New York Pitch Conference, 7 Pre-event Assignments
1. Story Statement
Louisa must solve the mystery of “the thickening of air” to escape a dark faerie realm and return home to Pennsylvania.
2. Antagonists
As the first human to fall into Faerie in over a hundred years, Louisa comes to the attention of King Mal and Queen Mab, immortal wraiths who keep their subjects trapped in a never-ending war. The unknown curse that prevents them from dying has transformed them into unnatural beings whose thinning physical substance is as disquieting as their cruel reign. They force Louisa to ride in the sadistic ritual of the Wild Hunt, endanger Lysander (Louisa’s love interest) in deadly war games on Midsummer, and keep close watch over Louisa through the Malfeasants – Mal’s personal, deadly guard. Mal and Mab act as the ultimate antagonistic force, tying into the greater mystery of the thickening of air and the fate of Faerie.
Lord Aelfric Hargrave, Louisa’s master at Hargrave Hall, is a secondary and more personal antagonist. Having possession of Louisa’s full name, he can control her with a geas – a naming magic that compels its victim to obey the caster’s command three times. Lord Hargrave is a petty tyrant; he abuses his staff, keeps his wife’s stolen selkie coat hidden so she can never escape his rule, and is grooming his heir, Lysander, to be a ruthless goblin soldier.
3. Breakout Title
The Thickening of Air
Alternative title: The Servant
4. Genre Comparables
Drawing from Scottish, Welsh, and Irish folklore, The Thickening of Air will appeal to fans of high fantasy, fairytale retellings, and coming of age stories. Like Neil Gaiman’s The Problem of Susan, Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway, and Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy, The Thickening of Air addresses the trauma of thosewho return from the Otherworld. While the folklore draws from the same well as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the bildungsroman within an epic fantasy setting and the intimate, single-perspective narration evoke Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy.
5. Core Wound/Hook Line
An upper-class horse girl from Pennsylvania is trapped as a scullery maid in a dark faerie realm where she navigates a forbidden love with a goblin soldier and confronts immortal kings and queens in her struggle to get back home.
6a. Inner Conflict
Much of Louisa’s inner conflict comes from navigating her lowered position. While trying to maintain a sense of personal dignity despite her servitude, she is faced with the ways in which she previously benefited from others’ service. This culminates in a falling out with a fellow servant and close friend who tells her, “You don’t mind the order, you mind you’re at the bottom of it.” Louisa is constantly reevaluating the moral conflicts of class, privilege, and power.
Another source of internal conflict central to the novel stems from parental abuse and generational trauma. Louisa was raised in a strict, wealthy suburban household, with a workaholic father and resentful mother whose high expectations have cultivated her perfectionist tendencies. Lysander, a pious, obedient, and disciplined squire, suffers from an emotionally and physically abusive father and a distant mother who sees him as an extension of her abuser.
6b. Social Conflict
A social conflict that drives much of the plot is Louisa and Lysander’s inability to be together despite their growing feelings and shared secrets. As a servant in a feudal society, Louisa cannot be in a legitimate relationship with a baron’s son. When Lady Hargrave catches them kissing, she slaps her son and scolds him for putting their vulnerable staff at risk. Their feelings for each other escalate slowly throughout the narrative, causing a rupture in the household and fostering their character development.
7. Setting
The primary setting of TheThickening of Air is the Unseelie Kingdom in the Greene Isles, an alternate world, British-Isles-equivalent filled with beings from Celtic folklore, including sidhe, brownies, djinn, fauns, dryads, selkies, and kelpies. We experience several settings within this world, including Hargrave Hall, Unending Bog, and a skerry governed by a selkie pod.
Louisa first finds herself at Hargrave Hall, an old manor house with mullioned windows, dark chimneys, and hanged man heraldry, with a courtyard that “gave way to a desolate stretch of moorland that was dotted soft white with sheep and sharp white with frost…Farther out was the woods, overrun with thorns.” In the second half of the story, she comes to live at Castle Fenn in Unending Bog, the training grounds of the Redcap Goblins. The castle is supported by a foundation formed of thousands of blackened bog bodies, the necromantic magic preventing the fortress from sinking into the marshy depths. Will-o-the-wisps haunt the desolate stretch of wasteland and the harsh terrain is reflected in the castle’s inhabitants.
Contrasting this world is the Brandywine Valley region of Pennsylvania, the setting of the frame story (prologue, interludes, and epilogue). This region is made famous in the paintings of Andrew Wyeth -- bleak Americana landscapes, rolling hills, lone colonial farmhouses, deer hanging over tree branches waiting to be dressed. Wyeth’s artistic tradition, inherited from the fairytale illustrations of his father NC Wyeth and his father’s tutor Howard Pyle, creates an uncanny connection between Chadds Ford and Unseelie. The local history of English colonialism, Quaker settlements, and fugitive slaves and freedmen living just north of the Mason-Dixon line sets the backdrop of both the portal and the stories of those who’ve fallen in. The local environs have shaped Louisa’s personality, from horse culture to WASP stoicism, self-denial, and entitlement.
