I'm at the scriptwriting phase of the animation, and I am thinking about the structure and the content of the script. Judging by the idea, I'd say it would be structured like an animated sitcom episode, that's sort of what I'm going for throughout the series, I'd to the series itself not use a formula but to follow a story arc instead. However, for the sake of this TV pilot, I'll see if I can follow a more basic standalone episode formula, only I'll make it relate to a theme that's relevant to my series and characters.
At this point, I'm sort of questioning the story I've had my heart set on writing. On the other hand, I would rather make the pilot in one location to save production time, maybe even costs, and I can't actually imagine another idea beyond Millie feeling sick that would fit into that category. I'll still go with that because, as it is emphasised in the book Writing Sitcoms by John Byrne and Marcus Powell, "most jokes are only funny the first time you hear them" and imagining how Millie could very stupidly screw up forcing herself to get cured, or even just the idea that she would even attempt it, made me laugh a lot, when I first thought about it. Multiple potential story ideas have come up, but my heart is set on this one so I can't exactly back down now, and can make this one funny. I just need to think about it like I'm writing one episode out of the thirteen or more others that I would if this series got picked up.
In terms of a themefor the pilot, the themes I've had in mind for the series as a whole is emotions, nostalgia, love, friendship, happiness combatting depression and anxiety, childhood, coming-of-age, and independence. I can apply at least a couple of those themes to this story and I'll by describing what I know about it so far. I remember being miserable every time I felt sick when I was a child because I always expected days off from school to be fun but they just weren't. There was never anything good on TV and I had so little energy to actually do anything, so it was boring and painful. Now to put Millie in my shoes, I have to imagine what she would do in this situation. Since she is basically an exaggeration of what I was like as a kid, she is thinking exactly the same thing. This time she has Sillie to share this pain with, who is equally as upset about this because he can't have fun with her at all. Millie, being the crazy girl that she is feels bad about disappointing Sillie, so she decides it would be a good idea to find a way to make herself feel better quickly, and Sillie decides to help her out anyway he can, despite them both having no real understanding of medical knowledge. So Millie is acting on behalf of Sillie due to her emotions forcing her to do this when she really should not have done so. I think I'm on the right path now.
Since I now have a clear understanding of the story and what the characters could develop from it, I guess the next step is to develop a narrative for it.
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