Storytelling and Narrative - Week 2 (03/10/2025)

For our second week of our Storytelling and Narrative module, we were presented with a large table listing of different genres, environments, morals and character archetypes commonly used in narratives of all kinds to create a story. We were then tasked with pairing up with another classmate and creating a simple story made up of 6 to 16 storyboards/panels that use a wide variety of elements that we had free reign in choosing. After the first hour of conceptualisation, one of us would be separated and paired with different person from another group, who we would then have to receive feedback and potential assistance from to change the story.

I had been paired with George Lance and we had both conceptualised a ludicrous plot-line that took place in the event of a zombie apocalypse, where we follow a zombie secret-agent who wants to rebel against the zombie invasion and save humanity alongside a Christian wizard mentor. The secret agent-zombie attempts to foolishly jump off a roof and unload his bullets into a zombie hoarde, causing his legs to break from impact once he lands. The wizard would arrive on a bicycle, putting the agent back together using a gluestick before dragging him to his secret church lair underneath an ASDA to help the zombie agent through prayer.

Everything, while very fun to conceptualise and work on, turned out to be a nightmare to explain with any consistent logic or theming as most of the ideas we both shared were purposefully zany and comedic.

After the first concept-session ended, Kaneda was paired up with me and provided broad, helpful feedback in regards to the structure of our narrative, which was the biggest hurdle we had inadvertently built ourselves. We had come to the conclusion that the narrative was far too bloated and nonsensical and while the introduction of characters was solid enough, the story needed a rework.

Using knowledge and inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut's narrative structure, I wanted to apply the "Boy Meets Girl" narrative to our silly story to give it a light ending and inject it with the theme of growth. We made changes to the story, like changing the spy from a zombie to an uninfected, but incompetent, human secret-agent. The wizard's religious beliefs were stripped away and he took a much more prominent "mentor" role by assisting the spy through rigorous exercising, quizzing and spy training, only keeping the abandoned supermarket interior as a background element for their training.

The newly-trained spy and Wizard mentor would then sneak into a zombie-filled laboratory to steal the vial containing the cure for the infected populace. Once they reach it, the wizard uses all of his energy ro create a storm cloud that rains all over the horde, curing them of their zombification. The spy celebrates and looks back to see his wizard mentor as nothing but a smoking pile of clothes. He then dons the hat of his mentor, mourning his passing.

Whilst still overly bloated, I like this version a lot better and trying to fix the mess of a story I had created through Kaneda's criticism and assistance proved to be an eye-opening experience for me when it comes to creating a narrative for a project. I had a lot of old animation and game projects that had to be drastically scaled down because of my own over-excitement and ambition and while this class was no different, my knowledge on narrative structure helped me make the story a bit easier to digest. This lesson helped immensely in forcing myself to keep the structure of my narratives for stories simple and readable.