Algonkian Retreats and Workshops - Assignments 2024

[EditorAdmin]

Introduction to Pre-event Assignments 

The below seven assignments are vital to reaching an understanding of specific and critical core elements that go into the creation of a commercially viable genre novel or narrative non-fiction. Of course, there is more to it than this, as you will see, but here we have a good primer that assures we're literally all on the same page before the event begins.

You may return here as many times as you need to edit your topic post (login and click "edit"). Pay special attention to antagonists, setting, conflict and core wound hooks.

And btw, quiet novels do not sell. Keep that in mind and be aggressive with your work.

Michael Neff

Algonkian Conference Director

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THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT

Before you begin to consider or rewrite your story premise, you must develop a simple "story statement." In other words, what's the mission of your protagonist? The goal? What must be done?

What must this person create? Save? Restore? Accomplish? Defeat?... Defy the dictator of the city and her bury brother’s body (ANTIGONE)? Struggle for control over the asylum (ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST)? Do whatever it takes to recover lost love (THE GREAT GATSBY)? Save the farm and live to tell the story (COLD MOUNTAIN)? Find the wizard and a way home to Kansas (WIZARD OF OZ)? Note that all of these are books with strong antagonists who drive the plot line (see also "Core Wounds and Conflict Lines" below).

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. 

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THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT

(Photo : Javert from "Les Misérables")

What are the odds of you having your manuscript published if the overall story and narrative fail to meet publisher demands for sufficient suspense, character concern, and conflict? Answer: none. You might therefore ask, what major factor makes for a quiet and dull manuscript brimming with insipid characters and a story that cascades from chapter to chapter with tens of thousands of words, all of them combining irresistibly to produce an audible thudding sound in the mind like a mallet hitting a side of cold beef? Answer: the unwillingness or inability of the writer to create a suitable antagonist who stirs and spices the plot hash.

Let's make it clear what we're talking about.

By "antagonist" we specifically refer to an actual fictional character, an embodiment of certain traits and motivations who plays a significant role in catalyzing and energizing plot line(s), or at bare minimum, in assisting to evolve the protagonist's character arc (and by default the story itself) by igniting complication(s) the protagonist, and possibly other characters, must face and solve (or fail to solve).

CONTINUE READING ENTIRE ARTICLE AT NWOE THEN RETURN HERE.

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.

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CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE

What is your breakout title? How important is a great title before you even become published? Very important! Quite often, agents and editors will get a feel for a work and even sense the marketing potential just from a title. A title has the ability to attract and condition the reader's attention. It can be magical or thud like a bag of wet chalk, so choose carefully. A poor title sends the clear message that what comes after will also be of poor quality.

Go to Amazon.Com and research a good share of titles in your genre, come up with options, write them down and let them simmer for at least 24 hours. Consider character or place names, settings, or a "label" that describes a major character, like THE ENGLISH PATIENT or THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST. Consider also images, objects, or metaphors in the novel that might help create a title, or perhaps a quotation from another source (poetry, the Bible, etc.) that thematically represents your story. Or how about a title that summarizes the whole story: THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, etc.

Keep in mind that the difference between a mediocre title and a great title is the difference between THE DEAD GIRL'S SKELETON and THE LOVELY BONES, between TIME TO LOVE THAT CHOLERA and LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA between STRANGERS FROM WITHIN (Golding's original title) and LORD OF THE FLIES, between BEING LIGHT AND UNBEARABLE and THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING.

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

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DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES

Did you know that a high percentage of new novel writers don't fully understand their genre, much less comprehend comparables? When informing professionals about the nuances of your novel, whether by query letter or oral pitch, you must know your genre first, and provide smart comparables second. In other words, you need to transcend just a simple statement of genre (literary, mystery, thriller, romance, science fiction, etc.) by identifying and relating your novel more specifically to each publisher's or agent's area of expertise, and you accomplish this by wisely comparing your novel to contemporary published novels they will most likely recognize and appreciate--and it usually doesn't take more than two good comps to make your point.

Agents and publishing house editors always want to know the comps. There is more than one reason for this. First, it helps them understand your readership, and thus how to position your work for the market. Secondly, it demonstrates up front that you are a professional who understands your contemporary market, not just the classics. Very important! And finally, it serves as a tool to enable them to pitch your novel to the decision-makers in the business.

Most likely you will need to research your comps. If you're not sure how to begin, go to Amazon.Com, type in the title of a novel you believe very similar to yours, choose it, then scroll down the page to see Amazon's list of "Readers Also Bought This" and begin your search that way. Keep in mind that before you begin, you should know enough about your own novel to make the comparison in the first place!

By the way, beware of using comparables by overly popular and classic authors. If you compare your work to classic authors like H.G. Wells and Gabriel Marquez in the same breath you will risk being declared insane. If you compare your work to huge contemporary authors like Nick Hornby or Jodi Picoult or Nora Ephron or Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling, and so forth, you will not be laughed at, but you will also not be taken seriously since thousands of others compare their work to the same writers. Best to use two rising stars in your genre. If you can't do this, use only one classic or popular author and combine with a rising star. Choose carefully!

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?

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CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT 

Conflict, tension, complication, drama--all basically related, and all going a long way to keeping the reader's eyes fixated on your story. These days, serving up a big manuscript of quiet is a sure path to damnation. You need tension on the page at all times, and the best way to accomplish this is to create conflict and complications in the plot and narrative. Consider "conflict" divided into three parts, all of which you MUST have present in the novel. First part, the primary dramatic conflict which drives through the work from beginning to end, from first major plot point to final reversal, and finally resolving with an important climax. Next, secondary conflicts or complications that take various social forms - anything from a vigorous love subplot to family issues to turmoil with fellow characters. Finally, those various inner conflicts and core wounds all important characters must endure and resolve as the story moves forward.

But now, back to the PRIMARY DRAMATIC CONFLICT. If you've taken care to consider your story description and your hook line, you should be able to identify your main conflict(s). Let's look at some basic information regarding the history of conflict in storytelling. Conflict was first described in ancient Greek literature as the agon, or central contest in tragedy. According to Aristotle, in order to hold the interest, the hero must have a single conflict. The agon, or act of conflict, involves the protagonist (the "first fighter" or "hero") and the antagonist corresponding to the villain (whatever form that takes). The outcome of the contest cannot be known in advance, and, according to later drama critics such as Plutarch, the hero's struggle should be ennobling. Is that always true these days? Not always, but let's move on.

Even in contemporary, non-dramatic literature, critics have observed that the agon is the central unit of the plot. The easier it is for the protagonist to triumph, the less value there is in the drama. In internal and external conflict alike, the antagonist must act upon the protagonist and must seem at first to overmatch him or her. The above defines classic drama that creates conflict with real stakes. You see it everywhere, to one degree or another, from classic contemporary westerns like THE SAVAGE BREED to a time-tested novel as literary as THE GREAT GATSBY. And of course, you need to have conflict or complications in nonfiction also, in some form, or you have a story that is too quiet.

For examples let's return to the story descriptions and create some HOOK LINES. Let's don't forget to consider the "core wound" of the protagonist. Please read this article at NWOE then return here.

• The Hand of Fatima by Ildefonso Falcones
• A young Moor torn between Islam and Christianity, scorned and tormented by both, struggles to bridge the two faiths by seeking common ground in the very nature of God.
• Summer's Sisters by Judy Blume
• After sharing a magical summer with a friend, a young woman must confront her friend's betrayal of her with the man she loved.
• The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
• As an apprentice mage seeks revenge on an elder magician who humiliated him, he unleashes a powerful Djinn who joins the mage to confront a danger that threatens their entire world.

Note that it is fairly easy to ascertain the stakes in each case above: a young woman's love and friendship, the entire world, and harmony between opposed religions. If you cannot make the stakes clear, the odds are you don't have any. Also, is the core wound obvious or implied?

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.

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OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS

As noted above, consider "conflict" divided into three parts, all of which you should ideally have present. First, the primary conflict which drives through the core of the work from beginning to end and which zeniths with an important climax (falling action and denouement to follow). Next, secondary conflicts or complications which can take various social forms (anything from a vigorous love subplot to family issues to turmoil with fellow characters). Finally, those inner conflicts the major characters must endure and resolve. You must note the inner personal conflicts elsewhere in this profile, but make certain to note any important interpersonal conflicts within this particular category."

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?

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THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING

When considering your novel, whether taking place in a contemporary urban world or on a distant magical planet in Andromeda, you must first sketch the best overall setting and sub-settings for your story. Consider: the more unique and intriguing (or quirky) your setting, the more easily you're able to create energetic scenes, narrative, and overall story. A great setting maximizes opportunities for interesting characters, circumstances, and complications, and therefore makes your writing life so much easier. Imagination is truly your best friend when it comes to writing competitive fiction, and nothing provides a stronger foundation than a great setting. One of the best selling contemporary novels, THE HUNGER GAMES, is driven by the circumstances of the setting, and the characters are a product of that unique environment, the plot also.

But even if you're not writing SF/F, the choice of setting is just as important, perhaps even more so. If you must place your upmarket story in a sleepy little town in Maine winter, then choose a setting within that town that maximizes opportunities for verve and conflict, for example, a bed and breakfast stocked to the ceiling with odd characters who combine to create comical, suspenseful, dangerous or difficult complications or subplot reversals that the bewildered and sympathetic protagonist must endure and resolve while he or she is perhaps engaged in a bigger plot line: restarting an old love affair, reuniting with a family member, starting a new business, etc. And don't forget that non-gratuitous sex goes a long way, especially for American readers.

CONTINUE TO READ THIS ARTICLE THEN RETURN.

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.

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Below are several links to part of an article or whole articles that we feel are the most valuable for memoir writers.

We have reviewed these and agree 110%.

MEMOIR WRITING - CHOOSE A SPECIFIC EVENT (good general primer)

How to Write a Memoir That People Care About | NY Book Editors

NYBOOKEDITORS.COM

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Are you thinking of writing a memoir but you're stuck? We've got the remedy. Check out our beginner's guide on writing an epic and engaging memoir.

MEMOIR MUST INCLUDE TRANSCENDENCE

Writing Memoir? Include Transcendence - Memoir coach and author Marion Roach

MARIONROACH.COM

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MEMOIR REQUIRES TRANSCENDENCE. Something has to happen. Or shift. Someone has to change a little. Or grow. It’s the bare hack minimum of memoir.

WRITE IT LIKE A NOVEL

How to Write a Powerful Memoir in 5 Simple Steps

JERRYJENKINS.COM

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When it comes to writing a memoir, there are 5 things you need to focus on. If you do, your powerful story will have the best chance of impacting others.

MEMOIR ANECDOTES - HOW TO MAKE THEM SHINE

How to Write an Anecdote That Makes Your Nonfiction Come Alive

JERRYJENKINS.COM

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Knowing how to write an anecdote lets you utilize the power of story with your nonfiction and engage your reader from the first page.

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[Macen]

I wasn't too sure on how much or how little to write for the story statement. I suppose it could be a lot less but here's what I have so far:

STORY STATEMENT:  A reprimanded cop in a gritty future must rescue the governor's daughter or lose her retirement benefits and remain stuck on a earth.  (It's more or less, "Save the girl or you're screwed." which blossoms into a more complicated plot later.)

ANTAGONIST:  With the charisma of Charles Manson and the guile of Shoko Asahara, Syd Magnus is a popular thought leader dubbed domestic terrorist by the government. Head of the dissident group Children of the Dome, Syd advocates for a repeal of the harsh restrictions on dome resources, persecution of meta-sapiens, and an end to the lottery based economy.

     He gains the support of the people by hijacking food and medical resources, redistributing them to those residing in the lower levels of the dome.  behind the scenes however, he utilizes mercenaries to steal implants from citizens and sabotages infrastructure in the upper levels.  Ultimately he seeks to create a state of total anarchy where he can rule over the chaos.  

     His personality profile is ENFP as he is very charismatic and open to his followers, able to understand and empathize with others easily.  His enneagram is 4w9; he’s very driven to have an impact on the world and leave behind some kind of legacy. Born in the wasteland, he eventually found his way to the dome’s underbelly where he discovered the disparity between those living in Junktown beneath the city and those all the way at the top.

BREAKOUT TITLE: 

1) City of Lost Souls (It's a play on Los Angeles as this the story's setting)

2) Flatliner (In the story's future, killing is called flatlining and the MC's job is to flatline criminals too dangerous to apprehend)

3) Deadlined  (A military term for equipment that is non-mission capable; a play on the MC's status because her retirement is suspended and because she often renders cyborgs deadlined)

4) Shadow Stalker: Exodus (The MC's position within the police is that of a Shadow Stalker and her goal is Exodus to Mars.) I think this is the one I'm going with since I'm planning a series. The first book is Exodus (mc goes to Mars), second is Advent (mc returns to Earth), and third is Genesis (everything changes including the mc).

COMPARABLES - WIP

1) Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan-- The world is similar; distant future of humanity; extraterrestrial influence; the meaning of existence has changed; there's a caste system; body augmentation is common; it's gritty cyberpunk themed.

2) The Shard by Gabrielle Snyder; similar genre; cyberpunk; gritty

3) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick-- Similar concept; special police hunt  fugitives with superhuman capabilities; humanity is questioned; 

4) Neuromancer by William Gibson; core cyberpunk themes

HOOK LINE

Reprimanded for excessive force, a detective on a dystopian Earth with a sick child in tow must get offworld to find the cure, but when a politician’s daughter goes missing she is forced to solve one last case before they’ll let her leave.

