Over vacation, our class was assigned to read or watch a mentor text or movie. I decided to watch Charlie St. Cloud as a mentor movie. My story, Colliding Paths, is a story about this rich snobby girl named April who does not really understand life. As she runs easily through life being rich and popular, April does not know what reality is. She meets this boy named Brayden who ends up being an angel that only April can see. I chose to watch Charlie St. Cloud to observe how other people viewed Charlie when he was talking to Tess as well as his old friend that had died because only Charlie can see these people.
While watching this movie, I observed that the majority of the time Charlie is alone when speaking to the angels; however there were about three times when Charlie was talking to these “invisible” friends. When he was communicating with the angels in public and people were watching him, everyone just stared and looked confused. This wasn’t the best mentor text for me because it didn’t give me the clear understanding I needed to get as to how other people viewed someone talking to basically them selves. Charlie St. Cloud did influence me to make most of my story happen when they are alone and then work my way up to actually communicating in school in front of everyone because she will start to wonder why people believe she is crazy. Also, in the movie, the Girl that was invisible to everyone but Charlie, Tess, did not know she was invisible, she could see everyone and attempted to communicate with other people. This influenced me to show dialogue of Brayden speaking to class mates but having him be ignored because they can not see him. I believe that this will hide the secret of Brayden being a guardian angel, for a longer period of time.
Although Charlie St. Cloud was not the best mentor text for my story, Colliding Paths, it did spark a few new ideas on how I should set my story and add more dialogue, even though it will only be to trick the reader. But that is my newest idea, to not give away Brayden’s big secret until the end of the story.
