Teaching Argument Writing with Frankenstories

Frankenstories is great for arguments & persuasive writing

This lesson will show you how to use Frankenstories to teach sophisticated argument writing skills.

To do that, we'll use prompts like this:

Council saves town from interdimensional portal sinkholes

To scaffold player responses like this:

Council saves town from interdimensional portal sinkholes, bins not collected

R1

Alright, we need to do something about the portal to the underworld that has appeared on Lennox Ave. The Council maintenance crew thought it was a sinkhole, but it's clear it's a doorway to some kind of alternate—and unpleasant!—dimension. We've lost one school bus and several cyclists into it. I suggest we allocate budget to fill it with sand and gravel, then pave over it and carry on as if it never happened.

R2

Sand and gravel is easily the most economical solution. After covid, revenues are down and complex inter-dimensional portal-closure technology is caught up in supply chain shortages. So working with plentiful, handy materials is going to get us off to a good start.

R3

Additionally, the high surface area of sand-filled crevasses means that any monsters from beyond are more likely to be soaked up as they enter the material plane. This makes it far more effective than wood or plastic solutions.

R4

It has been suggested that the roads should be filled with concrete and bitumen to replace the original materials. This was considered, but scientists have found that the underground monsters live on a diet of these solid materials and will therefore continue to devour the city street. Eventually, all streets will need to be made of sand.

R5

So there we have it: a quick and cost effective solution that will seal the road, prevent more loss of life and soul, keep out inter-dimensional marauders, and put us ahead of the game long-term, as more roads devolve into infernal sinkholes. I propose, who wishes to second?

"Council saves town from interdimensional portal sinkholes"

To do this, we'll need a shared framework for argumentation!

The framework we'll use in this lesson (and across Writelike) is based on Writing Arguments by John D. Ramage et al.

We're basically compressing an undergraduate course into a series of Frankenstories games, but don't be intimidated!

We'll approach the framework in layers, and you can choose how deep you want to go.

The more you understand the architecture, the better you'll be able to extract value from argument games.

Roughly speaking:

  • Argumentation is about using reasoning & evidence to create a model of the world.
  • Persuasion is about using character, emotion & logic to influence an audience.

Argument is inherently persuasive; persuasion does not necessarily require argumentation.

In this lesson, we'll focus on argumention—how different types of claims are organised into a hierarchy and connected through different types of reasoning.

We'll tackle persuasion—how we combine logic, emotion, and character to influence an audience—in a separate lesson.

(And we'll tackle clause patterns and cohesive devices used in argumentative & persuasive writing separately again.)

All the game prompts are in the prompt library

All the game prompts in this lesson are in the Frankenstories prompt library, where they are grouped by topic under Persuasive writing:

FS Prompt library Argument components

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