CONFLICT (So my primary conflict is made up of several obstacles which I have to distinguish from being secondary conflict. As part of the primary conflict, the MC has to find and rescue the kidnap vicitim, stop an ancient weapon of war, and stop a virus all so she can complete her main goal of getting her son to Mars.)

Primary: Kenisha has to do the government’s bidding or they will take away her one chance to cure her son’s illness. Her main function within the department is that of a Shadow Stalker–to hunt down and terminate fugitive metahumans and illegally modified cyborg criminals. This problem magnifies in scale from simply following orders and investigating a case outside her jurisdiction (find and rescue the governor’s kidnapped daughter) to stopping a terror plot that involves a viral weapon of mass destruction. Warned not to fly off the handle, Kenisha still needs to do things her way because she’s running out of time and the stakes have increased considerably. Angered because the case keeps growing into more work she is constantly struggling with a desire to resolve things in the most violent ways possible to expedite closure.

Secondary:  Her son has Addelburgh Syndrome a genetic mutation caused from living in the dome. It is the primary cause of meta-sapiens (mutants) which have to be registered and forced to live under restrictive conditions or face termination.  As it is Kenisha’s main job to hunt down unregistered meta-sapiens, she doesn’t want this fate for her son. A cure allegedly exists on Mars, but those who have already transformed aren’t allowed to leave Earth. While she is stuck doing the governor’s bidding, her son’s condition is rapidly worsening. Additionally, she has a strong prejudice against sentient androids which are a common part of the workforce. Her late husband was murdered by hacked androids used to gut him for his implants.

Interpersonal Conflicts:

-A stern but loving mother, Kenisha constantly battles between the two sides of her persona for her son’s sake.  By day, she is a shadow stalking killing machine; by night she becomes the compassionate mom with the aid of cyber-synaptic repressor drugs. 

-She has somewhat of a father-daughter relationship with her boss, Chief Flannigan, but over the years her disregard for the rules has strained things. With the magnitude of this latest case, his hands are tied leaving him with little room to protect her should she go astray. He is also hesitant to lose his best Shadow Stalker.

-Syd Magnus, the main antagonist is the estranged half-brother of the Dome’s governor. Syd wants revenge for having been left behind to die in the wasteland years ago, when his brother fled for the dome. Syd’s relationship to the governor is unknown by virtually everyone in the dome. Also, unbeknownst to the main character, it was Syd's doing the led to the murder of her husband.

-Sari, the governor’s daughter has long been the compassionate face of the governor’s cabinet, however she is unwittingly converted to Syd’s radical organization, developing Stockholm syndrome which complicates her rescue.

-Kenisha’s new partner, Saiko is a pre-dome cyber soldier. Due to the age of his implants and wartime trauma, he is more unhinged than she ever appears to be. Ironically, Kenisha is often forced to rein him in.

Hypothetically, the MC's son's illness could advance faster than she anticipates forcing her to conceal his condition from the police for fear of him being taken away or executed. Also, it could prevent her from taking him to Mars should she finally complete the case and receive her exodus.

SETTING

     The year is 2330.  Over a hundred years since the Last Great War and an extraterrestrial event known as the Arrival, mankind has coalesced into pockets of totalitarianism, composed of hermetically sealed domes encapsulating all that remains of Earth’s humanity.  Only a few major hubs remain on each continent.  Outside the domes awaits an unpleasant wasteland for those who dare, populated by freak mutations and wandering military combat drones in the wake of nuclear tumbleweeds.  

     The massive population clusters that gathered under the safety of the domes saw a boom in technology leading up to the war, fought over resources and land as the world’s population soared.  Fearing an extinction event, extraterrestrial visitors known only as the Overseers arrived to end the fighting but in doing so, dragged Kuiper Belt objects with them raining intense meteor showers onto the Earth.  Having worsened the situation, it is believed they constructed the domes as rectification. 

     The Last War as it has been named in history books, ushered in new technologies such as self aware automatons, cybernetic augmentation, and genetic manipulation.  Flying cars and the neural data network have given way to a society at peak levels of interaction and productivity limited only by resource availability and the confined space of this new habitat crafted by aliens.

     Inside the Nuevos Angeles dome, an arcology stretching kilometers into the sky, three levels of society exist on tremendous platforms extending to the dome’s top. Nearest the bottom are the Grubs; those who rely heavily upon social assistance to survive, otherwise etching out a living as low level maintenance workers and insect farmers. At the center, the Grinders; the skilled labor force of the dome. And at the top, the Boujees; the social elite, mostly heads of government and titans of industry. The three levels within, referred to as zones are connected by a large tube at the center, using lifts powered by artificial gravity generated by the dome itself.  With social disparity at its limits, those residing below zone one are forced to play the lottery system for things as basic as groceries to more complex such as health care and retirement.  While each level could be a small nation on its own, given the differences in architecture, sociocultural norms, and even language, they all fall under the rule of one man–the dome’s governor, a position he holds for life, usually ending when he appoints a successor.

     Due to overcrowding, crime is near uncontrollable. Add mutant renegades who refuse persecution, cyber enhanced thieves, and glitched a.i.’s and it descends into a state of near anarchy. To combat this problem the dome government instituted the Heinous Crimes Unit, an elite organization of police known as Shadow Stalkers tasked with tracking and eliminating upgraded fugitives deemed too difficult to apprehend.

     Outside the dome—wasteland; hellish earth, populated by post and pre-war hazards, scavenger gangs, and mutant exiles from the dome. A place where the skies burn red choked with black clouds. Those who are able have migrated to Mars, a now terraformed paradise also gifted by the alien visitors. To ensure its purity, harsh restrictions must be met and mutants are prohibited. As extra precaution, the dome governments of the world have collectively set standards to prevent the ruination of Mars. Primarily, completion of a 30 year government service contract for non-hazardous duty; 20 for hazardous. Those not in service to their birth dome, play the lottery. At most, a tenth of a percent of any Dome is permitted exodus to Mars each year.

[reenita]

Okay here goes, I too am not sure if this is too little or...well I assume it can't be too much!
 

Alongkian - Seven short assignments

1. Story statement

Shadow Realm is the magical coming-of-age tale of Arya, who, ridiculed by bullies and haunted by his inner demons of anger, insecurity and reactiveness, rebels against the healing mythology of his Indian upbringing. Anything to do with his ethnicity, traditions or the fascinating mythological stories he has been raised with, has become the building block of unpleasant experiences. In a moment of anger, he causes an accident that confines his once-vibrant mother to a coma, Arya clings to the only remnant of their bond: an old, battered copy of the Ramayana, India’s ancient epic story of Rama’s battle against demons. So he picks up the mythology book in an attempt to cure her with its healing verses but finds himself tunneled into the world of its stories. There, Ravana, the demon king, strategizes to destroy his Ramayana, the very last copy in existence, and threatens to rewrite history from his evil perspective. Will Arya be able to battle with this fierce 10-headed demon to save the story of Rama in order to save his mother, and learn how to tackle the demons back home in his ordinary world? 

 

2. Ravana - the antagonist

Ravana, the ten-headed demon of Ramayana mythology, is not merely a relic of ancient tales but a resurgent force, hungry for control and power. Though once vanquished by Rama in the days of old, he has returned with a sinister agenda.

Ravana has a voracious appetite for crushing any potential 'Ram-like' forces, and he has set his malevolent sights on Arya, an ordinary teenager in a modern world. In Arya's unremarkable life, Ravana sends his demons, disguised as ordinary challenges, to thwart him at every turn.

In the realm of myth and fantasy, Ravana harbors a grander ambition: to steal Arya's last remaining copy of the epic Ramayana. With it, he intends to rewrite history from his evil perspective, a tale where he emerges victorious. This treasured artifact is the key to his wicked plan.

When Arya confronts Ravana in the mystical wild woods, he discovers not the stereotypical ten-headed demon, but rather ten manifestations of Ravana's sinister essence. Each head represents a facet of evil—The Boys, Athena, the doctor who wants to end his mother's life support, and the tenth head, Arya's own shadow self.

Ravana's power lies in the uncanny ability to regenerate heads with every defeat, making him seemingly invincible. Arya understands that to truly defeat Ravana, he must target the core, the tenth manifestation—the embodiment of what Ravana wants Arya to become, his shadow self. This is the battle that will determine the fate of both worlds and the young hero's soul.

 

3. Breakout title

1. Shadow Realm 

2. The Arya Chronicles - Book 1

3. Arya Rising

I like 1. the best - I think it gives readers the opportunity to identify with the story and possibly explore the meaning of the own Shadow Realm.

 

4. Comps

Good comps would be:

• Atlantis Rising by T.A. Barron - similar to Percy, mythology based, etc.
• Charlie Hernández & the League of Shadows by Ryan Calejo - uses Hispanic mythology as part of the story
• Loki's Wolves by K. L. Armstrong and Melissa Marr - similar to the above, but follows Norse mythology
• The Serpent's Secret by Sayantani DasGupta, an even closer comp that uses Indian mythology to tell the story
• When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller

 

5. Core wound (log line)

When an angry, rebellious teen Arya causes an accident confining his Ma to a coma, he must battle the 10 - headed demon king in the land of the Ramayana mythology, in order to learn how to conquer his inner demon before journeying home to save his Ma.

 

6. Arya’s conflict

Arya's first conflict is a multifaceted battle that rages both within and outside of him. In his real life, he grapples with the relentless torment of bullies who target him because of his unique identity. The stories of his Indian heritage, deeply ingrained in mythological tales, have become the very foundation of his unpleasant experiences at school. Each mention of his identity serves as a painful reminder of the relentless bullying he endures, creating a rift between his heritage and his everyday life.

His secondary conflict is rooted in the heartbreaking condition of his comatose mother. The relentless pressure from the doctor to withdraw life support fuels Arya's belief that the medical professional is akin to a malevolent demon intent on ending his mother's life. This perception extends to his father, who seems to be leaning toward the doctor's perspective. Arya's world unravels as he desperately seeks to save his mother from what he perceives as impending doom.

Amidst the trials and tribulations of his journey in the Wild Woods, Arya confronts two profound truths that are intrinsically linked to these conflicts:

• Arya learns the art of conquering demons, not just the external adversaries he faces, but more significantly, his own inner demon. Through his trials and encounters, he must find the strength to overcome the tormentors who haunt his everyday life and, in doing so, vanquish the self-doubt and insecurity that have plagued him.
• Arya discovers that to truly 'save' his mother, he must find the courage to let her go. This heart-wrenching decision is rooted in the understanding that only by releasing her from the physical world can she embrace her True Self and exist in a state of eternal bliss within the mystical realm of the Wild Woods. This profound realization tests Arya's emotional resilience and forces him to confront the complexities of love, loss, and the journey to self-discovery.

 

7. Story setting

Arya's reality is a tapestry woven from the threads of immigrant dreams and first-generation identity. San Francisco, once a beacon of hope, now stands as a testament to faded grandeur, bearing the scars of both the California gold rush and the relentless modern tech boom. The city's vibrancy is tinged with decay, danger, and the haunting specter of social problems deeply entrenched in its fabric.

Yet, in the expanse of the Wild Woods, the realm of ancient Ramayana stories, a different tapestry unfolds. This mythical world teems with fantastical characters, breathing life into the tales of yore. Here, Arya encounters Rishiji, an ageless sorcerer-sage who has walked the earth for millennia, imparting ancient warrior wisdom to Prince Rama himself. The Medicine Woman, a mystical figure, reveals herself as the embodiment of  his mother’s True Self. 

Among the towering trees, Arya crosses paths with the enigmatic Banaras , beings caught between man and monkey, who once formed an army under Hanuman's leadership in the Ramayana. Yet, lurking in the shadows are the Rakshasas, menacing demons that haunt the depths of the forest, presenting both threats and allies.

And then there is Ravana, the ten-headed demon king, whose relentless pursuit of power drives him to plot the destruction of Arya's cherished Ramayana, the last surviving copy. With malevolent intent, he seeks to rewrite history from his nefarious vantage point, casting a dark shadow over both worlds.

Within the Wild Woods, Arya's imagination takes flight, and the choices he makes in this fantastical realm hold the power to reshape his reality back in San Francisco, bridging the divide between dream and action.

[Michelle Trageser]

1.     Story Statement

Susie Cole is enjoying her last summer at home before she leaves for college: playing golf, hanging out with her new boyfriend, and generally trying to stay out of her unfathomable and mercurial mother’s way.  That works until Nancy makes a discovery on the 4^th of July that changes both of their lives, and alters the relationships of all the members of the family.  Why does Nancy react the way she does, and how will Susie’s view of her family and her upbringing change after she leaves the sheltered cocoon of her 1970s suburban life?  This is a coming-of-age moment for both women, as a mother is forced to acknowledge and reconcile her past, and her daughter searches for a way to forgive her.

Or, if you are looking for a single sentence:

Mysteriously missing birth control pills propel a 1970s suburban housewife and her daughter into conflict, requiring them to resolve decades-old traumas as they both embark on coming-of-age life changes.

2.     Sketch the Antagonist/Antagonistic Force

Nancy, the mother, is the primary protagonist.  Her daughter Susie is the secondary protagonist.  They are each other’s antagonists.  There are other minor antagonists along the way, helping to waylay each of them, but primarily this is a tug of war between the two of them.

