Week 8: Read It the Wrong Way

Before the session#

Bring materials for six small cards or page-like units — paper, pens, scissors and old magazines, or your phone. You’re building one fixed set of six pieces, then reordering it, not drawing twelve separate images.

Same Pieces, Different Story#

This is the main studio activity. Make six cards, then:

Story A — arrange all six cards in one order that produces one readable story or interpretation.

Story B — rearrange the same six cards into a different order that produces a meaningfully different story or interpretation.

Requirements:

• all six cards are used in both versions;
• the content of the cards does not change — only the order does;
• Story B has to be more than Story A told awkwardly; the new order should change causality, emphasis, character interpretation, the ending, or another clear narrative relationship.

Record both orders, for example A → C → F → B → D → E and D → B → A → E → C → F — these are just examples of how to notate your own two orders, not sequences to copy.

None of this needs polished illustration. Rough drawing, collage, photography, typography, or simple shapes are all legitimate.

Let the reader choose#

Once you have Story A and Story B, design a simple way for a reader to encounter the six cards in different orders themselves — loose cards, a branching choice, two marked starting points, a reversible direction, or plain instructions for rearranging them. This doesn’t need to be technically complex; the important question is how the reader knows that another order is possible at all.

Test it#

Give your six-card system to another reader without explaining Story A or Story B first. Notice:

1. Where do they start?
2. What order do they choose or construct?
3. What story do they think happened?
4. Do they realise another order is possible?
5. What changes when they try a second order?

Keep this light — it’s a quick observation, not the full reader testing later assessments will ask for.

This Week’s Misbehaviour — Wrong Order#

A separate 15–30 minute experiment from Same Pieces, Different Story — not another six-card project.

Take a tiny familiar sequence of three moments, 1 → 2 → 3, and present it in a wrong order instead, such as 3 → 1 → 2. Then ask:

• what does the new first moment make the reader assume?
• does something that was originally a consequence now feel like a cause, a mystery, or a setup?
• what new meaning appears?

Briefly note the expected order, the wrong order you used, and what changed between them. Keep it rough and quick.

Afterwards#

Add your six-card set and your Wrong Order note to your Misbehaviour Toolbox. Week 7 controlled what happened after one page turn inside a sequence the reader still moved through in order. Week 8 questioned whether that sequence had to stay fixed at all. Next week goes further again: the reader’s own action becomes something the story actually needs to happen.

The spec

What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.

• you have six cards used, unchanged, in two different orders
• Story A and Story B are meaningfully different, not the same story told awkwardly
• you have designed a simple way for a reader to discover another order is possible
• you have completed this week's Misbehaviour, Wrong Order