her last name woes, is what inspired this story in the first place. Furthermore, I love that the subject matter of the book is this rom-com/high-school-drama/Disney-Channel-Original-esque plotline, even though in the very first chapter Logan is self-aware enough to point out that this story, while it seems very much like “every high school romance movie, like, ever just decided to insert their plot lines into my life” is different from the rest (or at least Logan seems to hint that it is). I’m not quite sure how this “different from the rest” thing will play out, so I’m also engaged in this material because I’m intrigued in figuring it out along the way.
ABOUT EACH EXPERIMENT
Experiment 1: Sound Essay
Think of a sound essay as a story/experience told through purely auditory information. In my sound essay, "Morning Blues," I outline the not-so-perfect morning of our protagonist's (Logan's) first day of high school. If you'd like to view it now, click on the video to the left. If you'd like to learn more about this Experiment first, click here to visit the "Experiment 1" page.
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Experiment 2: Book Trailer
A book trailer is like a movie trailer, but for a book! If you would like to view the book trailer now, please click on the picture to the left. If you'd like to learn more about this Experiment first, click here to visit the "Experiment 2" page, which contains my entire writeup about my book trailer that I made for class.
Experiment 3: Book Website
A book website is the home for all things book-related! It acts as the second-face of the book, its online presence, and a marketing tool for current and future readers. If you would like to learn more about this Experiment first, click here to visit the "Experiment 3" page, which contains my entire writeup about my book website for class. If you would like to visit my website first, click here.
ABOUT MY FINAL PROJECT
Since the nature of the experiments was to only actually make a small sample of the overall sketch of the project (not actually try to finish any of the experiments), my "Final Project" is just the fancy way of saying "the experiment I chose to finish in its entirety."
For me, that was Experiment 3, my book website. My original Experiment 3 had contained all of the tabs you can currently find on the website, but only the "Home" page had been finished, and the other tabs remained bare-bones versions of their current selves. As such, to "fully realize" this experiment, I had to finish out the rest of the pages.
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For the "About" page, I tweaked my short bio and wrote the entire long bio from scratch. For the "Books" page, I played with formatting to get it looking how it does now. I didn't really change the "Contact" page (if you visit it, you'll see why), but I did tweak the already finished "Home" page. Lastly, I created the "Q&A with the Author" document for the "Extras" page, then wrote descriptions for each of the three "Extras" files.
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If you'd like to view my final project, you can click on the website photo above, but I recommend continuing on the the "Experiment 3" page, first, to get the full picture (after you have also viewed "Experiment 1" and "Experiment 2" pages).
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If you'd like to read more about my process of making these Experiments and choosing both my Origin Piece and my Final Project material, click here to visit my "Final Project/Reflection" page. (Again, this is best done after you read about the Experiments on their pages.)