Russell Koshkin Blog #15 Period 9
Aim: How can the elevator pitch and consultant protocol provide clarity and feedback for our fable project?
Do Now: Round “1”- The Elevator Pitch (Creation)!
Create an elevator pitch for the fable you created. Your pitch should address the moral you chose and the fable story idea you created from the outline. Be prepared to “Pitch” your idea to your team in round “2”. Record your response on the chart space provided.
My Pitch: Knowing the difference between notoriety and popularity is slim, and some people don’t find it out until they need it most; follow the adventure of a “King” Cobra as he understands that he is not as admired as highly as he thought, but will it be too late?
Round “2”- The 1 Minute Pitch
In this elevator pitch, I decided to begin with the moral, as I believe it is a powerful one and would attract any listener to the idea. However, different members of my group decided to take different approaches. For example, some people decided to begin with the names of their characters to intrigue us, while others used the most exciting part of their fable, but left the listener with a cliffhanger to entice them. The elevator pitches were interesting to do because you had to take an already short piece of literature and condense it even further in an attempt to interest someone. We were also asked to come up with “probing” questions to guide our peers away from possible pitfalls in their writing.
Round “3”- Team Consultant Protocol
For Round 3, we were asked to ask the“probing” questions to help our group mates think about what they can improve on in their fable. I believe that this was extremely helpful because oftentimes when we write, we believe our work is impeccable and nothing can be changed in it, or the perfect harmony of our words can be disrupted. However, when someone helps you with your general idea, the pitch, rather than the finished work, one takes less offense to the idea of “help” and can understand that there are obvious pitfalls in their writing that they did not acknowledge because of their love for their own writing. For this section, some of the feedback included, “attempt to be more concise in stating your moral, as it is more powerful when it is shorter” and “every character in a fable should represent something: don’t just pick animals because you like them; pick animals with true symbols.” These two pieces of advice may seem obvious, but drastically helped me with the writing of my fable.
Round “4”- Team Suggestions
In this section, we were asked to give concrete advice to help our peers fables, rather than just ask a leading question into getting them to the desired result. Guiding questions are wonderful when the advice you can give to someone can be taken up for interpretation, such as asking about the true moral of the story or something similar. However, when you need to give a specific piece of advice that you believe is necessary to the success of the fable, specific advice is great. Some of the advice I was given went along the lines of “mention characters at least twice in the fable so that the audience does not forget their meaning”. This related to the ending of my fable, where I introduce a character to give the moral; however, I had not mentioned that character previously in the fable, which confused my group mates. I will now look to mention that character earlier to prevent confusion from my readers. I helped my teammates similarly, as they all used whimsical names for their characters, which distracted the reader from the moral. Alliteration is memorable, but when overused, makes the story seem unimportant.
Reflection:
Today I learned about the importance of peer assessing, the innate biases we have towards our own work, and that writing with concision is oftentimes harder than in longwinding prose. On the topic of peer assessing, I found that getting an objective, honest opinion on your work may seem harsh, but is extremely necessary in the long run. Without the help of my teammates, I would not feel as confident beginning to write my fable as I am now. Going into today, I did not think that I needed to change anything. However, without any screaming or yelling, my group mates showed me that there was room for improvement. My bias towards myself was thrown out the window because I saw that they meant the best for me, which felt relieving. To write with intelligence but with a level of familiarity any audience can understand proved itself to be more difficult than writing with powerful language because with enough words, you can explain any idea. However, to speak about matters that adults argue over in language that any child can understand is more of a challenge. I will use all of these new tools in the future, aiding my writing and speaking skills. I will approach critical analysis from others with thanks rather than an evil eye, and I will attempt to make my ideas short and sweet.
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