Observation Journal — 31 ways with a story

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.

1. Riso prints (there was a residency I was looking into)
2. Cards — myriorama
3. Cards — a la The Family Arcana
4. Fold out/diorama
5. Pop-up
6. Transparent layers — strip away to reveal truth
7. Accordion-fold/frieze
8. Stand-alone book — beautiful
9. Zine — quick & rough
10. Collection — disparate — of illustrated stories
11. In a collection of prose stories
12. In a collection with a thematic through-line
13. Chapbook series about characters/family
14. “Adventures of a Ghost”
15. Black and white/noir
16. Full colour/painted
17. In parallel with another/someone else’s story
18. In parallel with score for music from the play
19. As a script for the play
20. Plays within plays (a la “The Town in the Library…”)
21. Only ever alluded to in another story
22. Recounted by a 3rd party/other after the event
23. Omniscient viewpoint
24. Evocative line + picture per page = feel discrete BUT connect
25. Series
26. Article a la a ’30s advice column
27. Epistolary — postcards home
28. Set in a very different era
29. Different realities — a tumbling block of world/story (many doors)
30. A commonplace book of a character
31. Map of travels (and times?)

Dog on Zoom

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.