Round Robin

Here's a quote from Albert Einstein on the topic of inspiration...

"When I think and reflect how my discoveries originated and took form, a hundred times you run, as it were, with your head against the wall in order to lay your hands upon and define and fit into a system what, from a merely indefinable premonition, you sense in vain. And then suddenly, perhaps like a stroke of lightning, the salient thought will come to you and the indescribably laborious task of building up and expanding the system can begin. The process is not different by which the artist arrives at his conceptions. Real faith, either to a scientist or a businessman or a minister of religion, involves the problem and struggle of searching." 

In class today, we considered the various sources of inspiration for our stories--objects, places, people, processes, etc. etc. For example, I shared a particularly messed-up story from my genealogical history.

We also looked at a few different series of tiny(ish) stories and discussed the unifying principle underlying these stories. For example, we imagined what our friend Tim Burton might create in response to this assignment.

Now that you've found a source of inspiration for your tiny story, consider HOW you are going to tell/illustrate it? You might consider theme, character, use of punctuation, literary devices, visual motifs...

And then, when it's your turn to continue someone else's series, choose whatever you find interesting/compelling/essential from the previous story and develop that. 

Now, here is the assignment description for the Red Robin from the syllabus:

Each student will collaborate on a series of five ‘tiny stories.’ By ‘tiny story’, I mean a narrative (with something that might resemble a beginning, middle and end) of less than 30 words, accompanied by an illustration (drawn, photographed, computer generated, etc.). By ‘collaborate,’ I mean that each student will complete the series’ 1st tiny story, forward it to a second (pre-determined) student, who will complete the 2nd tiny story in the series, who will then forward that 2nd story (NOT 1 & 2) to a third (pre- determined) student who will continue the process until each student has contributed 5 tiny stories, each to a different series.Then we’ll see what happened.Artist statements should include a discussion of how form and content, narrative and theme, individual story and series correlate and compliment each other. 

To simplify this potentially complicated creative process, let's do this...

First, I'm going to assign you to the following groups of 5, with whom you'll be creating your series(es)(?) of tiny stories...

Group 1
Camden Argyle
Aidan Barringer
Tabby Brower
Barrett Burgin
Trevor Bush

Group 2
Pepe Callejas
Brandon Carraway
Zach Connell
Madison Ellis
Grant Gomm

Group 3
Weber Griffiths
Keith Grover
Hannah Hansen
Adam Hardy
Tom Hartvigsen

Group 4
Addy Hunsaker
Morgan Jones
Nathanael King
Rachel Lawyer
Emily McNey

Group 5
Heather Moser
Jake Nelson
Amy Peterson
Maddy Purves
Juan Rodriguez

Group 6
Catherine Santos
Daniel Schindler
Kyler Sommer
Nathan Tanner
Grace Taylor

Group 7
Jase VanMeeteren
Graham Walker
Jesse Baird
Benjamin Thevenin

Then, once all of the series are completed, you will need to send each of your tiny stories to the student who started the series to which each story corresponds. Please agree as a group when this should be done (probably no later than Monday morning), to allow everyone in your group ample time to reflect on the assignment, write an (amazing) artists' statement (together as a group) and post it (along with their series) on their blog.