Susie has pretty simple teenaged goals at the beginning of the book.  She’s enjoying her last summer before college with her new boyfriend.  Nancy thwarts that when she discovers missing birth control pills and punishes Susie because she thinks Susie took them.  Later in the book, Nancy throws up new barriers as Susie develops new goals.  She wants to date a boy from college but Nancy disapproves.  She wants to get to know her maternal grandparents but Nancy blows that up at the Christmas dinner table.  Susie perseveres and ultimately finds answers, and comes to understand her mother and how her mother’s life has impacted her own.

Susie is Nancy’s antagonist simply because she exists.  Nancy became pregnant while she was unmarried and in college.  Her decision to keep the baby changed her life.  She left college, deferred her own career goals, married a man she didn’t know well and moved to an unfamiliar city.  She has made those decisions work for her, but deep down she harbors resentment toward Susie, and as Susie is maturing into womanhood, Nancy is jealous of the opportunities that Susie will have that were not available to her.

In the present day, Nancy is her own worst antagonist, if that is a conceivable structure.  She has not dealt with the traumas of her early life in any constructive way.  Instead, she has built a fortress around her heart in order not to be vulnerable and be hurt again.  This behavior has limited the emotional depth of all of her relationships.

3.     Breakout Title

1.     First working title was “Aiming for Par”, with the idea of multiple meanings for the use of par.  Parity, equality, norms, etc.  But it seemed too golfy.  And as the story evolved, addressed only the women’s exterior goals, not their inner conflicts.

2.     Second working title is “Maps”, because I saw a little theme of maps developing – literal usage of road maps and atlases, the making of plans, trying to chart a path, to see where one comes from and is going, etc.  But it seems not enough.

3.     “Rough Terrain” is a thought.  Terrain is a great word for both literal and figurative landscapes. Rough terrain is exactly where all of the characters are in their life paths and relationships.  And being in the rough on the golf course – which is an analogy Jack uses to Susie at the end of the book – is, well, rough.  It requires recovery.

4.     Develop Two Smart Comparables

I’ve really struggled with this one.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus:  Also a period piece.  Also about a smart woman who wants a career and is being thwarted by the social mores and paternalistic workplaces of the era.  Also a protagonist who is not warm and fuzzy, but intriguing enough to engage the reader.  The writing addresses serious personal and societal issues, but in an easy-reading kind of way that seems similar to my own.  

The Precious Jules by Shawn Nocher:  A broken family struggling with secrets.  Similar time and setting.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano: Ditto.

Writers and Lovers by Lily King:  This is aspirational.  I don’t compare myself to Lily King, but this story of a young writer grieving her mother’s death as she struggles to find her way in the world touches on a lot of topics I do, and is the book that reignited my desire to write.

5.     Write my Hook Line with Conflict and Core Wound

A suburban mother discovers that her birth control pills are missing in the summer of 1976, which forces her to reevaluate her relationships with her teenage daughter, her husband, and her estranged parents, and to address the unresolved traumas of her own youth which have affected them.

6.     A. Protagonist’s Inner Conflict

Nancy’s daughter Susie has invited Nancy’s estranged parents to Christmas dinner.  They drive several hours from out of state to get there.  Nancy is anxious for a week beforehand for many reasons.  Susie doesn’t know the nature of the estrangement; she knows only that she rarely sees these grandparents.  The estrangement goes back nearly twenty years to when Nancy became pregnant out of wedlock in college and then decided to keep the baby against her parents’ wishes.  She has made a new life in a new state and, she believes, has escaped her devoutly religious, blue collar upbringing.  The tension of this holiday meeting comes to a head when Nancy overhears Susie describing her new college boyfriend at the table to another relative.  Nancy fears that this boyfriend is unsuitable for Susie and that a relationship with him could result in a reenactment of Nancy’s own experience.  With her parents looking on from across the table, Nancy loses her cool and sabotages the dinner, causing her parents to walk out, and Susie to be confused.

B. Secondary Conflict

Earlier in the novel, Nancy and Jack throw their annual dinner party at their home for his business associates.  The party goes well.  Nancy is a good cook, organized, meticulous, and adept at cocktail conversation.  Everyone except her drinks too much.  Toward the end of the evening she accidentally spies Jack flirting in the darkened kitchen with one of his business partner’s wives.  She reacts by retreating, heading upstairs to the bedroom and leaving him to close out the party.  When he comes upstairs later, she is in bed, awake, but has locked him out of the bedroom.  As currently written, there is not much interior monologuing from Nancy at this point.  We know she is angry, but it is only later in the book when she brings up this night in a conversation with him that we learn how insecure she is.  She wonders if he cheats on her, whether he still loves her, or ever loved her.  Because of her parents’ and boyfriend’s rejection of her nineteen years before, she believes herself to be unlovable.

7.     Setting

The setting is upper middle class suburban life in 1976.  Action takes place in the following primary settings:  A suburban Baltimore Country Club; The main characters’ family home in suburban Baltimore; Ocean City, Maryland; Duke University; a modest home in Pittsburgh.  It is a time before electronics and internet, a time of paper road atlases and payphones.  Nostalgia for older readers like myself, for sure.  But I also see it as a set piece.  I envision this mid-century home that Jack designed twenty years ago. He’s an architect, so it’s kind of Mad Men.  I see Nancy in this pretentious country club that is so far from her upbringing, which she hides from everyone in her efforts to create a life where she belongs, but where she is beginning to chafe from the confines.  Susie arrives wide eyed and naïve at Duke for her freshman year, and there are many scenes of college life on campus, and in the dorm, when she begins to expand her life experience.  There are many party scenes in the book.  Adult parties and teenage parties, each a little different, designed to be compared and contrasted with each other.  Each party can be recalled with a single food or drink item which plays a role:  homemade cannoli; frozen daiquiris; a pot of chili. The main characters always learn something about themselves and their friends/family at these parties.  There are a few suspenseful action scenes that take place in settings where the characters are forced to struggle against a natural element such as the ocean, and a dark, foggy highway.  Because it is a book about family and loved ones, many of the most pivotal scenes take place in an ordinary place, a home:  The Coles’ home, Nancy’s childhood home, Susie’s college home.  Sometimes the scenes are very intimate, as a bedroom discussion behind closed doors.  Sometimes they are holidays, with family gatherings, and all of the tensions that those gatherings create.

 

 

[Elissa Mackintosh]

1.     Story Statement

Find the stolen coins and with the reward bring a sister back home. 

 

2.     The Antagonist Plots the Point

Charlie Badgely was born in Bottom Poggs, in fact on the kitchen floor of his mother’s tiny cottage, in relative poverty. And he’s been resentful ever since. Hired as a member of wait staff at the posh Haverly Hall masked ball he concocts a plan to steal a precious coin collection and two valuable rabbit sculptures. But the heist goes horribly wrong, he loses his loot, and unbeknownst to the village someone ends up dead. A reward is offered for the return of stolen items. But no one comes forward. Thirty years later the skeleton is discovered by three children and a police dog, who hunt for the missing treasure and the reward. Charlie spies on their sleuthing and realizes they are making progress. On the outside he is affable, good-natured Charlie, who works peacefully on his allotment, growing vegetables, and chatting sociably with the children, but on the inside he is seething with bitterness for a lost opportunity and, as he sees it, being forced to murder someone. When the protagonist, Maudie, is close to uncovering the truth Charlie’s anger bubbles over and Maudie’s life is in jeopardy.

 

3.     Breakout Title

The Secrets of Bottom Poggs: A Four Paws Finding Agency Mystery

Henry VIII’s Treasure: A Four Paws Finding Agency Mystery

Double Dog Dare: A Four Paws Finding Agency Mystery  

 

4.     Genre and Approaching Comparables

Middle Grade Mystery

Mo and Dale Mysteries                Sheila Turnage

Hide and Geek                              T.P. Jagger

 

5.     Logline

Discovering an old skeleton and a stolen coin in a muddy field three friends, and two police dogs, must uncover old village secrets to find all the coins, earn the reward, and bring a much-missed big sister back home.

 

6.     Protagonist’s Inner Conflict

As a daughter of a Detective Sergeant and a Police Dog Handler Maudie tries hard to emulate her parents and do the right thing, but she is impetuous and headstrong. She misses her big sister who argues with their mother, and has moved out, and Maudie wants the reward for finding stolen loot to fund a big sister bedsit over their garage, although in her heart she knows her sister could stay where she is and use the money to pay for nursing school. And subconsciously she’d like to fix the relationship between her sister and her mother.

 

7.     Setting

Nestled in the Vale of the White Horse, Wiltshire, Bottom Poggs is based on the real village of Shrivenham, where sheep graze high on the hills, cats perch on stone walls with inscrutable expressions, and ponies stick their heads over gates hoping for a polo mint from a passerby. This bucolic setting is also the local village of the British Defence Academy, where individuals come from all over the world to study at the military university.

In one of several village pubs, you might find a farmer, an astro physicist and a retired army colonel deep in conversation. 

For some villagers it’s the only home they’ve ever known, and everybody knows everybody, and by extension their business. For others it’s a new home, where their stay is usually transitory, although from time to time through jobs or relationships or asylum, they settle there.

The church, with its 13^th century tower, speaks to a long history of village life, while the constant flow of different ethnicity, cultures and language makes this both a cosmopolitan and stuck-in-time location.

It’s not unusual to find Bottom in English village names – examples Scratchy Bottom in Dorset and Slap Bottom in Hampshire.

And there is a Broughton Poggs in West Oxfordshire, not far from Shrivenham.

[KarenBrandin]

STORY STATEMENT: 

Air Force fighter pilot Captain Beth “Mustang” Ford chases her dream of becoming an AF

Thunderbird pilot as she tries to live up to her legendary grandmother, and be successful in her own right, while battling some of the same sexist obstacles her grandmother did during her career. Female pilots, past and present, must be twice as good as their male peers to be seen as half as good.

ANTAGONIST/ANTAGONISTIC FORCE:

Major Garth “Vader” Lane Beth’s squadron commander at her first assignment. An Instructor Pilot (IP) during Beth’s F-16 training, he hates Beth and does all he can to ruin her career as she was instrumental in the loss of his IP job. Doesn’t conceals the fact that he thinks women should be relegated to ferrying aircraft versus flying in fighter aircraft. Large framed for a fighter pilot, he frequently uses his physical size to intimidate women and verbally abuses them to discourage women from staying in the Air Force in anything but an administrative capacity. The culture during the grandmother’s career was blatant sexual harassment, verbal and physical, which was largely ignored. The same culture exists to some degree, but has gone “underground” and relates more to prejudice against female pilots continuing to fly if pregnant or after they become mothers.

TITLE:

Twice As Good

COMPARABLES: 

Difficult. Many non-fiction, including memoirs, have been published about the trials women have faced in the military, “Twice As Good” is a fictional combination of a modern female fighter pilot navigating sexual harassment and discrimination while living up to family expectations (grandmother-granddaughter relationship). I found nothing like this concept. 

LOGLINE:

Air Force fighter pilot Captain Beth “Mustang” Ford fights sexual discrimination and harassment as she chases her dream of becoming a Thunderbird pilot while trying to live up to the expectations of her legendary grandmother.

PROTAGONIST’S INNER CONFLICT

Every day is a struggle to maintain confidence in her abilities in the face of daily sexual harassment and discrimination, both blatant and subtle.

EXAMPLE SCENARIO:  During a training flight, a substitute male instructor pilot tells Beth she’ll never be an instructor, or Thunderbird pilot; that the only reason she got into pilot training was because of her family’s influence. He throws jibes at her throughout the flight, including stating that if she does graduate from F-16 training it will be because she’s banging her instructor – untrue, but a common accusation encountered by female pilots.

SECONDARY CONFLICT

Beth and her grandmother, one of the first females accepted to the Air Force Academy and an outstanding instructor pilot, have always had an uneasy relationship. Raised by her father and grandparents after her mother’s death when she was eight, she always felt the need to be perfect in everything, like her grandmother. Discipline was required in the grandparents household for both Beth and her brother Simon throughout their childhood. Expectations have always been high as the siblings made their way through childhood and into their professions.

Her life is further complicated when her two past loves show up, and try to become a permanent part of her future. When her dreams come true, only one of the men in her life supports her achievements. Pressured to choose between love and children, or flying, both grandmother in the past and granddaughter in the present must be twice as good to accomplish both, as they prove day after day they are equal to their male peers.

HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO:    

Beth declares an in-flight emergency when a bird strike renders her instructor unconscious and damages her F-16. Beth flashes back to her grandmother’s stories of aircraft emergencies, but must block out her feelings of inadequacy to focus on landing the plane. Her training kicks in and she successfully lands on a foamed runway, saving her instructor and herself. Most peers celebrate her extraordinary piloting skills but as always, there are those who call it luck.

SETTINGS: 

-  “Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.” Flying sequences in the skies.

-  Luke Air Force Base (AFB), AZ F-16 training base and range, both in the air and on the ground. Interior and exterior cockpits of aircraft. The tarmac and hangers on the ground.

-  Nellis AFB, NV:  Beth’s first assignment after training. Off duty socializing is in the bars of Vegas and physical competitions in nearby hills.

-  Forward Operating Base in wartime. American has been sucked into Middle East conflict where Beth, and her peers, get combat experience, including dealing with losses.