New York Pre-Event Assignments - June 2021
in New York Write to Pitch 2023 and 2024
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New York Pitch Conference, 7 Pre-event Assignments
1. Story Statement
Louisa must solve the mystery of “the thickening of air” to escape a dark faerie realm and return home to Pennsylvania.
2. Antagonists
As the first human to fall into Faerie in over a hundred years, Louisa comes to the attention of King Mal and Queen Mab, immortal wraiths who keep their subjects trapped in a never-ending war. The unknown curse that prevents them from dying has transformed them into unnatural beings whose thinning physical substance is as disquieting as their cruel reign. They force Louisa to ride in the sadistic ritual of the Wild Hunt, endanger Lysander (Louisa’s love interest) in deadly war games on Midsummer, and keep close watch over Louisa through the Malfeasants – Mal’s personal, deadly guard. Mal and Mab act as the ultimate antagonistic force, tying into the greater mystery of the thickening of air and the fate of Faerie.
Lord Aelfric Hargrave, Louisa’s master at Hargrave Hall, is a secondary and more personal antagonist. Having possession of Louisa’s full name, he can control her with a geas – a naming magic that compels its victim to obey the caster’s command three times. Lord Hargrave is a petty tyrant; he abuses his staff, keeps his wife’s stolen selkie coat hidden so she can never escape his rule, and is grooming his heir, Lysander, to be a ruthless goblin soldier.
3. Breakout Title
The Thickening of Air
Alternative title: The Servant
4. Genre Comparables
Drawing from Scottish, Welsh, and Irish folklore, The Thickening of Air will appeal to fans of high fantasy, fairytale retellings, and coming of age stories. Like Neil Gaiman’s The Problem of Susan, Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway, and Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy, The Thickening of Air addresses the trauma of those who return from the Otherworld. While the folklore draws from the same well as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the bildungsroman within an epic fantasy setting and the intimate, single-perspective narration evoke Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy.
5. Core Wound/Hook Line
An upper-class horse girl from Pennsylvania is trapped as a scullery maid in a dark faerie realm where she navigates a forbidden love with a goblin soldier and confronts immortal kings and queens in her struggle to get back home.
6a. Inner Conflict
Much of Louisa’s inner conflict comes from navigating her lowered position. While trying to maintain a sense of personal dignity despite her servitude, she is faced with the ways in which she previously benefited from others’ service. This culminates in a falling out with a fellow servant and close friend who tells her, “You don’t mind the order, you mind you’re at the bottom of it.” Louisa is constantly reevaluating the moral conflicts of class, privilege, and power.
Another source of internal conflict central to the novel stems from parental abuse and generational trauma. Louisa was raised in a strict, wealthy suburban household, with a workaholic father and resentful mother whose high expectations have cultivated her perfectionist tendencies. Lysander, a pious, obedient, and disciplined squire, suffers from an emotionally and physically abusive father and a distant mother who sees him as an extension of her abuser.
6b. Social Conflict
A social conflict that drives much of the plot is Louisa and Lysander’s inability to be together despite their growing feelings and shared secrets. As a servant in a feudal society, Louisa cannot be in a legitimate relationship with a baron’s son. When Lady Hargrave catches them kissing, she slaps her son and scolds him for putting their vulnerable staff at risk. Their feelings for each other escalate slowly throughout the narrative, causing a rupture in the household and fostering their character development.
7. Setting
The primary setting of The Thickening of Air is the Unseelie Kingdom in the Greene Isles, an alternate world, British-Isles-equivalent filled with beings from Celtic folklore, including sidhe, brownies, djinn, fauns, dryads, selkies, and kelpies. We experience several settings within this world, including Hargrave Hall, Unending Bog, and a skerry governed by a selkie pod.
Louisa first finds herself at Hargrave Hall, an old manor house with mullioned windows, dark chimneys, and hanged man heraldry, with a courtyard that “gave way to a desolate stretch of moorland that was dotted soft white with sheep and sharp white with frost… Farther out was the woods, overrun with thorns.” In the second half of the story, she comes to live at Castle Fenn in Unending Bog, the training grounds of the Redcap Goblins. The castle is supported by a foundation formed of thousands of blackened bog bodies, the necromantic magic preventing the fortress from sinking into the marshy depths. Will-o-the-wisps haunt the desolate stretch of wasteland and the harsh terrain is reflected in the castle’s inhabitants.
Contrasting this world is the Brandywine Valley region of Pennsylvania, the setting of the frame story (prologue, interludes, and epilogue). This region is made famous in the paintings of Andrew Wyeth -- bleak Americana landscapes, rolling hills, lone colonial farmhouses, deer hanging over tree branches waiting to be dressed. Wyeth’s artistic tradition, inherited from the fairytale illustrations of his father NC Wyeth and his father’s tutor Howard Pyle, creates an uncanny connection between Chadds Ford and Unseelie. The local history of English colonialism, Quaker settlements, and fugitive slaves and freedmen living just north of the Mason-Dixon line sets the backdrop of both the portal and the stories of those who’ve fallen in. The local environs have shaped Louisa’s personality, from horse culture to WASP stoicism, self-denial, and entitlement.