1. Think of an adjective (rotten)
2. Pick an animal (a bear)
3. Choose an occupation (pirate)
Put them together and what do you get? – Rotten Bear the Pirate!!
Why is he ‘rotten’? Perhaps he is mangy. Bad at pillaging? Is he too jolly? He might be too cuddly to be truly scary?
Rotten Bear the Pirate was no use at all on the high seas, until the day he found an old map changed things forever. At the bottom of the map was a message GENUINE PIRATE SHIP WANTED FOR ADVENTURE …
Recently we grappled with a boy character in one of our rough stories. The boy was doing boy-like things with boy-like behaviour, but something was missing from the drafts. We changed the boy character into a dog of uncertain heritage, and voila! The story still worked, and now the character was free to move about in exciting, unexpected ways.
Just how far should the boy be morphed when visualised? Should he be rendered as a regular dog with a collar? A smart casual town dog? Should he have a hint of residual boyishness? After some scribbles, the character had a resolution, of sorts. He would be an upright dog in a pair of sparkling red shoes of course! Although, maybe, he is still actually, kind of a boy underneath that fur – on the inside, waiting to break out. That’s not my read, he looks dog enough to me. Besides, some cigar chomping joker once said that inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
bakersmith 