-  18^th Aggressors Squadron, Eielson AFB, AK:  Beth uses her combat experience to fly as an aggressor against AF units to provide experience to other pilots. Dealing with the extreme cold is a major obstacle for all, but when Beth and two friends are stranded in a freak snowstorm her leadership and cold weather survival skills save their lives.  

-  Nellis AFB, NV, Thunderbird training:  Beth achieves her dream of becoming a Thunderbird pilot. All Thunderbirds have a two-year assignment travelling to many bases and civilian airports as ambassadors for the AF. After the assignment Beth realizes she has chased the wrong dream and returns home to the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan to teach flying and follow in her Grandfather’s bush pilot footsteps.

Flashback settings:

-  Small flight school in Michigan’s UP owned and run by her fraternal grandfather, “Pops”, who famously “runs the rivers” flying below tree lines. He taught teenage Beth to be a daring pilot.

-  The United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO:  Grandmother’s trials as a member of the first class with female cadets in 1980, as well as Beth’s experiences there decades later. The Academy is set in the beautiful Rockies, where upperclass cadets ski, hike and run in the mountains. Parachuting and glider training are available to cadets – Beth is chosen for glider training.

[Ann Mary]

[jldenn]

1.  Story Statement:

·         Allen must go forward in time in an attempt to find a cure for his infant daughter’s terminal illness.

2.    Antagonist

·         Identifying the antagonist in my story is a difficult task which may be why I’ve struggled moving forward with the novel.  My protagonist is thwarted not by an individual character but by circumstances he encounters based on decisions he has made.  He travels to the future in a gamble that doctors in the future will have found a cure for his daughter’s illness.  He finds that they have not and indeed the intervening years had played out in such a way that they were never looking.  His original plan was for his daughter and wife will join him in 2099 (they could not all travel together).  When the time comes for their arrival, they do not show up.  He attempts to research what happened to them and he finds that his daughter died a year after he left and his wife remarried.  Having no way to find out why, he falls into a depression that lasts for years until he finds himself incarcerated and under the care of a psychiatrist with whom he eventually feels secure enough to share his story. The rest of the novel revolves around their attempts to find a cure, their relationship, their child, and eventually full circle to him finding the answers he had been searching for all along.  I’m considering adding a character that follows him into the future for nefarious reasons but I’m not quite sure how to do it yet.

3.  Breakout Titles:

·         Father Time

·         Breath of Time

·         Changing Fate

4.  Comparables

·         The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (one of my 5 favorite novels)

·         And Then She Vanished by Joseph Bridgeman (recently listened to on Audible)

·         The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman (just found while researching to answer this question.  It is very close to the mechanism/discovery used in my story.)

·         The Time Anomaly by Katie Mitsui

5. Core Wound and the Primary Conflict – Hookline

                Estranged from his parents after his brother’s death, Allen must rise to become the parent he wishes he had, risking everything on a chance to save his daughter.

6a. Inner Conflict Scenario

                The first, second, and third opinions all agreed that Emma had just over a year to live. ‘Go home.’ ‘Make her comfortable.’ ‘Love her.’  But that wasn’t enough for Allen. He would not abandon her to fate. He didn’t know how yet but he would change this.  He knew abandonment and he would break that chain. It wouldn’t bind either of them anymore.

6b. Secondary Conflict (social environment)

                (A scene where Allen must pawn items after arriving in 2099)

“All right.  Let’s see what you got wef.”

Allan had found what he assumed to be this time’s version of a pawnshop.  He had taken his briefcase in and was about to offer something to pawn when it occurred to him that he had no idea what price his items should bring.  He would probably be taken, but it didn’t matter.  He needed at least $375 and he needed it by Wednesday of next week.  That was when he had an appointment with Dr. Baderman.

He removed his spare glasses from the briefcase and laid them on the table so they wouldn’t be in his way as he was choosing something to pawn.

“That’s trunckable!” said the shop owner.

“Trunkable?” asked Allan.

“Yea, sure, I haven’t seen any of those in 5 or 6 years, very rare.”

“Haven’t seen any of what in five years”

“Don’t play yerk wef, the glasses, the glasses.”

“These?  You like these?”

“Of course, very collectible.  They haven’t been used in over 60 years.  Very few pairs have held up and most of those are in museums.  This is a fine example.  I’ll take ‘em.”

Allan had his contacts on and didn’t really need the extra pair and from this conversation he surmised that with a little investigation he wouldn’t need his contacts either.  So he said, “How much for them?”

“This is a turn around shop you know, not a fancy auction house or museum scout store.  But I could give you $7500 for them.”

He knew enough to know that this was just his first offer.  In order not to be taken he would have to play the game.  “I don’t know, um, I had hoped for a little more than that.”

“You’re playing me again.  You didn’t even know what you had.  Hell, if I didn’t know better I’d have thought you wore these yourself.  I’ll go up to 85 but you’d better take that because I doubt that once it’s on the street that you’ve got these, you won’t have them for long.  I think you know what I mean.”

“How is anyone going to know I have them?  You didn’t until I showed them to you.  What’s to keep me from putting them back into my briefcase and going to the next guy for more?” he said boldly.

“Where are you from wef?  The cams,” he said turning around and motioning with his arm to what appeared to be closed circuit cameras mounted on the wall behind the counter.  “Everyone knows.  At least everyone logged on right now.  How do you think I get my buyers?  I’ll have these sold by 6pm.”

Allan cleared his throat; clearly he had been outdone and had better take what he could get.  “85’ll be fine,” he said looking up at the cameras.

 

7. Setting

                This novel begins in the present but most of it takes place in 2099.  Earth hasn’t changed too much in appearance; however, society has made some dramatic shifts.  The people of this time have lived through the ‘Genetic Revolution’, a time when funding for disease research was secretly diverted toward finding ways to remove the incidence of genetic disease not developing cures. Genetic testing is commonplace and determines if a pregnancy will go to term.  The Welfare system has become a highly regulated operation where recipients live in government owned facilities and agree to follow a set of rules, those that do not are relegated to the ‘colonies’ where they are removed from government assistance and subsist on individual or organizational charity. Clones are commonplace but have become a sort of slave class. Citizens are tracked in almost every respect. 

[Tracy K. Macdonald]

Algonkian Conference Pre-Work

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: Story Statement

(Contemporary Women's Fiction- novel draft of Becoming Agent McKenna)

 

Southern belle Vivienne McKenna, from Chatta Creek, Georgia, escapes her marriage to a brutish Frenchman. After their failed union, she yearns to be a victor, not a victim. Deflated after losing a promotion at work, Vivienne seizes an opportunity to join the Secret Service as a federal agent. She applies, believing this new career will make her invincible.

 

Vivienne has secretly loved Jacob since they lost touch in high school. A decade later, they unexpectedly meet again, and sparks fly between them. Conflicted, she denies her heart and commits to training, pushing Jacob away. Trading sundresses for boxing gloves at the academy is grueling, yet, despite naysayers, her ladylike upbringing, and a chauvinistic instructor determined to make her fail, she refuses to quit and overcomes every hurdle.

 

As an agent, Vivienne trusts her head more than her heart and relinquishes a second chance with Jacob to accept a Financial Crimes Task Force assignment in London. There, she unravels a transnational case involving a stolen Egyptian artifact. When her investigation gets too close, a threat in Cairo jeopardizes her life and Vivienne wonders whether she’s made the right choice. In the end, she reunites with Jacob and allows herself to be vulnerable. No longer needing the badge to feel empowered and prove her worth, she resigns to build her own security company.

 

 SECOND ASSIGNMENT: Antagonist Sketch

The initial antagonist is GASTON, the protagonist’s verbally abusive husband. He’s a narcissist, who belittles his wife to feel more powerful. He’s charming in public, but controlling, unfaithful, and angry behind closed doors.  

 

A second antagonist is MR. RODNEY, Vivienne’s chauvinistic instructor at the federal law enforcement academy who doesn’t want women in his boys’ club. He singles Vivienne out and attempts to weed her out of the academy.

 

The protagonist, VIVIENNE, is also her own antagonistic force. After the failure of her marriage, she doesn’t trust her judgement nor does she believe she deserves true love. She chooses the risks of the job instead. Simultaneously, her traditional upbringing causes her to be at odds with the world of law enforcement and life overseas.

 

THIRD ASSIGNMENT- Breakout Title (for a story about female empowerment, defying the odds, and a journey of self-discovery)

 

Becoming Agent McKenna

The Lighthouse Tattoo

(The protagonist rebels against her conservative debutante upbringing and gets a lighthouse tattoo in college on a girls’ weekend. The tattoo becomes a symbol of strength; a talisman she physically touches in times of struggle as a reminder that she doesn’t have to conform to the rules and she’s her own beacon of light in a crisis).

Southern Belle Brave

 

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: Two Comps  

This contemporary women’s fiction novel is written in the southern lyrical style of author Patti Callahan Henry, sharing her similar themes of southern culture, a love of the natural world, and a female protagonist who explores relationships.

 

With elements of romance and suspense, this story will resonate with fans of Janet Evanovich’s heroine Stephanie Plum and her struggles as a female investigator (bounty hunter) in a male-dominated field.    

 

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT:  Hook Line

After a ruinous marriage, a southern debutante reclaims her power behind the badge, but will she sacrifice chances at true love in the process?

 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: Primary protagonist inner conflict- trigger and reaction

Vivienne longs to escape an abusive marriage, but has been taught to be loyal and not break her vows, so she hides the hell she’s living in behind closed doors to keep up appearances. Once Gaston traps her in a closet and his threats escalate, she flees and files for divorce, despondent that she’s an utter failure for not making her marriage work, and afraid she’ll embarrass her mother and disappoint family friends in her conservative hometown.

 

Her father’s recent death, a lost promotion at work, and leaving Gaston are the catalysts that spur Vivienne to make a change and prove her self-worth with a grand-scale achievement. She defies the odds and is accepted into law enforcement training, which brings hurdles of chauvinism, physical challenges, and an internal struggle between the academy’s paramilitary demands and her debutante upbringing.

 

Secondary conflict involving the social environment:

Childhood sweetheart JACOB resurfaces just as Vivienne is about to leave for the academy, and she’s conflicted. He’s the one person who knows her best, yet she doesn’t trust her judgement, is hurt and angry with Jacob for disappearing years ago, and thwarts chances at true love. She refuses to put a man’s needs before her own again. Plus, her mother doesn’t approve of Jacob because he isn’t from the “right” kind of family. Vivienne denies her true desires and throws herself into law enforcement training. Jacob becomes entangled with the sommelier of his wine bar.

 

At the field office, she laments arresting families and breaking them up to enforce the law and questions her decision to become an agent. Jacob calls to say his sommelier is pregnant and it’s his. This propels Vivienne into a spiral of regret and self-blame.  

 

When she is injured by a crime syndicate while working a criminal case in Egypt, her priorities become clear. She realizes she doesn’t need to prove her self-worth behind a badge after all, and allows herself to open her heart.  (Jacob’s sommelier lied about being pregnant).  

 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: Setting

Chatta Creek, Georgia is a charming small town where the summer climate calls for bare feet with its lazy afternoon shadows and a sun that sets long after cocktail hour.    

 

This southern hometown is where our protagonist Vivienne’s fascination with the natural world began, along with her relationship with (neighbor, and later, lover) Jacob. Her childhood garden was a laboratory full of magic and imagination, where she and Jacob chased lightning bugs and hunted for feathers. Their six-year-old fingers traced the spidery veins of dried leaves like braille before tasting their papery, bland earthiness. (These keen observation skills Vivienne learns help her become an expert fraud analyst).  

 

Memories of Chatta Creek provide a safe place for Vivienne’s thoughts to land when she craves comfort from her crumbling marriage, but also leaves her wanting more. In high school, Chatta Creek made her feel confined “like cellophane around her soul,” with its tight hold on ideals from the past. Women are taught to comply, paste on smiles, and declare that everything is just fine, no matter what was happening. These social constraints weigh heavily on Vivienne’s decision to stay in a toxic marriage.

 

In Chatta Creek, along with Vivienne’s mother, who dresses in pressed slacks and applies lipstick before 7a.m, are “The Treasures,” the circle of (martini drinking, cackling) southern mamas that collectively reared Vivienne and her closest friends (to become debutantes). “The Treasures’” legacy is their echo in Vivienne’s conscience with their admonishments... "Now, shush! Southern ladies don't air their dirty laundry."

 

When Vivienne does leave Chatta Creek for Atlanta, the federal law enforcement academy, London, and later Cairo and Sharm-El-Sheik, (her investigation takes her overseas), Chatta Creek’s societal expectations that shaped her formative years cause her internal struggle.    

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

[Anne]

 

Algonkian Workshop
Pre Events Assignment 1
 

Story Statement:

Susan Thatcher is standing on the precipice of a new life with her soul mate. At their long awaited wedding, he waits for her at the end of the aisle but she finds her foot will not move. After all they have been through to get here, she is frozen. Stymied by the past and petrified of the future will she be able to move forward and take that first step into the future?

Antagonist Plots the Point:

As all old loves who resurface in one’s life, Lizzie shows up supposedly out of the blue. She shows up socially for a weekend social event causing friction for Susan and her budding relationship. Lizzie then comes for a job interview which she extends to a week-long “see what you are missing” visit. She shows up for forever with a new job, an immediate relocation back to town and back into Jackson’s life. Displacing Susan and her new relationship with Jackson. While she disguises her motives by being friendly, she sets her sights on Jackson and his world. A world where she is the central figure now and forever.

