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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)
Hello,
Everybuggy,
I got this great idea for a hero from all the people who posted their
ideas.
This character has silver hair, stormy eyes, beautiful, and is female her
name is Lisette.
If you are wondering why I used the name Lisette from vote for heroes, I did
that because I voted for her.
This character has blond hair, blue
eyes, and is male. His name is Luke.
The elves have no hair at all , stormy black
eyes , and are all male. Their leaders name is Dragon.
Here is her story: One day the King and Queen were talking about the war
that was going on between the elves and the King and Queen's kingdom. They were
worried about their little girl named Lisette. They wanted to protect her so
they left her with their friends the wolves. They took great care of her. They
taught her how to fight and defend herself. They also told her what was good to
eat out in the woods. One day when she was 16 the wolves told her that her
mother and father were the King and Queen. That night she told the wolves that
she was going to find her parents. So she went and found a horse in the woods.
In the forest she found a boy and his family in a small one room cottage. They
were poor. One of the boys in this house knew how to get to the kingdom. So she
brought him with her. On the way Lisette learned a little about this boy. He
was named Luke. Luke was poor because one day a burglar named Dagon. Now Lisette
knew was how to defeat the elves and their leader Dagon because when Dragon
stole Luke`s money he left behind a book that had all the elves secrets. Now
all she had to do was get a magical want from the giant. The giant lives where
the wolves live now, in the forest where she was raised by the wolves. That
forest is called Charmed Woods. Now all
she has to do is get the wand and hope it is not too late.
(July 4, 2014 - 4:10 pm)
MY CHARACTER'S NAME IS WOLFETTE.
(July 5, 2014 - 7:58 am)
After we vote on sidekick and villain, is there going to be nothing else except Fred threads and fantasy dictionary?
There may be special requests on the Fred threads. I'm not sure. I don't know that anything else is planned. Stay tuned. . . .
Admin
(July 6, 2014 - 9:21 pm)
Hi everyone! I'm new to the chatterbox so I need some help. How do I Comment? It said "add new comment" here but on "this month" or "pudding's place" or any of those other things I cant find out how to chat.
Welcome to Chatterbox, Avella. Wherever you see Add new comment, you can click and add a new comment. When you click on the box of one of the Chatterbox sections (Down to Earth, Pudding's Place, etc.) you'll get a long list of threads of conversations already created. You can click on any of those threads and then add new comments.
To start a new thread, look for the box near the top left of the section (e.g. Pudding's Place) home page, where it says Click here to talk about ___. If you click in that box, then you'll be able to start a new thread.
Admin
(July 8, 2014 - 8:32 pm)
Thank you! That helps a lot. So to tell about my sidekick I press "add new coment" and start with name, appearance etc.?
- Avella
Yes, that's it. Scroll down to the end of the opening description of what we want to know about your sidekick, then click on Add new comment in the red letters and take it from there.
Admin
(July 9, 2014 - 4:29 pm)
Thanks for the information. Do you know when voting for the villians starts?
-Avella
Admin: It should be live by tomorrow, July 11, at noon central time!
(July 10, 2014 - 12:13 pm)
Dear Admin, what exactly is the fantasy dictionary, and how do I add to it?
-Avella
Go to cricketmagkids.com/chatterbox/crowdsorcery and click on Fantasy Dictionar (the y didn't fit in the field). Read the introduction to learn how to submit your words.
Admin
(July 13, 2014 - 10:40 am)
Hi Admin! So Madeline T. submitted Fable?
-Avella
Yes.
(July 13, 2014 - 11:16 am)
This is kind of a random question, but what will the story be called? Will it just be called "Crowd Sorcery" or something else that will be decided once the voting is finished?
Good question, Fairen! I'm not sure that has been decided yet. We'll have to wait and see what Fred does.
Admin
(July 13, 2014 - 3:28 pm)
(By my locations, you can see I'm moving around a lot this summer! -- They're all true!)
This is a good question, Fairen. I think it's very unlikely that the story would be called "Crowd Sorcery" unless it turns out to be about a crowd performing some kind of sorcery. It's not impossible -- anything might happen in the worlds of story and imagination. But Crowd Sorcery is the name of the project, not the title of the story. The title will suggest itself from the story as it's being written. What sometimes happens is that a writer will give a story a title, and then the editor(s) who work with the writer to improve the story will suggest a different title. Titles are really important, so I imagine there might be a lot of discussion among several people to find the best possible title for this story.
(July 14, 2014 - 12:21 am)
Thank you! I've had so much fun on this so far and can't wait to read the story :D
(July 17, 2014 - 5:05 pm)
Can one vote for themself if they submit something?
Yes.
Admin
(July 13, 2014 - 6:42 pm)
Wow! I thought that was a definite no! Good thing I asked!
(July 13, 2014 - 10:01 pm)
Will the story be only one issue long, or will it be a continuing story? If the latter, do you know how long it will be?
(July 14, 2014 - 5:14 pm)
Hi, Crowd Sorcerer! Those are great questions, but we don't know yet about the story's length. It will depend on what kind of story grows from the characters and their situation.
(July 15, 2014 - 1:30 am)