Hey Shannon - thanks for posting these; it's clear, tonally, you're after a feel-good ending - and there's nothing wrong with that, though all I'd observe here is that things still feel a bit random - not sure what a 'scientific theatre' is - or why in idea 3 the mum would ever turn up in her astronaut clothes to a school play, or in idea two, the 'prop telescope' isn't really earning its keep, in so much as it's 'just there' and doesn't appear until your plot needs it to be there. All of that said, there is something in your idea three about the frustrations a child might have with their astronaut parent and the idea too of the videos being sent back and forth. I think there's something here structurally too... the use of these 'video diaries' as a storytelling device:
so - absent parent, who is an astronaut - who is promising to get back to see their daughter in some kind of performance; we see this set-up through videos etc. Maybe there's some kind of incident during a video diary where the daughter (and audience) sees that something has gone wrong and now the astronaut parent won't get home after all... so, now it's just before the performance and the daughter is all miserable and then there's some kind of delivery to the stage door or whatever - and it's something wrapped in brown paper - and it's a telescope, with some instructions - all very mysterious - but the instructions say something like 'look to the blah blah blah quadrant of the sky at 7:04pm precisely - or whatever - and the girl does, looks through the telescope and sees that her mother's rocket ship has written 'Good luck tonight love mum' in the sky - so a bit like this....
https://youtu.be/NPW3mvAN0Rc
This is obviously a much darker version of the frustrations between a child and an off-world parent, but it might be useful to you in terms of thinking about how you might show the passing of time and also use the idea of the videos as a way to move your story along quite quickly.
Hey Shannon - thanks for posting these; it's clear, tonally, you're after a feel-good ending - and there's nothing wrong with that, though all I'd observe here is that things still feel a bit random - not sure what a 'scientific theatre' is - or why in idea 3 the mum would ever turn up in her astronaut clothes to a school play, or in idea two, the 'prop telescope' isn't really earning its keep, in so much as it's 'just there' and doesn't appear until your plot needs it to be there. All of that said, there is something in your idea three about the frustrations a child might have with their astronaut parent and the idea too of the videos being sent back and forth. I think there's something here structurally too... the use of these 'video diaries' as a storytelling device:
ReplyDeleteso - absent parent, who is an astronaut - who is promising to get back to see their daughter in some kind of performance; we see this set-up through videos etc. Maybe there's some kind of incident during a video diary where the daughter (and audience) sees that something has gone wrong and now the astronaut parent won't get home after all... so, now it's just before the performance and the daughter is all miserable and then there's some kind of delivery to the stage door or whatever - and it's something wrapped in brown paper - and it's a telescope, with some instructions - all very mysterious - but the instructions say something like 'look to the blah blah blah quadrant of the sky at 7:04pm precisely - or whatever - and the girl does, looks through the telescope and sees that her mother's rocket ship has written 'Good luck tonight love mum' in the sky - so a bit like this....
https://youtu.be/NPW3mvAN0Rc
This is obviously a much darker version of the frustrations between a child and an off-world parent, but it might be useful to you in terms of thinking about how you might show the passing of time and also use the idea of the videos as a way to move your story along quite quickly.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/165882881