Story #1 "Transience" (Annam)

I took inspiration from a French film I once saw about a strangely endearing girl who constantly traveled from place to place, like a drifter, and began thinking up alternate versions, endings, and characters. I decided I would take this original plot and make it my own, with new characters and a new story...sort of like a spin-off. You could call this film my muse when it came to my first story for class called Transience.

In the story, a homeless girl, named Perry, is found frozen to death in an abandoned barn shed. The only thing she possesses with her are a few scarce items she took as memory tokens from three significant people she encountered in her short life. Thus begins a full fledged investigation which steals headlines and TV time all over. Everyone is obsessed with the idea of uncovering the identity of the mystery dead girl.

I liked the idea of a non-linear, flashback type of format for the story and felt it would have fell flat any way else. The reader is introduced to the only three people whom Perry ever allowed to get close to her, and each character begins heading back to that short time they knew her, telling every detail about the breif meeting and their first impressions of the mystifying transient. Everything starts to fit together and make sense.

Perry is known to be a wild child with a poetic soul. I imagined her to be completely disheveled with dark features. When it came to coming up with the three characters who make up a huge part of the story, I wanted each to be completely different on the outside, but all a bit mentally damaged and insecure on the inside.

The character whom I spent the most time on was River, Perry's momentary love interest, as they make the most noteworthy connection. I sort of imagined Perry and River to be a Kurt Cobain/Courtney Love type couple, expect younger and less "tortured". Perry inspires Gaspard the businessman to fulfill his dream of being a teacher and he moves off to the mountains and leaves his cold, business world behind him. She encourages Belinda, the depressed housewife to run away from her supressive husband, and ofcourse, River to stop being such a recluse and go forth with his dream of traveling and becoming a well-recognized poet and writer.

Perry comes along out of nowhere and becomes the saving grace for each character, but tragically cannot find a saviour for herself. But its not all dark and gory in the end depending on how you take it because I saw it as she didnt live such a solemn life. She took whatever little she had and brought happiness to those she met along the way, sort of sacrificing herself for another. I feel like Perry is one of those beautifully flawed characters you come to admire and sympathize with and Im really glad I could portray her the way I wanted.