“I want to tease out a first glimmer of an idea for a screen world I might like to explore…”

Coming merely from a title based on a pun that came to me – “Lore Enforcement” – I want to begin to work my world-building muscles. In order to fully explore and further flesh out this conceptual world, I reflect upon our group discussion in the first class of week one – regarding the ‘rules’ of a world being basis for world-building – that is, the scope of what is and is not possible within the world I create.

In my mind, “Lore Enforcement” would take the form of a episodic sitcom set in a fantasy world where two bookstore workers/detectives are employed to travel from their office into famous fictional literary texts (for example Romeo & Juliet) and resolve some sort of deviation compromising the events of the novel (for example, Romeo meeting another woman he finds more attractive). While the detectives are aware of the intended events of each novel, the characters of these novels are unaware that their lives are intended to take a certain course (as the characters remain unaware they exist within fiction) – which could set up a basis for some of the comedy.

What still needs to be amended is what would happen if the characters fail to amend the deviation from the script, and how such deviations would be discovered / reported to these characters. It is definitely necessary that both of these ‘gaps’ are resolved, as not doing so could leave the world feeling very incomplete and disjointed.

In terms of the type of worlds created in relation to the common examples we discussed in class, I think the world(s) created within this screenplay would be considered a very small and/or contained world and a fantasy world (in the case of the bookstore overworld); and a new perspective on a familiar world (in the case of the texts traveled into).