Friday 6th November
Next week is a break out week where Gerald will be doing 1 to 1 tutorials with everyone so he has tasked us to write 3 new stories using the prompts provided ready to present in small groups on Wednesday.
Today we received an email including 3 Prompts:
-Pre-School
-Adult/Teen Thriller (Look at news paper articles)
- 3 Genres (One of which is a musical)
To begin this task I gathered a bunch of books I knew in the genres presented and quickly re capped them for myself to get a feel for the style of work.
For the pre-school I looked at books like 'That's Not my Tractor' and 'Spot the Dog' for the younger side of pre-school, which teaches through repetition and the tactile nature of the books and 'Chicken Licken' for the older area of pre-school as it has a bit more of a fun story and a lesson, written in a child friendly style but without the tactile aspect.
This really helped me as I made sure to aim my story at something teachable, repeatable and tactile, hitting all the elements for a pre-school story.
I then used the 5 word bridge method: Dog Duckling Lamppost skeleton Blanket
This produce 2 different outcomes and wrote out 3 ideas in the end to then choose and expand on Monday.
For the Adult/Teen Thriller I looked at books like 'Spooks Apprentice' which is a supernatural, fantasy, thriller/horror series that I have read and loved. A lot of spine chilling content to draw from. And 'The Yard' which is an 1800's based crime Thriller about a detective investigating the murder of a person found in a suitcase at a train station. Looking at both these books gave me the broad spectrum of thriller, from supernatural Fantasy to more true/fictional crime.
After looking at these books I then found two news articles what were completely contrasting; 1 -Two men lure a woman to their house, torturing and dismember her.
2-Woman has 8 Failed pregnancies and 9 years, Gives birth to healthy baby boy
I then began to write out a couple of event orders and while I was doing that I remembers another News story about H.H. Holmes who was a famed serial killer in the late 1800s who owned the infamous murder hotel. A story that really gripped my imagination when I first heard about it and decided to draw inspiration from it.
I came up with a basic outline of -
A woman goes to a hotel to celebrate her pregnancy reaching 9 months after multiple miscarriages. The owners seem a bit off but she decides she wants to enjoy herself and wont met it get in her way, when she hers the door lock shut.
She discovers 2 way mirrors, a gas chamber shower and secret doors leading to other rooms with murderous devices when she goes in to labour
She has to escape the hotel and get herself to safety and finally have the bay she always wanted.
I like this idea and think its a good base but Its missing a crucial twist at the end, I will continue to think on this idea and pitch it to Connor. We have been bouncing ideas back and forth from the start and find we have similar trains of thought so his opinion/ideas are helpful.
And finally the 2 Genre, 1 musical Prompt. For this prompt I didnt need to read any books as I am an avid musical fan and have been watching several musicals recently.
I didn't want this prompt to be your usual happy, fun, sing song musical with a message of love yourself in it as most musicals have, so I decided I wanted to go down the horror musical route with one other genre which defined the setting/story.
I have actually watched a
couple of Horror musicals recently so have a good idea how songs will mix well with the plot of such an unusual mixture of genres.
I tried Crime and western to begin with but neither sparked an idea, so I decided to try the 5 word bridge method again and while looking through my book collection I spotted 'The Guardians of Childhood - Nicholas St North' which is a fantasy re telling of the origins of St Nick (or Santa if you prefer) and it all clicked in to place.
A Festive Horror Musical.
Using this book and the 'Spooks Apprentice' for the horror aspect I got the words: Time Spying Well Thief Star
I also recently found out about a creature called Krampus who punishes naughty children at Christmas and decided to use it as inspiration for the villain.
I was very excited about this and the ideas began to flow.
The basic outline of my idea was -
A young boy and his older sister argued and the young boy wished his sister would go away.
That night the boy witnesses his sister being taken down in to the well but a creature known as Krampus.
The boy gathers his friends and descends in to the darkness of the well to save his sister.
In my head the style of this musical will be in the style of YouTube musicals such as 'Hazbin Hotel' and 'Bad Luck Jack'. Both have a soft colourful 2D animated style with adult language and content. For this piece I need to figure out how the ending works and flesh out some details.
I was very excited about this task as you can get bogged down in a couple of ideas and doing this allowed me to experiment with different styles and genres I wouldn't normally go for, such as the Crime Thriller which I enjoyed coming up with more than I thought.
I will be updating on the ideas I chose to go with on Monday.
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