Welcome to 'The Gateway' - a random novel by class 3.
To create the novel we went through several stages listed below:
Stage One
Mr. Widdowson finally found some Javascript coding that would allow a webpage to have a feature built into it that allowed for the next page to be a random choice. After initial testing at home, he was happy that it would work for the project.
Stage Two
The children were introduced to the idea of a novel with alternative page choices (first we read some of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, then spoke about a truly random novel, and what would happen in it).
Stage Three
The children created their characters - in the case of 'The Gateway' two boys and two girls. Then they named them, and aged them (as teenagers). They discussed a beginning for the novel.
Stage Four
The children then thought about what had to happen at the beginning and ending of every page of the novel - and they decided that the characters had to be present at the beginning and end of each page to let the story flow. As one of the children said ; "If a boy disappears on one page then reppaears later on, it won't make sense"
Stage Five
The children drafted out the first version of their part of the story (on paper). After they finished it was reviewed by the teacher, and suggestions made. The children then began working on the second version.
Stage Six
The children wrote out the second version of their page on the computer using Word. They saved and printed off a copy. The copy was checked again and spelling mistakes were noted. The children returned to the PC and reloaded their page. Corrections were made, and then saved. (Spellcheck was not allowed for corrections)
Stage Seven
When all the pages were written, checked, typed and corrected (taking about 5 weeks), the children began to cut and paste the writing into a premade webpage template. Each child saved it with a different letter / number (ie novel1.htm or novelb.htm)
Stage Eight
Three possible endings were written by Mr. Widdowson (simply because the end of the term was fast approaching) and the beginning of the story rewritten.
Stage Nine
An initial version was uploaded onto the Internet, and a select group tried a dry run to make sure it worked. Slight modifications were made at this stage.
Stage Ten
Final graphics were added, and the whole site was made live on the Internet to be viewed by all.
Project Completed !!
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