Monday, July 15, 2019

Summertime Writing: Combine and Adapt Ideas In Stories

In the last innovation post, I tried to use the substitution method for story innovation. In this post, I'd like to try the next SCAMPER methods of innovation and creativity. I will do the second and third of the seven parts of the SCAMPER method in this post—Combine and Adapt.

New ideas created on this page are ©2019 by Ken Wickham

1. State the original idea, problem, or question (source).


For this case, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Synopsis found at Wikipedia. I cut together pieces of the larger synopsis.

tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a hideous, sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment...the Creature tall, about 8 feet (2.4 m) in height and proportionally large. Despite Victor's selecting its features as beautiful, upon animation the creature is instead hideous, with watery white eyes and yellow skin that barely conceals the muscles and blood vessels underneath. Repulsed by his work, Victor flees when it awakens. While wandering the streets, he meets his childhood friend, Henry Clerval, and takes Henry back to his apartment, fearful of Henry's reaction if he sees the monster. However, the Creature has escaped.

Intelligent and articulate, the Creature relates his first days of life, living alone in the wilderness and finding that people were afraid of and hated him due to his appearance, which led him to fear and hide from them. While living in an abandoned structure connected to a cottage, he grew fond of the poor family living there, and discreetly collected firewood for them. Secretly living among the family for months, the Creature learned to speak by listening to them and he taught himself to read after discovering a lost satchel of books in the woods. When he saw his reflection in a pool, he realized his physical appearance was hideous, and it terrified him as it terrifies normal humans. Nevertheless, he approached the family in hopes of becoming their friend. Initially he was able to befriend the blind father figure of the family, but the rest of them were frightened and they all fled their home, resulting in the Creature leaving, disappointed. He traveled to Victor's family estate using details from Victor's journal, murdered William, and framed Justine.

The Creature demands that Victor create a female companion like himself. He argues that as a living being, he has a right to happiness. The Creature promises that he and his mate will vanish into the South American wilderness, never to reappear, if Victor grants his request. Should Victor refuse his request, The Creature also threatens to kill Victor's remaining friends and loved ones and not stop until he completely ruins him.
Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees. The Creature says he will watch over Victor's progress. 

2. SCAMPER

Substitute is about replacing parts of the story. Characters, description, setting, plots, or conflicts may be replaced with alternatives.
Combine is about merging two or more ideas, processes, or products into one.
Adapt is adjusting, changing, and tweaking to make more suited for the current situation.
Modify, minimize, or maximize
Put to another use
Eliminate or elaborate
Reverse

Combine

The method that I will try is to trying to combine a few popular classic story elements into the Frankenstein story. I'll pick three classic popular stories, at least in the US.

To Kill a Mockingbird
A minority is wrongly accused of a crime committed by a prejudice and lazy low life character that only has the benefit of being a member of the majority. The wife of this character dreams of having an affair with the accused character prior to the accused "crime".

Maybe the best way to combine these stories is to use the De Lacey family, the family that adopts the creature and are living in exile from the government for treason, in a similar way that Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell are used in the story. Or I can use the creature in the same way as Boo Radley, the reclusive person next door that is friendly with Scout and Dill and eventually saves them from Bob Ewell.

Victory Frankenstein could either be more like Aticus, the lawyer that defends Tom Robinson, the accuse, or like Tom Robinson himself.

The Grapes of Wrath
Since Tom Joad eventually kills the person that kills his friend Jim Casy in a union violent clash, the creature might work well as Tom, recently released from prison and now a fugitive breaking parole, the main character in the book. Victor Frankenstein might work as Jim Casy, his friend from the town that they left due to bank foreclosure and journeyed to California in search of work. After a flood, they might seek higher ground and find in a barn a boy and starving (blind) father, the De Lacey family

Aladdin
Maybe Victor could play the role of Aladdin, an impoverished youth that is recruited by the creature to recover a wonderful oil lamp from a booby-trapped magic cave. The creature could play the role of the sorcerer from the book. A genie appears after rubbing a magic lamp. With the power of the genie, Victor becomes powerful and marries a high society princess.

The creature that recruited Aladdin might steal the lamp after which Victory must try to get back the magic lamp.

Analysis of combine technique

The Grapes of Wrath would be the most difficult to combine stories. However, To Kill a Mockingbird and Aladdin I felt had much more usable content that might be able to combine with Frankenstein.

Adapt

Adapting is brainstorming with the purpose of trying to adjust, tweak, or change a product into something more appropriate for the current situation.

The most obvious way to adapt Frankenstein, writing in the early 1800s, would be to adapt it to the modern time period. Weird science sort of adapted Frankenstein to the 80s.

How could Frankenstein be adapted to 2019.

Let me brainstorm.
Instead of alchemy, Dr. Victor Frankenstein might use modern DNA splicing and create a creature using different DNA from different people—or even mixed with different species, a hybrid.
The creature escapes and lives with the De Lacey family which might be an off-the-grid or doomsday preppers. The creature learns from these survivalists and learns to speak English. The creature then eventually contacts Victor and threatens to kill his family if he doesn't create a partner for him.

Analysis of Adapt

Adapting might be more fun if mixed with some of the other techniques. I don't like doing a straight adaptation of Frankenstein.

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