Sydney Salter

I learned so much from the pitching process over a series of days (and revisions). The feedback was substantial, unlike other pitch events I've attended. The homework ahead of time had already pinpointed weak spots in my story and the workshop helped me with my pitch. I also appreciated the camaraderie among our group and the welcoming tone set by Paula. I was able to ask all my silliest questions! And Paula had all the answers

Opening Scene - introduces protagonist, setting and other POV characters.

CHAPTER ONE: SIBBY 

Good coffee and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins brought everyone together in a way that made Sibby believe in world peace for a few minutes every day. Add a sunshiny October day and everything seemed like it would turn out okay. A warm wind shoved last night’s chill away, as if telling winter to back the hell off. Sibby Wicklow needs a few more weeks of good business. The maples in Prayer Grove rustled with their glorious rare red as the sun rose over the mountains. Hikers had been crowding the cafe all morning, going on about the leaves! The leaves! The leaves! 

Jib stood at the espresso machine following an online tutorial to create leafy latte art. “What do you think?” The swirled foam briefly looked leaf-like before oozing into a puffy cloud. 

“Stick to making hearts?” Sibby said. 

“Naw. I’ve got to challenge myself.” Jib was Sibby’s best friend, and only employee, and only until the snow started falling. She hoped that he might at least stay in Utah. Another customer ordered a latte, so Jib chose one of the wide mugs he’d fired in his homemade kiln earlier in the week. This time, he crafted a perfect leaf. 

“Like skiing corduroy,” he said. “I pronounce this one socially worthy!” 

            The customer pulled out her phone. “Posted!”

            Jib flashed his famous sponsorship smile. “Tag the café, but tag me too.” He leaned down and posed with the latte while the customer took another picture. The café had a scant 684 followers, whereas Jib had several thousand who followed his daring slopestyle videos – hopping his board onto various rails, tree stumps, and other snow-adjacent surfaces. The skill had transformed him from Robert Baxter III, Ivy League dropout, into Jib—a snowboarding sensation known for his moves more than his own name. 

            Sometimes Sibby wondered if customers came to see Jib even more than they came to gawk at her sad-story self: Olympic hopeful loses leg in car crash days before Pyeong Chang. Jib had framed one of the newspaper articles and hung it on the café wall. “Adds to this place’s story,” he’d said. When she bitched about having to see a daily reminder of all that she’d lost, he quoted the Marcus Aurelius he’d been reading: “Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.” Sibby had been glad when he moved on to reading Hemingway. 

            Sibby watched several cars speed up the canyon. “I really need to capitalize on these busy weeks before the dead season.” 

“Not every car needs to stop here,” Jib said. 

“Gonna take a few hundred lattes to pay for a new commercial-grade oven.” Not to mention all the other plans she had to return this haphazard building back into something glorious. “How many weeks do we have – three? Four?” Snow already dusted the Wasatch peaks. 

“Focus on the present,” Jib said. “It’s going great.”

Sibby looked out from the wide kitchen counter toward the large stone fireplace and took in the real-life scene she’d been visualizing for months, much like she used to do with a competition race. All sixteen tables filled with paying customers, a mix of strangers and canyon locals. Kristin, a local, picked at a gluten-free muffin while frowning at a laptop. Across from her sat a younger woman, overdressed for Saturday in the canyon, who blabbed and blabbed about something, gesturing at the laptop. Usually, Kristin brought her kids, a mouthy teen and a moody boy. One table over, sad dad Justin and his daughter waited for his ex-wife—late again—to drive the girl down the canyon to her soccer game. At their window table, The Three Old Codgers dumped a shocking amount of sugar into their coffees, like always. In the back corner, a pair of teenagers hovered over open textbooks, but couldn’t stop checking their phones or sneaking peeks at Jib’s Norse god-like good looks. Three tables of leaf peepers compared photos on their phones. A small group of camo-dudes drank black coffee and ate warm muffins, having stopped on their way back from hunting in the high country. 

Sibby wasn’t particularly fond of hunting, but she had grown fond of the hunters who always ordered large quantities of food. Everyone in Utah expected to see a few dead bucks in the backs of pickups this time of year, anyway. She hadn’t been prepared for the Early Season gunshots ringing up-canyon – the jarring sound made her feel vulnerable in a PTSD kind of way. The first time she heard gunshots she hurriedly pulled on her leg, made her way to Jib’s RV, and crawled into bed with him like a scared kid. Gunshots sounded way too much like the pop of a tire blowout. The sound took her right back to that moment in the car—

A few months after her accident, Jib took time off from the men’s national team, bought the RV, and drove the two of them all over the country, forcing her to live life rather than wallow in grief. He literally helped her walk again on mountain trails and beaches, as she adjusted to her prosthetic limb. And when Grandpa died, leaving Sibby the canyon property, Jib insisted that she actually do something with the old place, parking the old RV out back and using his handyman skills to get the work done, along with a loan from her brother David.

Waking to gunshots every morning revved her heartrate into stress mode and rolled her brain into perseverating on her to-do list – repairs, cost of repairs – sending her into imaginary conversations with her brother, which inevitably involved a fraught discussion about her ability to properly run a business and how she might want to rethink the direction of her life, et cetera and et cetera and et cetera. 

But that early morning worrying happened hours ago. Now the café hummed with customers. See? I am succeeding, she mentally told her brother David, despite all of your doubty-doubts. So there! 

Jib squeezed an arm around her waist. “You’ve created a kickass gathering space.” 

Sibby leaned into Jib’s sturdy body, shifting her weight into him. “I think my Grandpa would be happy. And I hope I can make it into something even bigger and better.” 

“Forever is composed of nows.”

“Who said that?”

“Emily Dickinson.” 

