There is one thing guaranteed to catch my attention no matter what I’m doing, whether I’m scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, or just strolling down the sidewalk — an adorable dog. Given the amount of social media accounts devoted to four-legged friends, I’m certainly not alone in this. So, for my live-tweet storytelling, I decided to focus on my dog Oliver’s trip to the groomer.
I always make sure to cut his fur short before true Edmonton winter hits. This way, he has a chance to grow back some of his coat by the time the snow falls, but I’m also not forced to deal with a tangled Chewbacca lookalike come February.
Telling the story from the perspective of the dog allowed me to play with some of the elements of suspense shown in the video we watched this week. As the video stated, the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. To a dog, basically everything is unknown — though he knows that a car journey means we’re going somewhere, he has absolutely no clue where it will be.
I started by establishing stasis, and shared a picture of Oliver at his daily post — perched on the arm of the couch, snout nudging the curtains aside as he monitors what’s going on in the street in front of the house. From a car parallel parking to a woman pushing a stroller on a mid-day walk, there’s a lot to monitor!
I introduced the ‘trigger’ of the story by showing a close-up of his paws on an iPad, open to a calendar.
I was reminded of the concept that stories should be universal, and thought that the idea of a calendar invite would be something that a lot of people are familiar with. I mean, who isn’t overloaded with Zoom invites and meetings?
In order to mix things up a bit, I opted to include a short video clip to kick off the quest portion of the short story arc and show his excitement at heading down the deck stairs and towards the garage. I also introduced some tweets from Oliver’s perspective, implying that he strongly felt the plan was to head to the dog park. I felt this would be a way to highlight the surprise element of the story. There’s a tweet in which Oliver realizes something fishy is going on, and finally, he recognizes that the trip isn’t to the dog park after all.
The spot was bustling, with two other dogs there for lunch-time drop-off. They had a new display of different seasonal treats, including a frosted snowflake cookie. In order to respect the groomer’s social distancing rules, I didn’t take any pictures while I was actually dropping him off — it’s quite a small space and Oliver was busy sniffing around the big golden retriever nearby! Instead, I decided to get creative and look for a GIF that I felt would express his emotions at the climactic moment of realization. I quickly found one from The Office, which I obviously selected because who doesn’t want a little Michael Scott in their Twitter thread?
I also introduced the idea of bargaining for treats as a way to show Oliver navigating the critical choice. While the reader of the thread knows that the grooming appointment is inevitable — worst case scenario, a 12 pound dog is quite easily scooped up and carried in — from Oliver’s perspective, he’s making the choice of whether to go in or refuse and stay in the car.
I built to a climax with a tweet showing Oliver’s fear that he may never emerge from the appointment.
For the reversal component of the 8-point story arc, I included a picture of Oliver, post-haircut, and I resolved the treat-focused element of his critical choice by showing a picture of him sniffing the cookie.
Finally, I brought the thread to a close by returning to the scene of the first shot to establish his new stasis — he continued his favourite activity of looking out the window and watching what’s going on in front of the house, but he did so with a new ‘do
You can see the full Twitter thread here, including a picture that shows off a seasonal Halloween bandana that was removed approximately 15 seconds after the image was taken, hence the lack of wardrobe in the final image of the thread.
EXSM 3989 - Digital Storytelling Class Blog 