When I decided to self-publish, there were a couple of things I knew would probably be useful, but were so far out of my comfort zone I would never actually do them. One was selling books in person, because I’m an introvert and couldn’t imagine standing at a stall talking to the general public about my book. The second was doing an author talk at a school, because I had no idea what I’d talk about, and I’m an introvert and couldn’t imagine talking to large groups of schoolkids.

I managed to get over the selling books in person part by starting small. I did a small event in Worthing with a local writers group. I was with people I knew and mostly I sold books to supportive friends and family. From there, I did a larger event in Brighton, and then MCM Comic Con in October last year. By MCM I felt pretty confident as the event went really well in terms of both sales and interactions with the public. There were some awkward moments, but nothing awful happened and most of my concerns turned out to be unfounded (I do have a half-drafted blog about the weekend, but it’s so epic, I never actually finished it. Maybe next time…)

I decided to try the same approach to school talks. Last year I volunteered at my 12-year-old’s school, taking part in a careers day. I was there in relation to my day job rather than as an author, but I did it to get a sense of what it was like being in a school all day and talking to teenagers. I did the same thing earlier this year, at the school where my wife works. By then, she had already booked me in for my first talk in her library, which is what I did today.

I’m happy to report it went well. Like most things, it had become this huge mountain of a task in my head; something I need to overcome and survive at great personal cost. In reality, it was fairly pleasant and no one died, which is good. I wanted to write down some thoughts while it’s still fresh and I thought I’d share them here.

The premise of my talk is that playing video games uses the same skills you use to tell a story. You have a character in a situation and you use your imagination to make decisions for them. I wanted to show how this applies to story-focused games but also newer games, like Fortnite, which is how I related it back to my book.

There are 4 parts to the talk –

1. I read a bit of the book.
2. I talk about old text adventures and a bit of video game history.
3. We play a section of Colossal Cave Adventure, the first text adventure
4. We make our own game using a real-life version of Twine (using actual twine)

I did the talk twice, with mixed results. I think one thing I took away from it was the unpredictability of a room full of 11-12 year olds. The first group responded really well to the game-making section, the second group not so much, to the point where it was on the brink of descending into chaos. The Q&A after the second session went well, though.

The first part, introducing myself and reading from the book, was good both times.

The video game history part was too dense. I think I was hiding behind that part a little, and also I’d done too much research and become too interested, so I kept adding things. I did part of it on the ZX Spectrum and The Hulk text adventure, which was probably unnecessary but it had been my starting point for the whole thing. The interactive parts of this section worked well though – asking them if they knew what a cassette tape was (in the first group no one had any idea, in the second group someone guessed it immediately), comparing the opening of Breath of the Wild to the opening of Colossal Cave Adventure, getting them to guess how to make Bruce Banner angry… There was just a little too much information in the rest of it, which I kind of knew going in but I wanted to try it out anyway.

Playing Colossal Cave Adventure worked really well both times too. I’d adapted the first section of the game so it was playable in PowerPoint, and made it a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure rather than a text adventure. I read out the choices and the kids shouted out their answers. When I was planning the talk, this was the part I thought the kids would find most boring and I almost cut it completely, but we played through to the end of the section each time.

The final section went well with the first group, but not the second. My plan was to create a physical representation of a multiple choice story, to show how the threads of a story interconnect and weave together based on your choices. I’d done something similar in a screenwriting class once, and remembered it going really well. I think it could have worked better, but I needed to practice it more. It was a bit too complicated to pull off, which I think is partly why the second group didn’t engage with it as well.

Overall, though, I’m really happy with how it went and there are twenty more books out there in the world, being read by kids who hopefully have a bit more context for the book. It’s definitely something I’d like to do more of, I just need to work out a few things first.