Breakout Title:

Outer Banks Summers - This was the working title and it has merit in that it names the location where the majority of the story happens.

Where it all Begins - This alludes to being where this relationship started and from where their future begins.

Footsteps in the Outer Banks - This names the location of the majority of the story and refers to the struggle to step forward into a new life.
 

Genre and Comparables:

Women’s fiction

Doretha Benton Frank - Same Beach Next Year

   Dottie Frank made me want to follow my dreams and write.

   Mary Alice Monroe - Swimming Lessons, Beach House for Rent

   Mary Kay Andrews - Summer Rental, Ladies Night

 I love stories where the female characters are faced with adversity of some kind and have to start over in some way. They possess grit and rise above their circumstances to be confident, accomplished, and real.

Hookline:
After an emotionally abusive marriage Susan must wrestle with her sense of feeling unworthy and unlovable as she meets her soulmate and tries to move forward in life.
 

Conflict:
Primary Conflict
Susan has spent a lifetime of feeling unworthy and unlovable. From childhood, and into her disastrous marriage she is bombarded with unworthy and unlovable messages. After meeting her soul mate, the roller coaster game of flirting, dating, dealing with an ex-girlfriend unfolds. AS She stands at the edge of a new life with Jackson, she is too paralyzed with insecurity to move forward into a new life of love and happiness.
 
Secondary Conflict
Susan must come to terms with the reappearance of the old girlfriend, Lizzie. When the girlfriend shows up, when she comes for a visit and when she ultimately comes to stay. After Lizzie snags an engagement, Susan must fight for her man or walk away. 

Other Matters of Conflict
Primary-Susan’s childhood set a stage for feeling unworthy in that she always felt like nothing she did was right. These feelings became the springboard for life with her narcissistic ex husband and his controlling issues. Susan has spent her entire life being a “fixer” trying to make the dominant people in her life “happy”. This causes her to be very anxious although she hides it well with a Type A personality, where she controls all the things she can. Post divorce she meets her soulmate and as she approaches her marriage to Jackson she feels out of control and paralyzed with fear. She is stuck and cannot move forward into her future.

Scenario-Susan catches her ex husband having an affair and she gathers evidence to support that he is cheating but does not confront him directly. Even when she has the courage to leave him she still does not confront him directly but leaves a folder of evidence as to why she is gone. 

Secondary-Susan’s willingness to please people makes it easy for Jackson not to commit or even have a discussion about their relationship or how he feels. When his old girlfriend shows up and he easily diverts his attention back to her, Susan is once again feeling unworthy, and unlovable. While she knows in her soul that the feelings she has for Jackson are real. Susan must struggle with her fears and decide to either “fix it” by letting him go or by rising above her insecurities and fighting for love.

Scenario-Jackson is having a getaway weekend with Lizzie and Susan is also there with her girlfriend. When he texts that he wants to meet she is filled with apprehension, while she wants to see Jackson as much as possible, he is with someone else and it feels wrong. Filled with angst about what to do, she buys time by not deciding until the last moment. This is monumental and her choosing to go may be the only chance she gets to fight for her man. She takes a deep breath to squash her fears, she gathers her things and she goes.

Setting:
We begin as Susan is preparing for her years in the making wedding to her soul mate, Jackson. The happy couple have rented a large house in 4x4, North Carolina which is where the blacktop ends on route 12 and sand begins. Only accessible by a four wheel drive it is large enough to house their family and closest friends. It is as picturesque as it is beautiful and the large windows overlooking the Outer Banks shoreline is the perfect setting for a new beginning. 

As she stands at the end of the aisle, Susan cannot make that first step and move towards Jackson and her new life. As she wavers, her life passes through her mind like a movie with all the major events bringing her to this point. She remembers her parents and growing up in a small town, going off to college and coming back without a clue of how to make her way in the world. She sees her life in Richmond, Virginia in the “big house”, the rise and fall of her marriage over a 10 year period, living life as a single parent, dating and meeting Jackson. 

The Outer Banks of NC, where she first went as a child. She loves the barren wildness of the outer stretches of land and has spent time there through the many facets of life. Having a child, married, and divorced, the beach has always been a panacea for all the good and bad life sent her way. It is where she and Jackson began, ended and then began again. It is only fitting that their new life together start here back where it all began. If only Susan can take that first step.
 

 

[CFTurner]

1. Story Statement - Twenty-year old English student Asher Townsend is humiliated after being outed by his ultra-religious ex-girlfriend Blaire Gates for having eyes for her older brother. In an attempt to gain control of his narrative at the University of Arkansas, he leaves the state to study abroad in Europe, hoping that by the time he comes back, everyone will have forgotten about his seeming unfaithfulness to Blaire. While in Europe, he falls for two frat boys, Cain Duncan, a seemingly innocent church boy, and Trace Cunningham, a mysterious but wealthy playboy. After a series of events with Cain Duncan, Asher finds himself on the butt end of his own narrative yet again, all because of his sexuality. To gain control once and for all, he teams up with a powerful adversary–Jack Cunningham, the Father of Trace Cunningham and a powerful oil magnate with his eye on the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion. Through this unholy partnership, Asher hopes to ensure that he maintains control of his and all LGBTQ people’s narratives once and for all–but not without paying the ultimate price, his soul. 

2. Antagonists - The antagonists are Cain Duncan, who seems innocent at first. He comes from a large, Christian family very involved at the Fayetteville Baptist Church. Only when he attempts to sexually coerce Asher does he reveal his true colors–a closeted gay man who resents his own existence. He is jealous that Asher was able to nab Blaire, who would have set him up for the picture-perfect life in Arkansas that he had been primed to pursue by his church and family. When Asher is able to reveal Cain’s true motives to the rest of the group, his resentment of Asher grows to the point that he makes his life a living hell. After going missing, he stalks Asher and threatens to destroy his reputation. The other antagonist is Jack Cunningham, whose immense wealth, influence, and access make him a formidable adversary but also an uncommon ally when he agrees to soften Asher’s reputation if he helps him steal the governorship from a newly-elected Arkansas Governor. His conservative policies are largely antithetical to Asher’s in terms of LGBTQ rights, but he is the only one who can get an outsider like Asher within the inner circle of political power in Arkansas. 

3. Breakout Title - American Gay, The Gay Politician, Powerless

4. Genre and Comparables - Yes Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage for protagonist navigating sexuality around highly religious actors and similar tone and Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller for navigation of sexuality through lens of power, influence, and social expectations as well as similar romance aspects (LGBTQ Fiction)

5. Core Wound and Primary Conflict - Asher Townsend must restore his name and reputation after antagonistic forces humiliate him by painting him out to be unfaithful, manipulative, and even evil based on how he navigates his own sexuality. 

6. Other Matters of Conflict: Two More Levels - Asher must contend with accepting his own sexuality after he is accused of having eyes for his ex-girlfriend’s older brother, as well as two men on his study abroad trip. Once he starts to have sex dreams about both of the boys on his trip and he is confronted by an outwardly gay student for being a hypocrite around sexuality, he must come to terms with whether he is lying to himself about being straight or accept that he is, indeed, gay. Even after he accepts this aspect about himself, he must do so while realizing that his Southern family, who is overtly religious, may disown him even though this isn’t something he has any control over. 

7. Setting - The story starts at the University of Arkansas campus in 2014, pre-legalization of same-sex marriage in the U.S. This serves as a visual representation of the political and cultural aspects of LGBTQ identity and the social expectations attached in an area still widely behind the rest of the country in terms of acceptance. The rest of the story mainly occurs in Spain, which allows the protagonist room to navigate aspects of himself without the social pressures of family, religion, and social expectations dogging him.

[Alexander]

STORY STATEMENT

Covid thrusts a working parent into full-time fatherhood where he must raise his young son in a world not accustomed to fathers.

Thus begins a journey of discovery, exploration, identity, and learning as father and son sprint and stumble through life.

ANTAGONIST

There is no clearcut bad guy, no ultimate villain in my memoir. Instead, there are several antagonists or “antagonistic forces.”

My Own Demons

Parenthood is as much about the child as it is the parent. I grew up in a household, in a family that was starkly different than the one I have now. And I carried that, held onto all of those things well into adulthood.

What manifested was this myriad of traits. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. An explosive temper. Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity disorder. And in my journey to successfully raise a young child, these are the demons that are persistent and manifest in ugly ways.

The Outside World

The looks from mothers at the playground, and the questions that subsequently followed. A trip to Costco at peak hour with an irritable toddler. A jaunt through the clubbing district of a large city at midnight with a sleeping child in stroller.

As a full-time father, the outside world is this force that shakes you, that makes you question who you are, what you are doing, and if you are doing the right thing. It is a force that is at once isolating but also one that you must participate in.

My Child

Poop accidents in the bathtub, carefully prepared food thrown on the floor, meltdowns in crowded public places. Children can be these unpredictable forces of chaos and destruction that test everything within you.

BREAKOUT TITLE

A Father and His Son – This is fairly simple and straightforward.

The Only Dad at the Playground – An enticing proposition with promise of intrigue.

Forming a Bond: A Full-time Father and His Son’s Journey – More descriptive and evocative than the first title.

Honorable Mention

Leo and Me – A simple but endearing title.

COMPARABLES

Raising Raffi: The First Five Years by Keith Gessen

Written out of the need to share and communicate his experiences and journey, Keith Gessen offers a starkly candid view about fatherhood and all its highs and lows, all its challenges and joyous moments. My own manuscript echoes the motivation, theme, and style found in Raising Raffi, and ultimately the hopes and dreams of a father with his child.

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year by Anne Lamott

Raw and at times irreverent, Anne Lamott offers an unfiltered window into the world of rearing children. The format is journal entries, each day a new adventure, a new challenge, a new absurd situation, written in a way that is open and vulnerable, honest and endearing. My own manuscript is formatted as journal entries, and like Lamott, I strove to keep my writing honest, open, and vulnerable.

Honorable Mention

The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad by Shannon Carpenter

Practical advice from a full-time father written with humor and relatability in mind. Everything from how to pick out the best stroller to seeking solutions for anxiety and stress, The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad is a guide to being a better father and a better human being. My own work is a balance of storytelling and advice, with the ultimate goal of sharing and helping others who may be on the same path.

CONFLICT AND CORE WOUND

A new full-time father, pulled by internal and external forces, must find a way to raise a child in a post-Covid era where his world has flipped upside down.

OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT

Inner Conflict Conditions

There are these internal forces that plague all parents. As a father, it was hard for me to identify, to reflect, to mitigate those negative voices that spill over into a child’s life. I found myself thinking about the younger days, before kids, when I was free from responsibility. I thought about my previous identity, this working adult that was successful and earning praise and promotions. I dwelled on the influence my parent’s had on my own parenting style, my own ticks and traits that I didn’t want my child to inherit. It was this battle, this reckoning between what and who I was, and what my current reality looked like.

Hypothetical Scenario – Inner Conflict

I make this lovely dinner for Leo, carefully prepared to his liking. He takes one look at it, frowns, and refuses to eat. For the next hour, I battle him, coaxing and negotiating, bribing and threatening him. He takes a few bites, most of it ends up on the floor, and I lose it. My anger erupts, and I yell and send him to his room. Food is this trigger point because I was raised on this idea of not wasting food, and this idea that cooking for someone is an act of love.

Interpersonal Conflicts

Parents – I want my children to see and to love their grandparents. When they do come and visit, I am too often reminded about the way I was raised and it is this double pain, the pain from my own childhood and the pain of seeing my children experience the same treatment.

The Wife – She is the most important person in my life. The one whose words matter. Her advice about raising children or her commentary about me as an individual trigger an instinctive defensive reflex. I hear the words but they are like knives, piercing into me and making me feel like I have holes. I have always been sensitive to feedback, a byproduct of my own upbringing.

Hypothetical Scenario – Secondary Conflict

It’s the first day of preschool for Leo. He’s nervous about meeting new friends, seeing his teacher, and being in a new environment. I’m nervous for other reasons. I walk into the school holding Leo’s hand and we are immediately greeted by a cacophony of noise – children shouting, screaming, and parents yelling. I’m the only dad, and the moms all turn to stare at me. I force a smile. A few minutes later and one of the moms pops the dreaded question, “So what do you do for a living?” My face gets hot and my mind races, struggling to come up with an alternative to “full-time father.”

SETTING

In a world where daycares around the country are closed due to Covid, a father must forfeit his career to raise a child at home. Home is a battleground, this cramped apartment overflowing with teethers and plushie toys, unorganized shelves of junk, and dirty clothes and dishes. There is little room to breathe, little room for escape.

It is within these walls that he must find a way to persevere, to raise his son. It is within these confines that he must teach and mentor, must play and guide, must admonish and discipline. With boundless energy and enthusiastic curiosity, the child explores his home, often with sticky, unwashed hands and a penchant for throwing things.

There are other places. The playground, the supermarket, the preschool. There is less control in these places, more opportunity for shame when the child is inconsolable and others are looking on, more opportunity for harm when the child is bullied by a peer and the parent must restrain his fury, more opportunity for judgment when the father is the only dad at the playground.

But a child needs both. The inside world and the outside world, and the father must negotiate and navigate between the two, while keeping his sanity.

[iain]

Story Statement:

Save humanity from its vengeful creator.

 

Antagonist:

The brain of an alien ship that crashed on Earth over 3.5 billion years ago. To save itself, it destroyed its crew and used their DNA to create a self-replicating host to house its intelligence: Life.

