The Plot

I realize I have yet to explain what I'm doing and why. As we planned it out in pitch and planning I forgot to add it onto this blog, so I will now.

What am I making?

Originally it was going to be a children's book to raise awareness for autism as well as other mental health disorders, but now due to the length it is more of a graphic novel than a children's book. I did consider making multiple books to follow (so it was a series) but I would not have enough content in each book to really make it worthwhile.


Target audience?


Children ideally, but all ages as well. The aim of this book, is; say for instance you have a child who knows someone with autism and doesn't understand the way they act. You would read this book to them and they would start to understand. Its subtle awareness through entertainment.  Target audience for reading it themselves would be 7 up, but if you were reading it to younger kids, perhaps 5 and up?


Why am I making this?

I don't feel like I understand enough about mental health issues, which is why I'm sort of learning as I do it (so I'm teaching myself something) and  its to raise awareness for other family's. If this took off successfully I'm sure it would be developed into other books about other issues.

Plot:

Two young boys - Ben and Charlie. Ben is older and doesn't like his younger brother, who has Autism. He doesn't understand him - so the first bit of the story is laying the relationship between his brother and his mother. Even though the main character in the book is Ben, It's really about Charlie. Then one night Ben wakes up and sees a silhouette at the foot of his bed. Its a dragon. It leads him into his wardrobe and through some caves (when he's in the caves he sees they are bright and colourful. Also that the dragon he is following is red. He doesn't give him his name, so Ben simply refers to him as Red) Then the red dragon leads him to a cave - in which is a huge blue dragon. He is introduced as Depression, and Ben must help him before he can move to the next cave. There are six caves in total, and each have a different dragon in - (anxiety is a small pink one - ADHD is the size of ben and green, Bipolar is HUGE and has two heads and is purple - and Tourette's is a swimming dinosaur (Water dragon) with a muzzle on. He's blue.)  Each dragon has attributes or behaviours in its cave that link to it's individual disorder. For instance, Depression has a messy cave to show lack of control - so Ben helps tidy the cave for him to get his brain in order - anxiety has agoraphobia (anxiety of open spaces) so he encourages it to walk with him and show that things aren't as scary as they seem. ADHD is all over the place, and vibrates so fast when he's moving, it looks like there's multiple dragons in the cave, whereas there's only one. So Ben Helps make him a 'to do' list to help keep his mind focused. Tourette's is obviously distressed from his blurting out words, so Ben sings him to sleep to relax him to ease the ticks. All the while, Red is being very rude and blunt to the other dragons, and ben confronts him about it but Red doesn't give an explanation. Then when they get the last cave and its empty. The red dragon turns around and explains to Ben his name is Autism. He explains what that means and how he acts and how even though he doesn't mean it, it makes everyone dislike him. Ben makes the connection with his little brother and they agree to just sit and play for a bit, so the dragon feels like he does have a friend. The final scene is the exact same pose but instead of being in the cave, they're back in the bedroom and its Ben and Charlie (in a dragon onesie) playing together by torchlight.


I decided to relate dragons to mental illnesses, as people tend to not believe in mental illnesses if they can't 'see' them. Much as people nowadays don't believe in dragons. Also kids love dragons, so its interesting to them, and Its also to show the scale mental disorders can reach.