Exercises
- After people-watching in a public place, expand the actions of two or more people into
a simple story situation with conflict. - Using the basic situation you developed in exercise 1, exaggerate the real people that
inspired you until you make two original characters reacting as only they would. - Now put two entirely different characters into the same story you made in exercise 2.
How do the new personalities change the story and the conflict? - Make up a funny situation using funny characters.
- Think about your childhood. Recall a situation or event from back then. What did you
see? What did you hear? Was the weather hot or cold? Who was there? What could
you smell, and taste, and touch? What were your emotions? How did you feel? Why do
you think you still remember this incident? - Choose an event that happened recently. Write about it as if you were five years old, or
ten, or sixteen. - Can you give more suggestions for coming up with new ideas?
- Create your own idea notebook using some of the suggestions in this chapter. Make the
notebook useful for you, personally. - Start files with clippings for later use for stories.
- What makes you angry, sad, or passionate? Write a simple fictional story using those
feelings. - Read a book or magazine while you’re listening to talk radio or TV. Does combining
these two sources of information give you any unique ideas? - Make up a short story from a quotation or from a sentence of original dialogue.
- Take the list of people/animals, places, and things and transfer each item to a separate
index card. Place the cards in three different bags (one for people/animals, one for
places, and one for things). Break up the class into groups of five to seven people each.
Someone from each group will draw out one card from each bag. Each group collabo-
rates on a story combining the three ideas on the index cards. - Using the list of people/animals, places, and things, make up a story for an original ani-
mated short. - Begin to think about characters and concrete ideas for a student film.
44 Animation Writing and Development