Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
Plotting
The temptation here is to just set as many plates spinning as possible. But knowing that this first chapter might be the only part of this project that ever becomes produced, I would like to at least have a sort of a mini-ending - even though it would leave a lot of questions still un-answered and plot threads a-dangling.
Plus I really don’t have a lot of money for this. While my project outline has changed, unfortunately (although perfectly understandably) my budget remains exactly the same. Most apocalypses are pretty small though, right?
So after drafting this one-page pitch for the project - for myself as much as anyone - I then went on to plot this little opening chapter of the story. Here’s the eventual five-page summary if this sort of thing is of interest to you. I think it introduces enough of a bigger world to show that there are plenty more stories to be told within it but it also focusses on one protagonist. This gives me a chance to work on a solid character now rather than quickly introducing ’some kids with flashy mobile phones’ that my last incarnation had. To be pretentious for a moment, it also gives me room for the subtext that while the world might in fact be ending within the world of the story, protagonist Verity’s world is definitely ending as she nears the end of her university safety-net and her life begins to fall apart.
From a writing point of view, I’m also looking forward to being able to write the different styles of website required in the story: we have two different people blogging, a corporate website, a movie website as well as the basic fun of writing an over-the-top webcomic about a saxophone-wielding god!
The only downside I can see of this so far is that with this chapter being a finite story, there’s no real purpose in running it ‘live’ on the net. It all just has to be there for the audience to go and look around at their own pace. What I liked about ‘The Dark Knight’ and its fragmented, all-encompassing online campaign is that you would receive small e-mails and updates from the story world every now and again whereas here, I’m just going to drop the audience in it.
I just have to remember that this is essentially a promotion chapter. Ideally, when ‘The End is Nigel’ inevitably receives all sorts of unlimited bugets and resources to do whatever it likes, this story would run for two or three months as if it were happening in real life. ie - if the characters said something was going to happen on September 22nd then it would happen on actual September 22nd.
Although…there could actually be a trick here. In writing the blogs as if they were happening now, it could be then revealed that these events happened a while ago. Hmmn. Playing around with time like that could be a bit too much like the ‘Saw’ movies though.
We’ll see.
