Students and teachers
A real novel for your portfolio
Classroom resources, on the house
Studying a creative subject? Take a chapter and make it your project. Your creation joins the gallery, under your name.
Teaching? The novel, the exercises and the map are ready for your class.
Build your portfolio on a real novel
An open brief, for art and design students
Pick a chapter. Illustrate it, set it to music, translate it, draw it as a comic page or film a scene from it.
Choose your medium
- You sign your creation. It stays yours.
- You publish it in the gallery.
- You put it in your portfolio, with a real novel behind it.
- No deadline, no brief: it’s an open subject, not a commission.
For schools of illustration and comics, animation, graphic design, music and music production, writing, translation, film and TV, tattooing, and for literature students at university.
Your name in the creators’ directory
Your profile shows your creations, your school and your link. Other creators find you and can work with you.
Everything you need to create
It’s all on the site, on the house
Dip into the novel
7 exercises, ready to go
On your own, in a workshop or in class
1. Invent a word
Like the Viking lexicon: a word, its definition, how it’s used. See the invented words
2. The map of your life
Name the places in your daily life as if they were kingdoms. “The Kingdom of Undone Homework.” See the map
3. The family saga
Tell your family’s story as an epic. An epic nickname and a kingdom for each person. Being neutral is forbidden.
4. The flip side
Pick a scene from the book and rewrite it the other way round.
5. The alternative ending
What if the story ended differently?
6. The secret sentence
Write the cryptic sentence that would announce the next chapter, with its clues.
7. Say no
Write a refusal, without justifying yourself. That’s what the book is about. See the guide
To go further: write a chapter in 4 steps and the hero’s journey. The exercises are inspired by Gianni Rodari, “The Grammar of Fantasy”.
In class, with your students
For teachers
It’s a contemporary novel about resilience, humour and creating. The author talks to her character in it. It invents a whole world, with its own places and words: ideal ground for writing.
The 47 chapters come as text and audio, to read in order or dip into.
Recommended level: upper secondary (ages 15–18). The novel deals with burnout, toxic relationships and rebuilding your life.
Publishing your students’ creations
- First name, class and school, nothing else. No surname, no photo, no email address.
- You collect the parents’ permission and confirm to me that you have it.
- You submit the work, never the student.
Your students get the same as everyone else: their first name next to their creation, their profile in the gallery and a certificate if their work appears in a Hammock product.
Nobody can contact them while they are under 18. Their profile opens when they turn 18, if they ask.
A question, a project?
A class, a whole year group raring to go: one email is enough. I reply quickly.