Algonkian Retreats and Workshops 2023 - Assignments

[Cairn]

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. 

Save a piece of the developing world and return home a transformed person.

SECOND ASSIGNMENT: 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.

Who is the antagonist in my novel? Since the story is in process, this entity has yet to come into view. I see the protagonist on a pathway, looking at the horizon. Today, the sky is clear, but for a few clouds, the view is far, the air fresh, the sky blue, the pathway flat, paved with concrete. All represent a potential albeit boring future. It's all right there for enjoyment on her morning walk. Then, a bicyclist comes charging down the pathway. Is she prepared? She is walking on the righthand side, the biker coming towards her on the left, and the passing is easy, quick; only some wind is blowing in her hair as the sound ascends from behind her view. Then another biker, this time from behind, yells on your left, and she steps left in a moment of disorientation. What happens next prevents that day from taking its intended form and creates a new day requiring new ways for her to navigate her world. You might say that was an unintended antagonist. It's all behind her now. But is she prepared for the next time? Probably not, for this is not a morning walk, and she does not know yet. 

THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).

The Unfolding Stone

Rough Ridge Over Yonder 

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: - Read this NWOE article on comparables then return here.

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?

I don't know who compares to me because I am still working on a writing style. Memoir is what I initially thought I'd write, but after attending a creative nonfiction writer's conference, I changed my mind and felt my genre to be that. Once I learned more about creative nonfiction, I decided I did not want to write in that genre. Since then, I have chosen to write in the third person. I am reading the The Algonkian Novel Development and Craft Guide - 2022 and am making note of suggestions for writing in third person.

Authors I have liked and types of books I Like to read that might help answer this question are: Barbara Kingsolver and Susan Mock Kidd do Historical fiction; Sharyn McCrumb does Appalachian "Ballad" novels; Louise Penny does mystery fiction. The two best potential comparables would be historical mystery fiction. I enjoyed David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon, narrative nonfiction. These are all risen stars, so I will keep looking for that one who is rising as a comparable.  

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: 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.

Enjoying Ice-cold beer on white sandy beaches did not drown the angst; the catalyst to connecting would happen unexpectedly in a confrontation on a trip to a different island on an outward bound adventure. 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: 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 protagonist is conflicted about why they have come to this tropical hell on earth. Besides the bottomless, rich, dark coffee on the boardwalk, they gasp, seeing broken people wandering off large boats looking for easy prey. It's a hot, steamy morning. A woman on a bench gives her infant son to what appears to be a total stranger. He grabs the child, turns his back on the woman, and walks away. The protagonist's heart drops somewhere in the intestine, and a whisper inside her head says, "Oh shit. 

Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it?

The protagonist feels alone here, and friends seem few and far between. Here she is stamped with Dona fitting a particular role as in a silo; she walks around in this container only and appearance of what could be an authentic self with a true calling. 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: 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 story takes place in a small mountain village on the defunct Virginal Creeper train line before the immigrant population built roadways. Today, what once was a major stopover of the creeper, an old hotel in the middle of town, is currently being renovated. The library sits on a hill, claiming its statue as equal to the surrounding mountains. There is one main street and two back streets. The smallness of the village is deceptive because the whole place is run by big businesses and the Christmas tree industry that imports workers every year to do the hard labor of processing trees. These workers come and go invisible to the local community and visitors who enjoy the local small arts scene, community theater, and a publishing co just on the outskirts of town. 

As suggested, I will build on one aspect of the scene, such as the old hotel, the library, or the arts community, in my novel. 

[mariwestcott2]

 

 

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. 

Life often gives us the same lesson over and over until we finally learn the lesson we are meant to learn. For Mari, it began at age three when her baby sister died and her parent’s divorced. Her mother neglected and abused her and her older sister for six years before finally abandoning them on their father’s doorstep. Mari struggles through relationships, abuse, alcoholism, and addiction attempting to understand why her mother can’t love her and what is wrong with her.

ECOND ASSIGNMENT: 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.

Mom has many faces; you never know what you will get. Silly Mom; carefree, happy. She skips in the rain puddles and dances to Sinatra. I love silly Mom. Sad Mom; withdrawn, depressed. Her eyes are dark and sunken. She refuses to eat or leave her room and starts to smell from not bathing. She cries all the time. I ache for sad Mom. Wheeling, dealing Mom; Let’s make a deal. She’ll make sure that I pay up front, yet she almost certainly won’t hold up her end. She makes me feel like it’s my fault she can’t follow through. I despise wheeling and dealing Mom. Bitter, cruel Mom; lip curled back, eyes sharp and pointed. Whatever comes out of her mouth will be mean and she’ll intend for it to cut and hurt. She’ll be violent and cruel for no reason, and she won’t be sorry. She finds joy in my pain. I fear bitter Mom. Tender, loving Mom; kisses my forehead, tucks me in. Cradles me in her arms and sings lullabies in her beautiful soprano voice. I miss tender Mom.

Secondary Antagonist – The Nothing

From a young age, Mari feels an emptiness inside her that sits in the center of her being. It seems to suck everything good and light into it. The Nothing pulls and tugs at her until it consumes her. Engulfing her in depression and endless sadness. She succumbs to it, being sucked into a deep pit, clawing at the sides while being pulled downward into endless darkness.

Secondary Antagonist – Daddy

Mari is Daddy’s little girl and wants only to please him, yet they are at odds with where her life should go. Daddy’s conservative Christian ideas are continually pushed on her as a young adult, both at home and at church. Mari begins to question and push back. She dreams of traveling, having a career, being something more. Daddy insists that she must settle down and marry. She resists and rebels against him. Losing everything in the process.

Secondary Antagonist – Nick

Mari’s high school sweetheart and first love, Nick’s personality resembles that of Mom far more than anyone realizes. Their on again, off again relationship tears at Mari over and over, forcing her to relive her childhood pain in real time.

Secondary Antagonist – Dimitri

Mari is naïve and immature when she meets Dimitri who is suave and manipulative. She is raped and gets pregnant at 17. Due to her childhood abuse and the culture of her family and church she doesn’t recognize that this is not her fault. She feels the only way to save face with her family is to marry Dimitri.

Secondary Antagonist – Liam

Liam is a rebound from Nick, and Mari’s biggest mistake. She meets him while trying to run from her pain from Nick and from Mom. He introduces her to cocaine and speed. Which starts her down a dark road that will take years for her to recover from.

Secondary Antagonist – Benji

Confused and reeling from the abuse she suffered from Liam, and still recovering from the drug addiction, Mari returns home to her family. She meets Benji and reluctantly marries him. At first, she thinks that it is love at first sight. Once they are married, she realizes immediately that it is a mistake. She stays in the marriage to ensure that her children are cared for and have financial stability. She becomes more and more unhappy, unstable, and miserable.

THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).

Possible Titles:

Undesired Inheritance

Secrets: Hiding Mother’s Scars

A Field of Yellow Flowers

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: - Read this NWOE article on comparables then return here.

- 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?

A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown – Her story begins with the death of her mother which then sends her life into turmoil and chaos. Cupcake’s life becomes one disaster and traumatic event after the next propelled by the poor decisions made by the adults in her life. Driven to a life of addiction and alcoholism that nearly kills her, she thinks that she is worthless and has no hope. She finds recovery and a voice. Her writing style is forward and in the moment. As a fellow sufferer of trauma and addiction, I could relate and sympathize with her and her story. Cupcake’s book draws readers who can relate to childhood trauma, addiction, homelessness, and recovery. Her story is inspiring.

Educated by Tara Westover – Tara describes her struggles with culture, religion, and mental illness and how they shape who we are. As she becomes a teenager and an adult, she begins to recognize the sickness that she has been swamped in not only from her religion but also from her family's mental illness. Her struggle to learn how to live in a normal world while coming from an abnormal upbringing is touching and relevant to anyone who grew up with parents with mental illness. Her story also demonstrates the power of culture and religion and the many ways they affect our lives and personalities. Those who read her book are either looking to heal from similar trauma or love someone who is dealing with the pain of a broken childhood.

My writing also draws from the culture, religion, and mental illness that affected me while growing up and into my adulthood. These factors form our belief systems about the world around us, and ourselves.

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: 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

Core Wound: Growing up with a mentally ill mother who neglected and abused her and her sister, Mari fights an inner emptiness that threatens to swallow her whole.

A lifetime of abuse and neglect leaves Mari torn between hating her mother and longing to be loved by her.

Hook Line: Torn between love and disgust, growing up with a neglectful and abusive mother, and conservative, religious father, Mari tries understanding herself and searches for the love she never felt from her parents in all the wrong places.

 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: 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.

I was late getting out to the school bus to go home. I ran down the hallway hoping that I could catch it.

“Mari!” Mrs. Gentry, my teacher, called after me.

Oh no! I thought, turning around trying to catch my breath.

“Mari, did you turn in your math assignment today?” Mrs. Gentry asked sternly.

“Um, I think so? I’m going to miss my bus; I have to go Mrs. Gentry. Can I check tomorrow?” I asked hopefully. My stomach filled with dread as I thought about the long, cold walk home if I missed the bus.

“It’s important to turn in your assignments on time Mari. You are responsible for your own work; I expect that it will be in my box tomorrow morning.” She instructed.

I shook my head and turned on my heels bolting for the double doors that led to the yard where the bus picked up. My face grew hot and the pit in my gut grew deeper when I saw that I was too late, the bus had already left. I went inside to the office to try to call Mom.

“Ring, Ring, Ring.” No answer. I dialed again. “Ring, Ring, Ring.” Still nothing.

I handed the phone back to the secretary, “Thank you,” I told her holding back my tears.

