story problem

I went and talked to DQ this morning, and finally understand what he's getting at.
he's right. we don't have story, we have concept and character. in our current 'story', the character goes through a character arc, but there is no other story development. like, nothing ever changes! ask the question 'what if?'. if the ape never found out about the ground level, then utopia would continue polluting... but in our story, the ape does find out about the ground level, and still nothing changes.

for a good story, there must be a rising crisis level. like, the stake must get bigger. what if, the pollution is building to a critical point, to a point where it's actually killing? and *if* the ape doesn't fix this, people will die! or something. the point is, there's gotta be something at stake.

DQ made an interesting story suggestion: the toxic waste could be turning into the monsters (no more space pirates, no more questions of why people would choose to stay under Utopia and not just... move). I think someone else mentioned this before? I'm not sure--but anyway, then there could be a crisis level. perhaps the toxicity of the waste is building to a point where a sentient monster would be created, and someone has to stop it beforehand. if no one stops it, everything will destroyed.

another point DQ talked about is that the audience should understand the world. maybe we can spend more time on introducing our world, showing Utopia in all its splendidness before introducing the conflict. even in the Mickey Mouse short (where he went through the looking glass) we watched today in lecture, half the short was just him enjoying the oddities of the world, building a strong setup. but we can worry about that after we get our story straight.


so let's all think about ways to build some crisis into our story! that's the main problem, if we solve this then we've got a story. =D




oh, and if anyone's bored and wants some inspiration...
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/03/25-brilliant-animated-short-movies/