The Adventures of Dan and Penelope

When brainstorming for my twine story I wasn’t exactly sure what to do it about so I got online and googled how to come up with a story idea and it told me to look up writing prompts, like the ones you use to get in high school English class, so I did. I googled writing story prompts and went through a handful and then came across one that said to write about two people in a Prius who are going on a road trip with only $300. This one jumped out at me specifically because I knew I could turn it into an interactive story. Although that specific prompt had the exact car and funds the people were taking, I decided to twist it into something different. So, I came up with two characters, Dan the dinosaur and Penelope the pig, and just had them go on a road trip, no specific car or funds to take. I chose those two characters because when I first started to brainstorm ideas I couldn’t come up with any but had the idea to use a dinosaur and when thinking of names Dan seemed perfect because when you put the two together it flows and I knew when I found the road trip idea that I needed another animal but one that would work in a sense with a dinosaur and that is how I came up with Penelope the pig. Starting out Dan and Penelope wanted to find something fun to do since they were out of school for the summer. Their need in the end was to find themselves, Penelope came over a fear of heights in one path and they both found it in them to finish a huge dinner to earn more money for their trip. I honestly didn’t know what their needs were going to be until I was almost done with the first path and came up with the idea of finding themselves by overcoming something difficult and when they did they found that this trip was much more than just a road trip through a bunch of random cities and states but something they needed to do together as friends to build their friendship into something stronger and it did just that. They found out things about themselves in the end that they would not have known if they would not have gone on this road trip. Each path leads to something bigger than itself like I mentioned before Penelope overcame her fear of heights. In the Historic 66 Route, they decided to detour to the Grand Canyon and Dan wanted to go to the highest point, but Penelope is afraid of heights. She didn’t want to let Dan down and she didn’t want to regret missing that because she didn’t know if they would ever do something like that again. So, Penelope, with the help of Dan decided to overcome her fear and climb with him and she found that fear is nothing but a word, it is not something that defines you and all you have to do to get over that fear is to push through it to see that everything you have been afraid of was just in your head. So, each city and state Dan and Penelope went through they not only learned about the United States and those specific cities but about themselves. Another thing they ran into was having to eat a giant steak and if they do it each person got $100, they were running out of money and desperately needed that so they found it in themselves to push through and finish it to earn the money so they could go do more things or extend their trip if they needed to. In the beginning I was a little overwhelmed with the story beats and getting them to make sense without being too much for the viewer but in the end I did it how going on a road trip would be in real life. The most difficult part of coming up with the story was actually coming up with ideas that weren’t boring or something that everyone would think of. I kept coming up with ideas about going to school or work or a girl with a boy problem but I wanted to do something different and unique, which is when I turned to google to help me figure out what to do it over and then the hard part after coming up with the idea was sitting down and making it make sense once I started writing it. It was overwhelming at first trying to figure out how to make it fun and interactive without it being too overwhelming for the viewer but I also didn’t want it to be boring, I wanted there to be enough interactive but not too much that the viewer decides they don’t want to do it anymore. Once I got all of that figured out it was smooth for the most part, there were a couple of bumps but after going back over the story and playing it as if I was a viewer, I figured them out. Trying to get the motivations for the characters aligned with the viewers interest was also difficult. Like I said above it was hard trying to make the game and story plot interesting enough to keep the reader involved and in order to do that I thought of what I wanted to see when playing an interactive game. I have played a lot where I got bored within a few cards because nothing was happening or because it was just too much and too overwhelming so I wanted to avoid that and in order to do that I just kept those games in my head and tried to veer away from what would make it too much and tried to make sure that it reflected something I personally would want to go play when getting onto an interactive gaming website.  A few of the photos I got off of the website https://www.roadtripusa.com