I walked outside and pulled my sweater around me. It was starting to snow, and it was cold. I started out across the back field because it was the shortest distance to home. The snow was deep, going up above my knees in some places. I was only wearing a sweater, cotton skirt and baby doll shoes without socks. My feet were numb, and it felt as if my fingers were going to fall off. I thought about earlier that morning when I had rummaged through the large black plastic bags that Mom called her “laundry system” in an effort to find something clean to wear. I wished I had taken more time to find something warmer. The only part of my body that wasn’t cold was my face because of the hot tears that continuously ran down my cheeks. Finally, I stumbled into the back door pulling off my shoes and turning them upside down to dump out the excess water and ice. I ran through the kitchen.

“Hey! Hello Sunshine! You look frozen! Come sit with me by the stove!” Mom’s syrupy voice startled me.

I stood there, melting snow dripping from my dress. Mom was looking happy today with her red and blue flannel all buttoned up, her hair curled, and her bare feet resting on the open oven that was on with her wool socks warming on the top rack.

“Well, don’t just stand there drip, drip, dripping everywhere silly! Come dry off!” Mom motioned for me to come over to her.

My face grew hot, I could feel the tears starting again, “Mom? Why didn’t you answer the phone? I called because I missed the bus?” I asked confused and angry.

Mom threw her head back and laughed, “You walked all the way from school in this weather? No wonder your nose is so red!”

I couldn’t stand it; I ran to my room. Pulling off my wet clothes I started screaming. I made no audible words, I just yelled as loudly as I could. I threw myself onto my bed and beat my tiny fists into the pillow.

Why doesn’t she care? I could have frozen to death, and she thinks it’s funny! I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!

My bellowing dissolved into sobs.

Why doesn’t she love me?

It felt as if she enjoyed it, denying me the love that was so rightfully mine in the first place. The way she sneered at me, mocking my tears and my pain. While I supplicated at her feet, pleading and petitioning for the slightest hint of affection from her.

I tried squeezing my eyes shut tight. I thought about being dead. Not about actually killing myself, more about wishing that something horrible would happen to me that would end in my demise. I just didn’t want to exist anymore. The emptiness and sadness set in; the hollow Nothing at the center of me sucked me in. It was relentless in its pursuit of magnifying my pain. I must have cried myself to sleep.

file:///C:/Users/marig/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it?

I clutched the pint-sized vodka bottle in one hand, while I puffed on my cigarette with the other. As I took a deep pull from the bottle, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the burn of the liquor as it hit my gut. I let out a sigh and took another.

Ahh, there it is! At last, silence.

My yammering brain finally shut up; I was in my happy place. Here there was no punishing criticism flying at me nonstop. I was not the unloved child searching for meaning in an empty and insignificant existence. I felt no sorrow over the loss of my dad. The anger and rage that usually consumed me was extinguished. Here, in my happy place there was nothing, only oblivion. It wasn’t the same as the emptiness that the Nothing created. That stole everything from me and left me a hollow shell of pain and anguish. This was the absence of the Nothing, it was the lack of everything. And I loved it.

I am going to drink forever!

I told myself.

Sun broke through the curtains in my bedroom, and I sat up with a bolt.

Oh shit! Where am I? Where’s the baby?

Frantically looking around, I could see David in his crib reaching for and playing with his feet in his footed pajamas. I breathed a sigh of relief. My clothes from the night before were in a pile in the corner, there were soda cans scattered everywhere. I pulled a t-shirt over my head, glanced down, and noticed a pair of men’s boxers with leprechauns on them.

These aren’t Nicks. I whispered, Oh shit! What happened last night?

I thought hard, but I couldn’t remember anything past Nick handing me the third can of Pepsi. I swung David over my hip and headed downstairs. Lucy and Marissa were asleep on the living room floor, along with some of their friends. I stepped over them to get to the kitchen. As I made David’s bottle, I looked out the kitchen window, there were dishes all over the front lawn. I set David down and went into the living room,

“Hey, guys? Wake up! What the hell? Why are there dishes all over the lawn? Also why do I have leprechaun boxers in my room?” I stopped and started coughing, “and eew! Why does my breath smell like cigarettes?” I yelled at them.

Lucy sat up, groggy and irritated, “Because you ran up and down the street, throwing the dishes, screaming that you were never going to wash dishes again. Then you went into the neighbor’s house and came out with his boxers on. I seriously don’t know if you left your clothes in there or not. Then you came back here and insisted that you smoke. After trying to light the stupid thing backwards for fifteen minutes, we finally helped you light it.” She scowled at me and lay back down, pulling the blanket over her head.

I stood staring at her in disbelief, “No,” I shook my finger back and forth, “No, none of that happened, you guys are playing a joke on me.”

Marissa shot up from where she had been pretending to sleep, “Oh my god Mari! You so did! I’m going to my room to sleep!” She stormed upstairs.

Nick came stumbling down the stairs, “Hey babe, you were on fire last night,” he chuckled, “Did they tell you?”

I snapped my head around, “Don’t you start with me!” I glared at him.

My head was screaming at me again. Telling me how stupid I was for letting myself get out of control. Reminding me that I am a mother and I have responsibilities, I can’t be acting like this. Asking what if Amanda found out? She would kick us out and then we would have nowhere to live. I went into the kitchen and rummaged around the empty bottles from the night before. At last, I found a half full bottle. I tucked it under my shirt, picked up my baby and went upstairs to drink away my noisy head in peace.

 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: 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.

We had this horrible green velvet sofa. It was the only constant in our lives because Mom loved that stupid couch. She told me once about how she and Daddy had saved up for a year and half when they were first married. The oversized crushed velvet sofa was the first piece of furniture they had purchased as a married couple. The olive-green chesterfield springs to life in nearly every one of my childhood memories. Beginning with Annalise and I giggling and laughing on the soft new cushions, morphing into that awful day our baby sister Haley died as we watched the babysitter pace back and forth in front of it. I can still picture Mom perched on the edge of it in the small two-bedroom house we called home before our world was torn to pieces as she repeated over and over that the doctors couldn’t stop the bleeding in Haley’s head. Then came the endless march of the infamous green couch, and us.

First, to the farmhouse with its endless cornfields and the barn filled with cows, sheep, and chickens. There was a giant willow tree that stood in the front yard, Daddy made a paddle swing for us that hung from one of the highest branches. A small creek ran down one side of the property with wildflowers growing along the edges. We played in the creek and along the bank for hours at a time, pulling the heads off the snap dragon flowers, trying to make the snapping sound the way that Mom always did. Several acres of corn crops lined the opposite side of the house. Daddy ran the tractor and let Annalise and I take turns riding alongside him. It made me feel as if I were on top of the world. Corn rows seemed to go on forever, even now the sight of a corn field and a sunset brings tears to my eyes. Behind the farmhouse stood a large barn and a small corral. About halfway between the farmhouse and the barn was a tattered old chicken house. Mom would give me a small bag of chicken feed and I would wander around chasing the chickens attempting to make them eat the food I was throwing onto the ground. Not realizing that I was actually scaring them away by running towards them.

Then we left, and with us we took that stupid couch. There was a giant plate glass window in the front of the house that looked out onto the cul-de-sac. Mom positioned the old green velvet couch directly underneath the window. I loved to sit on the back of the couch and look out the window, resting my face on the cool window.

“Mari? Are you going to sit there all day?” Annalise asked me.

“I’m waiting for Mom to come home.” I replied.

“You’re probably going to be sitting there for a while.” She said sarcastically walking away.

I was undeterred. I rested my cheek again on the frosty glass. Feeling the moisture from my breath as it created a fog circle. I didn’t move or flinch. I felt as if I did, somehow it might prevent Mom from returning. The sky began turning dark, I saw headlights come up hill. My heart quickened as the car turned around in the circle and headed back down the hill. My shoulders dropped back down; I relaxed back into my previous position. My stomach growled and rumbled. I pushed the thought of hunger away. I had learned that if you ignore the hunger pains for long enough, they just go away. Unfortunately, the fear, loneliness, and empty feeling doesn’t go away regardless of how much to try to avoid it. I continued to stare out at the street until I drifted off to sleep leaning up against the window.

When Mom finally took us to Daddy’s and left us on his front porch that cold, blustery March morning; it wasn’t Mom that I missed, it was that horrid old green chesterfield. After all it had been with me since I had been born. It had been more present in my life than just about anything else.

 

 

 

[Amy Russell]

Amy Russell

Assignment 1:  Story Statement

     Sarah Piper, newly minted Episcopalian minister, must protect the vulnerable and vanquish the corrupt, namely a  powerful and misogynist church leader, all with the word of the Bible as a tool, while simultaneously struggling with a personal betrayal and shifting faith.

Assignment 2:  The Antagonist

The antagonist in this story is Jeffrey Trainer, the Sr. Warden of the church.  Lacking a moral compass and driven by a thirst for power over others, Jeffrey continues to drive the story to gain his own objectives over Sarah’s resistance.  Jeffrey may have believed that he was driven by love for a woman and a need to help her, but it becomes clear when he cannot achieve that, that he is simply seeking power over others.  He wants to win all: the love object, prevent the church from moving forward with gay marriage, even to protect his family from the truth.  Jeffrey proves to be Sarah’s greatest challenge forcing her to take a stand when she is resistant to do so, believing rather that if she just listens to people, everything will work out.  His forceful maneuverings test Sarah’s resolve to find the best in people and push her to finally show her strength.  But his way of using people also teaches Sarah not to trust so readily.  She begins to understand that people are complex and cannot be judged with simple rules of moral behavior that the church teaches.

Assignment 3:  Breakout Title

Casting the First Stone

Blind Mercies

Gnosis

 

Assignment 4:  Comparables- genre religious literary

Search by Michelle Huneven, a funny, sharp novel about a congregational search committee.

