Changing a male plant to female? What could possibly go wrong?
This is a prime example of getting caught up in something that should enhance a story, but not giving much story around it.
I got caught on the idea of plants that have gender. Most plants have distinctive male and female reproductive parts. When bees pollinate they are simply moving genetic code of one plant to another. Some plants (like the Holly Bush) are either male OR female. The more I looked into it, the more it struck me as something to allude to in a cap.
When I went to make this cap I had the fuzzy idea of a nursery owner trying to change the gender of a holly bush and that method changing his gender. I found an image of an attractive lady that looks as though she may be working in a nursery and went to write. About halfway through I realized that I had no idea of where the story was going to go beyond making the 'stamen' and 'carpel' joke.
I didn't like the story I had written, but I liked the image, and I liked the joke. So instead of trashing what I had done, I just capped an ending on it, and called it a cap. I'm not happy with the story... it seems very basic with no depth whatsoever. It can be summed up with: Man tries to change gender of Holly plant, and transforms himself into a woman. Yay!. It is far to long to be a good 'short cap', and not nearly detailed enough to be a good 'long cap'. So it is just a muddy, medium length cap.
In fact... right off the top of my head I think I can make a better short version:
While Ron was attempting to change a Holly bush from male to female he accidentally spilled some of the solution onto himself. Here we see Rhonda (as Ron now likes to call himself) showing off her own Holly Bush!
Ah well.. live and learn. I now know to either trash caps that I'm not happy with, or at least trash the story and start over!
I agree with you on this one. Perhaps the best way to have done it was to go with your short version. Maybe flesh it out a tad bit more, throw in a few plant puns (look at her gorgeous stems!) and call it a caption.
ReplyDeleteBut, that probably isn't in your DNA as a captioneer. Sometimes we over think things in our creations. Maybe that is why I'm loathe to have anything sit on my hard drive for more than a day. When its done being created and proofread, POOF, it is up on the Haven.