Ideation: Book Choice & Deconstruction

Before you deconstruct then reconstruct something, you have to fully understand what it is.

I decided to look into diferent ways of categorising and understanding the written word, starting with investigating plot types. I had heard that there are only a limited number of storylines, so i investigated this. I found that there are many different ways of categorising books; the 3-plot, 7-plot, 20-plot and 36-plot being only a few of the more well-known. I took the information from 'http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html'. I then tried to describe my chosen book (the magicians nephew) with each of these classifications. It was interesting how, in different ways of categorising books, the description of it changed, but it still ran true. The magician nephew is a 'happy ending book' , a 'Man vs. Supernatural', a 'adventure' and a 'The Enigma/Pursuit'.




I then outlined a rough description of the storyline as well as giving justification for my choice of text. I felt that it was very visual and light-hearted in one aspect, whilst having darker undertones and adult connotations which i found very interesting. It is quite unusual to have such depth in a childrens book.



I then started to think about different ways to represent different elements in the book.



Ideas such as an 'illuminated board' with the characters as chess pieces in some kind of game. As time goes forward, the pieces move forward and interact with eachother and the user gains information. They could skip parts, and certain parts of the board could trigger sounds. Giving the reader the power to pick and choose what parts they want to see or not see, or to be able to to into detail or not is quite interesting to me.



I also thought about the ideas of 'concealment' and has earlier thought of hiding things in the board that are diccult to see, only partially viewable or perhaps hard to remove. I later added a few more ideas such as the boxes with keys. These were general thematic ideas though and i didn't have much focus on exactly what parts i wanted to show.





I was also taking into consideration which materials to use for the model. Different materials lend themselves to different styles of modelling, and the level of preparation you need varies hugely. For example clay and dough are easy to control and mould, and are immediate as you can change things as you go without ruining anything. Paper models are less so as you have to work out how to glue and fold and cut ahead of time. This still takes generally far less time than working with metals or precious metals. I also considered casting with pewter and making quick cuttlefish moulds.