Evensong, by Gail Godwin, people in a small Smoky Mountain town and a woman minister whose world is altered by them.

 

Assignment 5: Hook Line with Core Wound

Sarah, a young, inexperienced minister uncovers a church leader’s secret affair with a young female congregant and his plot to get her hired as staff.  Sarah carries a deep internal sense of personal guilt from her helplessness over the early death of a sister.  She compensates with a relentless drive to “do good and help people.”   Her inner sense of need for moral perfection leads her to judge harshly those around her. But her inner guilt gives her pause in acting on this judgment. When a new lover reveals a betrayal, she is thrown into a hurricane of judgment and indecision. 

Assignment 6: Inner conflict- scene in story when this inner conflict is triggered and then the secondary conflict involving the social environment.  Other characters?

Sarah suffered the early loss of a sister which left her with a sense of guilt and helplessness.  Her call to ministry was centered on a need to “give back” as recompense for the congregation who helped her to heal.  But her naivety about human failings creates in her a harsh judgment of others when she is confronted with the knowledge of the secret affair of the Sr. Warden, and a lack of ability to respond to this revelation.

Secondary conflict appears when her lover reveals his married status. Sarah questions her ability to judge morality and to assist others in their moral dilemmas. She finds her new ministry unable to give her that sense of giving back.  She struggles with the lack of clarity and relevance in religious doctrine and human behavior.  She struggles most with not forgiving herself which makes it harder to forgive others.

Final Assignment:  Sketch out your setting in detail.  What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene to allow for uniqueness and cinema in hour narrative and story.  Imagine an interesting setting.

Setting is an Episcopalian church in a working class neighborhood in Philadelphia which is changing with the addition of areas of redevelopment of upper middle class housing.  The church has been a place where working people did as much as they could to support the church but could not afford to support a professional religious education staff.  With the new growth of younger more prosperous families, the church is moving toward hiring a religious education director.  The novel takes place around 2016 after gay marriage has been made legal but when many Episcopal churches were still in turmoil about whether to allow it.  The vestry of this church still has reservations but the new minister wants to change that.  The struggle over this issue demonstrates the internal differences within the church.

Church is old stone church building with lots of stained glass, very traditional in a suburban/urban neighborhood. 

Congregation represents two value sets:  working class- we need to do all this ourselves, can’t afford to hire someone vs. middle-class- our time is valuable and we want a professional doing it

Downtown churches are more progressive and are considering development of a food bank.  The new minister is interested in having her church support this effort but there’s a culture of scarcity.  They haven’t done a lot of social action outside of food baskets at Thanksgiving.  There’s still some families in the church who need help sometimes. 

 

[Stephanie Raffelock]

[Eric Brandenburg]

1.

After a university lab building sinks halfway into the ground overnight with a sign left in one of its windows reading “Explain This,” Ryan Flynn, a veteran down on his luck and Freya Thorensen, a beautiful artist recovering from trauma, team up to find her missing brother, a scientist who holds the secret to a technology that could change the world.

2.

The chief antagonist in “Explain This” is Freya’s brother Robbie, a brilliant but irresponsible scientist who vanishes just before a violent and mysterious incident at the lab where he was conducting classified research. Freya, our heroine, is desperate to find him to make sure he’s all right and that he hasn’t done something stupid that’s gotten him into a lot of trouble. Ryan, our hero, needs to find him because that’s his job even though he has growing doubts about his new employers and their motives. The stakes are raised in an early scene when we see an old panel truck we suspect is being driven by Robbie being followed by a state trooper in a cruiser because it looks suspicious. The cruiser’s front end is suddenly crushed by an unseen force and the panel truck speeds away.

Secondary antagonists are the holders of the many other secrets that Ryan and Freya singly and then together must uncover through the course of the story.  These secrets run the gamut from revolutionary technologies that have been classified to family scandals to personal wounds that the two protagonists don’t want to look at themselves, much less share with anyone else.

In the first half of the book, Ryan and Freya are also mutual antagonists. For Freya, Ryan is a government agent who shows up asking all sorts of questions about her brother and her family. Her family’s history and the circumstances of her father’s death and the source of her injuries aren’t subjects she wants to talk about and she wants to find Robbie on her own. For Ryan, Freya says she doesn’t know where her brother is or any more than she’s already told him but she’s a bad liar and he hates it when people hide things from him.

Ryan has a number of other people to contend with. His new boss in the “Special Transport Unit” (“the Unit”), Captain Baker, didn’t bother to tell him his new job involves a lot more than just backing boxes full of official documents and driving them from place to place. Ryans’ first day of work, he finds himself in the middle of a mess and Baker still won’t tell him anything because he thinks he doesn’t “need to know.” In addition, the F.B.I. arrest Ryan for a burglary that was probably done by another member of the Unit and someone has started following him. Freya has to contend with her mother with whom she has a combative relationship.

Because of their core wounds, Ryan and Freya are also their own worst enemies.

Ryan suffers from undiagnosed P.T.S.D. and can control his anxiety only when he has a job to do. The only one he’s got at the moment though is doing whatever Baker tells him to do, and he doesn’t trust Baker or the Unit and he has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.

Freya has recovered from her physical wounds but, when the darkness gathers inside her, about all she can do is to try to get rid of it is to paint, run or spar at the Akido dojo. Her latest painting of a half man, half wolf trapped in a cave scares the hell out of her. She doesn’t know why. Is it about her father or somebody else? And why the hell is she having nightmares about her father and their old farmhouse in North Dakota. And why is it stuffed with junk and on fire?

Ultimately Ryan and Freya help themselves by revealing their secrets to one another.

In the last act of the book, the final flesh and blood antagonists are revealed, rogue members of the Unit who are determined to steal Robbie’s revolutionary technology for themselves. In the last act, Ryan, Freya and Robbie as well as honest members of the Unit have a showdown with the rogue Unit members at the Thorensen’s deserted farmhouse where Freya and Robbie grew up.

3.

 Explain This!

4.

Sci Fi Thriller

Comparables: Dark Matter, Stranger Things

Explain This is a story in the tradition of Dark Matter, the Xfiles, Fringe, and other works that revolve around an extraordinary technology disrupting the lives of ordinary people.

5.

Hook line, a variant on the story statement above:

After a university lab building sinks halfway into ground overnight with a sign left in one of its windows reading “Explain This,” Ryan Flynn, a veteran with PTSD eager to make good and Freya Thorensen, a young artist recovering from trauma must learn to trust one other and confront their pasts in order to find her brother, a missing scientist who has disappeared with the secret to a revolutionary technology. “Sometimes the hardest secrets to uncover are the ones you’re keeping from yourself.

6.

The basic conflicts are as follows. I’ve put this from the point of view of the characters:

 

Ryan Flynn shows up for his first day of work in the Special Transport Unit (the “Unit”) hung over and wearing a brown plaid suit borrowed from his father. He’s suffering from undiagnosed P.T.S.D.  Bread or most any other baked good makes him anxious but that’s another story. All that’s holding him together is this new job which, he was told by the firm’s recruiter, “just consists of guarding boxes of classified material and moving them from place to place.” He thinks he can handle that. On the way in from the airport, however, his new partner, Dickie Gautier, tells him the Unit has a secret, highly classified side and that the “stuff” in their care is sensitive technology with military potential which Unit members must protect “by any means necessary.” On their current project, the lead scientist on the project has gone missing after a bizarre incident at the lab. Ryan needs to focus on his new mission or he’ll go to pieces but his new superiors won’t even tell him the secret he’s supposed to be protecting. The scientist’s sister says she doesn’t know where her brother’s gone. She seems desperate to find him but it’s clear she’s hiding something. It doesn’t help that she’s beautiful and he feels a strong desire to help her if he can. What if finding her brother means turning him over to people who want to put him in prison or worse? How much will he have to share about himself to gain her trust? How can he do that when he’s been avoiding looking at himself since he got home from overseas.

 

Freya Thorenson thought she’d been doing pretty well. The bullet wounds in her side have been healed for some time and, physically, she’s in good shape. Emotionally, though, she suffers from bad dreams and works through her anxiety by painting, running, martial arts training and ceaseless work on her graphic design business and the renovations to the house she shares with her mother. Everything was going okay until her brother Robbie showed up. His wife threw him out and neither he nor she would say why. He acted strangely, working till all hours and then just disappeared one night, leaving behind a note saying he’d be back soon and not to worry. All this might have been manageable if his lab hadn’t sunk halfway into the ground a few days later and someone hadn’t left a whiteboard in one of its windows with “Explain This!” scrawled on it in big purple letters. Wouldn’t that be enough to make anyone anxious? And then this Ryan Flynn shows up on her doorstep in his silly ass brown plaid suit, asking way too many questions about her brother, the family, her, everything. She spent five years trying to put her family shit behind her and she isn’t inclined to share it now with some spook. The image of her late father and his crooked ways fills her mind. Her brother had that same look just before he left. Where did he go? Did his going away have something to do with what happened at the lab? How can she figure out where he’s gone and get to him before the government does? Ryan Flynn wants to find him, sure, but for his own reasons. Can she trust him? He’s a human border collie, driven and whip smart but she can sense he has glaring weaknesses as well. Her father taught her how to read those. Can she work Ryan over to her side or is he too smart and strong for that? Does even looking at the situation this way mean she’s just like her father?

 

Some scenes:

Freya invites Ryan to her art studio and he quizzes her about her paintings, which he admires. She secretly likes him and is torn about sharing that side of her with him. She can tell he’s using this as a way to probe and find out more about her and her family. Ryan is drawn to Freya and is actually impressed by her talent. Picking up certain clues within her dark, symbolic painting and around her studio, he confronts her with things she has been hiding from him. She suggests they have dinner. Over food and a beer she shares a certain amount about herself and her family’s troubled past while also probing him, trying to gain a foothold and win his trust. Over these two scenes each is dancing around the other, trying to get as much as they can out of the other one without giving away too much.

