DCda1

1.     Write Your Story Statement

Writes essays to reconcile his past traumas.

 

2.     in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them.

 

Personal weakness betrays Darius’s true intentions at keeping relationships. Compound that with a negligent mother, a conniving half-brother, and the lies and deceits of friends both old and new and what you get is a clusterfuck of people screwing Darius out of the fulfillment that loving relationships bring. 

 

Sometimes the lies he’s told have backfired, stymying his trail. Sometimes his sincerity has provoked ridicule. Either way, the forces against him hinder even his best laid plans, sending him into his psychiatrist’s office, into sullen seclusion, and ultimately on a quest for redemption and reconciliation through the narratives he writes in his personal essays. Will his reflections help him overcome his personal traumas, Or will they only plunge him deeper into despair and isolation?

 

3.     Break Out Title

 

Confession Is Not Betrayal

 

It’s My mouth

 

Trauma Mia: The Stories Of How I Learned To Accept Vulnerability As My Superpower.

 

4.     Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why?

 

Real Life by Brandon Taylor. We share similar emotional content, and characterization. He’s black and from the Midwest, I’m black and from the Midwest, He’s a college student, I’m an MFA student. We both share messy relationships and try to reconcile them with what we respectively desire to achieve in them. 

 

She Memes Well: Essays by Quinta Brunson. Hers is childhood dreams, mine is childhood nightmares—foils of the same time but with very different connections.

 

 

5.     write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication.

Confession Is Not Betrayal is an account by Darius Chitison, a 40-something writer, a man of unique life experience, a man saddled by unanswered questions, struggling to live in the fallout of his previous wounds. He’s lost friends and gained new ones. He’s lived a life full of love and laughter, heartache and harrow. And through a series of true stories, he attempts to reconcile the charms and traumas of his past.

 

6.     sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction.

 

The turmoil in Confession Is Not Betrayal comes from the disparity between the relationships he has and the ones he’d like to have. The ones he has are fraught with deceit and neglect and confrontation. It’s a confusing set of circumstances that sees him cling to the ideal of the past while viewing it through the cynicism of his present. It’s a detached searching, a casual stroll through the traumas of the disappointing people who’ve set him up and let him down.

 

7. sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it.

 

 The settings range as the essays do. From family reunions to elementary school classrooms to a convention center to a college lecture theater—the settings process through a series of real life locations and offer a back drop for the action to unfold. They aren’t so grand as to be characters themselves. No New York in Sex and the City. More a canvas, blank as a cloudless sky, where emotional turmoil is stained through reflection.

 

 

 

1.     Write Your Story Statement

A young woman tries to evade a murder investigation.

 

2     in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them.

Detective Santiago is an intrepid private investigator who always catches his man. He’s a hotshot from New York called to a small town to investigate a series of murders. But one doesn’t fit the mold. And he wonders whether it’s a copycat out of control or the real deal. When he acquires a pair of muddy boots potentially linking the protagonist Kat to the murders, she has to outwit and outplay him to survive. 

 

3.     Break Out Title

 Look What You Made Me Do

 

  

4.     Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why?

  

 

5.     write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication.

Kat is a young woman traumatized by a recent rape who takes back her power by killing the man responsible 7-years later after the events and gets herself embroiled in a murder investigation. She struggles to evade police. But once Detective Santiago finds proof potentially linking her to a series of murders, she must regain or destroy the evidence by any means. 

6.     sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction.

 

Kat feels guilty for Mahkai’s arrest. She also feels guilty about killing the man who raped her. Plus the trauma of reliving the event stresses her. So her inner turmoil comes from the great gilt, regret and fear she struggles with. That and the fear of getting caught for the murder twists her inner world into a storm of anxiety and regret. 

  

7. sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it.

1.    Kat’s cabin

The cabin is a large wooden structure with a wrap around pourch. It is remote and surrounded by trees and large stones.

This is the central hub of all her decissons. The place where she chooses what actions to take for the plot to move forward. It’s where we see her and Mahkai, someone she’s roped into her madness, break up and make up and ultimately work together to save Kat. 

2.    The sheriff station

Teh sherif station is compossed of cedar wood and has an over wet foundation that sinks a bit more evey year. The lot is gravel and dirt.

This is the central hub ofr Murdock and Washington to show their levity and plan their pipe dream careers of becoming crack detectives. 

3.    Santiago’s hotel room

It is a lodge resort type room in a small town where he's been hold up for months investigating a series of murders. It's wooden and square and large for what it is. 

A brief showing of the man after the killer. We see his things. We hear his phone calls to his forensic psychologist. We ger some action for a plot point.

4.    The abandon cabin in the woods

This cabin has a whole in the wall preventing it from staying warm. There is snow on the floor and a draft. It is delapidated.

This is where Kat falls back to. Where she has the mudy boots delivered. Where she kills the sheriff by mistake. It is spooky and offers a chance for some creepy thrill. 

5.    The wood burial sight 

Tall trees, a grove, large rocks, and mud.

This is ground zero. Where the plot picks up and where we meet Santiago for the first time. It’s revisited and revealing of intent and the evidence that take Detective Santiago on a wild goose chase to find a serial killer who isn’t responsible for this crime.