The Founder Volume 5 Issue 4

The Founder | Thursday 4 November 2010
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New Student Help Desk
Support and Advisory Services have opened a new help Desk within the Founder’s building to act as a first port of call for any student welfare related
issues you may need help or advice on. If we can’t answer your query we can sign post you to the relevant sub-section of Support & Advisory
Services for more specialised advice. The S&AS sections are Chaplaincy & Faith Support, Community Liaison & Support, Educational Support,
Residential Support, International Student Support, Student Counselling, Student Finance and Funding advice who are all based in Founder’s
West, the Health Centre located on the 1st floor of Founder’s East and the Careers Service who are in the Horton building. The Help Desk is also
being used as the sales point for tickets for Halls of Residence Social events such as the forthcoming Christmas parties. You can also pick up one
of our wide range of leaflets and publications or a free personal safety alarm and hand in application forms, time sheets or similar if the office you
need is temporarily closed.
The Help Desk is manned between 10am and 4pm during term time and is located on the Founder’s West 1st floor corridor next to the Fee Payment
Centre.
You can also email us at SupportAndAdvisory@rhul.ac.uk or telephone on 01784 443394 / 443955.
‘Novel’ idea taken to schools to
encourage budding young authors
aving already successfully
showcased their
innovative experiment in
accelerated, collaborative
fiction writing – creating
60,000 word novels in
under a week – Dr Joseph
Reddington and Dr
Douglas Cowie of Royal
Holloway, University of
London will be offering
school children the opportunity
to take part in
their ‘TooManyCooks’ project,
due to a grant from
the College’s Outreach
Fund.
The project has already
seen a team of nine
undergraduate students
collectively produce two
novels in summer 2009,
with The Shadow Hours
and The Delivery written in
seven and five and half days
respectively.
The concept of ‘TooMany-
Cooks’ is to speed the workflow
for writing fiction novels
to unprecedented levels
by using a procedure based
on techniques currently used
in designing computer
software. Innovative software
helps the writing team
to see how the structure of
their novel is progressing
and whether they are being
successful in achieving a
consistent writing style.
The project employs cutting-edge
linguistic analysis
research developed by
Royal Holloway’s Computer-
Supported Narrative and
Semantics Group, which as
been featured in ‘Nature’.
Dr Reddington says, “The
first time we ran the project
we were just interested to
know if it was even possible.
It was only during the process
that we could see how
much valuable development
the students were getting
from it. The benefits were
not just in terms of the pure
writing that such an intensive
environment would be
expected to improve, but
also in areas such as teamwork,
feedback, productivity
– ‘soft’ skills that many claim
universities do not develop
sufficiently in their students.”
In addition, the students
benefited enormously from
seeing the full workflow of
a novel from the inception
and development of highlevel
structure to proofing
and choosing a cover illustration.
This view was backed-up
during the 2010 Royal Holloway
graduation ceremonies
when the academic members
of ’TooManyCooks’ won
the College’s team teaching
prize for their contribution
to student development.
Now, thanks to a grant
from the university’s outreach
fund, a new gen-
eration of students from
sixth form colleges and
schools will be able to
give the project a try, and
produce their own works
of fiction. The younger
students will have a
slightly cut-down version
of the project and will cooperate
to write a 40,000
word novel in five days
During this process
they will get a chance
to interface the cuttingedge
linguistic analysis
techniques developed at
Royal Holloway, and will
receive detailed feedback
on their writing ability,
style, teamwork, and editing.