 

Some scenes with secondary conflicts:

Freya argues with her mother about having a relative stop by their old farmhouse in North Dakota to check it out for the Winter. Her mother says they wouldn’t charge anything. Freya says they’re just out to make a buck and why bother when no one will ever live in the house again which hurts her mother’s feelings. Throughout the conversation her mother calls her by her first name, Christine, when Freya’s told her many times she wants to go by Freya, her middle name from now on. Her mother ends the conversation by saying Freya should come home and fix the downstairs toilet which she’s been after her to get to for days.

Ryan is detained by the F.B.I. who suspect him of having broken into the apartment of Robbie Thorensen’s research assistant. Ryan is in the possession of a classified document but he got it from Freya’s house, not the other place. The F.B.I. grill him and tell him the Unit has a bad reputation but after a phone call from an unknown party they simply give him back the document and turn him loose.

Ryan flies to North Dakota in pursuit of Freya who has determined where her brother has gone. After he and Freya spend the night together, he is called repeatedly by his superior in the Unit, Captain Baker, who wants to know what progress he’s made and insists on sending out more men “to help.” Ryan, who has grown to distrust the Unit and wants to find Robbie and bring him in peaceably resists.  He buys some phones and puts his Unit issued phone in a special bag which blocks radio signals so it can’t be traced.

7.

Setting 1: A street on the border of a major university campus in the Boston area containing an old candy company warehouse and its offices, a low rent bar, a building that once belonged to a now bankrupt printer and an old university lab building, marked for demolition. The lab building has sunk halfway into the ground overnight under mysterious circumstances.

Setting 2: A Special Transport Unit armored SUV which contains a police radio, a radar tracking device, and document packing and transport materials such as boxes, markers and envelopes. There is also a safe under the floor containing a pistol, two compact sub machine guns and ammunition as well as a tazer, lock picks and rubber gloves.

Setting 3: The Thorensen house. A three story Victorian house which is undergoing renovation. The first floor has refinished floors and paneling and new plastering. The furniture is a mix of new relatively expensive furniture and inexpensive antiques from the former Thorensen farmhouse in North Dakota. Landscapes of the prairie painted by Freya, the heroine, adorn the walls. The second story has two renovated bedrooms and a bathroom. There is a third bedroom still undergoing renovation. The third floor has been gutted and renovated has just started.

Setting 4: The flooded basement of the sunken lab building which contains a number of experimental devices based on a revolutionary technology.

Setting 5: Freya’s art studio. A semi finished divided loft space where Freya has an easel, paints, a computer and other equipment for her graphic design business.

Setting 6: A room in  cheap motel in Grand Forks North Dakota

Setting 7: A churchyard in a small North Dakota farming town.

Setting 8: An abandoned farmhouse in rural North Dakota built with a variety of defensive features by Freya’s father including reinforced doors with gun ports and sideways periscope peepholes, hiding places for guns and money, several safe rooms with reinforced doors and a mud room that doubles as a killing room with gun ports and peepholes on the sides. Intruders can be locked inside the mud room by releasing a cable on an exterior wall which drops weighted bolts through the tops of the inside and outside doors.

[Susan Church Downer]

..

[Danielle Ward]

1.       THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT-- develop a simple "story statement." In other words, what's the mission of your protagonist? The goal? What must be done?

Alicia falls in and out of books as easily as she falls in and out of love, trying on many characters instead of presenting the world with her real self, all to earn the love of others. On her journey to discover her own story, this oddly ordinary teenager is shaped by peer pressure, surprising sexual desires, and a confusing mixture of emotions.

Based on the author’s own experiences in the 1990s, this story explores the delicate inner-workings of how coming-out and coming-of-age intertwine. Each chapter weaves in a selection from a high school reading list such as Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby, Princess Bride, or Crime and Punishment. Alicia clings to such books as her roadmap to self-realization while navigating her parent’s great expectations for her. If only she can stop pretending long enough to discover her true self.

2.     SECOND ASSIGNMENT: 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.             

There are multiple temporary antagonists in this story, all challenging Alicia to define (or redefine) herself in their eyes. In the first half of the novel bullies, ex-friends, and boyfriends that break her heart push or pull Alicia around like a pinball towards the person they think she is. In the second part, Alicia’s parents—part of an older generation with specific expectations for her bright future and always with her best interest at heart—refuse to accept the young woman she is becoming, especially once she discovers she is bisexual. Alicia is then forced to decide if she is brave enough to break free from the cozy childhood mold her parents made for her.

3.     THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).

Catch Her in the Lie        

(1st Choice since title plays with a classic title as each chapter does, it speaks to the imaginings she has for life, and also the ultimate lie she must tell her parents in order to continue to foster a relationship with another woman)

Figments of Love            

Falling in…

Auditioning for Life        

4.     Fourth Assignment: 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?

Catch her in the Lie is an autobiographical fiction coming of age novel that employs various stylistic tones related to Classic literature, but draws contemporary references to Stephen Choboky’s honest and revealing Perks of Being a Wallflower as well as Sara Nisha Adam’s literary-inspired The Reading List.

5.     FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: Write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. 

In this autobiographical fiction about coming out while coming of age in the 90s, Alicia searches for herself in books and boyfriends while navigating the emotional obstacle course that is high school. After faceplanting hard for another girl, she discovers she’s been looking for love and acceptance in the wrong place and must now choose between playing the dutiful daughter her parents expect or writing herself a brand-new story.

6.     SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: 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.

Alicia enjoys a lot of things other kids her age care nothing about. She loves old movies, musical theater, and music from before she was born. Maybe that is why she feels so shy around people her own age. Of course, it doesn’t help that her parents are much older than most and her siblings are grown. She doesn’t have a lot of experience with people her age, specially making friends. Books, on the other hand, are much easier to come by and easier to navigate. With high school serving as a sort of pressure cooker, Alicia battles with being herself or being what others deem attractive, taking on different roles in order to please others, even when that goes against her true self.

This inner struggle is first felt in Chapter One when she sees Montag, the first boy she develops a crush on. Wanting him ignites changes in her that hurts her long-time best friend Leslie and sidelines the unique qualities that make Alicia who she is. This turmoil intensifies in Chapter Two when she lands a lead role in the school musical Cabaret opposite Montag. When the two start dating, things spiral out of control as the storylines of the characters they play on stage bleed into their everyday relationship. In an effort to “cut loose” and be sexier on stage, Alicia also lets her sexual exploration with Montag advance beyond her comfort zone.

7.     FINAL ASSIGNMENT: 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.

While Riverside was big enough to be called a city, it lacked the luster of neon lights and late night anything. The city’s only claim to fame was its hour-long drive to a variety of more desirable destinations: mountains, beaches, deserts, and of course, Hollywood.

Movies. Movies were big in Riverside. Especially when the weather warmed up. If residents weren’t exploring the breezy retreat with indoor palm trees and food courts with a buffet of options that is the mall, they opted for indoor picnics with overly-priced popcorn, Coke, and junior mints at the celluloid palace.

People living in the Inland Empire were caught in the whir of L.A.’s dream-machine. They shared the same air, gulped the same dirty collection of car exhaust, inhaled the same flecks of dead skin laced with the sweet sweat of a million movie stars. The Hollywood high induced 120-minute dreams in the dark.

Perhaps that is how others survived the stagnation year after year. Their minds wandered to a other possible lives though their bodies stayed. Stuck like the smog that lingered, clogging the pores of these poor people. The only reprieve was the Santa Ana wind, but it came with a cost.

Santa Ana winds were like something out of Greek Mythology. They came and went as they pleased, very temperamental and all; churning the flames on the mountains that surrounded the city, turning Riverside into a fire-pit.

Perhaps Mother Nature wanted to remind the population of her power because during one of summer’s hundred-degree heat spells, the wind inevitably threatened a cocky housing community, one that had crept a little too high on a hill. The sirens sounded and people jumped into their air-conditioned capsules to cram the freeways, windshield wipers fighting the sticky ash as they sped towards somewhere, anywhere else.    

In order to escape the grey pallor Riverside tended to leave on your skin, the young visited the land of hormones and high drama at school. Although now that I think about it, the make-up helped too. 

Alicia’s school, unimaginatively called Riverside High, was a middle of the road school unless you were a member of the prestigious International Baccalaureate program.  Members of the penultimate AP/IB program, imagined themselves destined for greatness. But how much weight do you give students whose certificate would more appropriately be titled the Intellectual Bullshiter’s Program?  The mission was: “Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”

[Jan H]

Haraczy Pre-Work – Algonkian Writer’s Conference

 

Story Statement – An elk hunter and another intelligent sentient species collide in the vast unspoiled wilderness of the Siskiyou Mountains.  This other species is a creature of myth with no modern proof of its existence.  Pop culture calls this beast Bigfoot or Sasquatch.  Many First Nation tribes knew of this creature and referred to its kind as The First People.  For millennia this ancient creature has lived in harmony with nature.  Homo sapiens sapiens, a relative newcomer to the planet, has fallen out of harmony with the consequence of destroying Mother Earth.  When loggers invade Sasquatch’s hunting territory, Sasquatch and Human find they can work together to preserve untouched nature. 

