This weeks theme examines the difference between story and plot and how we utilise these within our works as storytellers. The story helps to summarise the action or adventure taking place by your character/s and explain the adventure from beginning to end, whilst the plot is what we use to build a series of moments and becomes HOW we tell the story.
This week we looked at the wikis in the workshop and using dot points, jotted down points of the story working backwards froman ending point / the resolution. There was one wiki in the collection that fit ever so perfectly to the overall concept of my game from Holland which was “The lid is placed solemnly back on the coffin”.
The intention I had for the story of Bones was that he would always end up finding his home again. This is the entire premise of the game - he wakes up dismembered in a sewer after falling out of his coffin that breaks away as its being put onto a truck for relocation and his aim is to find where its been relocated to. This wiki really communicated the gentle and peaceful resolution to Bones’ grand adventure. I approached the wiki in a more chronological order of leading upto the moment of Bones finally feeling at peace with the comfort and realisation of who he is and where he came from. There are however some flashbacks that flick through as he is walking through the eerie graveyard approaching his grave. I ended up developing two endings. One where he lays down looking at the stars content with closing the lid and being at peace with life, or realising laying in the coffin didn’t make him feel any different to who he was and that he was always Jasper Thornwell and home is where the heart is, deciding to close the lid on his home knowing he can always go back and walking off into the distance. His whole journey begins with him thinking he isn’t anything without his home. It’s his attachment to home that drives his motivation in finding it again, in which he realises he has no idea how to because he can’t remember who he is, where the grave site has been relocated to or believes how can function without it.
Bullet Treatment: Original Dot Points
- Exhausted and tired he looks up to the large iron gates
- The trees whisper scattered words as he anxiously begins a stroll through the grounds
- As he gently approaches his grave, a time lapse of memories surface
- walking down the main strip of town
- Smiling at the locals
- Hugging his family
- He looks down at his hat and gently smiles with a sense of completeness
- On his hands and knees he begins to dig as fast as he can
- His beloved home covered in soil, is in pieces
- He gathers the pieces of wood he collected during his journey and begins to reconstruct the home he once loved
- A voice whispers in his ear, reminding him his home has always been within him
- He lays down, hugging his hat and gazes up at the stars
- The moonlight ripples through the trees
- The lid is placed solemnly back on the coffin.
Alternate last couple:
- He feels nothing
- Standing up he looks back at the life he once knew with a smile on his face, he places his hat back on his head and walks off into the distance
This work examines the ideas of story and plot by looking at the Hero’s Journey, through exploring the idea of working backwards from an ending point in order to develop the story leading upto it.
Joseph Campbell broke the Hero’s journey down into 12 key steps that take place over the course of the story, that is generally speaking a universal approach to storytelling. The particular scene focused on this week helps to conclude our hero Bones’ journey through utilising animation to wrap up the story through a heartfelt scene and focusing on the last step of Joseph Campbell’s mythic structure of the hero’s journey “Return with the elixir”. This is where the hero of the story usually returns home having undergone enormous growth. “Story lines have been resolved, balance has been restored to the ordinary world, and the Hero may now embark on a new life, forever influenced by the Journey travelled.” (Voytilla, 1999).
By exploring the ending point of the story, we are able to work out how the hero’s journey will conclude and allow the player to enjoy the story of Bones after working hard to guide him there experiencing the end of the journey with Bones - rather than as Bones. Animation allows us to express storytelling visually and emotionally in a lot more depth. The plan with Bones, is to have animation clips in between episodes, the beginning and end to help tie the story and adventure togetherand express the emotional growth Bones goes through as a person. The work of “Bones” is similar to the work of the film Boxtrolls directed by Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi in 2014, in that it utilises materials that feel familiar yet strange and relates very closely to this style and approach of stop-motion animation films. Boxtrolls presents a lovely in-between feeling of reality and cartoon world. This is also why utilising animation snippets throughout will help create a nice blend or cross over between the worlds of animation and interactivity in order to tell the story of Bones.
There has been a lot of debate through how the story should end and through feedback from outside sources and some peers, it has been concluded that Bones should not conclude in the most expected and predicted way, follow Joseph Campbell’s theory of the end stage of the journey bringing resolution to the story. There is still somewhat an element of resolution through the character’s internal emotions and beliefs, rather than the old tale of returning and staying home.
This will continue to develop though as time goes on and the story is evolved further. There has been a lot of “what ifs” being asked such as “what if he can’t put his coffin back together again” and creating further opportunities through the use of metaphors.
