Wow, lots of posts, let me try to cover everything
and if I missed anybody, let me know.
Arenyth - I like your idea. Youve got the story but its
missing something to pull it all together. Its a visual driven
concept so I think it would be best to throw in a piece of symbolism
to make it work. How about the sky fisherman ties a star to his
fishing rod as his bait? When we are introduced to him, the star
has lost its sparkle and dull looking. The golden fish snaps it off
which sends him off to the chase.
In the end, I dont think he should catch the fish. The idea of
the story is that he has lost the point of the game, the thrill of
the chase, then finds it again, like athletes who strive for
something that may or may not be attainable but they try
anyway for the ride, not for the goal. So not catching the
“goal” will give continuity to the story.
As the final conflict, he should be CLOSE to catching it but
as hes pulling it up, he pulls the bait that the fish swallowed
insteadthe star. But it is no longer the star that we saw before,
it looks renewed and shimmering bright again, symbolizing how
the golden fish returned the spark that the fisherman once lost before.
sandy_maith - Hmm
for some reason, I have a hard
time conceptualizing your story. Id like to think I have a
pretty well-rounded story schema, but Im not quite sure
where to fit this one. Maybe I need some more information.
For starters though, perhaps the lead character is a little too
young. Physically, 3 year olds are still pretty small, kinda clumsy,
and not very agile at this point. Intellectually, theyre just
around preschool time with vocabulary spanning 200 and 300
words but theyre not really good at stringing them together so
only about 3/4 of their speech are understandable. Then again,
this is animation world so we can fuzz up things but if we go too
far out of the norm, the character might no longer look 3 years old,
so it depends on how much talking and moving around your
character needs to do. Also note that their emotional spans are
limited too.
As for the truck, is it supposed to be personified? Like does it
have human characteristics? Is it fantasy like or is it really
an inanimate object that the child “imagines” to have human
characteristics? Im a bit stuck on the style of the story, so I
think knowing this would really help. Also, what kind of adventures
do you think theyll be having, can you provide an example?
Infinity2208 - An oversized pufferfish, thats cute.
So how do you end a piece like that? Lets try giving the boy
character a little more background to wrap this up. A lesson to
be learned kind of thing. Maybe do a quick intro on how the boy
is bit of a bully in the neighborhood, you can put this in the
beginnning as hes brining the pufferfish home.
On his way, hes running and crushes somebodys toy car,
maybe theres a party and he pops his little sisters balloon.
After he does this to the other kids he smiles back and we see
theres something distinct from his smile like theres a slit between
his two front teeth.
When he reaches home like you said, he dumps the fish in the tank
and frightens it. The fish expands, eventually crushing his toys
and popping his balloons with its spikes and squeezes him out of
the house. The whole place falls apart and the fish is like
rolling down the street, down the hill, with the boy running in
front of it like Indiana Jones until they reach the harbor
(Im thinking they live by the seaport).
And this giant fish ball thing is rolling down the dock forcing
the boy to jump. They fall in the water and the pufferfish finally
contracts but surfaces to turn to the boy with a smile and we see
that the fish also has that trademark between its teeth. The boy
looks at it with surprise. Closing credits.
The whole thing is really just for the gag but giving the
characters some personality will round it out more.
And finally. finally86 - About how long is your story supposed to be?
I just want to understand how much focus will be placed on which
part of the story. Because its poetic, it should evoke some feeling
or idea from the audience but without the rhythm, its hard to
understand what that theme or idea is. Based on the outline, theres
a list of events in the story but the connection between them is
not very clear, like the meaning to them. Its the job of the audience
to interpret a poetic story into whichever way they see it but its the
job of the storytellers to know the between-the-lines stuff so there
is consistency in the message being conveyed. So, can you explain
a little about the pieces that make up the story?
Thanks, omarpac!
Im glad the forum is helping out people who are reading it!
Its funny that youre suggesting me to write a book because
Id LOVE to and was really thinking about it several weeks back.
The thing is, Id really need to think about what to put into it so it
doesnt go pass 1,000 pages of me just blabbering. I cant stand
reading how-to books that goes on and on about a single topic.
So if I were to write one, Id try to make everything as simple to
read and as straight forward as possible. I need to get the planning
done but thats not my biggest obstacle, which would probably be
looking for a publisher. I could motivate myself to sit down to write
everything but finding the time to researching and attracting the
right publisher/distributor and legal stuff would be the tough part
for me and thats kind of been whats holding me back. So, I
dont know, any suggestions?
My idea is to have the girl a moment of silence where she can reflect herself, what her decisions will be. then ill put up a flashback scene where she and her mom talking one night @ bed when she was still little kid. Her mom talks about the rapture and accepting the savior before she dies to reach the heavens. then that moment (flashback) gave a strong impact wit her decision to make. how does it sound?
