Week 2: Magically Useful Products for Writers

Writing Brief: Inventing a Magically Useful Product for Writers

On week 2 of the Creative Writing Post-Digital Content module, 2nd-year students were asked to create and describe a product in your co-ops which would be important/beneficial for writers. They were encouraged to be as creative as they could in the creation of their product, following the example of the Ministry of Stories and Horton Street Monster Supplies.

Products for writers could be anything possible or impossible and they must write a piece about them which enabled us to understand what the product was, what was it for, who is it for, what are its main benefits or specs and what are the values of the company that created it.

Below are a collection of the products and pieces students created, from brain expanding pills, to continuity goblins, from organic headgear as scribes to isolating bubbles to help you write anywhere.

Scroll down and take a look!

Origin Labs Welcomes a New Era for Writers by Jess Hamilton

Origin Labs, est. 2015, has successfully launched its first psychoactive pill, Brainspansion, which aids writers with two seamless hours of enhanced cognition whilst promising zero negative effects after use.

Tired of seeing young writers imprisoned by saturated genres and overused tropes, Origin Labs developed Brainspansion to combat the 21st century creative famine. Their new drug amplifies neuron transmission to the area of the brain responsible for creativity, allowing writers to explore a new realm of possibility.

With Brainspansion, creativity is boundless.

Brainspansion: Dare to Enter the Unknown by Jess Hamilton

We’re for the next generation:
The players.
The ones who are all in.

Are you ready to take a leap of faith?

Be the one to do it different:
The daredevil.
The founding father.

Get ready to revel in rebellious glory.

Our time is now:
Never look back.
Our future is limitless.

And it is waiting to be written,
by you.

Here at Origin Labs, we believe every writer deserves to achieve Nirvana, and that’s why we’ve developed the solution to end our life and death cycle of type, edit, type, and scrap. We’ve unlocked the door to the sixth dimension.

Are you in?

Brainspansion is the gateway to the good life: the end of suffrage for the 21st century writer.

Welcome to the new age.

Our mantra: Creativity. Whenever. Wherever.; it’s at the core of everything we do. Our passion is your passion; and your passion is ours. That’s why our brand new psychoactive, Brainspansion, is the only way to experience the endless realm of possibility. Take the emerald pill and discover your true imagination. Fuel your mind. Fall down the rabbit hole.

Find yourself whenever, wherever.

The writers of tomorrow will thrive today. A new world is waiting.

How much do you want it?

Gone are the days of writer’s block: we’ve come to change the game. Are you ready to take it to the next level? We present the new era of writing: you. Pave the path to our future. We value your mind.

Why not take us on a journey?

What is creativity to you? Your epitaph is yours, write it well. Write it big. Write it bold. Your life is a statement. Say it loud. Say it proud. Shout it from the rooftops. You are here, in the new age, and you have something to say.

Have you said enough?

There’s no holding back. Our time is now, and our legacy is waiting.

Have you written it yet?

Brainspansion: Press Release by Halle Merrick

From Origin Labs comes Brainspansion, a brand new pill designed to unlock your creative potential. The pill is targeted towards young writers seeking that extra boost of imagination in their projects, marketed with the slogan ‘Creativity. Whenever. Wherever.’

Origin Labs first started testing this productivity pill back in 2015, with phenomenal results in 97% of all subjects. Now, nearly six years later, the product is finally ready for its long-awaited launch, and the overnight queues outside the pharmacies selling it suggests it’ll be an instant hit for creatives everywhere.

So just what is this Brainspansion pill, and why should you be buying it?

Origin Labs released a statement at the beginning of their non-stop marketing success stating that they were ‘tired of seeing young and hopeful fantasy writers fall short of their creative potential because of the tiresome stresses of the 21st Century’, and so were quick to create a product that would help the struggling generation. One Brainspansion pill unlocks your creative potential for two straight hours, allowing the creators of tomorrow a surge of new ideas and motivation to write the next bestseller, without facing the hardships of a brain crash once the effects have worn off.

Some of the beta testers of the innovative new pill have come forward with glowing reviews, just in case you weren’t already sold on the product.

Ashleigh, 23, says that she ‘always struggled with putting her ideas to paper, but after taking a few Brainspansion pills I was able to entirely write and edit the high fantasy novel that’s been in my head for years’, and is now in talks with multiple publishing houses to take her dreams that one step further.

It’s not just for those novel writers out there either. James, 20, tested the pill out alongside his university degree; ‘I was practically drowning in unfinished coursework and assignments, but with the help of Brainspansion pills I finished everything with time to spare, and got firsts across the board!’

The pill, a striking emerald green in colour and packaged in a frosted glass bottle topped with a quill lid, is easily identifiable on shelves in all major pharmacies and supermarkets. Priced at £50 for a bottle of 15 pills and £100 for 30, that seems a more than affordable price for hours of productivity. And students registered with Unidays will also be happy to know that you can get 10% through the student discount website starting today!

Find it at your local Boots, Superdrug, and astonishingly, Waterstones, this Friday, and unlock your own creative potential!

