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Chatterbox: Crowd Sorcery
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Welcome to Crowd Sorcery!
This summer, Fred Durbin and Emily Fiegenschuh, author and illustrator of “The Star Shard” (Cricket April 2008–April 2009) will be working with ideas and characters you develop through Crowd Sorcery to create an original fantasy story for the November/December 2014 issue of Cricket.
Fred and Emily need your help inventing a hero or heroine, a sidekick, a villain, and an imaginative fantasy world. Beginning with the July/August issue, Cricket will publish in the magazine selections of what kids write on Crowd Sorcery. Sketches of some of your characters and ideas by Emily will be featured in the digital editions!
Digital editions of the magazine will be downloadable for free during the summer. They include everything in the magazine plus many extra features. Just go to the iTunes store or Google Play and search for Cricket magazine to download a free digital edition.
We hope that all of you who love to create stories on the Inkwell will enjoy collaborating in the process of creating a real Cricket story. We also hope that kids who read Cricket around the world will join the fun by linking from their digital editions to the Chatterbox.
If you’ve linked here from the digital edition, let us know! And welcome to the Chatterbox!
How does Crowd Sorcery work?
We’ve planned four threads where you can contribute ideas for a hero or heroine, sidekick, villain, and a Fantasy Dictionary. You can create as many characters and fantasy worlds as you like. Maybe your characters will live in a medieval village, or in ancient Egypt, or your fantasy ideas might lead you to imagine a futuristic world. It’s up to you! You can also change your ideas, and comment on the ideas of other Chatterboxers. (You can’t create new threads on this section of the Chatterbox. Please post your contributions as comments or replies.)
From time to time, Fred will create a Fred Thread. He may ask a question to help him, and everyone, better imagine the story’s fantasy world and characters. He may also post parts of the story as he writes, so that you can comment or make suggestions.
We would like you to begin with the threads for Hero or Heroine, Fantasy Dictionary, and Fred Thread 1. Later in May we will make live the threads for Sidekick and Villain.
How will we/Fred/you decide on the final characters?
We plan to have kids vote on the final choice of characters for the story. We’ll announce during the summer when voting will take place. Your discussions on the threads may also help you decide on your favorites.
When writing the story, Fred will probably draw upon a lot of your ideas, not just the final choices. It will be interesting to see how an author uses ideas in surprising ways to make a story his own.
So go to the threads and begin!
You don’t have to do them all at once. We hope you will return many times over the summer to add and discuss ideas.
Invite your Chatterbox or other friends to participate. We’ve never tried this before, but no one else has either because ... it’s a first-of-its-kind crowd-sourced fantasy story!
If you have any questions or comments, you can post them below.
submitted by Admin
(April 23, 2014 - 9:50 am)
(April 23, 2014 - 9:50 am)
Do you think that a character like this could help?
Character: Fod Wollow
Story line: Fod Wollow is a wood sprite. He is also is Listette's best friend. When Listette leaves the woods to search for the book she takes along Fods Wollow. Later, they find out that Fods Wollow is a guardian of the book and is a very powerful sprite.
(September 13, 2014 - 6:47 pm)
there isn't much I can say that hasn't mean said all ready except for: IS THIS A DREAM and PLEASE TELL ME THIS ISN'T A DREAM.
PS. Edie The Bewildered you put your character in the wrong place .You were meant to but it in the thead called Hero or Heroine.
(April 24, 2014 - 6:09 am)
Thanks for the tip Jonh F.Q....
(April 25, 2014 - 8:19 pm)
You're welcome, Edie The Bewildered. I'm glad I could help.
(April 26, 2014 - 4:59 pm)
I have an idea that rules
Character Name: Magenti
Description: Robotic fire eating RAVENS!!!!!!!!!!
(September 13, 2014 - 6:38 pm)
I hope I can write some cool stuff here.
(October 29, 2014 - 8:52 pm)
This is such a great idea! I love the idea of something I help create being published in the magazine! Yay! What a blessing.
(April 24, 2014 - 9:25 am)
Ooh this sounds really cool! I'll add some ideas in a few since I have dinner soon. :3
(April 24, 2014 - 4:11 pm)
I am THRILLED that we are creating a story together! I'm grateful to the CRICKET editors for coming up with this project, delighted that Emily Fiegenschuh will be doing the illustrations, and CAN'T WAIT to read all of your great ideas!
(April 25, 2014 - 5:12 pm)
This is an awesome idea! I LOVE IT! *Skittles over to other related threads*
(April 26, 2014 - 8:11 pm)
Fred, when's the deadline for the characters? Can we submit them anytime before summer? Also, how will we vote for the characters?
Thank you
(April 28, 2014 - 2:32 pm)
Hi, Nina!
As I understand it, there's no strict deadline yet. Yes, you can keep submitting main characters on into the summer. If you keep watching this web site, in a few weeks, the Sidekick and Villain threads will go live, and you can submit characters for those, too.
The Administrators -- our friends, the CRICKET editors -- will keep us posted on deadlines, and they'll also tell us how the voting will work. I'm really excited about that, because it's clear there will be a lot of amazing characters to choose among! I think we all just need to read the threads carefully and maybe make notes on characters that seem to stand out.
(April 28, 2014 - 10:34 pm)
This sounds like a great opportunity to submit some ideas! I've actually been working on some stories myself, but none of them are fantasy-related, so I'm going to come up with some new characters...
Here's a question for Fred Durbin or Admin: can the characters be animals or do they have to be people? Because, to be honest, I think animals are better than most people
-Dominic
We Admins would welcome animal characters! We think Fred would, too, but we haven't heard from him yet.
Admin
(April 30, 2014 - 12:35 pm)
We just heard from Fred:
Yes--I agree, too. If anyone wants to suggest animal characters, that
will provide more variety and encourage everyone to think in original
ways.
(April 30, 2014 - 11:08 pm)
Okay, thanks, Fred/Admin!
I've got some ideas...
(May 1, 2014 - 11:40 am)