“You know, most guys your age quote Yoda.” She leaned her head on Jib’s shoulder just to mess with the teen girls eyeing him. Maybe there’d been a time when the two of them would have gotten together, back when she could crawl into bed with two legs, but now the relationship was as rooted as a Prayer Grove maple—in friendship.

Nothing’s going to change that. That part of her life was over too. A few horrifying weeks on the dating apps proved that the world was filled with sicko pervs.

“I need the place to make money,” Sibby said.

“You’ll make the money you need.”

“Did Emily Dickinson say that too?”

Jib laughed and slapped her ass as he strutted over to the counter to take an order.

 

#1 Story Statement

The canyon wildfire steals everything from some, gifting opportunity to others, but no one notices in those early days of community spirit. Then insurance settlements, building plans, and a pair of twelve-year-old boys’ secrets threaten to destroy the community all over again.

#2 Antagonist

Twelve-year-old Benny isn’t good enough. Not good enough at sports. Not rich enough to impress kids at school. Not good enough at homework for Mom. He’s sick of all the pressure. He wants to be more like Lucas, the kid who’s dad lives in the creepy old canyon lodge. Lucas knows how to do guy stuff—like shooting guns. Benny dares Lucas. He’ll bring the fireworks. Lucas will bring the gun. It’s so cool. The sound. The sparks. But a hiker comes and ruins everything. Benny doesn’t even think about how the wildfire started. Because living in a hotel is the best! All the guys at school want to hang out with him, now that he has room service and porn. But then the fire investigators come. Lucas says too much. Benny threatens Lucas not to say more. Benny knows he’s bad. A psychologist thinks he’s bad too. But Mom can’t handle more stress. And Dad quits his job. Telling some of the truth is best. But he can’t stop thinking about the dead people. The dead animals. People want him dead too—he sees it online. Being dead might be best. He’ll never be good. Just bad.   

#3 Titles

Things We Lost In The Fire

What Does Not Burn

After The Fire

#4 Comp Titles

The story explores a tragic incident from multiple points-of-view like See How Small by Scott Blackwood and What Comes After by Joanne Tompkins (a BOMC selection) in a neighborhood setting like Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng and Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson (a GMA Book Club pick). 

#5 Logline

Canyon residents—an injured Olympic athlete, a sad divorced dad, a perfectionistic physician, and a guilt-ridden son—struggle to rebuild after a pair of twelve-year-old boys start a deadly wildfire. Rebuilding material structures turns out to be easier than reframing one’s sense of self.   

#6 Inner Conflict of Protagonist + Secondary Conflict 

After a car accident kills her parents and leaves her with an amputated leg, ending her Olympic snowboarding career, Sibby plans to transform the family’s old ski hill into something big—once her struggling café makes money. The wildfire turns the café into the heart of the community, but she won’t make it through the winter without paying customers unless she lies on her insurance forms. A relationship with sad dad Justin—and long talks with his son Lucas—force Sibby to question all the things she thought she wanted.

Justin is only living in the old family lodge long enough to recover from his divorce. The fire changes everything. His family can now sell the land, and the post-disaster app he creates to help his neighbors negotiate insurance settlements attracts investors and job offers. Things have never been better. And things have never been worse. His twelve-year-old son Lucas is being investigated for starting the fire by shooting one of the old guns from his attic. Justin wants to escape to a great job in San Francisco, but he cannot leave his kids—or Sibby.

As a physician Kristin remains in control at all times, more so after being stung by an unfair malpractice suit. After the fire Kristin turns into something of a shopaholic, builds a sprawling new house and profits off women’s insecurities by adding med spa services to her gynecological practice. Everything is fine. Even if her son Benny lied about shooting the gun that started the fire. Even if she “encourages” a psychologist to diagnose Benny with mild conduct disorder—to make him more sympathetic to the judge. Nothing is fine.

Mark’s parents are the only people who die in the fire. If only he’d taken them to church that morning or moved them into the valley. He and his brothers decide to honor their parents—and earn a pretty profit—by turning the old family homestead into an assisted living community. When Mark changes his mind, his brothers sue him, but nature votes with Mark and sends a mudslide ripping through the canyon. Restoring the canyon gives Mark a way to forgive himself, and the boys. 

Benny and Lucas only wanted to do guy stuff. If guns are loud, are fireworks louder? What if you shoot a gun at the fireworks? Benny threatens Lucas—he better keep the fireworks part secret. Each boy spirals into suicidal depression knowing that two people—and so many animals—died. Neither boy can imagine living with what they’ve done. The judgment they receive is so big. So much money to repay. So many hours of service. So many apologies. Working with Mark to replant the canyon might help the boys heal too. Turns out that being a man is a lot more complicated than doing guy stuff.  

# 7 Setting:

The Pony Express, the Donner Party, even Brigham Young himself, entered the Salt Lake valley through Prayer Canyon. The Mormons claim that Brigham Young prayed in the grove of rare red maples, non-Mormons joke that he just took a piss. Now pioneer cabins and cholera-era lodges known as Heritage Properties sit alongside expensive custom homes owned by wealthy newcomers. Cultures have always clashed in the canyon—like the time the Mormon church stopped a ski resort from being built near the maple grove. Now there’s a struggling café on old Rattlesnake Run property. After the fire, the community holds planning meetings at the café; the huge gravel parking lot served as a firebreak saving the structure. Tensions spark over maintaining the character of the canyon versus making improvements. A developer buys one of the largest properties and starts building cheaper tract homes. The huge meadow at the end of the canyon is going to be home to an assisted living facility. New growth sprouts and some wildlife returns, but the canyon will never be the same. The charred land shifts yet again after heavy rainfall causes a massive landslide. The character of the canyon changes yet again.