Songbird
A (Potential) Novel by Eileen Kelly
Experiment 1: Friendship Journal
My first experiment is what I’m calling a “friendship journal”—basically, it’s a journal that each of my characters have “written” in, and in some ways sort of serves as a time capsule of their lives before they part ways to attend college or university. I wanted to create this project because I wanted to explore the ways that each character would have a somewhat distinct narrative voice, and also be able to incorporate multimedia elements into my project.
Genre Exploration
While I was researching this genre, I couldn’t find a whole lot about what a journal that exactly matches the idea I had for mine would look like, so instead I decided to research the genre of journals as a whole and then narrow my focus in my own experiment.
I read The Journals of Sylvia Plath over the summer, which is very different from the kind of tone I want my project to take (since her journals are intended to be just about her daily life, they’re more introspective than the entries in mine will be, and she writes in a much more formal tone than the ones my characters will—of the four characters I’m using as “authors”, only one of them would actually be the type of person who would keep a journal outside of this project, so I think that will influence the tone as well). However, since this is an example of a journal (or collection of entries, at least) that has been formally published, I thought that it was a good idea to at least have it in the back of my mind as a reference point.
The two models that I found that most closely resemble the kind of project I want to create are actually two books from my childhood. Both are actually books published by Disney, actually: The Hidden World of Fairies and Rapunzel’s Journal. I remember that I really loved both of these books as a kid because they told a pre-existing story that had already been shared in a movie or other series of books in a new way. Instead of just retelling the plot, they built on the existing universe by giving the character’s firsthand accounts (in the case of the Rapunzel story, it’s her own journal, in the fairy one, it’s Wendy’s journal, from Peter Pan) or by using multimedia aspects that are “taped” or “glued” into the book.
One thing that I especially love about the fairy journal book is that it includes actual three-dimensional elements that fold out or open up, which I don’t think is something that I’ll include in this first version of my project but is something to think about if I decide to use this experiment as my final project. I think that it would be really cool to create a physical book and actually write out all of the entries and things instead of typing them or adding things digitally.
Sketch
I created a brief outline of what I think that a fully realized version of this experiment would look like.
pg 1 (front cover): Appears to be a composition book with “friendship journal” written on the cover. Also decorated with stickers, etc.
pg 2 (back of front cover): A “taped-in” map of the island that my characters live on. I think that this would help to establish the setting without having to go into it in great detail in the actual content of the book
pg 3: Introduction to the book “written by” Rosanna, one of the four main characters. She explains that this book started as a class project to create a time capsule in their senior year, but that she wanted to involve her friends in her time capsule because they’re what she wants to remember most when she looks back on this time in her life.
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pgs 4 & 5: Journal entry by Piper
pgs 6 & 7: Journal entry by Madelyn
pgs 8 & 9: Journal entry by Elijah
pgs 10 & 11: Journal entry by Rosanna
pg 12: back cover of “composition book”
Each journal entry for each of the four characters includes some info about the day that they “wrote” the entry, like the things that might be included in a regular journal/diary entry, as well as their thoughts about going away to college next year. The main theme of the book is the friendship between the four characters (hence the title “friendship journal”) and each entry is written in the voice/tone of the main character. The pages would also use different fonts to represent the characters different handwritings and be decorated with stickers and other items. I would also include an index card on each page where the characters answer the same questions, to create a common thread between the four entries in that way as well.
Reflection
I really enjoyed working on this experiment. I thought that the process of trying to write in the ways that the different characters might write was super interesting and actually helped me a lot in developing their different voices and internals/external conflicts. I also think that using the multimedia elements was a great way to make the finished project seem more authentic, and that was one of the parts of the experiment that I thought was most fun. I think that, since this project is based off of the universe that I created for my longer story that I used for my “artifact of origin”, the target audience would be the same as the people who would enjoy that story (since you sort of have to have the context of reading that to fully understand this experiment; in some ways, this experiment is almost like “bonus content”). That being said, I think that the target audience would be high school aged kids (the book is definitely YA) and more specifically I think kids that age from Michigan or who enjoy reading stories that take place in more nature-y environments rather than the city, if that makes sense.
Works Cited
Glass, C. (2010). Tangled: Rapunzel’s Journal: Letting Down My Hair. Disney Press.
Plath, S., & Kukil, K. V. (2014). The Journals of Sylvia Plath: 1950-1962. London: Faber and Faber.
Redbank, T. (2008). The Hidden World of Fairies. Disney Press.