 

Antagonist – Josiah Blackthorne, a venture capitalist for green technology entrepreneurs.  He spent his youth romping the rugged forests surrounding his hometown of Kalama, Washington.  During his formative years, Josiah excelled in his schoolwork; but he believed his best teacher to be nature.  He spent many an hour marveling at the intricate balance of creatures with their habitats.  A horrible accident destroyed his inner peace.  A toxic spill from an upstate paper mill rendered Kalama’s drinking water unsafe.  Josiah decided to turn his outrage into action by focusing his future career path on environmentally-friendly technology.  His pursuit led him to California’s Silicon Valley, a place far removed from the wild wonders of his youth.  He often reminds himself that the sacrifice is worth it.  He views his mission of enabling green technology as his contribution to saving the planet.  A couple of times a year he escapes his grueling business life to recharge in secluded wilderness.  In his latest getaway he travels to a remote section of the Siskiyou Mountains with plans of hunting Roosevelt elk. 

 

Prospective Titles:

·         Dominus

·         The Mother’s Protector

·         The Ancient Ones

 

Comparables

The Twilight series:  Stephenie Meyer not only immersed us in a fictitious world of vampires and werewolves, but also made us love them. 

The Meg series:  Steve Alten introduced us to a creature long believed extinct.  He gave us an inside glimpse of the animal’s primal instincts as it navigated the waters of the modern world

 

Hook Line – The alpha male of a Sasquatch clan forms an uneasy alliance with an elk hunter he abducts as they work to prevent loggers from decimating the clan’s hunting ground.

 

Protagonist Conflict – Chukka, the alpha male of a Sasquatch clan, despises humans.  While his contact with humans, or pests as he calls them, has been scarce over the years, his first contact left him scarred.  As a juvenile, his clan was forced to flee their hunting territory because of a forest fire started by careless campers.  Chukka and his mother witnessed the incident, a campfire built too close to dry tinder.  Chukka’s older male sibling perished during the clan’s desperate search for safety from the raging inferno.

While returning from a training hunt with three of his clan’s adolescent males, Chukka sniffs the foul scent of a pest.  Later that night he tracks the putrid scent to the intruder’s campground.  The first thing he sees is the campfire, igniting the memory of that long-ago frantic dash to safety.  The sight of the campfire detonates his inner rage.  As much as he wants to squash the pest, his moral code prevents him from killing animals he does not plan to eat.  Instead he decides scare the pest away. 

Later in the story, Foos, one of Chukka’s beta males, discovers a logging operation setting up on the northern boundary of the clan’s territory.  Chukka decides to abduct the pest to help the clan learn how best to drive this threat off their hunting ground.  As much as Chukka dislikes pests, he knows that forming an alliance with the intruder will increase the clan’s chances of successfully securing their territory.   Chukka now faces the challenges of ensuring his abductee’s safety from other clan members and convincing this adversary to work against his own kind to help the clan.

 

Setting - Fictional and remote Symbol Lake in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon.  The forest is populated with a variety of pines, spruce, deciduous trees, thick brush and thorny thicket.  To the north of Symbol Lake sits an alpine meadow, a popular grazing spot for deer, elk and bear and a fruitful Sasquatch hunting ground.  The Sasquatch inhabit a cave west of Symbol Lake about halfway between the lake and alpine meadow.  The cave provides easy access for Sasquatch, but very difficult for human navigation.  It is reached by one of three ways on foot:  by ascending a sheer rock wall on the eastern side, ascending a slag field with a 70 degree slope on the south and western sides, or by descending a sheer rock wall on the north side.  The cave has a large flat clearing in front of it, large enough for a human to be dropped by helicopter.

Josiah makes camp in a clearing along the northwestern shore of Symbol Lake.  He intends to hunt the alpine meadow, a place where in the past he has successfully bagged Roosevelt elk.  For his first day’s hunt, he bushwhacks a trail to the alpine meadow, a distance of 2.5 miles.  With the trail cleared, his subsequent treks to the meadow will be easier. 

Elk hunting season in the Siskiyou Mountains runs in early September.  The sun throws intensive rays during the day, but gives way to chilly evenings.  Josiah planned his hunting attire for daytime highs in the 70’s and overnight lows in 40’s.  Were he to be trapped in the mountains during the rainy season, which commences in October, he would suffer from weather exposure and even possibly die from hypothermia.

 

[Teresa Drosselmeyer]

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. 

 

Overcomes long-held secret to find her voice and take back what was lost.

 

SECOND ASSIGNMENT: 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.

 

Angie is a small woman who was raised on a rural farm in southwest Oklahoma. Her parents were devout Catholics and, when she married outside the church, they were so upset they refused to attend the ceremony. However, even though Angie is no longer a Catholic, a lifetime of oppressive religious teachings has been imbedded into her character. Any discussion of sex or the reproductive system is completely avoided and, when her children ask probing questions on the subject, she merely states they had been Angels in Heaven or someone sprinkled sugar on the windowsill.

Angie is a master of manipulation and cover-ups. No matter how dire the situation, she projects normalcy. She uses psychological bullying to control the protagonist into abiding by her instructions. Her plan only has the most trusted individuals involved so that no one will ever know the secret they share. In her mind, if you don’t speak of it, it never happened.

In some twisted way, Angie’s motivation is to protect the protagonist. However, her own past has bled onto the present and, although she thinks her actions are an act of love, she is really placing the protagonist in impossible submissive situations.

 

THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).

Shamed: the secret I lived with

Crimson & Cream, and a Dream

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: - Read this NWOE article on comparables then return here.

- 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?

1- Educated by Tara Westover: Overcoming religious views that hindered our progress towards an education is something we share, but there is more to the story than that. We both had parents that were over-bearing and controlling that kept us submissive. There was no doubt that to go against my mother – to break the silence – meant losing her love. To go against her was to sever all ties. As in TW’s book, the struggle to please her father created inward conflict and, ultimately, there is no way to be both an obedient daughter and have autonomy. We both had to break free in order to survive.

2 – Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?: Jeannette overcomes a well-meaning but abusive mother misguided by religion to find herself and happiness.

 

 FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: 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.

Shamed: the secret I lived with

A woman struggling with a dark secret confronts her loss risking exposure, and all that she loves.

Crimson & Cream, and a Dream

(This title would obviously focus more on the arc of healing through education.)

Tormented by a dark secret a woman struggles to find identity through higher learning.

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: 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.

 Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it?

Inner conflict: The protagonist is a pregnant teen in the year before Roe v Wade when social scorn for unwed mothers was at its peak. Because of her mother’s Catholic upbringing, she is hidden and forced to give her child up for adoption and told to never speak of this again. She struggles with trying to redeem herself in the eyes of her mother while suffering from the loss of her child who is supposed to be nonexistent. To tell the secret, she understands that it will mean the loss of her mother and her family, who had never been told. But to hold it inside is to never know what happened to her firstborn child. It is to never even know her name.

Secondary conflict: When the protagonist is met with her own child’s secret, she realizes the threat of exposure is real, which she is certain will result in losing her family.

More to come after the weekend – daughter is getting married on Saturday

[MR Robinson]

1. Story Statement—Aidan must discover the secret of the mysterious condition that is threatening to kill him as it killed his brother. In the process of discovery, he becomes aware of a powerful organization that relentlessly hunts people like him to use for experimentation before ruthlessly exterminating their victims. He is on the run with a small group until he realizes he will never be safe until the organization and its leader are destroyed.

2. Antagonist Sketch—Cy is seen as a savior to many. His insights and wisdom are a core part of the reshaping of society to more humanist ends. But behind many of his discoveries is a dark secret of human experimentation, torture, and merciless killing. His reeducation programs aim to make suitable members of society. Employing a professional military as well as mercenary gangs, the organization, with CY as their leader, ruthlessly incarcerates anyone showing signs of the mysterious psychological opening that is happening to Aidan. They take people into the facilities ostensibly to keep the streets safe and to give the patients the care they need. In truth, they test and experiment with the subjects, trying to understand the psychological phenomenon (opening) that is spontaneously happening.

3. Breakout Title—Initiation

4. Genre and Comparables—Supernatural action thriller.

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

The Passage by Justin Cronin

The Matrix

5. Hook line—After watching his brother deteriorate from a mysterious psychological condition, Aidan begins having similar symptoms. Armed with nothing more than a vague lead, he sets out on a quest from the safety of his mountain compound to seek help before the condition takes his sanity and then his life.

6. Inner Conflict Pt 1— When Aidan is identified as having extraordinary abilities, he is marked as an enemy of the state and hunted ruthlessly to be brought in for tortuous reeducation or to be killed. Aidan must get help for the psychological condition that is taking him over, making him sick while also giving him surprising new powers.

Inner Conflict Pt 2 (secondary conflict) Racked with guilt over his fear and inability to help his family while they were being attacked and killed. Aidan is haunted by the fear that he cracks under pressure and cannot rise to the occasion.

7. Setting—In the near future, dystopian California, the cities have become walled enclaves for the rich, healthy, and compliant members of society. Outside the walls of privilege, the rest of the population struggles for resources and lives in fear of the marauding gangs that roam freely while fighting each other for supremacy.

[Merredith Branscombe]

Trace eerie coindences of sexual assault, secrets, and mysterious disease across three generations of women only to find that those in power hoped they would never tell and will not help. It's too late to save her mother; but to save her daughter -- and others like her -- she must first save herself.
 

[Padraig]

 

Algonkian Conference
Secession
Patrick Brady

 

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. 

The protagonist confronts the divide between liberals and conservatives. She must convince the antagonist to give up his plan to secede from the US, a plan that has gotten many people killed and many more will die if she doesn’t succeed. 

 

SECOND ASSIGNMENT: 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.

Stoner cum entrepreneur Thomas Galley wants to be a legal weed kingpin, but California law is stymying his business’ growth, so he decides to co-opt the Jefferson statehood movement into a strategy to circumvent California law. As he gains power, his goals evolve and he leads Jefferson into a full-fledged secession from the US, and being president seems way cooler than being governor, especially if there are no pesky federal laws or constitution.

 

THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed). 

