Hey George - firstly apologies for not doing as I said I would and dropping by last night to take a look at your provisional idea. Anyway, you've made a positive effort to push your story into a very different, more speculative place, but I am going to suggest gently that you still don't have a satisfying story just yet - so I'm just going to pick out the elements that I think have real promise and hope also to suggest some alternate ways for getting your story to cohere satisfyingly.
I like the whelps very much and the notion of the dragons. And it occurred to me while reading your script that perhaps your vacuum-cleaner and your dragon might be one and the same thing (they certainly share physical characteristics). The real issue is that you're not actually using your light-house in a proactive way - it's just a place, when actually a lighthouse is an environment with a specific function; a lighthouse keeps something safe from danger when visibility is poor.
If your magician is a lighthouse keeper, his job would therefore be to keep something safe from danger when certain conditions arise. But why does a lighthouse need a magician as its keeper? Well, perhaps it's because only a magician can create the kind of bright light necessary to the function of the lighthouse itself. So let's say that we have an effective, orderly system - the lighthouse keeps 'something' safe and the magician is the 'lightbulb' - great - but what might come along to throw a spanner in the works (and therefore create the tension)?; perhaps the magician has an apprentice or side-kick, who, while vacuuming up, does something to throw the whole system out of whack; vacuums up the wrong thing or creates a problem. Maybe, the light in the lighthouse is created by a single dragon, who is managed by the magician, but the dragon makes a lot of dung, and it's the poor apprentice's job to hoover up the dragon-poop; maybe the apprentice is sick of hoovering up the dragon-poop and stops doing it, and so throws a spanner in the works that way? Let's try and establish the purpose of the lighthouse; does it light the way to the afterlife? Does it light the way for dreamers to return to the waking world? If you figure out what the lighthouse is doing then you can figure out the consequence of it 'not' doing it, because of the hoo-ha within the lighthouse.
You know, a part of me is beginning to think that you could structure this story like somekind of 'explanation story'. For example...
... some cultures explain thunder as the consequence of giants throwing rocks at each other; your story could be an explanation of a natural phenomenon - for example; 'Why do meteor showers happen?' The answer being that 'meteors' are lost dragons who fail to turn left at the great lighthouse of XXX whenever Cloth-ears, the magician's apprentice, presses 'blow' instead of 'suck' on his dragon dung extraction device (or hoover!). See what I mean? Perhaps you need to think of one of those classic childhood questions (Where do babies come from?) - personally, I think using your story to explain where thunder comes from could be perfect, because 'thunder' suggests things crashing and colliding - which might very well happen if the great lighthouse of XXX lost its light-source! Have a go, George :)
OGR 23/01/2013
ReplyDeleteHey George - firstly apologies for not doing as I said I would and dropping by last night to take a look at your provisional idea. Anyway, you've made a positive effort to push your story into a very different, more speculative place, but I am going to suggest gently that you still don't have a satisfying story just yet - so I'm just going to pick out the elements that I think have real promise and hope also to suggest some alternate ways for getting your story to cohere satisfyingly.
I like the whelps very much and the notion of the dragons. And it occurred to me while reading your script that perhaps your vacuum-cleaner and your dragon might be one and the same thing (they certainly share physical characteristics). The real issue is that you're not actually using your light-house in a proactive way - it's just a place, when actually a lighthouse is an environment with a specific function; a lighthouse keeps something safe from danger when visibility is poor.
If your magician is a lighthouse keeper, his job would therefore be to keep something safe from danger when certain conditions arise. But why does a lighthouse need a magician as its keeper? Well, perhaps it's because only a magician can create the kind of bright light necessary to the function of the lighthouse itself. So let's say that we have an effective, orderly system - the lighthouse keeps 'something' safe and the magician is the 'lightbulb' - great - but what might come along to throw a spanner in the works (and therefore create the tension)?; perhaps the magician has an apprentice or side-kick, who, while vacuuming up, does something to throw the whole system out of whack; vacuums up the wrong thing or creates a problem. Maybe, the light in the lighthouse is created by a single dragon, who is managed by the magician, but the dragon makes a lot of dung, and it's the poor apprentice's job to hoover up the dragon-poop; maybe the apprentice is sick of hoovering up the dragon-poop and stops doing it, and so throws a spanner in the works that way? Let's try and establish the purpose of the lighthouse; does it light the way to the afterlife? Does it light the way for dreamers to return to the waking world? If you figure out what the lighthouse is doing then you can figure out the consequence of it 'not' doing it, because of the hoo-ha within the lighthouse.
You know, a part of me is beginning to think that you could structure this story like somekind of 'explanation story'. For example...
... some cultures explain thunder as the consequence of giants throwing rocks at each other; your story could be an explanation of a natural phenomenon - for example; 'Why do meteor showers happen?' The answer being that 'meteors' are lost dragons who fail to turn left at the great lighthouse of XXX whenever Cloth-ears, the magician's apprentice, presses 'blow' instead of 'suck' on his dragon dung extraction device (or hoover!). See what I mean? Perhaps you need to think of one of those classic childhood questions (Where do babies come from?) - personally, I think using your story to explain where thunder comes from could be perfect, because 'thunder' suggests things crashing and colliding - which might very well happen if the great lighthouse of XXX lost its light-source! Have a go, George :)
ReplyDeleteTHANKS A LOT PHIL :D
Deletethis really helps out