Deconstruction:
For this assignment, it seemed that the Twitter story was developing around two characters. As the story developed it almost seem that the characters evolved almost parallel to each other until the characters reunited towards the end. And then, of course, there was “Kismet” idea… When it meant to be life finds the way of making it happen. I took this premise of the destiny and imagined two stories developing separately but meeting in the end. And since there were already magical elements present with two key elements of the story: the mysterious house or the cottage and an enigmatic little child they meet I thought it would fit nicely with a concept of a dream. Imagine two people dreaming and in the end meeting each other in the dream.
Once I developed this idea and re-wrote the two dreams to better fit together using some of the elements from the Twitter story and incorporating some of my own so that the dreams were approximately the same length visually it was time to look for a tool that will allow me to present the idea. It actually took a while because I wanted it to allow stories to be presented side by side. I also wanted a nice presentation. I looked at different tools such as H5P which is HTML5 based learning development tool, mind mapping tools, and infographic tools. In the end, I ended up using Piktochart because it allowed me to display the dreams parallel to each other and because it allowed for the incorporation of nice dynamic visual elements.
The Story:
Responses to this project never cease to amaze me, and yours is no exception. Even given the awkward writing process imposed by the project rules, there are compelling story elements that develop and lead to such myriad ways to conceptualize and extend it, well beyond the literal fragments that are a result of the process.
I was initially surprised when the story bifurcated into what you’ve recognized as essentially two stories evolving in parallel, but as a literary conceit I think it works very well. This is evident in your treatment of the story. There was a clear sentiment from just about every contributor to draw Kes and Re together somehow, to provide a sense of closure and to settle some of the issues that Re in particular was facing. Your response does a fine job on all of these counts. I particularly like the way you incorporated literal story elements with your own narrative elements. Both sides of the story read well and are compelling in their own right (write?), but they strike me as very powerful when viewed together in the way you presented them. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Houses of Leaves (Danielewski) but it uses a similar but far more complex conceit of multiple strands and stories woven together and presented largely in parallel fashion. If you find yourself with a few months with nothing to do, you might take a look at it. It’s not an easy summer read by any stretch.
Very nicely done and well presented. Thanks.
There is a small typo in your post title: Storrytelling should be Storytelling. Too many r’s…
I loved The House of Leaves! It took me a while to finish it. It’s an intense story. I loved the house as a character. the fact that it was alive and ever changing and taking other characters through different ladders of experiences. I think, maybe subconsciously I was drawing on that when I was constructing the two narratives. I think Twitter as a communal storytelling tool is fascinating. I could not picture how it would go when we started contributing. Relying on a previous tweet by others was to weave the story at first seemed constraining, but then magic happened. Your brain starts to fill in the blanks. I also found myself obsessively waiting for the next tweet to see where it would take the story; if people would take up your branch and build on top of that.
It took me several months of dropping and restarting to finish House of Leaves, but I’m glad I did if only for the experience of exploring the literary mechanisms involved. Compelling story, too, once you find its wavelength.
I fully agree with your comments about the way our story was constructed. It can be very frustrating at first–especially for writers–but, as you say, we tend to want to make a story out of the chaos and understand its characters on some level.