Word Play – Teaching Creativity Competition And Collaboration With Decamot
From a family parlour game to a technique for inspiring creativity in even the most reluctant writers; Gavin Jackson tells the story of Decamot…
As a species, we’ve been storytellers for tens of thousands of years. And probably for just as long we’ve occasionally suffered from writers’ block: that terrible feeling you get when faced with a new cave wall, a piece of papyrus, a sheet of vellum, a whiteboard screen, an empty notebook or journal, a new Word document on your laptop, or a fresh Facebook page, and are invited to write about… anything.
The Decamot Method is an educational programme that Stanley Jackson and I developed and piloted during the writing of Book of Decamot; ‘Decamot’ being a word invented by the Jackson family circa 2000 to describe a game in which contestants compete with each other to create short stories which must include 10 allocated words. Having conceived of the programme, we developed a way of delivering it to students and were fortunate enough to find a set of schools who were prepared to trial it with us.
At the start of the Decamot experience, we work with the students to select Decamot items to work with. We treat this in classic brainstorming fashion, and try to make it as fun as possible. All suggestions are written down for consideration; there are no right or wrong suggestions. Then we allow them to select 10 items from those amassed with minimal guidance.
Given 10 initial disparate items, a little time, and the element of competition, something magical happens: Two or three of the items suddenly combine to give you an unexpected idea from which a story can slowly (or sometimes rapidly) emerge. The remaining Decamot items can then help you to discover where the story might next go. Interestingly, when two or more people are given the same set of Decamot items, they invariably come up with radically different stories.
Sheer inspiration
What you notice about Decamot is that it immediately eradicates that dreaded blank page. Many students get the idea long before we’ve finished explaining and are eagerly anticipating getting down to write their story. We’ve found that students can’t resist the temptation to get started; the blank page doesn’t stand a chance!
James Thurber’s advice to writers in Fables for Our Time is: ‘Don’t get it right, just get it written.’ No one expects an idea to be perfect immediately; polishing occurs during the edit. That’s what we try to encourage with students’ initial Decamot entry. Getting the idea for the story on paper is of primary importance. Once it’s out there it can be collaboratively developed and improved.
The Decamot Method works for two main reasons: First, because it is a process. It is not a magic wand or a gimmick. Rather, it consists of a set of stepping stones with a strategy for getting from one stone to the next. The outcome is always different, even if you start with the same initial 10 items. Decamot the game ignites the spark of inspiration; the Decamot Method fans that initial spark into a roaring fire.
Secondly, the Decamot experience is fully inclusive at every step along the way. From the very first selection of Decamot items, to the submission of Decamots, to the selection of a Decamot to develop, through to the completion of the final script, all participants play a vital role.
The Three Cs
The success of the Decamot Experience lies in its ability to harness the following complementary elements:
• Creativity • Competition • Collaboration
In the Decamot Method, we refer to these as the three Cs.
Creativity The initial Decamot submission can be in any format: some students submit lengthy, carefully planned tomes; others rattle off an idea on a single side of A4. The important thing is the originality of the idea and its potential.
Just putting together two Decamot items can be enough start the idea of a story forming. For example, consider how the words ‘game’ and ‘killer’ make for good Decamot items. Taken literally, there are many types of game – board games, card games, ball games, team games, and so on. ‘Game’ could just as easily refer to the world’s oldest profession. Sherlock Holmes uses the word metaphorically, when exclaiming: ‘the game is afoot’. TV schedules are often padded out with ‘game’ shows. And of course, ‘game’ can also refer to animals being hunted.
As for the word ‘killer’, it could be taken as either a noun or an adjective, or used colloquially as a superlative.
Putting “killer” and “game” together might then make you start thinking about one of the following:
• Murderball, also known as wheelchair rugby • Russian roulette • A murderous prostitute wreaking revenge on abusive clients • A grouse shoot on the glorious 12th • A chess grandmaster playing his best ever match • Holmes and Moriarty toppling over the Reichenbach Falls, and plunging into the icy waters below.
Where those starting points might go next will depend on many things – the remaining Decamot items, your state of mind, any odd or quirky facts or events you might have recently read or heard about, and so on. The key factor that determines the success of a Decamot, however, is its originality. The more creative you can be with the usage of the 10 items, the more original the entry will be.
Competition The notion of competition within education is apt to divide people’s opinions. No doubt the mentality of winning at all costs is unhelpful to say the least, but if the number of people who watch their teams compete at Wembley and Murrayfield, enthusiastically follow the Olympics and cheer on their favourite player at the finals of Wimbledon is anything to go by, people like to compete and root for a winner.
Our intention with Decamot is to harness that natural competitive spirit to create with the students the best possible drama. We start the Decamot experience with a fun game: creating a Decamot with 10 items of their choosing. We explain that they will be selecting the entry with the most promise to develop into a script for a drama, and that for the whole endeavour to succeed, they will need to be as creative as possible in their submissions; the better the entries to choose from, the stronger the final script will be.
Collaboration Collaboration plays a significant role throughout the Decamot experience. From selecting the 10 items to include in the initial Decamot entries; to choosing the criteria for determining which entry is most appropriate and agreeing on the three strongest Decamot creations, through to working together to improve the selected Decamot.
In the script development phase of the Decamot Method, collaboration takes centre stage. The students act out the initial scenes written for the script. This allows them to understand how scenes work. As the script matures, the students play an increasingly active role in the shaping of the dialogue. The best way to write dialogue is to test it out and revise it, so that it sounds more natural. Students can help improve the dialogue by being themselves.
The end product of each Decamot experience will be a unique script that originates from the students themselves, tackles those issues that are important to them and very much reflects their own voices. If you were to express the above as a ‘Decamot Function’ based around our three Cs, it would be:
C + C + C = a worthwhile drama with something to say
Gavin Jackson is an author, trainer and the co-founder of Decamot; for more information, visit decamot.com or follow @decamot_method
