Hi Ben - thanks for your patience. Okay, so put bluntly, you've approached this creative challenge in the way I sort of asked everyone not to... for example, it is completely irrelevant to your story that the item confiscated from the girl is a pair of roller-skates. It might just as well have been a cauliflower or a hot cross bun for all it matters to your story. Likewise, the laboratory is irrelevant; you've introduced a scientist - fine - but his environment contributes nothing. Then suddenly you've got a mountaineer, who just happens upon the girl, and somehow, this grown-man decides to rescue a pair of roller-skates - from a scientist's tower... It's just a generic story featuring the items you selected, as opposed to an original story deriving purposefully and imaginatively from the three items.
I want you to go back to the drawing board and start this process over, but this time take on board some of the advice that accompanied the briefing. Let's think for a moment:
What might a mountaineer be doing with some roller-skates and why might a scientist in a laboratory be involved? Is the mountaineer attempting some land-speed record, first climbing up the mountain, then zooming down it, while the scientist observes? Is your story in the category of a Road Runner-style knock-about?
Is your 'Mountaineer' a mountain goat (non-human characters are fine, as long as they fulfil their role).
There's something about the roller-skates that makes me think that your story might be about children playing - so *pretending* to be mountaineers or pretending to play at mad scientists.
The idea of a secret mountain top laboratory is very 'James Bond' too, but again the rollerskates feel like a comedy object or a childhood object, and again I sort of get the idea of a film that starts off looking and feeling like an action movie, but slowly reveals itself to be the game of two kids?
My point is simply that I think you need to do more work with your three components - and derive a story that is actually 'from' your selection.
OGR 22/01/2016
ReplyDeleteHi Ben - thanks for your patience. Okay, so put bluntly, you've approached this creative challenge in the way I sort of asked everyone not to... for example, it is completely irrelevant to your story that the item confiscated from the girl is a pair of roller-skates. It might just as well have been a cauliflower or a hot cross bun for all it matters to your story. Likewise, the laboratory is irrelevant; you've introduced a scientist - fine - but his environment contributes nothing. Then suddenly you've got a mountaineer, who just happens upon the girl, and somehow, this grown-man decides to rescue a pair of roller-skates - from a scientist's tower... It's just a generic story featuring the items you selected, as opposed to an original story deriving purposefully and imaginatively from the three items.
I want you to go back to the drawing board and start this process over, but this time take on board some of the advice that accompanied the briefing. Let's think for a moment:
What might a mountaineer be doing with some roller-skates and why might a scientist in a laboratory be involved? Is the mountaineer attempting some land-speed record, first climbing up the mountain, then zooming down it, while the scientist observes? Is your story in the category of a Road Runner-style knock-about?
Is your 'Mountaineer' a mountain goat (non-human characters are fine, as long as they fulfil their role).
There's something about the roller-skates that makes me think that your story might be about children playing - so *pretending* to be mountaineers or pretending to play at mad scientists.
The idea of a secret mountain top laboratory is very 'James Bond' too, but again the rollerskates feel like a comedy object or a childhood object, and again I sort of get the idea of a film that starts off looking and feeling like an action movie, but slowly reveals itself to be the game of two kids?
My point is simply that I think you need to do more work with your three components - and derive a story that is actually 'from' your selection.