1. Secession
2. The Secession of the State of Jefferson
3. The Second Civil War
    

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: 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?

After the Revolution, Robert Evans: What will the fracturing of the United States look like? After the Revolution is an edge-of-your-seat answer to that question. In the year 2070, twenty years after a civil war and societal collapse of the "old" United States, extremist militias battle in the crumbling Republic of Texas. As the violence spreads like wildfire and threatens the Free City of Austin, three unlikely allies will have to work together in an act of resistance to stop the advance of the forces of the Christian ethnostate known as the "Heavenly Kingdom."

In my novel, Northern California secedes from the US, and in doing so, it becomes a lawless place divided by competing interests. The US can’t allow Jefferson to succeed, which ensures enough war to scar a culture for a generation.

 

The Deluge, Stephen Markley: In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come. From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.

My novel is set in the near future and it is set in motion by present-day tensions between the left and the right. Adding to the tension are flashpoints like drug policy, credit card debt, social welfare programs and our obsession with guns. Jefferson not only circles the drain we’ve all feared, it goes down the tubes, descending into a lawless fiefdom that has chosen to go to war with California and eventually the US. 
 

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: 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.

When her soon-to-be ex-husband gets involved in a statehood movement in Northern California, Islin Ryan shrugs it off as another of his stupid antics, but when he gets their son Jason involved, she fears that he will go down the same right-wing rabbit hole her soon-to-be ex jumped down. Jason goes to work for the Jefferson movement and lands in the crosshairs of the US government when Jefferson decides to secede from the US. To save her son, she must confront a former flame and reveal a long-hidden secret. And maybe, if she can save her kid, she can save California, too.

 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: 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.

Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it?

Islin has lost her patience with right-wing capital-C Conservatives, like her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Kevin. And while her ire at him has broken into the open, she doesn’t want to become a target of the far right—the forces at work to establish the State of Jefferson. Her son, Jason, is beginning to head down the Jefferson hole and Islin seems powerless to stop him. 

Her inclination is to avoid conflict, but she can’t abide discrimination and small-minded thinking. She wants nothing to do with the craziness that she sees in the Jefferson movement and wants to run away, but is angry she must leave her home. She decides she must get her kids and herself out of Mendocino County when tanks begin massing at the Jefferson border. 

Islin has to confront a former flame, the Governor of Jefferson. He is the most visible force behind the movement and she believes she must confront him if she is to save her son. She thinks that seceding to establish Northern California as an independent country is the dumbest idea she has heard in her life. Going to war to do it is even dumber. And her son identifies with the struggle because it mirrors his drive for independence as a teen. 

 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: 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.

Secession is set in Northern California. Primary locations include:

The protagonist’s ranch house, barn and sprawling property in rural Mendocino County. The house and barn were built by her father and represent security and safety for her. The invasion of Jefferson threatens her home and her sense of safety.

The rocky and foggy Mendocino Coast. The foggy coastline is a place that muffles sound and light, where you can hide everything from a tank to an illegal pot grow.

The California State Capitol building in Sacramento, its mall, and the downtown streets and buildings around it. A number of scenes take place in the governor’s offices.

The flat farmland and small farm towns of California’s Central Valley. This flat farmland is cheap, dusty and the sort of land you can’t imagine anyone fighting over.

The town of Chico, California, a farm community of 100,000. It makes a natural capital for Jefferson as it’s the largest city north of Sacramento.

An old storefront in Chico, converted into the offices for the Jefferson administration. Jefferson is not a slick operation. Their offices look like everything was bought at an office bankruptcy. The building is rundown and looks like it was last decorated in 1968.

The redwood forests and mountains of Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt Counties. The winding dirt roads and hidden cannabis grows serve as a backdrop in multiple scenes.  

The lava beds of Modoc County where the Modoc Wars were fought. The lava beds provide excellent cover for anyone.

 

 

[Merredith Branscombe]

Story Statement:

A woman discovers uncanny patterns of secrets and betrayal in the lives of her mother, her daughter, and herself: the story of how we are so conditioned to be nice and trusting of others that we forget to trust our own judgment or bodies when faced with trauma and disease.

Antagonist/Antagonistic Force:

Priests, doctors, casually predatory bosses or professors, and nice boys who turn out to not be so nice. What do they have in common? The assumption that whatever they do to others, there are systems, mores and money in place that will protect them. Their shared goal: protect their authority and image so that the larger system survives respected, unblemished and unquestioned. 

If the Church or our medical systems damages penitents or patients, it is in service to their higher calling. The rest may lack a lofty mission, but they are protected as well – because this is the way of the world, the way it has been for centuries. 

The main antagonists:

Fr. Panton: priest who grooms young women and sexually assaults them;

Dr. Jody: Pediatrician who relies on her charm and reputation to cover her mistakes;

The Episcopal Diocese: Religious organization that denies/covers up the harm done by its priests.

There is another, unseen antagonist that shadows the protagonist’s entire journey: the narratives and conditioning that women, in particular, absorb to be… “nice.” Generous, deferential, careful not to offend. Whatever their instincts tell them, they must be mistaken.

 

Breakout Title:

The Price of Nice:
How We Pay in Trauma and Disease, In Life and in the Medical System

 

Comparables:

The Price of Nice (working title) is narrative non-fiction, to add facts and credibility; but also part memoir, to show what those facts actually look like in the lives of three women from the protagonist’s POV. I have chosen comparables in both narrative nonfiction and memoir.

 

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel Van Der Kolk -- the gold standard for reporting the impact of traumatic stress on the body and on society, but does not focus on trangenerational trauma or how we are re-traumatized in the medical system. 

An Elegant Defense: The New Science of the Immune System/A Tale in Four Lives, by Matt Richtel -- NYT science reporter Richtel faces the death by cancer of his childhood friend, and explores how the science and pharmacology around the immune system has changed, by profiling four lives.

(note: I am one of the four lives presented in that book)

Memoir:

Untamed, by Glennon Doyle -- Thematically similar to The Price of Nice, Doyle explores  her rise to become a best-selling author based on a life that had become a lie because she was "tamed" -- and shows how breaking free from that lie made her feel finally alive

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Elizabeth Gottlieb -- a psychiatrist's journey with her own psychiatrist, studded with insights from the psychiatric field;

 

Logline with Core Wound:

The true story of a woman who bears betrayals, secrets and illness alone – until she uncovers the same patterns in the lives of herself, her mother and daughter. We follow her  through a maze of trauma, secrets, betrayal and illness that could have been avoided but wasn’t, passed down through generations as surely as DNA.  
 

Conditions for Inner Conflict/Societal Conflict:

Sick herself,  given a host of questionable medications, and hiding a major secret that set her apart from her peers and changed her life forever (groomed and assaulted by a trusted priest, but ignored by the Church that protected him instead of her), the protagonist sees her daughter, unconscious on a gurney in the ER after trying to kill herself. The daughter was recently raped –  at the same age as the protagonist had been; the daughter’s pediatrician had prescribed medication rather than therapy, saying it would “help her anxiety.” 

The protagonist thinks of herself as an empowered woman, despite her illness. Yet even when her instincts warn her that something is wrong, that what she is being told doesn’t add up to what she knows to be true, she tends to default to niceness: ignoring those instincts rather than speaking up, she silences herself, deferential and generous – allowing that the mistake might be hers – rather than offend them. 

That was also her mother’s example, Plus, the stories she was raised on – Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty – have reinforced the lesson to bear wrongs done to you silently and alone, and one day you will be rescued. But those were stories. There was no ER or medical system in Cinderella.

Though she doesn’t quite realize it consciously yet, she registers the coincidence …and just for a moment wonders if she has somehow taught her daughter to be the same way. But that can’t be true. She has raised her daughter to know that she can “do anything she sets her mind to.” That is also what she has been taught.

But seeing her daughter inert on a gurney, as still as Sleeping Beauty but adorned with tubes and monitors instead of roses and thorns, she realizes that silencing herself –irrevocably – is exactly what her daughter has tried to do. 

She doesn’t know how they got here, and she doesn’t know how to fix it.

***
 

As the story unfolds the protagonist finds eerie coincidences  between herself, her daughter, and her own mother: sexual assault, secrets, disease, and sins of omission or comission by doctors. It is too late to help her mother, but seeing her daughter in so much pain that she no longer wants to live, she begins to consider that all the niceness she can summon, has ever summoned, will not be enough to save her daughter. It doesn’t yet register that there must be millions of others who have faced the same thing.

SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT: The story takes place in an odd moment of liminality: women and people of color are finally told that they control their lives and bodies; but at the same time, they are warned to trust authority lest it turn on them. Be nice. Keep it secret – no one will believe you anyway. So up until #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, assaults were told privately if at all, and publicly went unreported and unpunished. 

The social environment changes over the course of the book, since it covers three generations. The priest who assaults the protagonist is the first brown-skinned clergy hired for a white congregation that prides itself on being progressive in the Civil Rights era; and the protagonist’s parens are also civil rights activists, invested and involved in the church’s work. The women’s equality movement is happening around the same time, and the protagonist grows up surrounded by theoretical feminism; but faced with the choice to heed a white girl’s story about being sexually assaulted or fire the priest of whom they are so proud to have hired, the church does nothing. (The larger Church will circle its wagons; but that priest will eventually do it again, several times. Forty years  later the protagonist will learn he has moved out of the country to avoid extradition after being banned from the priesthood in three U.S. states).

 

There is another factor in the social environment: absolute trust for authority, whether parental , employment, or – importantly – doctors and the larger medical system. Doctors do no harm. In the 60s, 70s, and on until the 2000s, faith in modern medicine is unquestioned, and Incident Reports (of malpractice, adverse reactions, or death) are private and sealed. 

