Story Generator: Takuro's Pants - The Musical

There was one superhero. He's called "Happy Hikoro". Everyone thought that Happy Hikoro is the best superhero, but there were villains called "SKE 48".

SKE 48 eats too much junk food, everyday like hamburgers, crisps, coca cola. Happy Hikoro is a superman doctor. He can do surgical operations. one day, all of the members of SKE 48 (48 people!) got a very bad illness. Happy Hikoro had to do the operations in White City.

underpants (Photo credit: lucy and her dent)

The operation started. Happy Hikoro had to do 48 people, but he couldn't, so he put his hand into his pocket & took out Takuro's pants. Happy Hikoro put on Takuro's pants & he became a super muscle-man. he took the knife & started the operation again. Two minutes later he finished the operation - Takuro's pants can make him powerful.

The operation finished very nicely. Happy Hikoro was thinking "Let's drink beer", so he went to the underground to get on the Tube, but one member of the public fell onto the track. Happy Hikoro wanted to help, so he got onto the track, put on takuro's pants again and punched the tube train to stop it.

Happy Hikoro went to the pub & drank a lot of beer, and he lived happily ever after.

Cast:

Written & Directed by Tomoro, with creative contributions from Tak, Kan & Alex.

Story Generator: Amazon Heist

Plot summary:

A daring eating contest set in the mysterious Sakae village, features a heated battle between sworn enemies - GoGo Gorilla & the infamous Bosozoku Baka. The winner goes home with pride in their heart & a belly full of food. The loser, a whole education in the hands of a girl's school.

Cast:
  The Hero: GoGo Gorilla = Keisuke Honda
    The Villain: Bosuzoku Boys = Nicholas Cage
      Supporting: random people at eating contest
        Narrator: Morgan Freeman

Reviews:
"Barrow has eliquate (sic) use of the English language to portray a story of love, loss & eating." Daily Mail - 5 stars

"A spectacular story full to the brim with tension." 
Phillip Pullman - 5 stars

Written & directed by Alex, with creative contributions from Matsumoto's Lost Boys!

Story Generator - Popeye with no spinach but an app

Popeye was selling iPhones in Zambia. Mitochondria, who has an enormous mouth, came to buy the iPhone. The iPhone that she bought was broken & had funny Zambian faces on it. She got angry and bit Popeye's hand. Popeye searched for spinach to fight Mitochondria, but he failed to find them. All he had was an iPhone with a useless spinach app, and a funny picture of local Zambians.

Popeye ran as fast as he could, all the way up Zambia's highest gloomy mountain, the Zonbian volcano. Popeye was so happy to run away from Mitochondria. While he was enjoying his victory, Zonbian volcano erupted. As a result, he died painfully with his burned iPhone.

Mitochondria was safe because her body was too small to be hit by the volcano things.

Cast:
  Popeye = Tomoro
    Mitochondria = Mum
      Narrator = oyajim
        other characters - Umpalumpa

Written & directed by: Takoro, with creative contributions from Tom, Kan & Alex!

Analogue Story Generator - a dice & a homestay visitor

This is a fun activity which worked very nicely in class with my returnee brothers and their English homestay guest in a one hour class last week.

I was expecting them to not be in the mood for a regular class, prepping for FCE, and also that our native-speaking guest would probably have a lot of raw language I could use more creatively...

Column 1: Superhero - think of silly name for the six rows, brainstorming eg people we know & admire, sports stars, anything silly...
Column 2: Villain - maybe a baddy we don't like from school or the news...
Column 3: Location - somewhere local, or a place we like or want to visit...
Column 4: An object - a favourite toy or super-power delivering tool...
Column 5: Main event - more dramatic/mundane the better...
Column 6: Ending - obvious? Challenged mine to come up with a sticky end, a twist, comic book, science fiction, sporty & surprising finishes.

Materials = piece of paper with 6 rows x 6 columns, and a dice. Pencils would be handy!

The brain storming actually took quite a while as I needed to filter suggestions a bit so we would end up with an interesting variety of outcomes (and publishable ones!).

Selection phase = students throw the dice in turn to choose a superhero from column one. Repeat for the other 5 columns: each student now has a very eclectic set of characters & bizarre storyline to concoct!

Embellishing = decide on a cast list for the main characters (Mum featured as did the teacher), a narrator, supporting cast, a title.

Homework - write a summary of the plot (rough draft). Aim = second draft with more detail, structure/organisation, Hollywood moment etc!

Immediate feedback = very entertaining interaction & entertaining suggestions - only told them the 'story' aim after we'd brainstormed all the 36 components (otherwise the'd have been filtering their own ideas - as it was they guessed they were going to make a story - but a horizontal one eg all #4s - and had tried to make things 'fit')

This activity would never work with my usual junior high school/high school crowd; it did work splendidly with noisy, energetic, imaginative, competitive teens. One-upmanship added a lot to the storyboard, and I for once was not 'the expert' - all I had to do was pass the dice around...and moderate the input!