I always felt as if I didn’t have time to do a parallel novel. But now I realize that the term is misleading. We can spin out into a parallel scene while reading a novel, or we might be able to set up a parallel set of events for more than one scene, possibly up to one full chapter. But we can’t spin a novel from another novel that is a mirror of the original novel. That would be just too much to do.
So now, I feel a lot more free when doing R and D. Side bars appear and disappear. Spinout discussions happen and then they’re gone and back to the translation of the novel. My student Richard becomes Jean Luc Bartolin for a little while, and ask him questions and personalize, and then we’re back in the book.
Same with Reader’s Theatre. We think it’s a big deal. Theatre is a big word. But in reality what we do in RT is just a little scene we play with and bring the class into as actors. All very simple. I’m happy not to try to stretch CI into a big deal anymore.
We should call it Parallel Scenes and Reader’s Scenes. Or something.