 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was initially focused on veterans (shell shock; combat fatigue) and did not officially enter the broader psychiatric lexicon until 1980. Medications for the symptoms of PTSD have been judged “ineffective,” yet are still widely prescribed. Today, modern pharmaceuticals employ sophisticated marketing techniques to reach both consumers and their doctors. The top-selling drug in the U.S. is currently Humira, an immunosuppressant used both on-label and off-label to treat autoimmune conditions.  This will also become a factor, as the protagonist begins to question whether the expensive and toxic medications she takes – which have known, potentially deadly side effects – are even helping her.

 

But the protagonist’s family keeps its own secrets (do I share those in this assignment?) – which I could spell out, but the point is really that there is a cycle of trauma, secrets and betrayals – in life and in the medical system – that repeat themselves in uncanny ways across three generations of women. And potentially, in the lives of millions of others.

 

SETTING:

I am not quite sure how to answer this. Stay tuned!

 

[Allison Branscombe]

From Allison Branscombe:

Betta's Story: Identified as Jewish by Hitler

 

1. Story line

The book covers a year in the life of Elizabeth “Betta” Goldfarb and her family. Raised in the Catholic faith, Betta discovers her family is of Jewish heritage as Hitler moves to “annex” Austria into the Third Reich in 1938. As the Germans take over Austria, sudden changes occur to the family as they are forced to “become Jewish”. Her father’s businesses begin to fail and they lose friends not wanting to associate with them.  On November 9, 1938, Hitler’s Nazis carry out a campaign of terror against the Jews: Krystallnacht, when Nazis destroyed synagogues, Jewish homes and businesses all over Austria (and Germany). The reader witnesses the emotional identity crisis Betta experiences in the run up to this event, and fallout for the family in the short-term aftermath. 

 

2.      The antagonist

Hitler and the forces of evil he unleashes on the Jews forms the antagonist. He is able to orchestrate a campaign of fear, hate and unspeakable violence against Jews by convincing people that his mission to rid the country of Jews is a patriotic and noble cause.  Betta does not understand how people can fall victim to the power of his words of hate against innocent people. 

 

3.     Possible Titles

Betta’s Secret: Forced to be Jewish for Hitler

Betta’s Story: Identified as Jewish by Hitler

Betta’s Story: Becoming Jewish During Kristallnacht

 

4.      Comparables

I have yet not done the full research on Publishers Weekly of recent comparables for youth-oriented Holocaust novels, but as of about three years ago, these were three of the closest, and best literary novels that were of the most help in crafting my draft.  None covers the exact same period of time, nor the Kristallnacht.

a.      The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne, 2007

A third person voiced account of the friendship between two nine-year old boys, Bruno and Schmuel, built on opposite sides of a fence which led into a German concentration camp. The book has a stunning and emotional climax that affects Bruno’s family deeply. 

 

b.     The Tobacconist, by Robert Seethaler and Charlotte Collins, 2016

A vividly written personal account of life in Vienna, seen through the eyes of a 17 year old, Franz, who moved from the countryside to Vienna, as the Nazis were establishing a foothold  for their occupation.  

 

c.     What the Night Sings, by Vesper Stamper, 2018

The story of 15 year old Gerta, who learns she is Jewish only when she is taken to a concentration camp. Compelling detail of surviving life in the camp as a musician, plus the story of what post-concentration camp life meant for a Jewish person faced with anti-Semitism.

 

5.     Logline

Raised in the Catholic faith, Betta discovers her family’s roots are Jewish. She struggles with what this means to her, her family, good friends and acquaintances as Hitler annexes Austria into the Third Reich and persuades people to join his crusade to rid the world of Jews.    

 

6.     Inner conflict of protagonist

Betta has no idea what it means to be Jewish, nor does she comprehend the enormous power of a man bent of removing Jews from her country. She does not relate to being Jewish, and hates being stereotyped as one. Throughout the book, she struggles with the personal and impersonal impacts of this prejudice. 

Through various scenes, she comes to understand the personal power of hate and fear when it affects her teacher, and then her non-Jewish friends and acquaintances who suddenly want nothing to do with her or her family.  Her first encounter with this phenomenon is when her beloved teacher Herr Stein, who had been teaching his class about the impact of Hitler on Austria, mysteriously disappears.  Over a weekend, Fraulein Drumpf the school’s headmistress, replaced Stein with Herr Friedrich, who enters the class with a “Heil Hitler” salute to the bewildered class.  That Herr Stein would disappear without saying goodbye shakes Betta’s world. 

 

7.     Setting

The setting in Vienna allows for rich cinematic detail, with familiar buildings, landmarks, the Danube, her grandparents’ villa and other welcoming open spaces. These are contrasted with the damaged Goldfarb apartment, the curtains that Betta peeks through, and the light and dark shadows of that experience. Light and dark are one undercurrent in the book. 

 

[eursell44]

Response from Elisabeth Ursell for American Upside Down (historical fiction)

Assignment 1: Story Statement

Determined to prove herself adventurous, Rowena has just accepted a job in China on the cusp of the Covid-19 pandemic and must make a difficult choice: stay behind in America for a man she loves or move abroad for a new adventure. To help her make this choice, she revisits the life of her grandfather, Witold, a dual German-Polish citizen who during World War II evades a Nazi army summons and escapes Poland. Rowena ponders the question that no one in her family has been able to answer: why did Witold re-enter Poland knowing that he was a wanted man? Was it for love? The answer to this question could help Rowena understand why she doesn’t feel American, and why she wants to move to China so badly in the first place.

 

Assignment 2: Antagonists

My novel has a few antagonists, including:

Theo: Theo is Rowena’s boyfriend, whom she starts dating after accepting the job in China. He is driven by a need for family and tradition, and he cannot understand Rowena’s need to move abroad in the middle of a pandemic. He also belittles her way of dressing and her body, as well as her values, in a subtle attempt to undermine her identity and mold her more into someone similar to his ex-wife. He values grit and resilience above all else, even if it means overriding the nuances of pain. Above all else, he desires to re-create the image of the perfect family that he thinks he’s lost.

Henryk: Henryk is a young man who has just arrived from Poland to the United States and takes up a job as a live-in gardener for Ola, one of Witold’s friends from his Polish church. When Ola falls ill suddenly and Henryk inherits her house, Witold becomes suspicious of his motives. Rowena also senses that Henryk is not who he seems when she learns that he understands more English than he is letting on. Eventually, the extent of his manipulative nature comes to light when after Witold’s death, Rowena discovers Henryk taking things from her grandparents’ house under the guise of helping to clear out unwanted items. Henryk is motivated by money and by national pride. He wants to return to Poland as a wealthy and successful man to make up for everything his family lost during the war.  

The Nazis: The first threat appears as a silent one in the form of a military summons from the Nazis. Later, the SS guards who imprison and torture Witold serve as a physical manifestation of this antagonist. Through the rest of the war, the Nazis represent not only a threat to Witold and his family’s survival, also but force him to reaffirm and defend his identity as a Pole and not a German, despite his dual citizenship.  

The Communists: When Witold returns to Poland after the war, he faces the Communists as both his captors and torturers, but also as the reason that the woman he loves and came back for is someone he cannot be with. Later, the existence of the Communists also threatens his marriage, especially since his anti-Communist beliefs are seen by his mother-in-law as a threat to Irena’s safety. The Communists also make it nearly impossible for Witold to find a job or send his children to a good school. 

 

Assignment 3: Breakout Title

·      American Upside Down

·      Bloodplace

·      The Unpolished Patriot

 

The first title is focused on a recurring theme of the novel: that Witold’s favorite flower, the orchid, will invert itself through a process called resupination in order to receive more sunlight and grow. It is a play on the idea that in order to understand our identity, we have to turn what we assume about ourselves upside down in order to learn our own truths.

 Bloodplace is a play on a line from the book, which distinguishes Witold’s birthplace (Germany) from the place he identifies as home (Poland). To him, Poland is where he literally sheds his blood and feels that he belongs. 

 The third title is a play on words. Polish is the only word in English that changes meaning based on capitalization, so in this case it implies two things: to distance oneself from the act of being a Polish patriot, and to be “unpolished” or rough. The second meaning ties closely to the idea of becoming an American and how the immigrant experience can deconstruct one’s previously held identities.

Assignment 4: Comparables

All the Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer: Like my novel, this book alternates between the present time and World War II to show how a grandmother and granddaughter are connected. This book centers around a love story, which is also central to the theme of my novel. Like my novel, this one focuses on unanswered questions about family history. 

The Nesting Dolls by Alina Adams: This novel, like mine, describes how different generations of a family are interconnected by their traumas. It focuses mostly on the oppression of living through Soviet times, and similar to my book, touches on themes of love and marriage. In particular, the main characters in the book make choices about love based on the experiences and advice of their family members. 

Assignment 5: Hook/Logline

After accepting a job in China on the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic, Rowena must choose between love and a new life abroad while examining her grandfather’s past decision to flee Communist Poland for the United States.

Assignment 6: Primary and Secondary Conflict

Rowena’s primary conflict is determining how she identifies as an American and why her Polish heritage often conflicts with it. She believes that due to the immense suffering and perseverance of her grandfather during WWII, she must also suffer in order to deserve her own dreams, such as living abroad. When she accepts a job in China during covid-19, the border closes and her dream is deferred for months on end, which forces her to question why she wants to go so badly in the first place. She feels that she must prove herself resilient in order to honor her grandfather’s memory, and that she must also prove her identity as both an American and a Pole. 

Her secondary conflict is that she also deeply believes in true love and finds it difficult to choose between love from another and love for herself. Theo presents her with a constant challenge to choosing herself since he believes that tradition and family should come above all else, even one’s dreams. In any situation where Rowena must sacrifice something in the name of love, she believes that she is encountering this choice and that it is a necessary part of love. 