It called itself First, and its exponentially fragmented "body" covered the Earth, its thoughts drifting alone in the ether until other noises emerged: consciousness, unforeseen creations, artificial intelligence. Knowing its history, First recognized the introduction of modern technology as an existential threat to its existence.

For first, a god trapped within the physical vessel of its own creation, there is only one solution: the complete obliteration of humanity and everything it has created.

 

Potential Titles:

Child of the Bitter Gods

The Omega Paradox

Stap

 

Comparables:

Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD (as if, but both stories involve people on a post-apocalyptic point A to point B(ish) journey with little hope of finding a better "existence," but still fighting for the continued survival and companionship of each other).

Hugh Howey’s WOOL series (The similarity here is more from the philosophical questions and survivors’ relationship to their unfathomable environment)

 

Log line and core wound:

Used as a pawn in the final act of war between God and its most advanced creation, an artificial human must confront the paradoxical nature of her purpose: to save humanity by ending all life on earth, including her own.

 

Conflict One:

Stap is a reluctant leader. She is a little older, but early on her understanding of their destination, their purpose, and the danger they are in is hardly better than anyone else’s. She takes on the burden of protecting them, tries to shelter them from the danger of their surroundings, but fears she may ultimately lead everyone to a bad end.

 

Excerpt:

The trees were dark and silent. The boys kept looking back but nothing followed. Night settled in the woods. After several hours, Izzy grabbed Stap’s hand and pulled on it.

“What?”

“I’m tired. We’re all tired. Can’t we stop? It’s safe again, isn’t it?”

Stap looked at them. They were barely standing. She closed her eyes and concentrated. It was quiet, and they were alone. “Alright, we’ll rest here,” she said and began making a fire.

They sat around it, warming themselves, but no one talked. The boys fell asleep.

The blood on Stap’s clothes had dried to a dull brown. Izzy stared at her, eyes watering. “I’m scared.”

“Why?”

“Those men,” Izzy said. “I want to leave. They’ll come back. They hurt you.”

“I thought you wanted to rest.”

“I want to leave.”

Stap put her hand on Izzy’s shoulder and rubbed it softly. “They’re not coming back.”

“But they hurt you. You were bleeding.”

Stap touched the dried blood on her legs and chest. “That isn’t mine.” She looked at the sleeping boys, and then back at Izzy. She pulled out her knife—blood coated the blade. “We’re safe here.”

“They didn’t hurt you?”

“No.” Stap poked at the fire. “They didn’t get the chance.”

“They were going to hurt me if they found me. You knew that didn’t you?”

Stap put Izzy’s head in her lap and stroked her hair.

“How did you know they would hurt me and not the boys?”

Stap’s stomach turned over. She thought about the camp and the small fires. She took a deep breath and smiled down at her. “No one is going to hurt you.”

Izzy smiled back. “You’re very brave. And strong.”

“And your speaking is getting better. Now go to sleep. And don’t worry, we’re safe.”

Izzy closed her eyes.

Stap stared at the stars, the adrenaline easing, her muscles relaxing and her face softening. But she couldn’t shake the day from her mind, what she’d seen in that camp. She wondered if any others like them were still out there, alive and safe. They’d been lucky, so far.

She went back to counting stars and realized she was crying. She wiped her nose and her eyes, and then she cleaned her knife with the ashes from the campfire. Kaleb and Dillon slept close to each other. Thomas had moved away. He always complained about their snoring. Stap stroked Izzy’s hair and leaned back. “What a strange world,” she whispered.

She sheathed her knife and lay on her back, counting slowly and waiting. “Satellite,” she said when it streaked by. She closed her eyes and slipped into an uneasy sleep.

 

Conflict Two:

Stap struggles to understand the invisible but strongly felt differences between her and the people who want her dead and attack her at every encounter. She struggles to understand why she and those like her must fight so often when there are so few people left alive.

                   

Excerpt:

The screaming was over. Stap wandered back to the river and saw Macon-Jean sitting on a rock, covered in blood, and tossing stones into the water.

She sat next to him and listened to the river, its sound disrupted only by a wooden knocking: a man and a woman bobbing in the water, their heads bumping against a tree stump. She wanted to wade in and free the bodies. But instead, she only stared at them. Rolling in the eddy with their corpse eyes open, every few rotations they lined up, their faces staring lifelessly at each other. Stap tried to imagine them living. She wondered what they used to say when they gazed at each other, if it had any more meaning than the blank stares they shared now.

Macon-Jean stood up, waded in, and kicked at the bodies until they broke free.

Stap watched him. Another body drifted by. She tried to feel something for it, but she couldn’t. “How do we know?” she asked, wondering if he would understand the question.

“We just know. When you saw me above the boulders, you knew. That’s why you weren’t scared. We know who we are.”

“Is there something wrong with us?” Stap asked. “Did we cause something?”

 

Main setting(s)    (Since setting is 60% of a story, I hope I’m justified in making this part so long!)

The bulk of the story takes place after an apocalyptic event has wiped out nearly all traces of humanity, but spared most else. The main character travels along a route from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, through the grasslands of the Central Valley, and finally to the Big Sur coastline. Much of the main character’s development is linked to the escalating danger and adversity as the land becomes harsher and survival more difficult.

The other main setting occurs in the ether, in the strange minds of First, AIs, and artificial humans where strategies, fears, and confrontations take on all manner of anthropomorphic, animalistic, and sentient object forms.

 

Sub-setting 1

Early in the story, Stap deals mainly with isolation and confusion. She lives in an abandoned and crumbling facility built to survive the apocalypse. She has not known the company of another, nor is she fully aware of her danger. Her early environment allows her a bit of innocence.

 

Excerpt:  

She woke sometime later to imagined sounds in the hallway—something shuffling its way across the concrete floor, clicking softly, but she knew there wasn’t anything there. She licked her lips and tried to ease the dryness in her mouth. Her eyes focused, and she saw the lighter exactly where she’d left it. The deer’s carcass would still be in the compound’s center. Everything would be as she’d left it, and that’s how it always was.

Back on the rooftop, she hummed as she dressed the animal. The fire was bright and warm, and it popped and spit sparks into the air. She dragged the skin and useless parts to the roof’s edge and dumped them over the side. She let her eyes wander the treetops—forest in every direction.

 

Setting 2

After she leaves the facility and meets another like her, she finds herself deep in the alpine forests. Stap feels safe and confident in her ability to survive, and she is equal to her mild environment, but she has yet to experience the true danger of the world she lives in.

              

Excerpt:

They ran through the trees under moonlight, playing hide-and-seek. They’d sleep in the day and imagine a world beyond the horizon. In her dreams, Stap saw crashing waves. Watery ledges slamming into cliff walls. Air misting from the surface.

When she hunted, when her blade flashed and the blood jetted, Stap was immortal, violent, and terrible. When she walked naked from the water, wet hair clinging to her face, body shivering, she was a child.

They bathed in the river. Stap brushed Izzy’s hair, humming softly.

 

Setting 3

While crossing over the mountains, the horror of her world is finally revealed. And just as they are fully understanding their peril they are thrust into the grasslands of the central valley—a place as exposed as an open wound.

    

Excerpt:

The air had softened. The haze turned from orange to flame-red in the setting sun. Dust particles drifted in the warm air. Stap watched the northern horizon and held Izzy’s hand. The thing in the distance appeared watery and thin, an ill-defined object that only represented uncertainty. “Let’s go. We’ll walk through the night and see where it is in the morning.”

“I know where he’ll be,” Dillon grumbled. “Still out there, following us.”

They walked for hours in the dark. When they rested, they sat close together. Stap had relied on trees, rocks, and outcroppings to provide cover for so long. The grasslands offered nothing.

The landscape glowed under the moonlight. The stars lit the sky down to the land’s black horizon. She felt tiny on the exposed plain. And there was someone out there.

“We’ll never see him coming at night,” Kaleb whispered. “Not until it’s too late.”

“So, it’s a man now?” Dillon asked.

“It was always a man. I was just hoping we’d lose him in the distance.”

Stap’s back tingled. No matter how far away he was, it wasn’t enough. The open fields stretched forever, and anything in them was too close. “Look how smooth the grass is. The moon is so bright we’ll see him easily, even at night.”

“Not if he crawls,” Dillon said.

Thomas’s eyes went wide. “Why would he crawl?” He shifted closer to Stap.

 

Setting 4

By the time they reach the coastlands, there are only three of them left. The land has nearly broken them. And though quiet and beautiful, it is lonely and it feels to them that all the world is heading west with them, either to escape or to share in some final doom.

 

 Excerpt:

“There’s more,” Dillon said quietly and nodded to the night sky.

Stap pulled her knees close and strained her ears, trying to hear the calls above the crackling fire. Her eyes followed the thin smoke spiral. “You have good ears,” she whispered back.

Sharp warbling calls echoed, great birds bound for the dark sea, gliding, unconcerned with the silent earth beneath their wings. Stap wished she could fly away with them, high above the night world, following the black river lines through moonlit lands.

The warbling faded in the distant hills. Stap wrapped her arms tighter and stared at the fire.

“They’re headed for the ocean, aren’t they?” Izzy said.

Stap nodded.

“I thought so.”

They sat close to the fire, talking about nothing, trying to stay warm.

All night the birds passed overhead, crying out.

“Do you think they know something?” Izzy asked.

Stap squeezed her hand. “Get some sleep.”

They woke in the morning above a fog-covered world, hilltops and rocky crags floating on the uniform layer. By midmorning, the fog had burned away. They wandered through lonely hills, yellow grasses, and low, gnarled trees, silent and still, mimicking the empty blue sky. In a sundrenched vale, where the air was warm, they rested awhile. Steady cool breezes rushed across the hilltops and made the grasses twitch.

 

Setting 5

The pre-apocalyptic setting takes place primarily in areas along California Highway One between Monterey and Big Sur. Both the landscape and the people central to this part of the story are presented with a subdued quiet that forebodes the impending collapse.

 

Excerpt:

Andrews gazed at the gray Pacific as the sedan sped down the coastal highway. They crossed a high concrete bridge that he recognized from magazine and television ads. “So, this is where they film all the car commercials,” he said, trying to break the ear-ringing silence.

“I’m not sure.”

They overtook a camper on the winding two-lane highway.

Over the ocean, the fog thinned to a shroud on the water, water that now appeared more blue than gray.

Andrews stared down the steep cliffs. “So where are we going?”

“McWay Falls. Do you know it?

“No.”

“That’s where we’re headed.”

“What’s there?”

“Something you need to see. You were right . . . you are right. But you have no idea what you’re talking about, yet.”

Andrews took his eyes from the ocean. The oncoming cars passed in silence, and only the engine’s soft groan and the tire thrum disturbed the isolation. As the fog cleared, the water stretched away in a blue haze that blurred where it met the sky. “Do you know the rock smithsonite?” Andrews asked. “It’s a light blue stone, waxy and translucent.”

“No.” The man never took his eyes from the road.

Andrews nodded to himself and stared out the window. The onshore winds turned the blue water into something that resembled smithsonite. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought of it.

 

Setting 6

Early in the story, the main AI knows that some hostile intellect is trying to defeat its security, represented as a sentient house that is no longer able to provide protection.

 

Excerpt:

“Hello!” Two God Machine shouted at the dark staircase and turned his back on the silent boy. The house only shrugged—emptiness and disregard. The boy was already gone when he turned around, so he closed the door and walked through the house. There, exactly where it should have been, was the dining room table, and there, the cabinet. But why now were all the chairs gone? He started muttering, wondering if it was possible to misplace chairs.

The dining room was emptying itself.

Tapping in the walls again.

“Who are you?” His voice echoed in the empty house.

Two God Machine sat in the living room on the old leather couch and tried to gather his mind. There’d been an earthquake several days ago, but the power hadn’t gone out completely. It was what they used to call a brownout. The lights cast a sick luminescence. He sighed and turned to the window. Had it been brighter inside, he would have seen only his reflection, but dim as it was, he saw through the window. There was a face outside, a boy’s grinning face.

The tapping upstairs, deep in the blackness, grew louder. He would have to go up there eventually. The house had whole sections off limits now, too unfamiliar to dare enter.

He walked up the staircase and into the dim hall. There was a face there. It went by him, blind and unaware it had entered the house. Then it froze, a glitch, and burned into the air like a memory. Soon there would be more disembodied faces, vacuous and sinister, to cover the house like settling leaves.

It was sad for him. He’d loved the old house on the hill.

 

Setting 7:

At other times, the thoughts and fears of AIs are represented as vaguely realistic settings.

 

Excerpt:

He looked down at the morning streets. Half the city was under water, but the street below her apartment was dry and bustling, echoing with business and traffic. Across the street, though, water lapped at the concrete and sparkled under a rising sun. The farther alleys were submerged, and where the sun shone brightest the water was a crayonlike aquamarine. The sunshine gave the city a cheery, vibrant tone, but the people only walked on the dry sides and skirted cautiously the shallows. Down a side street the water moved. He saw something beneath the surface, a shadow drifting near the dry, safe concrete. He watched it, a black shadow beneath the blue. It slunk into deeper water, rounded a building, and reemerged in the next alley.

A family stood on the sidewalk. They pointed at shops and restaurants. The father glanced down the watery alley, and then his arm went up to shield the blow—thrashing water and froth. A shark powered onto the concrete and ate the family whole. It wriggled back into the calm blue water, licking its lips with a dog’s tongue. It grinned, and Two God Machine was sure it was watching him. The shark swam into deeper water.

