On this page of the observation journal, I revisited the 20 Things approach (see Observation Journal — 20 Ways with Gold Foil).

(Left page: “over-caffeinated, guilty and disconnected” — it was early April 2020)
On the right page, I was working through an idea I was developing for an illustrated story. I wanted to shake loose the possible shape of it. In the end I scripted and thumbnailed the idea as a comic — an approach that isn’t even on this list, although thinking through the list contributed to that shape. (The current status of the project is In The Queue.)
The 24th idea is where I started looking around my bookshelves for inspiration. And again, I’ve found this approach more useful with a very specific question. In this case, it was still a little diffuse. But it was a useful way to sort through both the possibilities of the story, what I did and didn’t know about it or want for it, and match that with my mental library of ways stories like this could be told.

Here’s the list. Note: It’s obviously personal to my interests and not comprehensive! The idea was a theatre-based ghost story — if you use this list for ideas, replace “ghost”, “theatre” etc with appropriate nouns.
- Riso prints (there was a residency I was looking into)
- Cards — myriorama
- Cards — a la The Family Arcana
- Fold out/diorama
- Pop-up
- Transparent layers — strip away to reveal truth
- Accordion-fold/frieze
- Stand-alone book — beautiful
- Zine — quick & rough
- Collection — disparate — of illustrated stories
- In a collection of prose stories
- In a collection with a thematic through-line
- Chapbook series about characters/family
- “Adventures of a Ghost”
- Black and white/noir
- Full colour/painted
- In parallel with another/someone else’s story
- In parallel with score for music from the play
- As a script for the play
- Plays within plays (a la “The Town in the Library…”)
- Only ever alluded to in another story
- Recounted by a 3rd party/other after the event
- Omniscient viewpoint
- Evocative line + picture per page = feel discrete BUT connect
- Series
- Article a la a ’30s advice column
- Epistolary — postcards home
- Set in a very different era
- Different realities — a tumbling block of world/story (many doors)
- A commonplace book of a character
- Map of travels (and times?)

Art/Writing exercises:
- I put the general 20 Things exercises on the previous post: Observation Journal — 20 Ways with Gold Foil.
- For this variant:
- pick a story/image you are working on (or one you like),
- list 20 different ways to tell it (or run it through this list), then
- consider how each approach would change it, and
- note which of those changes appeal to you or start off new trains of thought.
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