Witold believes that if he keeps fighting for his native country, Poland, that eventually justice will be found. However, after the immense losses of the Warsaw Uprising and watching his own people working for the Germans, Witold finds that he is running out of faith in the Underground that he has sworn his life to. 

Witold’s secondary conflict, which mirrors Rowena’s, is that he must choose between love for a woman and allegiance to his convictions about his national identity. When the Nazis’ discovery of his undercover role in the Underground forces him to flee Poland on foot, he must choose whether or not to re-enter the country to reunite with the woman he has fallen in love with. 

Final Assignment: Setting

The novel opens with Rowena standing at the banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, staring at the iconic Pearl Tower. Rowena is on the Bund, the former financial district of the city, to take in the skyline of her potential new home. Shanghai is a city where new meets old: busy shopping streets and narrow alleys full of soup dumplings and bubble tea, along with soaring skyscrapers and old lane homes. One big difference between China and the US is the use of megaphones and loud, repetitive announcements to convey information to the public. Rental bicycles are lying on every street corner, and e-bikes (what we’d call mopeds) clog the streets. The backdrop of the city and its transition from busy to quiet is used to show that that a huge change is coming, since the normally busy Bund is empty. 

The later scenes in Rowena’s timeline take place primarily in Philadelphia, including a barcade. Philly is a bar-centric city with strong opinions about food. The long lines at the rival cheesesteak stores, Pat’s and Gino’s, are used to mirror the inner tension in Rowena as she wrestles with whether or not to take the job in China during a pandemic. The pandemic is hinted at in the backdrop through the mention of hand sanitizer at the entrance to the supermarket and mandatory masking. Further use of Philly as a setting could include the nearby casino, the subway system (which becomes nearly abandoned during the pandemic), and the growing opioid epidemic in Kensington, where Rowena lives and regularly encounters the homeless. 

The famed Benjamin Franklin bridge is where Theo and Rowena run together during the early days of the pandemic, and also where they share their first kiss. The bridge offers a stunning view of the city during sunset. The sun reflects off the large windows of the Comcast building, the tallest building in Center City.  On one side of the bridge is Camden, a city many locals avoid due to crime, and on the other is Philly. When running, Theo and Rowena always stop short of the Camden side and turn around. This could possibly symbolize that there is some dark place in their own relationship that they don’t want to venture into. 

Witold’s scenes primarily take place in WWII Poland. He grew up in Poznan in a small apartment near the river. The apartment is small and depends on coal for heating. There are no supermarkets, so food is purchased fresh at the local market. Witold later escapes Poland’s southern border through the Carpathian Mountains, which make up the tallest mountain range in Poland. The winters in Poland are very harsh, and throughout the war lead to conditions that are difficult to survive as Witold evades the Germans. The extensive forest also drives the plot since it allows Witold and the other underground soldiers to hide and evade capture. The forest is where Witold hones his survival and combat skills. One aspect of the forest that could be emphasized more is that Witold knows the names of the many different mushrooms and berries in the forest and which ones are poisonous or not due to his training. Some of these mushrooms keep him alive. 

Later, Witold moves to Bloomfield, New Jersey. Northern New Jersey is full of strip malls and cars. Witold finds driving to be daunting at first and hesitates to learn how to drive, resorting to tailgating as his own unusual way to seek justice against bad drivers who cut him off. There is a local Polish church in an old municipal building in Boonton, but apart from that, Witold cannot understand the majority of the signs he sees. He struggles to complete basic errands like buying groceries since he is not used to so many choices, like wandering large supermarkets full of plastic packaging. New Jersey also serves as the setting for several scenes in Rowena’s timeline, including a scene shooting at a local gun range in the more rural West Milford, and driving scenes that involve speeding down route 80, a famous east-west highway known for fast drivers. Lastly, the chain restaurant Panera is referenced and serves as a setting for Rowena’s confrontation with her own beliefs about religion and her own bodily autonomy, since it is where she meets a dishwasher and begins smoking with him near the dumpsters behind the restaurant

[Lora D.]

Response from Lora Danley for From Apocalypse to Anu (epic fantasy)

First Assignment: Story statement

After surviving a deadly virus, Cody Armstrong discovers he must prevent the universe from being controlled by an evil alien species called the Drods. 

 

Second Assignment: Antagonist 

Because of its many portals, Earth is the key to controlling the universe as the Drods wish to do. Their leader, Dedron, is a conglomerate of four powerful Drods that can combine and separate at will.  Dedron stands as tall as four humans with the appropriate accompanying width and is dark grey in color with a bulbous head, hollow eyes, and spindly arms and legs.  

Dedron is seeking revenge for the four millennia the Drods have spent in isolation as punishment for their last attempt to control Earth.  Dedron has become very powerful due to their constant association with the dark part of the Source, a realm accessible to all beings through meditation.  A recent cosmic event has made the Drods rich with resources, and Dedron has begun their quest in earnest, starting with a virus that kills most of the humans on Earth.  

Dedron’s singular goal is complete control of the universe so that the Drods may have an easy and carefree life made possible by enslaving others.  One of the four Drods that comprise Dedron is the father of Aradne, a half-Drod being who according to ancient prophecy is supposed to work with Cody to defeat Dedron.   

 

Third Assignment: Breakout Title

From Apocalypse to Anu (first choice) 

The Legend of the Ones

 

Fourth Assignment:  Comp Titles

My novel has elements of the philosophy of Contact by Carl Sagan with a narrator and a quest that are reminiscent of Ready Player One by Matt Weir.

 

Fifth Assignment: Logline

A lonely misfit must overcome his difficulties in relating to others to lead a team responsible for defeating an evil alien species that is trying to gain complete control of the universe.  

 

Sixth Assignment:  Inner Conflict and Secondary Conflict

Inner Conflict:  Cody feels unworthy of his mission and is constantly striving to prove to himself that he is. He is frustrated if he cannot complete a specific task with ease and compares himself unfavorably to his companions.  He is paired with the beautiful alien Aradne to complete his quest and together they form “the Ones,” those who have been chosen by prophecy to lead the fight to save the universe.  While Cody considers Aradne his girlfriend, a second level of inner conflict exists as he is feels that he is better understood by Trudy, a practical and wise woman who is one of the humans accompanying them on their mission. 

While training for his mission, Cody is given the task to walk on water, but no instructions as to how to do it.  He watches helplessly as the others do it with ease, but he is not able to believe in himself enough to complete the task.  In the end, his frustration reaches a boiling point, and he lets out a primordial scream.  While he then accomplishes the task, he is admonished by his mentor for using anger instead of love.  

 

Secondary conflict:  Cody is forever feeling inferior to his close companions, Bart, who is able to pick up any skill or fix anything nearly instantly and Gurgla, a juvenile alien who possesses many abilities and talents at a young age that go far beyond those of any human.  Cody met Gurgla and Bart soon after surviving the virus and along with Bart’s wife Jenny, they have formed a tight-knit family. Cody is conflicted because he is jealous of yet thankful for his newfound family.

Cody was the last to master the task of walking on water and when he finally joins the others, he is upset that everyone else has arrived before him.  He is unhappy that Bart and Jenny walked ahead of him without ensuring that he was able to follow.  Bart welcomes him with open arms as he, Jenny, and Trudy trade stories with the others of what it felt like.   Instead of joining them, Cody sits by himself and sulks because Bart and the others have bested him when he assumed he would finish first owing to his rather instant success at the previous task.  

 

Seventh Assignment: Setting

One of the primary settings of the novel is post-apocalyptic Earth.  A virus has killed almost all of the humans instantly, and so bodies are everywhere, stopped in whatever action they had been taking at the fatal moment. Strangely, many of the animals seem to have disappeared as well, and so the world has descended into an eerie silence with people in various states of decay scattered throughout it.  The stench is awful in areas where bodies are plentiful, but in the midst of the San Bernardino mountains, where Cody first lives with Gurgla, Bart, and Jenny, there are no people and thus no smell.  A few smaller animals roam the area, but no alpha predators are encountered.  

 

Much later in the novel, the setting switches to the several of the main tourist areas in Egypt: the Luxor Temple and the Great Pyramids.  As these attractions were closed to the public during the initial stages of the viral outbreak when only small numbers of people died, they are devoid of humans save a few decaying security guards.  The final version of Earth presented in the novel is an alternate Earth which is very much like our Earth except that there is no pollution and certain circumstances are different for Cody and some of the other characters.  

 

Cody, Bart, Jenny, Gurgla, and the others prepare for their mission on the planet of Elthea which looks like a sea green version of Oz.  Everything sparkles because of Meesa, a green glitter like dust that permeates the atmosphere and obliterates the need for oxygen or food by providing energy directly to those who inhale it.  There is very little vegetation there since there is no need to eat, and animals exist only as pets.  Buildings look like small castles and are made of stone, however there are many areas in Elthea that materialize and dematerialize according to the needs of the trainees:  small stone rooms, tiny islands, entirely white spaces with puffy white cubes and white mist on the floor, deserts with skies that go on forever, and a giant courtyard used for games and meditation.  

 

The main characters spend some time on Beylon where they meet many other types of aliens.  Beylon is an artificial moon that serves as a trading post for the universe and while you can’t get valuable substances such as Meesa there, you can get just about everything else including highly realistic humanoid robots.  The Hotel Ginzi on Beylon has sleeping quarters for rent as well as a bar with food and drinks that no Earthling has ever before tasted.  All food is vegan to avoid offending any aliens by consuming their evolutionary predecessors.  Rooms feature twelve sleeping pods arranged around a common area, so that guests can get to know aliens of other species. Beylon also has areas for relaxation, for games, and a Dome Room which is similar to a house of pleasure.