Fun House

Katarina Scoma

CMI

Dr. S

30 September 2019

            In the development of my story, I brainstormed thoughts and ideas from my favorite movies as well as my own thoughts and experiences that I have gone through in my past. I started with “what if” statements to help me come up with beats that I wanted to be included in the story. My top three story ideas were similar in a sense, however there was one that stuck out to me the most. I thought of something that people could relate to, which was, haunted houses. It’s a fun, fall activity to do with your closest friends – however, there is a plot twist. “What if you actually got murdered in a haunted house” – a little dark and scary to think about but to amp it up even more, I thought what if you got murdered by your best friends and put the two ideas together. Now, if that wasn’t enough, I had a different plot twist – what if you got stuck in the haunted house forever. Your own personal hell.

            When writing my story, I was thinking how I wanted the friends to betray him, however I did not want it to be revealed until the end. With that, I started my story like a typical fall night. I let the reader choose the temperature so they could feel more interactive. At first, the reader might think that Charlie (the main character) needs to impress his friends because he likes Nancy and he wants to have a relationship with her. But as the story progresses, the reader finds out that his needs a second chance with his friends and his wants are survival. However, going onto the second part of the story Charlie’s needs and wants change to he needs to overcome his deepest darkest fears and his wants are to figure out “what is going on, why is he stuck there?”

            To make the story more compelling, I game the reader to pick what the temperature feel like outside as well as different music options. These techniques do not change the outcome of the story; however, it lets the reader be more interactive and let them pick based on their own needs and wants. Some decision points the reader will come across is based on where he stands in line. If Charlie chooses to move to the front of the line “to prove a point and impress his crush” he will get locked in the twilight zone. Now, if Charlie chooses to move by one of the girls he will either get murdered by their plan or he will survive their plotted plan.

            When I was brain storming about the story beats, I was thinking of what audience I was writing to. I knew I wanted it to be the general public and all ages, which brought me to the broad idea that we all have fears of something no matter the age or who you are. Many people have fears of clowns, murder, heights, panic attacks, and the list goes on. This idea allowed me to think of a haunted house, because it is full of what is to be considered everyone’s greatest fears. I wanted a part of my story to be something that “could happen in real life” and I wanted the other half to be “something fictional”, which is how I came up with Charlie getting stuck in his own personal hell.

            Coming up with the beats was what I considered to be the easy part of my story. The hardest part of my story was coming up with the “Twilight Zone” inspired ending – him being stuck in his hell. I wanted the reader to know that he kept going into the same situation. When doing this, I had to make sure the reader HAD to go through the passage at least twice and depending on what they picked they might even go through it three times. I repeated the same cards twice to make a more compelling story. I thought doing this would allow the reader to think why they are reading the same cards twice, and then come up with the conclusion that he is in fact trapped and he can’t get out. I thought if many different options for this segment. One of my ideas was to put five passages on one card and each of those cards leading to a “back button”; however, I chose not to do this layout because I felt it would get annoying and the reader would lose interest and fully understand the concept of what is going on.

            I based my personals experiences and my friend’s personal experiences together to create the characters motivations and options. For example, I came up with the option “spring to the car and get in” or “throw brock the middle fingers”. I said these two different options because I feel there are so many different personality types and based on the readers own experiences and their personality type, they could relate more to one decision than the other. Another task I used was based on courage. At the end of the scene where Nancy and Laura are trying to kill him, I wanted the reader to pick what Charlie should do based on what they would do if this situation was brought to life. For example, the reader could pick to “push Laura down and run” or to “stand there”. Both of these options are very bold but it is based on how the reader would handle the situation in real life, not know what is going to happen next.             Overall, this project allowed me to brainstorm and the of needs and wants to make a story more compelling. At first, I thought it was not going to be as challenging as it actually was. It became difficult when making each passage be two different options, but still needing it to be the same outcome. After this project, I now feel more mechanically inclined in writing stories in a different, more compelling way.