Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.
‘On waking, the dinosaur was still there.’
El dinosaurio (‘The Dinosaur’) is a story by the Guatemalan author Augusto Monterroso, often cited as the world's shortest: it consists in its entirety of the single line quoted above.
What would a comic of ‘The Dinosaur’ look like?
‘The Dinosaur’ is an interesting piece of writing because its simplicity makes it so complex. For instance, who's waking? A ‘he’, a ‘she’? It could even be an ‘it’, or the dinosaur itself! This is just one of many ambiguities that the text leaves the reader to resolve: as you can see, it also doesn't specify anything about its setting in time or place, who the waker is and whether or not the dinosaur is real or imaginary.
Help!
I've thought a lot about how I might make ‘The Dinosaur’ into a comic, but I'm only one person (also, I suck at drawing). What I need here are lots of different versions of ‘The Dinosaur’, all made by different people in different ways. Can you help?
You don't need to be an established comics or webcomics artist (although if you are I certainly won't turn you away!). All you need is a willingness to think a little bit about the original text and how you understand it (some of my thoughts on this below), then put that understanding on paper (or screen) in the form of a comic.
The story could be adapted in whatever manner took your fancy – long, short, complicated, simple, whatever – and I would be delighted with anything from a rough sketch upwards: my interest is in the ideas behind the adaptation rather than the quality of the execution. (Although I certainly love beautiful pictures, so if you want to make this a work of art please go right ahead and accept my embarassingly grateful thanks in advance.)
I hope to publish any comics I get sent here so that other interested people can look at them, but if you'd prefer that I didn't do that then just say so and I will keep them private.
If you're interested in taking part by making me a comic, please drop me a line at nick.boalch@gmail.com. Send comics, send comments, send questions! I look forward to hearing from you.
Some questions to think about
Though, as I say above, I'm not interested in prescribing any ‘rules’ for making these adaptations, I thought it might be helpful to mention some of the things I might ask myself if I were making an adaptation of this story. You might want to think about them too: do let me know what answers you come up with, if they're not explicit in your comic! Or the process might make you ask yourself entirely different questions: please let me know what these are, too!
- Can you make an adaptation that preserves all the ambiguity of the original text? Would you even want to?
- Does the story have a particular meaning to you that you can express in your adaptation?
- Where and where is the piece set? (If it's set anywhere/anywhen at all.)
- Who is the waker?
- What kind of dinosaur is it?
- Does the dinosaur actually exist?
- What is the relationship between the waker and the dinosaur?
- What is the tone? Ominous? Inspirational?
- What constraints would you normally work under, and how would they affect this adaptation if you stuck to them? (For instance, how would 'The Dinosaur' work, adapted into the style of The Angriest Dog in the World or – aptly – Dinosaur Comics?)