School Assembly, Wednesday, September 29, 2020

[sith_happened]

The auditorium was ready again today: folding chairs, check. Rostrum, check. Bored students, check.

Anakin walked up onto the stage. "Hello again, students. Today we have a special guest that is not going to pretend to kill teddy bears!"

He hoped.

"He's--" he pulled his notecard out, "--Nick Miller, and he's here to talk about Creativity and You, or Writing the Great American Novel."

So that should be nice and non-explosive!

Comments

Speech

[gotyoucookie]

Nick Miller was not supposed to be here.

Well. He was, in that he'd gotten signed up for this against his will and ended up flying across the country for an assembly at a high school he'd never heard of in a state he couldn't point to on a map to talk about, of all things, his craft.

So. When Nick got to the microphone, he looked not quite unlike a grumpy, panicked deer in the headlights who sort of wanted to fight the headlights.

"Right! So!" he began.

And then drew a blank.

"As he said, I'm Nick Miller-" Had he said that? He'd been in a fugue state, and not quite listening. "-and I'm here to talk to you about creativity. Book writing... things. Maybe you want to write a book. Maybe you've read some books. Maybe you want to... write a book. Well, the first thing you're going to need is characters. They should all have names. Are they based on someone you know? Who's to say? Not me."

He paused again, and raised a hand in a goodbye. "Anyway, that's my time, good night!"

He promptly tried to Moonwalk away off the stage.

Re: Speech

[sith_happened]

Anakin snagged him neatly by his collar and tugged him back to the microphone. "Try again," he gritted out.

Re: Speech

[gotyoucookie]

All right, so that wasn't going to work! Plan B!

"That was a trick!" Nick said, smiling daggers at Anakin. "So you have your characters, and then you have a story. What's your story? Write what you know. So you should all probably write about high school, right?"

He paused to see if anyone reacted. If he Moonwalked a second time, would it work? No. Of course not.

"Anyway, another thing that you need to think about is yourself. Like, where does inspiration come from? And what do you do if you get stuck?" Like now! "Sometimes, you just have to say to hell with it, and do something else for a while. Like now! Stand up, kids! That's right, everybody stand up, we're going to do an exercise."

Did he know what it was? No! But the guy with the hair scared him so he was going to have to fake it.

"We're going to do... an obstacle course! Yeah, right here in the auditorium! You all get to participate! So, everyone stand up, and then stand on your chairs. You're going to walk on the seats to get to the aisles! Come on, everybody! Just don't go too fast." He didn't know the next step yet. "Safety first and all."

And while the students were climbing over seats to get to the aisle, Nick was starting to frantically look around for stuff he could use.