She’s Leaving Home Prototype
I chose the lyrics to “She’s Leaving Home” by The Beatles as the plot of my story. I was more interested in creating a fun and interactive book than constructing a complicated storyline. The story itself was inspired by a newspaper clipping of a teenage runaway, which can be found here. Both of my parents left their homes when they were 17, and I used to fantasise about leaving home from a young age as well. The sentiment of running away might just be a part of growing up. I based this book off of my experiences to explain why I would want to leave home. It is not intended to bash my parents or lament about the tragedies of life. It’s merely a brief look into my personal life and the bumps along the way. My experiences are not entirely unique, and I’m sure everyone has felt some level of sadness, loneliness, or as if they were misunderstood. This book is meant for those people.
Last semester, I created a video game as a final project for a digital studies course. This game goes more in-depth in my experiences growing up and I was invited to present it at the Alenda Lux program. I included this song somewhere half-way in the game and it left a powerful impression on people. I’ve connected to this song since the first time I heard it in a humanities course during my sophomore year of college. Unfortunately, all files have been deleted off of youtube (the one up is NOT the original – sorry to sound like a hipster). Luckily, I have it saved on my computer. Making this book has been a bit difficult and I have experienced moments where I can’t bear to put it down and moments where I don’t have the emotional ability to look at it for days.
I also included song snippets and dialogue from the broadway musical, “Next to Normal.” Here’s one of the opening numbers from the Off Broadway version – it’s actually a really funny musical!
I’ve included pictures of what I have so far below.
Pictures of Semi-Completed Pages
Cover and Inside Cover
Page 1: My Room and a note inspired by “Maybe” from “Next to Normal.”
This note took a long time to write out, because there was a few other songs from the musical that I wanted to pull from…”I Am The One Reprise” and “Everything Anyone Ever Told You Was Wrong,” from the off-broadway version were two other songs I wanted to pull from. This was admittedly one of the hardest parts to write, because it was hard to separate my own emotions from the lyrics.
Page 2-3
Page 4: Childhood memories
Here, I included lyrics from the song, “Superboy and the Invisible Girl,” from “Next to Normal.” I wanted the theme of this page to be the Invisible Girl, because that’s how I felt growing up. I spent an hour drawing and redrawing the mouth on the face, but I can’t get it right. I might just redraw the entire thing because the insides were just sketches and I’m not satisfied with it.
All of my other pages are mapped out, I just haven’t filled them in yet. I’m planning to print out the lyrics of “She’s Leaving Home” to differentiate them from the lyrics from “Next to Normal.”
Really cool work so far! I really like the way you decided to continue a project from last semester for this project. It’s kinda like you are doing a remediation! Your first few pages seem pretty done. Do you think that you will change some of the content before the final is due on Monday? Really excited to see your final product!
I really enjoyed reading your post because of the way that you incorporated the images as textual evidence. I also love the way that you personalized your book by connecting it to your life, but let song lyrics tell the story as opposed to your actual thoughts. I would consider what ways your personal thoughts and feelings could further contribute to the message that you want to get across, as opposed to solely sticking to song lyrics. The ways that those song lyrics connect to your childhood and personal life may add to the reader’s ability to sympathize with your story.