On the sidewalk, the grocery bags sat toppled over, the contents spilled and broken. No one had noticed.

Two God Machine prayed his daughter wasn’t down on the street somewhere, working daily, lonely in the long night, in constant danger. He was sure she hadn’t been eaten. The mess in the kitchen was today’s, the pictures recently handled. His stomach ached. He saw her standing in the kitchen doorway, not a woman, but the child he remembered. She smiled and ran toward him. He put his briefcase down and held her tight.

Sunlight filtered through the diaphanous green curtains, and the streets slowly filled with water. His processors fired somewhere deep. The brightness grew until it burned his eyes.

 

[PGProctor]

The Act of Story Statement

Gail Leonhardt volunteered to host an event held every twenty-five years for a group of people who are ordinary in every way except that they fail to age. 

Antagonist

Bon vivant Ricci Alim Shabaev "Ricky" is the fly in the ointment. He arrives at Gail’s home in desperate condition, disrupting Gail’s life. Ricky hopes to ingratiate himself and gain acceptance into The Membership. He was present for the founding of the organization but declined to join following the murder of founder Harry Llewellyn. Harry was his dear friend and Gail’s lover. Centuries of ill will exist between Ricky and other members. Gail's friends are suspicious of Ricky's motives due to his unreliability and long history of charlatanism.

Breakout Title:

Ribbons of Time: The Membership

Genre and Comparables:

Ribbons of Time: The Membership is speculative fiction with a touch of magical realism, falling into the realm of paranormal romance. It is also a comedy of manners peopled by unreliable narrators. 

Comparables include:

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V. E. Schwab

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Also, the movie Age of Adeline and the short-lived television series New Amsterdam (not to be confused with the current hospital drama of the same name).

Hook Line:

A group of extraordinarily long-lived people who organized to protect themselves from the vagaries of changing times face the challenge of adapting to the modern world and continued concealment from a technological society.

Conflict:

Primary Conflict:

Making the arrangements for a convention-style meeting would seemingly be an uncomplicated task. However, those attending this event have the shared issue of failure to age. These ordinary people are not immortal, nor supernatural beings. They all suffered a traumatic event, after which they ceased to get older.

The challenges of moving from superstitious times into a modern world motivated the creation of The Membership. Difficulties encountered by the members include coping with their identities and finances in digital times, navigating through regional politics and war, and dealing with friends and family who age and die at a normal rate. 

Beautiful Gail is the member responsible for facilitating the upcoming meeting, which is drawing together associates from around the world. Her extended family and very old friends are at the heart of complex relationships featuring old rivalries, loyalties, and a complicated love triangle. 

Ricci, soon to be known as Ricky, is a would-be member of this organization. In advance of the scheduled meeting, he arrives in desperate condition seeking Gail's help. His appearance disrupts her household and her personal plans including her attempt to become a surrogate for a childless relative. Ricci's presence also disturbs her grandson Jeremy, whom Gail has taken in following a failed suicide attempt. 

Secondary Conflict:

Richard and Viggo are two members with whom Gail has a history of romantic involvement. The friends and rivals soon bring their own emotional baggage. After outliving his beloved wife, Viggo has staged his death and is looking to start anew. Ricky had a misadventure that nearly ended Richard's life, causing lingering resentment. The eternal bachelor, Richard is stunned to find he is a single parent for a very young boy. He hopes to exploit any feeling Gail has for him to persuade her to take parental responsibility off his hands. Gail discovers her son Robert, long thought dead, is very much alive, having the same extended lifespan as his mother.

How these unreliable narrators navigate the year leading up to their meeting is the crux of the novel. The narrative is driven by the relationships of these characters managing their unusual and complicated lives. 

Setting:

From 2017-1018 all roads are leading to New York City. An organization known simply as The Membership is assembling to plan the future for the group of a few hundred long-lived, eternally youthful participants. Gail owns an apartment building where many of the members will stay. Stateless Ricky receives an invitation to the event while working in an Indian dockyard and arranges to be smuggled into the U.S. Viggo abandons his life in Argentina, fakes his death, and embraces a new life as an American citizen. British lothario Richard sells out an international business to begin anew as the father of a young son.

Gail has the habit of taking in those in trouble and overextending her resources. She rescued her grandson Jeremy following a near-fatal drug overdose and brought him into her home. Ricky lands on her doorstep in terrible physical condition following his ordeal of jumping ship in New York harbor. Despite her great age, Gail's fertility is intact and she seeks out a suitable father for a child she plans to bestow on her childless granddaughter. Following an accidental encounter near her southern mountain home, she discovers that her son Robert thought dead for many years, has returned home fleeing a failed marriage in Colorado. She sponsors his membership since he shares her longevity. 

Gail has had on-and-off romantic relationships with both Richard and Viggo, both of whom maintain apartments in her building. Her feelings for Viggo are not reciprocated, while unreliable Richard's ardor for her has simmered since their first meeting. Richard blames Ricky for the death of the organization's founder and his own near-death experience. He's less than thrilled to find Ricky ensconced in Gail's home.

Members from all corners of the world descend on Gail's residence. Their objective is partly social since they have few outlets to express who they really are. They also seek to use science to help explain the nature of their condition. They feel the necessity of keeping their remarkable existence confidential re-establishing their identities as needed to avoid questions about their perpetual youth. Technology has complicated their lives and they are concerned about genetics, moving finances, and falling behind the times.

Amid romantic shenanigans, bonhomie, and the constant fear of public exposure the group of friends and lovers chart their future.

 

[Mickey]

1. Story Statement: 

Melly, a middle-aged woman, must release the expectations of a patriarchal society, to fully embrace and be happy with the life she has created. Specifically, she must gain understanding and forgive herself for the choices she has made.

2. Antagonistic Force:

The antagonistic force that pervades this novel is the patriarchal stew we’ve all been steeping in. For each woman, this is embodied by a different person and in some cases, the women themselves unwittingly propagate these narratives:  A husband who can’t let go of the possibility of his wife having a child; historians and preservationists who propagate the narratives that any woman of merit was a mother, who focused on hearth and home, and the decisions these scholars made which served to erase any woman who falls outside that tight circle, (Including demolishing a home to preserve their chosen historical narrative); dangerous women, who are personified by those “outside the room” who highlight what happens when a woman makes choices outside of societal expectations—shunning, arrest warrants, and similar; and well-intentioned friends and family members, who remind childless women that they don’t understand love, and certainly not the unconditional love mothers believe is theirs alone.

3. Breakout Title:

     In the Withdrawing Room

     Quiet the Room

4. Comparable (Historic Fiction)

     Trust by Hernan Diaz: turning the narrative upside down when it’s viewed, not from the men creating the narrative, but when the woman’s story is uncovered.

     The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert: a fictional story grounded in a real location, The Woodlands, in Philadelphia, and focused on a woman operating outside the norm.

5. Hook Line:

On her 50th birthday, an infertile woman confronts her perceived value in the world. As women’s autonomy and agency erode daily in the 21st-century, will the hidden stories of once-influential 18th, 19th, and 20th-century women provide an answer?

6. Conflict:

(Inner Conflict)

Melly remembers the first time she came into this room. When she first saw the portrait of Elizabeth over the mantel. The sad portrait of a woman painted with a purple sash and urn, commemorating the death of her “little lambs” as she called them. Back then, Melly asked the subject of the portrait, “if not motherhood, then what?” She hears voices from the garden below. She recognizes the suddenly deep voice of her nephew, and the giggles of her goddaughter. She looks out the window to see her husband in the mix. Where did that frisbee come from? They are all laughing now. It takes her back to that moment, more than a dozen years ago, when her husband was on the floor with that same nephew when he was barely a toddler. And her mother-in-law, watching from the sofa, loudly stating to everyone in the room, “what a shame my son won’t be a father. I always knew he’d be a great one.” Her cheeks still burned with indignity each time the memory emerged. They all knew it was her. She was the infertile one. The one who suffered miscarriage after miscarriage. The one who was placed on tables, poked and prodded, her female organs filled with dye. She was promised it could all be fixed, her belly filled with air and surgical instruments, only to be told post-surgery, “sorry” your fallopian tubes can’t actually be repaired. Should she have pushed forward? Should she have agreed to painful hormone shots, egg retrievals, and everything that went along with IVF treatments? Should they have put all their financial resources into the baby bucket? And the thing her family never knew…  what if…? What if she hadn’t had that abortion when she was too young to be having sex? Had she done this to herself? This was the guilt she had never let go of.

(Secondary Conflict- Social environment)

(1942) Edith has a very big decision to make. Was it time to find a husband and start a family? Or was it time to join the army? Her mother had escaped from France and was back at home in England. Still her letters grew more frantic. America had finally been forced into the war. Another great world war. Her work contract with Mr. Widener was coming to an end. She valued her experience and training in the art world. But was it time to let it all go? What road would she take?

7. Setting:

One room- A (formal) Withdrawing Room—from present day house museum back through 250 years, to when the house was home to revolutionary Philadelphians.

The setting is in some sense a character in itself. There are stories inside the room and several outside the room. The westward facing windows in the room are very important, as are the south facing windows that do not exist in present day. The room has gone through drastic changes through time. In its original incarnation, it was one of the most opulent rooms in Revolutionary-era Philadelphia, dressed with the finest of furniture and fabrics, important artworks, and books. One hundred years later, the room is barren, the walls have been scraped clean as the innards of the room have been sold off to a very important museum. In the early 20th-century, the room is being recreated. The present-day incarnation is that of a dusty house museum. Outside the windows, the change has been just as drastic. A spacious colonial garden with a view to a Lady Petrie Pear tree, was sold off in pieces, eventually replaced by a 19th century red brick warehouse, and later replaced by a much smaller Colonial Revival walled garden. Each character will look out the windows and see a very different landscape. Our main character, along with her goddaughter, will imagine the room as it *could be* today, reflecting the untold stories that lay hidden within. One character will find herself in the “Powel Room” as it is in the Met Museum in NYC, where it was surreptitiously relocated after removal in the early 1900s. (A reveal.) The room in the Met has faux windows onto a fake garden—altogether dead, removed from its original walls and light.

[Ines Garcia]

Story Statement:

Teresa must learn to move on with her life as she deals with a recently uncovered childhood trauma and struggles with alcoholism while running a bed and breakfast in a haunted mansion whose ghost wants revenge.

 

Antagonist:

After her lover shot and killed her husband and she drove him away through pride and anger, Cheralena’s illegitimate daughter Marina committed suicide. Cheralena was left to live out the rest of her life secluded and bitter in the mansion that was given to her by her gangster husband, whom she never loved but only married for wealth and social status.

Now, the daughter of her ex-lover has taken all that was rightfully hers, and Cheralena wants revenge. She can’t let that woman steal her house, her gold, and her dead daughters' love. So, she comes back to haunt Teresa and vows to destroy her.

 

Breakout Title:

“Breaking Free”

“The Ghost of Cheralena”

“Saving Teresa” (the first book in this series was entitled “Saving Marina”)

 

Comps:

“Her Fearful Symmetry” by Audrey Niffenegger

“The Prince of Tides” by Pat Conroy

 

Hook Line:

Teresa must conquer her demons and learn to forgive in order to survive the evil forces around her while running a Bed and Breakfast in a haunted mansion whose ghost wants her dead.

 

Inner Conflict:

Teresa is struggling to come to terms with the recently uncovered trauma of her childhood. She is resentful and in great emotional pain and is working hard to numb her emotions with alcohol and denial.

The death of her best friend and mother figure puts her over the edge. The ghost of Cheralena represents her destructive thoughts.

 

A Scene from the Book: (Inner Conflict)

Prologue

“We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of a remarkable woman, the godmother of El Cid, Agnus Delacroix….”

 My mind drifts. We couldn’t find her birthdate. How can she be dead with no headstone and no birthdate? The preacher is talking about the meaning of her name and about life in the hereafter, and all I can think of is: “Agnus Delacroix, lamb of God, who was never born and will never die.”

He goes on, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want….”

But I do want, and I do fear evil. I’m standing here in the valley of death; there is no goodness, and there is no mercy.

The sky is weeping gently as I make my way past the other mourners toward the gates of the old cemetery. I walk past my father's grave and brush my fingers lightly over the top of his headstone. I swore I wasn’t going to cry, but just the act of touching my father's headstone opens the floodgates, and I can taste my tears mixing with the now pouring rain.

There’s a storm brewing off the coast; I can feel it. I contemplate going out onto the pier. What a fitting way to go, following my sister into the deep waters, but I’m not that brave, so, instead, I make my way down the familiar tree-lined street to “Casa Marina,” the palm fronds whipping in the wind, throwing shadows under the streetlights in the early dawn. “Agnus Delacroix, lamb of God, who was never born and will never die,” keeps echoing through my head.

I enter through the kitchen door, past Agnus’ room, and up the back steps. I walk past my bedroom and up the spiral ship’s stairs to my office. I grab a bottle from the side cabinet and sit down at my desk. I take a long swallow and wait for the panic to dissipate as the brandy courses through my bloodstream.  Then I open the bottom desk drawer. Cheralena is standing there out on the widow’s walk, just outside the French doors. She’s watching me, her long grey hair whipping in the wind. A bolt of lightning shoots across the sky, and I can see her clearly now through the rain.

I take the revolver out of the drawer and turn it around in my hands; the pearl handle feels cool and smooth.

