Design Document

The main idea behind this project is to tell the story of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson using multiple visual media forms rather than simply using text.

This project will demonstrate how different media can be combined to add depth and detail to something like text. The short story selected was published in 1948 and this project will also serve to show how new and different forms of media have been developed and how they can aid in the story-telling process.

Throughout this course, we have learned about different types of media and how they can be used to deliver information to their audience. Since we will be using multiple types of media to tell the story of The Lottery, we will be further demonstrating the content taught in the course.

In order to do this, we will be using 4 different media to tell this story. The first of which, is a comic strip, which will be used to set up the story in a clear and purely visual manner, as shown in the rough sketches here.

Following this part, we will post  the backstory portion of The Lottery in a blog post, with  the text reformatted so that it more accurately represents how that part of the story would be presented if it were in a blog format (meaning that the language and sentence formatting will be more modernized, pictures will be added and the tone will be adjusted to be less formal as it is in blogs).

The next part will be done in a youtube video which will handle most of the dialogue that takes place in this part of the story. The video will include music in the background, appropriate sound effects when necessary, images that coincide with the events in the dialogue. It will be done similarly to this video of Christopher Lee reading The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe.

The remaining parts of dialogue will be shown using a twine game, as well as the ending of the story. In this portion, we will also be adding a variety of unique options that are not part of the story, leading to a more ‘adventure’ style to convey the end. The true ending (meaning the one that happens in the actual text) will be clearly marked, with the other endings being marked as variations.

The text that we will be focusing on here is The Lottery by Shirely Jackson, where we will be using her text (originally published in 1948) and telling it through a variety of media, with variations at the end of the story.