The last seminar in the Auto / Bio / Fiction series this academic year combines a practical writing workshop with digital role-playing game!
6 March 2025, 5.30pm UTC (online)
Beverly Frydman and Rochelle Robshaw, ‘Writing the Ordinary’
Starting as a writing project to encourage us both to write each day, our collective work now spans nine years, and has developed into a complex exchange of the mundane and the profound. Moments of our lives, in these disconnected email exchanges are woven together to create pieces of life writing. Our exchanges are not based on a call and response. Each exchange focusses on either Beverly or Rochelle’s written moment in space and time.
In some ways the work falls into the concept of negative space – it is built on those thoughts which sometimes tend to fall into the cracks of our lives. The sheer volume now of writing, offers a unique picture of connection, with ourselves, each other and the wider world.
Although we both live in London we seldom meet yet our shared memoir is a rich inter-active life writing project. We have have had a number of opportunities to curate our work, playing with time and form, yet always rooted in our identities as two women whose only connection is through the thread of the emails.
Our work falls happily into ‘the temporal and spatial dimensions of life narratives’ and our future intent is to explore how we can weave our work with music, sound and the visual arts.
For this seminar in the Auto / Bio / Fiction series we would like to offer a practical writing workshop. We would like the group to be split into pairs and for 10-15 minutes each pair would respond to lines in the chat. The end result would build into a long piece of tapped moments, which might repeat, ebb or flow away.
Xiyuan Tan, ‘Defeating the ‘boss characters’ of my life: Representing life turning points and adversities in an autofiction RPG’
This research is an autoethnographic case study that investigates the composition of autofiction using of digital game-making applications. A work-in-progress RPG created by the author is analysed from a visual narrative perspective. The game is set in a fictitious medieval fantasy universe, and represents the author’s key life events through various video game visuals such as character design, map design, level design, boss design and cutscene illustrations. Although the game applies pre-made codes and graphic assets from the game-making application ‘SRPG Studio’, the character portrait illustrations, level map layouts and cutscene visuals are all original work of the author.
Some of the game’s chapters focus on telling stories of life turning points such as the death of a friend, while others represent experiences of confronting adversities including bullying and interpersonal relationship challenges. The game outcomes suggest that comprehensive visual narrative skills combined with the versatility of game-making applications makes it possible for us to create interactive game levels that could represent anything ranging from literal events to metaphoric concepts.
This research takes three chapters/levels from the author’s game as examples. These chapters cover topics of bullying, coming out as LGBTQ+ and grieving respectively. The analyses focus on characters, map layouts and level progression, discussing how these aspects narrate the author’s experiences within the autofiction video game context.
Attendance is free but booking is required to receive a link to attend.
The speakers
Beverly Frydman is a London poet, originally from New York. She has an MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development from the University of Sussex.
Beverly has been published in What Rough Beast, Open Mic of the Air and the Poetry & Covid Project
Rochelle Robshaw has published over twenty educational books for young adults with Hodder and Stoughton. She currently works for the WEA, a national educational charity delivering community learning for adults.
She has facilitated Reminiscence sessions, taught Creative Writing, Art History, Literacy and ESOL.
Their joint projects are:
Frydman, B., and Robshaw, R., 2021, Mondays 2017, Tiny Spoon
Frydman, B., and Robshaw, R., 2020, Spring 2020, performance piece at the Tower Theatre (produced by Her Inside) as part of the ‘Love (and Survival) in the Time of Covid’
Frydman, B., and Robshaw, R., Wednesday 12 May, 2021, August 2021, Shorts Magazine
Frydman, B., and Robshaw, R., 2022, May, Modern Nature Anthology: responses to Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature
Frydman, B., and Robshaw, R., 2024, Time Cracks, Moormaid Press.
Xiyuan Tan is a Lecturer in Graphic Design at Loughborough University.
They teach a broad range of subjects including graphic communication, illustration, visual narratives and practice-based research methods. Their research interests are character design, visual storytelling, visual representation and application of illustration and animation in various contexts.
They have published research in areas of comics, game studies, drawing and animation.
Although working as an academic, Xiyuan continues their commercial illustration practice as well as their engagement with the online art community.