Hey Carly and Alisa look what I figured out:
I spent fifteen years thinking that I wasn’t good enough at TPRS, innocently going to national conferences and spinning stories with a big smile on my face like I was in complete control of the story and yet inside I was a mess.
I used to do that in all sorts of workshops and it was a crap shoot whether the story would get off the ground or not and certainly not worth being exposed like that in front of 100 teachers. We need to know that we can make a problem happen and then if we don’t have a problem by the time we get to where we want one in the story, we can just stop the story. That’s acceptable!
What saved me were the Anne Matava TPRS story scripts. They carried me for 15 years. At least 70% of my time spent in the classroom was spent doing those scripts. Most of the rest of the time – about 20% at least – I was doing one word images.
Each script is based on, has its underpinnings in, a really good problem of the kind that only Anne can manufacture. For example, on p. 28 of her masterpiece “97 TPRS Story Scripts” there is a story about a girl who drives the monorail at Disney World named Gabi who gets yelled at by her boss for sleeping all the time.
What more can one want in a problem? We have everything we need – a character, a place, other characters, a problem and a solution. And Anne has collected 97 of them! All one has to do is flip open the book, find a script, figure out what the problem is in it, create some dialogue in the form of an argument between Gabi and her boss, and then solve it in some way in QL6.
(The solution is always easy. If nothing else, you can just have the planet explode; problem solved.)
In reality, NONE of Anne’s scripts – search 97 Story Scripts by Anne Matava on my website (electronic version) or from Teacher’s Discovery (hard copy) – is targeted. The structures emerge from the text, are not foisted on it.
In the way they are set up, Anne’s scripts are very much like what Joe Neilson did – there is a “character who has some sort of problem” and the structures emerge from the story and not from a list connected to a textbook or curriculum of some sort. (That information is from the horse’s mouth from a Kansas City workshop in 2005.)
For those who have the script book, I strongly suggest using it but in a different way, in the non-targeted way. Most TPRS teachers only use a Matava script when they can use it to align their instruction with some list they have to teach.
Rather, it is best to just open the book and pick a script and isolate the problem and go from there as we do in the non-targeted story way.
Sample Story Based on a Matava Script
Here is another example, besides the one we just mentioned about Gabi in Disney World, that will show us in a bit more detail how to manufacture a good non-targeted story from one of Anne’s scripts. This script is from p. 24 in the script book:
Going to the Mall to See Santa (Level 1)
wait
I have to go to the bathroom sits
you’ll get
Three-year-old 1 Billy and his mother go to the mall to see Santa. They wait for 2 three hours. Billy says, “I have to go to the bathroom.” Mom says, “Can’t you wait?” Billy can’t wait. He pees his pants. He sits on Santa’s lap. Santa says, “Yuck! Your pants are wet! You’ll get no presents!”
Billy and his mother go to 3 Sears and buy new pants. They go back to Santa and wait 4 23 minutes. Billy says, “I have to go to the bathroom.” Mom says, “Can’t you wait?” Billy can’t wait. He pees his pants. He sits on Santa’s lap. Santa says, “You again! Your pants are wet! You’ll get no presents!”
Billy and his mother go to 5 Hot Topic and buy new pants. They go back to Santa and wait 6 34 days. Billy says, “I have to go to the bathroom, and I can’t wait.” 7 His mother brings him to the bathroom. Santa is also in the bathroom. Billy says, “Hey Santa, will you bring me Guitar Hero?” Santa says, “Yes of course, because you are a big boy and are going to the bathroom.”
Ask students:
1) Who goes to see Santa?
2) How long do they wait in line?
3) Where does Mom take him to buy pants?
4) How long do they wait this time?
5) Where does Mom take him to buy pants this time?
6) How long do they wait this time?
7) How does the story end?
Note that we will obviously not use either the structures at the top or the questions at the bottom of the page (forced on Anne and I by Teacher’s Discovery, nor do we need the second and third paragraph, which are patterned on the old “3 location” plan that they used to use in TPRS, or maybe still do.
All we need is the first paragraph. That gives us a character (Billy), a place (the mall), other people (mom and Santa), a problem (Billy’s pants are wet because he pissed them), and a solution (Billy learns to go to the bathroom).
Therefore, the Matava scripts are entirely aligned in conception and practicality with the Invisibles program I created. This new way of using the scripts is not the way I used the scripts when I was using TPRS. It’s a better way.
Just grab what you need from the first paragraph of each story in the book and watch the story grow wings because the problems are just so cute and clever.