Thursday 18 March 2010

Story Idea: Three Act Structure

Act 1:

The cuckoo clock is vastly approaching 12 noon and as it strikes the hour nothing happens; the doors, which the cuckoo bird normally exits from, do not open. Forcefully the cuckoo bird’s doors begin to slowly separate and after several attempts to barge the doors out comes a ‘conceited cuckoo bird’.

Act 2:

As this cuckoo bird is ‘conceited’, he obviously does not want to return back into his clock and when the bird ‘cuckoos’ he is unwillingly dragged back into it by the mechanism he is attached to. The doors open once again, and as they do so the cuckoo bird springs forward (looking fairly rugged), without warning the mechanism retracts again a takes the ‘cuckoo bird’ along with it. This time around the bird is prepared and holds onto the edge of the doors, trying to stay outside of the clock, unfortunately the bird’s strength is no match for the device and he is dragged back inside. As the doors open for the third time this bird is even more cautious waiting for the clocks mechanism to retract, the bird braces itself and when the mechanism retracts the cuckoo bird grasps onto the platform, but it is slowly dragged back into the clock.

Act 3:

On the final ‘cuckoo’ the bird once again exits the clock, but this time it is trying to remove itself from the mechanism. After a while the bird successfully frees itself from the clock, but falls onto the platform. Thinking he has successfully beat the clock, the ‘cuckoo bird’ relaxes his up posed chest, revealing that he is just a facade, a short while after this occurrence the clock doors open and the mechanism hits the bird without warning (the birds face appears as if it has been squashed against a screen). The mechanism retracts again and as the bird slides down the ‘screen’ the mechanism springs out and grasp onto the cuckoo bird and pulls it back into the clock.

If anyone has any ideas or comments on how to make this story more interesting or effective please state, thanks.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Ben! I can't quite work out why or how your cuckoo is conceited...it seems to me like he is more stubborn or frustrated... ?

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  2. Hi jackie I dont know if this helps but he i concieted because he wants the to show off and take the spot light (he doesnt want to return into the clock), the struggle is only to show how vein and self obsessed the bird is with showing himself to people, until it backfires onto himself.

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  3. thanks for the help by the way jackie.

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