A Bit of Perspective

This exercise was inspired by a four panel comic by Pablo Holmberg. If you don’t know Holmberg’s work… you are in for a treat. I found out about Pablo Holmberg’s work from a post by Melissa Mendes, who also makes fantastic comics.

What you need:

Post-It Notes
Paper
Pen
A bit of imagination and empathy

Instructions:

1. List a few events. The events can be small, like a boiling kettle, or a bit of dialogue, or the events can be big, like a volcanic eruption or the result of an election. They can be things you witnessed, heard about, or imagine. They can be true or completely made up.

   If the word “event” doesn’t feel right, you could try “moment”, or have someone throw you a random word or phrase and start there!

2. Once you have your list, pick one and draw it as your first panel. You may need to clarify your image with text, but you may not need to, like a picture of a boiling kettle would probably do the trick for that event, but an election might need a bit of context.

3. Now have another little brainstorm about all the different reactions people might have to that event based on different points of view.

   If it’s a kettle, maybe someone is excited for tea, but someone else hates the sound, and someone else runs into the other room to see if that screeching sound is their child. And how does the dog react?

   If it’s a volcano, maybe some someone is evacuating, someone else’s flight is canceled, someone else is preparing to toast marshmallows, and someone else is excited about the disaster insurance money. And what about the lava monster?

   Different people (or animals or things) with different points of view are going to react differently. You get the idea.

4. Pick the ones that seem interesting and organise them so they feel meaningful in some way or create some kind of structure. You can keep these reactions to a single panel, or flesh them out over a few panels.
   
   Too loose? Here are a few suggestions:

   • Organise the reactions from smallest/most mundane to largest/most extreme.

   • Group reactions that feel similar and pick one contrasting reaction to use at the end.

   • Pick one reaction and draw it out over a few panels before including other perspectives.

   • Forget these suggestions and just do your own thing.

Take 1:

Take 2:

Take 3:

A few Thoughts:

The contrast between different points of view is not, in and of itself, a story, but I think insights gained from understanding different points of view can FEEL like a story. We all know that our own perspective is not the only one their is, but it’s easy to forget, and I think that pointing out that fallibility can resonate with a reader (it does for me anyway).

I had fun doing this exercise but it took me a little while to actually think of an “event”. Maybe there’s a better word and I just got stuck on that? I got so stuck in fact that I asked my partner for help. She is a musician and educator and is in a new band called, Names of Birds. They have a new song coming out called, 28 Names for Long Leaf Pine, and when I asked her for an “event, she just told me the name of the song and… that was enough! In fact, I have a suspicion that the more random the prompt, the more fun this exercise becomes. Perhaps randomness forces us to abandon preconceived notions and processes in the same way that constraints and rules often benefit design?