This week's theme of Character/Location/Action asked us to explore the relationship between these three pillars of narrative, and write "an outstanding character, a dynamic action and an interactive location." In response to this I wrote:
"The Blind Spy frantically clambers back onto the platform, as a train comes rushing by."
Inspired by my recent reading of Ian Flemming's original James Bond novels and the works of John le Carre, I wanted to write a premise about a spy, but I felt the idea of just 'a spy' wasn't dynamic enough. Making this character blind introduces and implies a miriad of conflicts and challenges for them to face. It creates a nice dynamic, where their disability may aid their work perhaps as an unsuspecting undercover operative, while making the more physical aspects of their career more difficult.
This plays directly into the location and action, too, as they attempt to avoid an oncoming train. How would they get out alive? How did this character end up on the train tracks? What would failure mean for their mission and the world at large?
In these ways all three elements of Character, Location and Action play into each other to create a genuinely tense and intriguing scenario.
In response to this week's premise exercise, 'Place a character into a relationship with a need,' I began developing a short narrative about a man who wants to dance with his own skeleton.
The overarching conversation about character needs and motivations was very insightful, and had me thinking about characters and their purpose in a new way. In the past I would generally think of characters as symbols for ideologies, traits, emotions or archetypes, and while this is often the case I can see how important it is to ground a character in their own wants and needs.
In my mind I visualise my premise as a short animated film, following a man who dreams of seperating his body and his skeleton, creating a dance partner for himself. I'm not sure how I would conclude this story, but the initial concept has potential to resolve in a variety of interesting ways.
Though slightly different, this concept was partly inspired by the video game Felix The Reaper (Kong Orange, 2019). The game follows the titular Felix, a hopelessly romantic Grim Reaper set on winning the heart of Betty The Maiden from The Ministry of Life.
-Setup
Our character will be the Sun who is tired of his job as no one on Earth be thankful to him. Therefore, he quits his job and leaves the Milky Galaxy.
Our sun wants a vacation.
However, there are things in the way of his desire. The living balance of the Milky Galaxy has broken as the sun runs away. The sun also finds the Galaxy boring as he travels further.
-Climax
After exploring the galaxy for a while, the sun begins to feel alone, without the sounds of the people of earth.
Sun is bored and depressed. Suddenly he finds himself is about to get sucked into a black hole.
Earth is lost and starts gravitating toward asteroids that threaten the lives of earth. The sun can see it from a far distance but there's nothing it can do as it gets pulled deeper and deeper into the dark pit.
-Resolution
The sun thinks of the people on the Earth. Everyone is yelling and screaming, they are hoping the sun will come back.
The sun becomes delighted as he sees how much they need him, even if they don’t always appreciate him. He then regains his power and gets back to his original place.
Sun finds the strength to stay for the people who love and need it and it’s not always a one-way relationship, while the sun has always been the source of energy for earth, in a way earth could also be the one to support the sun.
To express the feeling inside the Sun, we personalize it as an office boy. Its changing emotion could be shown through the change of its colors. (Happier = red and brighter, depressed = yellow and dimmer).
The black hole is a metaphor to express the gradient of depression it has. When people are in depression, the support from others is the source to pull them back to reality and regain hope.