One of the keys to brainstorming is not putting your "editor" hat on during the process, and just allowing the ideas to flow. There are no bad ideas at this point. A lot of the ideas come for me by association with the previous idea. Just let your mind go but don’t let it wander off-topic. Try to keep your goals in mind. It’s also good to find a place where you won’t have any interruptions or distractions for a block of time. Turn off that cell phone and put it out of your reach. Get away from computers so you’re not tempted to go searching and end up surfing.
This may be a bit hard to read, but it’s a good representation of the stream of consciousness I went through over the course of many commutes to work:
I’ve had this image in my mind of a turtle with a jetpack. I also love vintage time periods and steampunk. And underwater steampunk is really cool - Bioshock is a wonderful example. Maybe you could be in an old steampunk diver’s suit with an air hose connected to a parked steampunk submarine? We’d have to lose the jetpack unless we did some kind of steampunk underwater one...but that feels forced. Let’s put a pin in the jetpack idea for now and follow this underwater steampunk thread for a bit.
Spotlight Stories Piggy was simple and funny. One character on a white background. He tries to get the cake when you aren’t looking. A simple relationship was built between you and the pig. You believed he was aware of you strictly by eye contact and turning your head. It also worked outside of VR if you had a phone with a gyroscope. We could be underwater with a blue fog around you to simplify the scene. You could be limited to just turning around and no locomotion; simpler still. We could always build upon this in a later project.
Gotta play with VR’s strengths and relative scale is one of them; either you’re big and things are tiny or you’re tiny and things are big. So if it’s underwater maybe there is no bottom or surface, to help with scale. But too much like Arden’s Wake. Let’s go with standing on the ocean floor. It works better with the diver’s suit and parked submarine anyway.
I want it to be comedic. There needs to be a double meaning and irony to the story. Like a dumb turtle thinks others find him fast/smart. It could have the voice of Bobcat Goldthwait or Tim Hawkins. The story could unfold through a conversation you have. But to keep it simple you can’t talk...so what does that leave? Nodding and shaking of the head? So he can ask you yes/no questions.
One thing VR does well is suspense/horror. Being underwater in the ocean can be very spooky. Comedy & spooky? It’s possible. Let’s aim for it. Maybe he tells you a ghost or monster story, one that happened to him. What Jaws did so well was NOT showing you the shark until the very end, with only quick glimpses beforehand. Let the audience’s imagination work for you. So maybe the monster could be a shark? But he doesn’t call it a shark. He calls it a...Boogie Man. Too cliche.
Hey, I learned recently that vintage blues piano music is called Boogie Woogie. There’s the music I could use. How could I weave it in? Maybe the turtle calls the shark the Boogie Woogie because Boogie Woogie music comes from it...but how the heck could that happen? Maybe the shark swallowed a radio, like a boom box? Do young folks even know what a boom box is? But this is a period piece and boom boxes didn’t exist anyway. And a boom box couldn’t work underwater anyway. But we are allowed “one bit of magic”...hmm...Boogie Woogie music is ragtime-like piano music. What if...the shark swallowed a piano player and his piano...and they still play from inside. So random. But maybe it could work. Let’s go with it for now, see where the thread leads. Too early to say no since I’m brainstorming.
So what does the turtle want? What if he wants to kill the shark? That’s dark. What is its motivation? Maybe...the shark ate its family...or it’s daddy...that’s dark too. How do we keep it light? What’s ironic? Maybe the turtle is delusional and wants to eat the shark for eating his daddy? “He ate my daddy. Now I’m a gonna eat him!” Creates dramatic irony (the audience is aware of the situation when the character isn’t). Makes me think of Henery Hawk the tiny chicken hawk from Looney Tunes. He’s a pipsqueak who doesn’t realize it. How do I take this to the extreme (contrast)? Make the turtle a baby, tween, or teen? Teens are known for thinking they’re invincible. Okay, keep going.
How can I add more dramatic irony to build tension and suspense? Maybe the turtle describes the Boogie Woogie while we hear the Boogie Woogie music circling us and the turtle doesn’t notice? What if we see the shape of a shark slowly creeping up from the blue fog behind the turtle while he’s talking? And we’re helpless to warn him because all we can do is nod or shake our head? That works.
How should it end? Logic says the shark would eat the turtle. And you. What would be the most unexpected thing? That the turtle eats the shark. What!? Maybe at the last second before the shark eats him, the turtle grows to a gigantic size and swallows him. How? Why? Does it matter? What would add irony? Maybe after the turtle eats the shark and swims away, a baby swims up to you and asks, “Have you seen my daddy?”
Next time we'll take a step back for an overhead view of our ideas in an overall story context. We'll look at some good goals to have in any comedic story along with some thoughts about my specific story genre choices for this project.
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