PROMPT SEVEN – PLOT TRANSPLANTS
This uses a similar concept as the Hollywood Style prompt that I covered previously. The idea is to take a story and transport it to a new time and/or location. One of my Creative Writing teachers showed me this prompt and she used fairytales to generate ideas, but really it works for any sort of story; historic tales, news features, and novels.
Once you have picked a fairytale (or any story) and decided when and where to place it you then decide how the new setting affects how the story is told. And because of that it becomes a new story. For instance, what would happen if you took Hansel and Gretel and placed them in a wild-west frontier town? Hank and Gertie might be captured by a mystic Indian medicine-man, which changes the dynamics of the story immensely while still giving you a good starting place for the plot.
Something else you can do with this concept is change one or more of the characters in the story. What would happen if Little Red Riding Hood climbed up the beanstalk and had to contend with the Wicked Witch of the West? Moving away from fairytales, imagine Dennis the Menace taking a basket of goodies to his grandmother across town.
If you don’t write cutesy fairytales this method can still produce useable starter material. Take the story of Sleeping Beauty and turn it into a dystopian, science-fiction nightmare. Wouldn’t that be a kick?
I chose a classic novel, Frankenstein, for my example.
Monsters on the Midway – Based loosely on Frankenstein this novel chronicles the story of a college football coach who is obsessed with creating the perfect football team. He introduces a new method of training the players that takes them beyond their normal limits and transforms them into machines of flesh and bone. Unfortunately, this training affects their lives outside the football stadium. Seeing his mistake, the coach attempts to resign from the team, but the players have other ideas about that. The players begin a psychological terror campaign designed to keep the coach in place and continue with their inhuman training.
This uses a similar concept as the Hollywood Style prompt that I covered previously. The idea is to take a story and transport it to a new time and/or location. One of my Creative Writing teachers showed me this prompt and she used fairytales to generate ideas, but really it works for any sort of story; historic tales, news features, and novels.
Once you have picked a fairytale (or any story) and decided when and where to place it you then decide how the new setting affects how the story is told. And because of that it becomes a new story. For instance, what would happen if you took Hansel and Gretel and placed them in a wild-west frontier town? Hank and Gertie might be captured by a mystic Indian medicine-man, which changes the dynamics of the story immensely while still giving you a good starting place for the plot.
Something else you can do with this concept is change one or more of the characters in the story. What would happen if Little Red Riding Hood climbed up the beanstalk and had to contend with the Wicked Witch of the West? Moving away from fairytales, imagine Dennis the Menace taking a basket of goodies to his grandmother across town.
If you don’t write cutesy fairytales this method can still produce useable starter material. Take the story of Sleeping Beauty and turn it into a dystopian, science-fiction nightmare. Wouldn’t that be a kick?
I chose a classic novel, Frankenstein, for my example.
Monsters on the Midway – Based loosely on Frankenstein this novel chronicles the story of a college football coach who is obsessed with creating the perfect football team. He introduces a new method of training the players that takes them beyond their normal limits and transforms them into machines of flesh and bone. Unfortunately, this training affects their lives outside the football stadium. Seeing his mistake, the coach attempts to resign from the team, but the players have other ideas about that. The players begin a psychological terror campaign designed to keep the coach in place and continue with their inhuman training.
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