Notes from Today

Here are some of the notes on characters that I took today.

Polly is part of a special ops team.  23 years old.  Undercover spy.  Different alias everyday.  Also, she's a different person when she's with her friends and when she's with her coworkers (like anyone).  Feels like she doesn't have her own identity.  Online, she discovers her real self.  Heather will write about this character.

Four other members of special ops team:

Michael/Micro.  25.  Technology guy, and the comic relief.  He likes to call Polly a parrot.  His girlfriend doesn't like that he's always doing stuff with his gadgets and digital media.  Doesn't see how it benefits him or her.  Rebecca will write about this character.

Grant.  27.  Leader and brains of the team.  Loves his government.  More of a control person when it comes to openness vs control.  Jason will write about this character.

Angelina.  26.  Beautiful, sort of a drama queen.  Aphrodite character.  She's her own kind of spy; more overt.  Feels like men only like her for her looks.  Online is more likeable, more vulnerable, more down to earth.  Christina will write about this character.

Jared.  25.  Brute force guy.  Ashley will write about this character.

We also thought of giving Polly a roommate who is not a member of the special ops team and to whom Polly can go to for relationship and emotional help.  Later this roommate and Micro get together.  Ashley was assigned to name her and write about this character.

James Herron.  24.  Bad guy, but not really.  He seeks for openness in the open vs control debate.  Hillary will write about this character.

Dr. Burton mentioned that we must remember this is not a creative writing class, although for our project we will have to do creative writing.  Basically, we need to apply what we're learning about digital culture to the book.  We can do this through the theme, which right now is that we can actually find ourselves through online media; our anonymous avatars actually let us see who we really are when no one is watching.  We can also explore the benefits of online media through Micro and his anti-technological girlfriend.  Finally, James' big "evil" plan might revolve around making the second life technology more open, and he is simply misunderstood.  We can do some commentary about the differences between openness and control in the foils of James and Grant.

Ashley was designated as our consistency queen.  She will make sure the final book has one voice, with the help of outside readers (such as Jake Cannon).  Rebecca was designated as our secretary to document our process.

Please have your character backgrounds done by Saturday, and please get lots of people excited about writing this book.  It's going to be awesome!