Today we had a Creative Writing Workshop on how to go about writing fun and crazy stories/ narrative. We also watched a few short animations on the website 'Shorts of the Week'.
Individual Exercise
We were then given the exercise of writing a story of our own. I was assigned three words:
An annoying boss, Chopsticks and fake an illness.
To be honest I was brain dead for the exercise and wasn't happy with any of my short stories. The most random one I came up with was this:
Main Characters:
- Annoying boss named Anne. Bit bonkers and in your face. Very energetic and loud. In charge of a chopstick making factory. Always bossing around her poor workers.
- Worker George. Bit lazy, ordinary guy but gets his work done. Always being picked on by the boss. Maybe she fancies him? Or maybe she just likes picking on people! Standing up to this woman is a bad idea.
Plot: Anne is bored in her office and decides to wander around the work place to bug her workers. One particular worker catches her eye because he's a bit more lazy than the others. She marches over and sarcastically starts giving out to him. After a while the worker grows irritated from the constant scolding and pokes Anne in the shoulder with a chopstick telling her to "shut up!". Obviously Anne interprets this as a challenge and graps a chopstick of her own and takes a fencing/ sword fighting stance and attacks the worker (George). They part take in a dramatic fencing match in the middle of the work area.
Anne then builds a proper length sword out of chopsticks with ridiculous speed. In shock George frantically does the same but builds a big axe. The battle dramatically continues and these two continuously building ridiculous weapons ranging from swords, axes, spears, bow and arrow, guns, tanks to transformer type suits. Fight scenes are overly dramatic and humerous and sometimes in a comic book like style.
Anne grows impatient and dramatically fakes to be wounded, collapsing on the ground. The worried George stops to help but she deals a lethal attack and sends him flying. She brushes herself off, chopsticks scattered everywhere and with no remorse laughs in Georges face and walks off telling him to clean up the mess. George sits on the ground with a twitch in his eye out of annoyance.
.....annoying boss!
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Group Exercise
We were then put into groups of three to do the same exercise. This time combining the three stories of each person together into one crazy story. Here is what we came up with:
Main Characters:
- Taxi man, Brian: Gloomy looking taxi driver who's always being scolded by his annoying boss. Always fed up looking. Must hate his job!
- Boss, Mr.Smith: Bossy, annoying boss that everyone hates. Always shouting at his employees. In charge of the Taxi company.
- Lady, Sarah: File Unknown?!!
Plot: Begins with poor Brian clearly irritated looking in his taxi waiting to collect people as he notices something outside the taxi which triggers him to remember certain events. Then changes scene to a flash back. Brian is waiting to collect people as usual and a woman gets into the back of the taxi. A spark develops between them as they talk and laugh together. As days pass this lady continues being collected by George in the same area to take her to the same destination and the spark between them grows. Then suddenly George stops seeing Sarah and she ends contact with him. George tries calling her but with no reply. Heart broken, George gives up and returns to his gloomy self. Time passes. One day when he's cleaning his taxi and comes across Sarah's number on crumpled piece of paper on the floor. In the Taxi Company workers area outside the bosses office. Brain decides to call Sarah one more time. He hears a ringtone that he recognises as Sarah's ringtone and automatically follows it's direction. It leads him to the bosses office. He peaks inside to see the boss about to answer the phone... while putting on his lipstick!!!!!!! George's face reacts with shock and disgust.
......Poor George!
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| This is the Poster and Title I came up with for the above weird story |
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RE-EDIT OF GROUP STORY!!!!!
Our tutor didn't really like our story, said it was a bit strange and random. He liked the beginning but not the end. So we changed it, we were then told it was a bit boring!! But I think thats ok, we can liven up the story ourselves when animating it our own way. We looked at our words again and changed the story. The words we chose to work with were:
- Annoying boss
- Taxi
- Valentines Day
- missing tooth
Plot: Begins with poor Brian the taxi driver being shouted at by his horrible boss. Brian leaves to go on his rounds as a taxi driver still gloomy looking. He stops at a certain place on the street and a woman gets into the taxi. As he's taking her to her destination the two of them chat and start getting along. As days go by, Brian continues collecting his woman in the same area and become close. Brian begins falling for her. Valentines day arrives and Brian perks up the courage to ask this woman on a date. He goes to collect her as usual, but to Brian's dismay, she gets in with her boyfriend!!! Brian is heartbroken and reverts back to his original gloomy state. Back at the taxi office Brian is being scolded by his boss once again. Finally Brian snaps and punches his boss in the face and knocks out his tooth.
Next thing you see Brian leaving the front door of the taxi office with his box of belongings in his hands. (Obviously was fired, but does he mind?) Brian then gets into a taxi to find it's a woman driver and they drive off.
……How romantic!!!!
Wasn't our first intention for it to be a soppy story but it turned out to be! I don't mind though because I love cute things haha! Hopefully I can do this story justice when animating it. I don't know if I'll change it too much! We'll see!
