Lucas
About Me
My name is Lucas. I am a freshman at DHS. I like to play soccer, exercise, and play the cello. My project is to write a choose-your-own-adventure book. It will be written to the storyline of the movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with a couple of slight differences. It won’t exactly be a fan fiction, rather more of a unique piece of writing. I chose this project because I like to write, but it’s not something that I’m that good at. One of my goals of this project is that I want to become a better writer through this project.
My Project
My project goal is to write a choose your own adventure book, with the storyline being mostly based on the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I don’t want it to be seen as fan fiction, more as a piece of creative literature. I want to write a draft and edit it with my mentor. By the end of the year, I hope to have a finished final draft. I want it to be around 40 pages long, and available online as a PDF. I like to write, but am not the strongest writer, and I hope that this project will challenge me and my skills as a writer and hopefully improve them.
My Mentor
Ryan SanAngelo is a local children's author, songwriter, and music performer. The "Spaghetti Eddie" author frequently performs for children, sharing his books and lively music. Ryan SanAngelo performs at preschools, elementary schools, libraries, birthday parties, and family concerts. You can check him out online at www.ryansanangelo.com
Reflection
IDEA was an interesting class as a whole. It gave me a good opportunity to pursue something that I had wanted to do but had never really had the motivation or time to. It would have been cool to be able to get my book published in time for Achievers’ Night, but the idea came a to be a little too late. Thankfully, I didn’t face any challenges along the way, unlike some of my peers. I wasn’t affected by any of the obstacles or roadblocks that other projects were. The most difficult part about it was that I wasn’t motivated to write some days, but I knew that I just had to get it done, and even if it wasn’t the greatest writing, I would be able to go back and edit it later. I think that part of the reason that I wasn’t able to get it published was that it ended up being about 25% longer than I thought it was going to be originally. But, it’s alright. You’re going to fail or not succeed to the point that you wanted to, and that’s going to happen, you just have to be able to accept that and move on.
Mini Goal #6
Finish Writing and Edit
Achievers' Night Presentation
PRP #5
Mini Goal #5
Write up to 40 pages in length
Design a cover for the book in Canva
Possibly start work on a trailer
PRP #4
Mini Goal #4
Write more
PRP #3
Mini Goal #3
Write 10-15 pages; unpolished
PRP #2
Mini Goal #2
My second mini goal is going to be smaller. Learning from my ambitious first mini goal, this second one will consist of just two parts:
1.) Expand plot web to give the reader more options
2.) Start writing a rough draft of the book
I hope to be able to complete both of these goals, since they both are open ended, and then I feel I will be getting my project done.
PRP #1
Mini Goal #1
My first mini-goal consisted of several parts,
Read some choose your own adventure book (purchased online)
Make a plot web with all the different routes the reader could take
Start writing a draft
I picked these goals because I thought that they would be a good place to start. Looking back on it, this mini-goal was very ambitious. I only completed about half of what I wanted to in the given time period.