For more information on Origin Labs’ Brainspansion Pills, check out their website: https://www.originlabs.org.uk/brainspansion-pills-product/.

The Corona: Gen Z – A Crown for your Thoughts by Jake Leins-Edwards

Introducing the new cognitive ideas scribe, or favourably; The Corona Z. A revolutionary, new inner-monologue recorder, recording all of your most inner thoughts and scribing them straight to your PC/Laptop. In a range of many different colours such as peach or our limited edition matte black with gold trim, The Crown is fully customizable, down to the choice of aesthetic cover, be it rubber, silicon, Gypsum Cement, gelatine, or foam latex.

Its new doughnut shape combined with its foam cranial supports provides cosy, comfortable fitting for round-the-clock dressing, with the option to add comfort jelly ring. Its sleek, soft leathery prosthesis provides ultimate comfort to any wearer disregarding their age, gender, head-size, or even species.

It has always been the peak of our designs, the materialization of collective minds working over a decade of revised plans and a juggernaut of modifications.

A magnificent compulsion. Our analysts, scientists and experts have been obsessively working around the clock for the past year while the final touches have been added.

Prioritizing simplicity for life for the millions of people resident to our earth, we adopted construction of the most adequate models conceivably achievable.

We will not stop and never be satisfied; The Crown is in need to evolve further. There is room for improvement and space to be refined.

Our initial step was designing the ring piece 23% larger, providing more comfort to the cranium resulting in an increase of brainwave thought transfer 34% faster, whilst only requiring 50% less of your electro-magnetic brain pulse.

The core concept of making the crown fully mobile insisted that we discarded the frontal lobe connection plate enabling us to make the crown completely wireless, when on charge and whilst in use.

To develop our slimmest crown so far, we have redesigned every element connected from the head housing to the top receiver, it transmits the operations you'd expect in a product that is thinner and more lightweight and all contained in a device that is the size and weight of a German pretzel (100g).

We have generated a modernized version for what we know is our best version to date. State-of-the-art. Boundless. Enigmatic.

The Corona Z.

A Crown for your thoughts.

Continuity Goblins ‘R Us by Sophie Deakin

Here at Continuity Goblins 'R Us, we're all about improving the quality of published fiction, one book at a time. We began back in the 1500s, when Sir Walter Raleigh returned from his exploratory voyage with not only the potato but also a community of Continuity Goblins he had met on his travels. Known scientifically as continuitus checkitus, the common or garden Continuity Goblin has a remarkable memory for facts and details, and in light of this, Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth I employed them as her personal fact-checkers, making sure that all of the royal documents were correctly formatted according to the spelling and grammar rules of the time.

Since then, we've expanded our business ventures into the popular market of writing—fiction and non-fiction alike. One of our proudest moments here at Continuity Goblins 'R Us came in the form of a glowing testimonial from the world-famous novelist Charles Dickens, who found the services of his personal Goblin so useful, he wrote him into his most famous novella A Christmas Carol. Tiny Tim the Goblin is currently prospering at the ripe old age of 200, and still working, as all of our Continuity Goblins enjoy a longer life span than the average human writer. All allegations suggesting our Goblins like to ensure this via criminal or indeed homicidal activities were thrown out of court due to a lack of non-circumstantial evidence and the sad, untimely deaths of the twelve jury members.

In the twenty-first century, our role in the writing workplace is more important than ever. Our Goblins are far more effective than the brainless automated spellcheckers you get online—their tenacity and eye for detail ensure they won’t miss a single mistake. Now with more than ten thousand Goblins available, we provide continuity services to writers, journalists, chroniclers and even bloggers all across the globe—though we regret to acknowledge that we are currently unable to provide services to locations that regularly see temperatures of lower than 0'C as our Goblins are used to a certain level of comfort and refuse to set foot on snow.

We believe that your Continuity Goblin shouldn't just be your employee or your hired help. They should be your friends. To ensure the best advice from your Goblin, you should treat it with the utmost respect, giving them good food to fuel their accuracy, and entertainment to help them live as happily as you would like to. Always remember to fly them first-class, and remember, if they have to get probed at the airport, they will kill you.

We at Continuity Goblins 'R Us wish you the very best in your creative process with our valued employees.

Continuity Goblin Review by Lucy Gill

I write this from the inside of my wardrobe. I have been in hiding since this morning and I am currently fearing for my safety and life. This post is a warning to anyone purchasing the Continuity Goblin. Please use this information to take down Continuity Goblin Ltd. It’s my belief that they are trying to eradicate all writers. Please send help. Enjoy the review.

I’ll give you some insight into my life by admitting to you that I am in no way organised about anything. So as you can probably guess, when it comes to writing, things don’t get much easier. In hopes it would help with my chronic forgetfulness, I invested in a Continuity Goblin (£49.99) from Continuity Goblin Ltd. Oh how I was mistaken. Ironically.

