Collaborative Creative Writing

In class with Mr Cole on Friday, without being told why, we had to arrange ourselves in age order. We then sat down and were told to write the opening paragraph of a story starting with the line ‘Ross, a 36 year old male woke and looked around him, he was…’ Apparently being in age order was purely to mix us all up so we wouldn’t be with people we were usually with though that didn’t really work as I was next to Jake who I am usually only two seats away from. Once done with our opening paragraph, we had to pass it around the room every 2-3 minutes with each person in the chain adding something to the story. The first person had to develop the description of the character Ross. The second person had to introduce a prop. The third person had to introduce another character. The fourth person had to create dialogue and the fourth had to end the story. Here is what myself and my class mates created.

Ross, a 36 year old male woke and looked around him, he was…

ME: somewhere he had never been before. The light was bright and hurt his eyes. When his chocolate eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that he was in a hospital. He looked down at himself on the white hospital bed to see his tall and skinny form covered in wires. Either the bed was very small or he had grown somewhat as his legs, from his knees downwards, were hanging off the edge of the bed. Ross’ face was long and thin, his skin pale and his short curly hair so dark brown it was almost black. He sat up, wincing at the pain in his chest before looking down at the floor. His widened eyes were met by the gaze of a small creature standing at about two and a half foot tall. Its skin was bright purple.

ALICE: The creature outstretched his arm, in his webbed hands only the size of a small child’s, is a sphere glowing a soft white light. The man reached down, his quizzical personality wanting to touch it, a magnetic field attracting him to this strange ball.

CAITLYN: The purple creature started to walk towards him and pressed a button behind his head. A door opened and a woman was pushed through the door. Ross looked at her - she looked vaguely familiar. She looked pleased to see him and ran over to him. He just stared blankly at her. She embraced him; he just sat there unable to move. “Ross! I’ve been so worried about you.” She said. Ross tried to reply but he just spoke in French. “Bonjour, comment t’appelle tu?” She stared at him in amazement.

GEORGIE: Speechless, and having no idea what to say, the woman passed a phone to Ross, with the intention of getting Ross to communicate with his family. A young voice at the other end of the phone said “Ross, I’ve missed you. Are you ok?” To which Ross replied “Yo no entendies.” (Spanish for ‘I don’t understand’).

MEGAN: He had no idea where these languages were coming from or how he could fluently speak them. The purple creature took the phone from Ross’ hand as Ross gawped in amazement and confusion. The creature hung up the phone and placed it on a nearby surface. Ross slowly stood up, his gangly legs weak at first, but able to hold up his stick-like body. His curiosity got the better of him as he reached forward to touch the glowing sphere in the palm of the creature’s webbed hand. He touched it lightly with his finger first but nothing seemed to stop him delving further and further in. Soon, his entire arm was gone inside this shining ball. With a quick and random ‘Aufwiedersehn’, he disappeared entirely.

My Perception

My perception of my opening was rather different than the perception of the others. While they developed a story about what seemed like Ross being a mental patient and having the main focus on him, while having the small creature as a side normality. I say this because they didn’t really highlight the creature in the story, he was just, sort of there almost unnecessarily. I pictured having the focus more on the creature than on Ross and how it appears that Ross is an outsider of a distant planet/ship/race etc when it turns out to be the creature that is an outsider on earth. My opening paragraph made it seem as though Ross was the subject of tests, what with wires attached to him but I visioned having the creature as the real subject of an experiment. I have written out my version of the whole story below.

Ross, a 36 year old male woke and looked around him, he was somewhere he had never been before. The light was bright and hurt his eyes. When his chocolate eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that he was in a hospital. He looked down at himself on the white hospital bed to see his tall and skinny form almost naked apart from a pair of shorts and covered in wires. Either the bed was very small or he had grown somewhat as his legs, from his knees downwards, were hanging off the edge of the bed. Ross’ face was long and thin, his skin pale and his short curly hair so dark brown it was almost black. He sat up, wincing at the pain in his chest before looking down at the floor. His widened eyes were met by the gaze of a small creature standing at about two and a half foot tall. Its skin was bright purple.

The creature’s large green eyes blinked at him like a playful puppy’s might do and Ross noticed the small syringe the creature held in its strangely human-like hand. The creature stepped towards Ross, climbed onto the bed and put a hand on Ross’ chest. He raised the syringe and looked at Ross. Ross went to question the creature’s actions but something made him stop. The creature nodded to Ross and proceeded to puncture the syringe into Ross’ chest. The creature drew a clear liquid from Ross’ body into the syringe, removed it and then placed the tip of his finger over the puncture in Ross’ skin. The creature’s eyes flashed silver and when he removed his fingertip, it was as if the syringe had never entered Ross’ chest. The creature nodded to Ross again and put the blood into a golden tube. Ross noticed that the agonising pain in his chest was now gone.

A door in the corner of the room opened and another creature, just like the one who had just healed Ross only this one was blue, entered the room. On closer inspection, Ross noticed that the blue creature has strange markings all over its skin, as if it had been cut and stabbed many times. The blue creature hurried over to the purple creature and said something in a language that Ross didn’t understand. The purple creature replied and before they could get into a conversation, Ross tried to speak to them. “Who are you?”

The two creatures looked to each other and the blue one nodded to the purple one. “I am Resgram and this is Necrop. We are creatures of the Nmodli. We don’t wish to harm you Ross, we only ask for protection.” Ross raised an eyebrow but continued to question them. “Protection? From what?” “Your people of power. They are coming after us.” “Why?” “We escaped from their testing facilities.” “So that’s why you have all those markings.” Ross said to the blue creature. “We were both tested on frequently. My scars don’t show because I have healing abilities. She has the power to move objects with her mind. You people want to extract these powers from us and plant them in humans but we escaped.” Said the purple creature, Resgram. “So where are we now? And how am I here?” Ross asked. The blue creature’s eyes flashed and the white lifted from the room. “We are in your living room.” Said Resgram.

A knock at the door stopped the conversation. Ross looked to the door. “Ross Hartley, CIA open this door or we will break it down.” Said the voice behind the door. Ross then looked to where the creatures had been standing but they were no longer there. Suddenly, the pain in his chest returned and he fell flat onto the bed, the darkness claiming his consciousness and his gangly legs dangling off the end of the bed.

Evaluation

I visioned a loop like story structure and bizarrely, after we got our stories back from the person who finished our story, Mr Cole showed us a video called ‘Loop’ in which a man wakes up, drops his tea seeing the outline of where a body was, slips on the liquid, bangs his head on a table and ends up within the outline. Needless to say I was a little spooked.

I don’t really think that this would make a good short film because I think that it is a bit too strange for modern mainstream audiences. Plus, to be honest, it’s just a kooky little story a weird girl came up with in a minute of class time. I didn’t really think it through or develop anything. If a short film had to be created using one of the two stories above, I think the collaborative story would work better mainly because it’s slightly more plausible than my idea.

This exercise was good as I had fun creating different ideas for different stories and it’s taught me that collaborative working can be really good and helpful for producing more successful work as if you work with someone else, not only will you get more ideas but you will also have a critic for your own ideas which I really like to have as it helps to separate my mad ideas from my even madder before I reel off on a totally ridiculous idea that would never work.