Reflections............Its all about Monty!

Its all about Monty and his adventure trapped in a book.
Monty was of course a creation from the imagination of Alice, adding personality to the mouse trapped in the book by naming him, her enthusiasm in telling Monty’s story was amusing to the point of struggling to keep a straight face, Monty had one hell of an adventure and it’s clear that a verbal narrative allows scope for the imagination to draw its own conclusions.
I found that it was difficult not to use your imagination to expand what we were being told during the drawing exercise, Alice said a castle tower and I drew the type of castle I would choose to draw with pointy turrets, of course this was not what I had been told to draw, oops.
The first time seeing the pictures from the mouse trapped in a book picture story I tried my best to describe exactly what was happening but as was unaware of what the next picture would be it was ackward to create any narrative other than “he seems to be eating the page....” but when hearing the version from Alice it was clearer what was happening within the picture story, especially with all the extra creativity and detail added to the pictures that I was unable to see.
Essentially narrative seems to be about using a certain amount of structure that allows us to build our own ideas and details around a pre determined plot base, adding our own perceptions and most of all using imagination to fill the gaps and embellish the story, this was clear when hearing the story without seeing the pictures and the development once we were aware of the story for the second verbal description which became a narrative whereas the original was merely an attempt at narrating an unknown story.
The visual impact of the images does a certain amount to lead us in the story, instead of a written description or voice to lead us the images take the helm, as each image changes the story unfolds, our imagination is used to put the pictures together as a narrative and fill in any gaps, also allowing us to think outside of the images, without knowing the title of the picture book our imagination had to fill in the blanks, did Monty know there was a picture behind that page? Where is Monty going? Is he actually in the picture or wishing it was a real plane to fly into the country scene? The narrative of the picture can only take you so far but that almost the point, you can make the story work as you wish.
I found describing the images interesting and as I went first was trying to explain what I was seeing rather than telling it as a story, I found myself using many descriptive sentences and talking at speed and in excess detail, when having the story created for me by Alice I found that with her narrative and my imagination I didn’t need as much description and Alice did not provide as was tied up with glee at the adventure Monty was embarking on.

Monty lives!