Author Brian Mooney Visits Campus
Last week's writer-in-residence shared his new novel, his new game, and his writing and editing prowess with students and faculty.
Brian Mooney, writer, educator, and creator of The Storymatic, spent a week with the Vermont Academy community as a writer-in-residence. In addition to treating everyone to an excerpt from his novel-in-progress, he ran creative writing class for the week, discussed the marketing of his story writing game Storymatic in an AP Economics class, ran writing workshops, allowed students to test play his new game called Synapsis, and even met with students one-on-one to help them develop their creative writing skills.
As a (hopefully) budding writer myself, I was eager to capitalize on the immense opportunity of having a published author and teacher at on our campus. In Creative Writing class, Mr. Mooney taught us exercises to develop tone rhetorical modes in our stories. He met with me twice one-on-one to help me work on characters in my story and even read through the first few pages of one of my own stories to help me refine it.
Likely the most fun I had all week was playing his new game Synapsis. I won't spoil it too much here, but the main idea is that you develop an entire story simply by answering questions others ask you about it. This was similar to an exercise Mr. Mooney did with me, asking me to take on the role of a character in my own story and answer his questions about them.
Likely the most fun I had all week was playing his new game Synapsis. I won't spoil it too much here, but the main idea is that you develop an entire story simply by answering questions others ask you about it. This was similar to an exercise Mr. Mooney did with me, asking me to take on the role of a character in my own story and answer his questions about them.
Aside from being a writer, Mr. Mooney also develops games like Synapsis. His first game was called Storymatic, and he was a guest speaker in Economics class discussing this. Unfortunately, I was not in this class, so I will leave it to the teacher Mr. Army to sum it up:
“Mr. Mooney came to us and spoke to our class about how he started the business for his Storymatic. It was interesting to hear how he had no prior business experience and was still able to start a successful business model. He talked about how it takes him years to create one deck of cards because he takes so much time looking at the details of every card and how they affect each other. He also explained how he keeps his production domestic to help keep jobs in the US. It was very intriguing how hard he has worked to have success in the short term thus far with his business model.”
“Mr. Mooney came to us and spoke to our class about how he started the business for his Storymatic. It was interesting to hear how he had no prior business experience and was still able to start a successful business model. He talked about how it takes him years to create one deck of cards because he takes so much time looking at the details of every card and how they affect each other. He also explained how he keeps his production domestic to help keep jobs in the US. It was very intriguing how hard he has worked to have success in the short term thus far with his business model.”
Dr. Zacarra hopes to invite more artists-in-residence to stay at Leavitt House in the future.
Vermont Academy is a coed college preparatory boarding and day school in southern Vermont, serving grades 9-12 plus a postgraduate year.
