I'm completely charmed by this story. It has real sweetness to it, like a child's book at bedtime. It has the potential too to go beyond this unit and perhaps, one day, go further in production. I love the way you've taken that suggestion re. the poster of the mouse as an opera singer, but now included the toad child as its witness - nice! I do have a few additional thoughts: I think you need to show us that the mouse's 'rucksack' contains his tent, because currently, its appearance later gives the impression of it being magicked out of thin air because the writer needs it there to solve a problem. My suggestion is just to rewind your story a bit further, so that it begins with the mouse in his tent and packing it away into the matchbox - in this way, you can show the audience exactly what's inside it - so all the matches etc - because again, when the mouse comes up with plan, the audience feels involved in it and understand it to be credible, because it connects to knowledge they've already been given. It feels to me as if you could put a scene together in which the mouse is seen singing opera to 'an audience' of bugs, or other mice, so we understand he's a busker - and an opera singer. We could then see him taking his tent down etc - in the distance, the city, towards which he sets off. In terms of running time, this adds more, but I think without this kind of prefacing, your audience won't be as clued in as you'd like them to be. You could then pick the action up as you've already written - he sees the poster etc.
Anyway, give it some thought: in simple terms, you need to show the audience that he's a busker, that he's got a lovely (and surprising!) big opera voice, and that his matchbox contains the elements he's going to think of using later as the story continues.
OGR 21/01/16
ReplyDeleteHey Mark,
I'm completely charmed by this story. It has real sweetness to it, like a child's book at bedtime. It has the potential too to go beyond this unit and perhaps, one day, go further in production. I love the way you've taken that suggestion re. the poster of the mouse as an opera singer, but now included the toad child as its witness - nice! I do have a few additional thoughts: I think you need to show us that the mouse's 'rucksack' contains his tent, because currently, its appearance later gives the impression of it being magicked out of thin air because the writer needs it there to solve a problem. My suggestion is just to rewind your story a bit further, so that it begins with the mouse in his tent and packing it away into the matchbox - in this way, you can show the audience exactly what's inside it - so all the matches etc - because again, when the mouse comes up with plan, the audience feels involved in it and understand it to be credible, because it connects to knowledge they've already been given. It feels to me as if you could put a scene together in which the mouse is seen singing opera to 'an audience' of bugs, or other mice, so we understand he's a busker - and an opera singer. We could then see him taking his tent down etc - in the distance, the city, towards which he sets off. In terms of running time, this adds more, but I think without this kind of prefacing, your audience won't be as clued in as you'd like them to be. You could then pick the action up as you've already written - he sees the poster etc.
Anyway, give it some thought: in simple terms, you need to show the audience that he's a busker, that he's got a lovely (and surprising!) big opera voice, and that his matchbox contains the elements he's going to think of using later as the story continues.