My first and maybe only praise is for the ability to customise your Goblin as you can choose it’s clothing, skin colour and give it a little name. Looking back, I was lured into a false sense of security from the get go. Imagine my excitement when a little Goblin, wearing the dungarees I picked out for it, was in the post and on it’s way to my house. I called it Roy. I wish I had barricaded myself from Roy. Or that I had known the horror that awaited me.

The purpose of a Continuity Goblin is to check back on your writing and make sure you haven’t made any continuity errors in long pieces of text. Just bigger than a pint glass, you just place your Goblin onto your laptop or notebook and it’ll flag up any mistakes regarding continuity as well as spelling and grammar. The concept is amazing. The outcome: traumatising.

I will give Roy some credit here and say that they are very efficient and worked brilliantly at correcting my work. I wasn’t sure how well it would work on film scripts but Roy made it very clear that they ‘graduated film school, bitch’ and that I was being ‘patronising’ and ‘Goblin racist’ (??). This is where I started to become nervous any time I sat down to write. At times where I forgot to put Roy on my shoulder as I wrote, he would scream profanities and homophobic slurs at me from across the room. His screams are still ringing in my mind. In fairness, Roy has made me a bit less forgetful. The catch being, I am constantly on edge and I’ve had to increase my anxiety medication.

Things have rapidly become worse in the past three days. Roy has learned how to open doors. They have created a hideout in the airing cupboard, in which I discovered written up plans to begin to occupy the bathroom. Insults are becoming significantly more offensive; threats, more severe. I found a knife lying on my desk this morning and Roy’s dungarees cut in half and charred in the kitchen. The last thing Roy said to me before I went into hiding was ‘Yippee Ki-yay motherfucker’ and then they shut the bathroom door in my face. I have not seen or heard from him since.

I am once again asking for your help. Take action; boycott Continuity Goblin Ltd and shut them down! I will also ask those who know my location to contact the authorities and make sure they’re armed. Roy is stronger than we know. Release me from their prison. Thank you for reading.

Wander Bubble: The Ultimate End to Writer’s Block by Rebecca Kealy

To the aspiring and upcoming writers of today, I ask you: if you could sit and write anywhere, where would you sit?

Would you write in your study?

Or at the smallest table in the quietest corner of Costa?

Or the tip-top of Mount Everest with the view of a lifetime?

Whatever your ideal environment, Wander Bubble will take you there.

Wander Bubble are made up of a team of writers (like me), who live the struggle of trying to knuckle down with your imagination when your ambience is all bent out of shape. And now, during a time where we are unable to escape to our favoured places of serenity, we have teamed up with scientists to create a revolution for writer’s (with a magical twist!).

What is Wander Bubble? Wander Bubble may seem like an ordinary necklace at first glance. But I assure you, it is anything but. And it all starts with the delicate bubble pendant dangling from the chain. All you need to do is picture exactly where it is you want to go, and blow! Before you can mutter the words ‘Wander Bubble’ you’ll be there. Sat on a chair designed for you, at the desk designed by you, in any destination imagined by you. Whether it be as humble as the library, or as wild as the middle of a tropical rainforest – it will be wherever your heart desires.

We know that no one size fits all. Is it a classic, wooden rocker that comforts you most? Or a standard operator? Maybe it’s a giant beanbag chair! Not only are there zero limits on adventure, but zilch on luxury too! Choose from one of our hundreds of designs or customise your very own set!

We prioritise creativity here at Wander Bubble HQ, but also safety. And the amazing aspect to our bubble, is that it never bursts! Wherever you choose to venture, you are safe from the elements and the creatures you find there. You will become a fly on the wall – invisible to others and bear no consequence to their actions. If you choose to get your juices flowing in a storm on a fishing boat in the middle of the ocean, go ahead. Or if your ideal place of focus would be in the scorching Outback, make sure to let us know how it goes!

The writers at Wander Bubble believe that every writer, no matter how experienced (yes, we’re talking to all of you) should have the same opportunities when it comes to their work. They should face no creative restrictions because of money, materialism or a worldwide pandemic.

We understand that now is a hard time to kickstart your writing career, and you may be stuck at home right now. But Wander Bubble says, ‘if human life has been there, you can too’. You could even become one small step ahead of writers, one giant leap ahead of writers-kind – if you know what I mean!

I came up with the idea of Wander Bubble, while trapped with an aching back, in my boxy bedroom with no space for a desk. Now, I write on the beaches of Thailand or in a small cabin beneath the Northern Lights. And there, inspiration never dies.

So, writer, I shall rephrase my question: you can sit and write absolutely anywhere you wish, so where are you sitting?

About the briefs and co-ops

On week 2 of the Post-Digital Content module, students were asked to create a product that would be magically useful for writers and then write a piece about it. Halle Merrick’s and Jess Hamilton’s pieces were written for the De Rigueur co-op, Jake Leins-Edward’s piece was written for the Dauphin co-op, Lucy Gill’s and Sophie Deakin’s pieces were written for the Saboteur co-op, Rebecca Kealy’s piece was written for the Dauphin co-op.

Learn more about the co-ops and this module here.