“Go ahead, pull the trigger,” she whispers in my head.

 I cock the gun.

 

Secondary Conflict:

Teresa’s husband, Michael, is fed up with her behavior and the dismissive way she is treating him, but she is so caught up in her own drama she doesn’t care. In fact, she is beginning to feel annoyed and resentful of him, and she pushes him away.

A Scene from the Book: (Secondary Conflict)

“I’m thinking of building a gift shop off the dining room, where the old speakeasy used to stand, you know, Cheralena’s parlor.”

We’re sitting upstairs in the observation room, having our nightly glass of brandy. Funny how that’s become a habit so quickly. Michael leaves for New York tomorrow.

“Are you out of your mind?” He looks at me as if I have two heads.

I purposely waited until his last night because I knew he wasn’t going to like the idea, and I didn’t want to be fighting in front of everybody. This will give him time to think about it.

“It could be an extra source of income, and anyway, Agnus needs a place to put her stuff.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” I knew he would be against the idea, but he has no right to tell me no. I’m not asking permission; he’s not my father.

“We can’t afford it, Teresa. And what is this thing you have with Agnus, anyway? Agnus needs this, and Agnus needs that. I’m getting tired of you putting Agnus’ needs ahead of ours.”

“Ahead of yours, you mean,” I whisper under my breath, but he hears me.

“Yes, ok, fine, ahead of mine. And what’s wrong with that anyway? I am your husband.”

“Oh my God, you’re jealous of Agnus.”

“I am not. I’m just sick of her, that’s all. I want my wife back.”

Oh, God, here we go again. He keeps saying he wants his wife back. I don’t even know what he’s talking about. Does he want that little girl he married all those years ago? For God’s sake, I was a child back then. I am who I am. Maybe he thought I was somebody else. Maybe I was somebody else once, but that was a long time ago. I’ve changed since I bought this house, I admit it, but I’ve changed for the better in my opinion. I have never been truer to myself than I am right now, and if Michael doesn’t like the woman I’ve become, well, he can just go to hell.

“Well, maybe you should stick around for more than two weeks at a time then.”

“We agreed on this, Teresa. We agreed I would come for two weeks for the grand opening and then go back to the city. I need to get back to the office. There’re a million things waiting for me there.”

“Like giving your notice? The notice you have no intention of giving?”

“That’s not true, and you know it. I’m going to quit; I am. I just need to button up a few things and wait for the time to be right.”

“The time will never be right, Michael, not for you. Let’s face it, you hate it here, and you hate the idea of quitting your fancy, high-paying job in New York City and moving down to Florida to become a maintenance man.” I wonder why, every time I drink this brandy, I don’t like him anymore. It’s not just the drinking; I’ve had other alcoholic drinks, in fact, many cocktails or glasses of wine, and I still love my husband. But every time I put this brandy, Cheralena’s brandy, up to my lips… Oh, well, whatever, I can’t wait to see him go.

“I forbid it – I absolutely forbid it, Teresa. Do you hear?”

“Go to hell,” I say as I storm out of the room, clanking all the way down the metal spiral stairs to our bedroom.

That night, I have the strangest dream.

I’m way out in the middle of the ocean, and I am drowning. There is no land to be seen, and I am all alone except for two birds flying overhead. One is a seagull, and the other a black crow. I’m panicking and screaming, and my hands are flailing around over my head. “Help me – I’m drowning,” I yell, but there is nobody there, just the two birds circling over my head, watching me. The rough ocean is thrashing all around me, and I am struggling to keep my head above the water. Suddenly, the birds start to fight each other. The seagull is much smaller than the crow, but it is faster and smarter, and it dodges the crow's constant attacks. Then the crow swoops down and starts attacking me. It’s biting my face and hands and trying to push me under. Suddenly, the crow grows bigger and bigger until it is the size of a person, then it turns into a person, and she is trying to kill me.

“You were having nightmares again last night,” Michael says.

The sun’s rays are just starting to slant into the bedroom windows, and the sky is hot pink.

“Was I? I don’t remember,” I lie.

“You were rolling around yelling “stop, stop,” You don’t remember?”

“No,” I lie again.

“Are you ok? I worry about you, Teresa.”

“I’m fine. It was just a dream, Michael.” I slip out of bed and go to the shower.

The hot, steamy water feels good on my skin. Who was that woman? She was trying to kill me, I know that. But who was she? I knew who she was in the dream, but I can’t remember her face now. And who was the seagull trying to protect me? I know this dream means something. I’ve had premonitions in the form of dreams before, and I know this is a warning. But what is it trying to tell me?

I still can’t shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong, standing in the parking lot, waving goodbye as Michael rolls the rental car around the corner and out of sight. I remember when I used to drive him to the airport. We would hug and kiss and promise to call. None of that anymore, just a wave goodbye. My head is pounding from the brandy last night and I’m already feeling tired, even though it’s still early morning. I walk through the back door and into the kitchen, pour myself a cup of coffee, and plop down in one of the chairs at the long table. Agnus must be at the beach. She goes every Saturday without fail and has been, she says, ever since she was a little girl growing up in the islands. She brings a large conch shell that she keeps in the garden and fills it with fruit, some mangoes, and a banana – an offering to her mother goddess.

Suddenly, she glides into the kitchen as if I conjured her up just by thinking about her. She has that power. Today, she is wearing white gauze pants and a t-shirt, her hair piled up on top of her head in a colorful turban, and her blue and clear crystal beads around her neck. Agnus, my rock, my savior, my counselor, what would I do without her? I am not worthy of her. She glances at me sideways, sitting with an ice pack on my face.

“Maybe we should put Cheralena’s brandy away for a while now,” is all she says.

I nod, putting the ice pack down on the table. Then I burst into tears.

 

Setting:

The historical neighborhood of El Cid in West Palm Beach, Florida, sits right across the Intracoastal from the island of Palm Beach. The land was once a pineapple plantation, which was later parceled out and developed during the land rush at the turn of the century. It’s a lush, tropical neighborhood named after the famous Spanish hero Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, also known as el Cid, with street names such as Granada, Barcelona, Valencia, and Cordova. Today, it is one of the most affluent neighborhoods west of Palm Beach, lined with historic mansions, all designed in some version of the Mediterranean Revival architecture of the 1920s.

“Casa Marina” sits on four lots across the street from the Intracoastal between Granada and Valencia Roads. Built in the Mediterranean Seaside style, it looks like it belongs on the “Cliff Walk” in Newport, Rhode Island, with a wide veranda wrapping around the front and south side and a “Widow’s Walk” wrapping around the third-story lookout room. The house is filled with secrets left by the Gangster who built it for his wife, Cheralena. It was recently renovated (in the first book) by Teresa and is being run as a Bed and Breakfast. The first floor consists of a great room with wrap-around windows and sheer curtains blowing in the soft breeze, a painted ceiling adorned with crystal chandeliers, and a grand marble staircase leading up to the ten en-suite guestrooms on the second floor. The remainder of the first floor consists of a grand dining room, a large kitchen, a small office and a powder room, and a soon-to-be gift shop, which was once a hidden room used as a speakeasy during prohibition but was burned to the ground (in the first book) by Teresa and the ghost of Marina. Just behind the powder room sits a back stair that leads to the oversized master bedroom on the second floor and a spiral metal ship’s stair that leads to the third-floor lookout room, with the “widow’s walk” outside and a view to the island of Palm Beach and the sea beyond. Across the street sits the pier where Marina jumped to her death (in the first book).

Some scenes take place in an old cemetery down the street from the mansion, where Teresa’s estranged father is buried. Others take place in well-known South Florida landmarks such as the  Ann Norton Sculpture Garden on Barcelona Road, famous for Ms. Norton’s “Easter Island” like sculptures, as well as its beautiful landscape architecture. Others take place in Venice, Italy, where Teresa goes to escape Cheralena (and her feelings).

Still others take place on the beach, especially during sunrise, portraying both Teresa’s and Agnus’ hopes and spirituality. There are also several dream scenes in the story where Agnus speaks to Teresa from the other side, giving her guidance and support.

The weather in South Florida can be volatile and plays a big part in the story, symbolizing Teresa’s emotions throughout the book.

 

ASSIGNMENTS.docx

[Kristen LePine]

Story Statement

The daughter of a dead Spartan king probes the past for lessons, learns how to forgive, and secures the support of her people.

Sketch the Antagonist/Antagonistic Force

This novel features a dual timeline (Now: 490 B.C. and Then: 499 B.C).

In 490 B.C. (Now), a Chorus of Spartan Women serves as the primary antagonistic force. In 499 B.C., King Cleomenes of Sparta is an antagonistic force.

The Chorus: As Gorgo prepares her father, King Cleomenes, for burial, she finds herself alone, save for a young slave girl. The women of Sparta (the Chorus) are expected to be at Gorgo’s side during the preparations, but they have gathered on the altar of the goddess Artemis because they feel unsafe. They fear that Gorgo murdered her father, who wrought chaos in their community. The head priestess of the temple allows the women to hold a tribunal that will end at dawn. Several choral members hold deep resentment and fury towards Gorgo. Gorgo’s old nurse, Dirce, relates a tale where the girl acts like a tornado destroying her few possessions. Her archrival, Demetria, and shopkeeper, Agnes, tell a moving story of Gorgo catching an egg thief (Demetria’s brother). The near-starving boy was whipped within an inch of his life. His mother disavowed his existence, and Demetria nursed him back to health, only to have the boy ask his sister to forgive Gorgo. Eventually, Gorgo’s mother asks for stories about Gorgo’s virtue and ability to uphold Spartan values. When dawn arrives, the time for stories concludes, and the Chorus must vote on whether to forgive and support Gorgo, their new queen.

King Cleomenes of Sparta: Though Gorgo idolized Cleomenes in her childhood, this changes when she is seventeen. An Ionian delegation from Miletus, a city in the Persian Empire, visits Sparta, seeking militaristic aid to stage a revolt from Persia, and Gorgo gets her first taste of real-world geopolitics and becomes aware of King Cleomenes’s flawed nature. He is not the model, virtuous Spartan she imagined him to be—he can be petty, suspicious, and jealous; he lacks prudence and can be bribed; he drinks too much and can make a fool of himself, and most significantly, he is willing to thrust Sparta into a war with the Persian Empire simply because his co-king is opposed. Gorgo convinces Cleomenes to see reason, and he does send the delegation away without Spartan support. However, this is just the beginning of his leadership misjudgments that eventually leads Gorgo to have her father arrested and put into the stockage. This is where he dies from a stab wound.

Breakout title

1.            Gorgo

I like this title the best. Gorgo is the name of the central character, and it’s a great name – simple, punchy, and related to the monstrous and mythical gorgon (a mythical figure that my Gorgo embraces.)

2.            Gorgo of Sparta

This title gives a setting as well as character name, inviting to readers who are unfamiliar with Gorgo and her place/time in history.

3.            Songs of Sparta

I like this the least, but it may be invitational to readers who enjoyed Song of Achilles or Silence of the Girls.

Comparables:

Circe by Madeline Miller (2018)

(along with Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, Ariadne by Jennifer Saint, and Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes.

Miller’s popular book pulls a minor character from Homer’s The Odyssey to tell a fuller story of Circe’s life as a witch and goddess with a human voice. My narrative takes a minor character for Herodotus’s The Histories, which reads more like fantasy than history. I also selected Circe because is enjoyed by adults and young adults, and I believe Gorgo is a story that can also cross-over between these two categories of readers.

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd (2020)

I selected this book because unlike Circe, Silence of the Girls, and Ariadne, Sue Monk Kidd’s book is a work of historical ancient fiction, and Gorgo is also a work of historical ancient fiction.

Medea by Euripides and Eilish Quin (2024)

I just learned that a novel about Medea is coming out in 2024. I love Euripides’s tragedy and his chorus of women has inspired mine.

Other comparables worth considering:

Whenever people learn that I set my book in ancient Sparta, they mention Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield (1998) and 300 by Frank Miller (1999). So, I feel like I must add them as possible comps. Both books feature Leonidas of Sparta, and Leonidas is present in my story as well, but I paint him very differently (younger, softer, not yet the king). I would love to encourage readers of these extremely popular stories to check out Gorgo too, but with an awareness that my story focuses on Gorgo and the women in Spartan society more than Leonidas and the men in Spartan society.

Hook line:

In 490 B.C., as the Persian Empire launches a war against Greek city-states, King Cleomenes of Sparta is stabbed to death in jail. The women of Sparta secretly meet, fearful that the king’s only daughter, Gorgo, murdered the king. They shift through their memories and stories to decide if they will support her. Meanwhile, Gorgo feels abandoned by the women of Sparta as she prepares her father’s body for burial. While she works, she is haunted by a memory of when she first became aware of her father’s corrupt nature. In 499 B.C., a foreign envoy from Ionia seeks militaristic aid from Sparta to secede from the Persian Empire. Gorgo intertwines past and present and stories from multiple perspectives to paint a picture of a complex heroine confronting her father’s failings, her own flaws, her duty to the community, and her destiny to lead in partnership with the new king.

Conflict:

1.       Central Conflict

Gorgo wants power and to be important. Her father has tutored and prepared her for power, but she is a girl and will never be king herself. She can be a daughter, wife, and mother to king, but she will never rule directly. Gorgo doesn’t understand why her father spent so much time tutoring her if she will never sit on his throne. He tells her that it’s important that a king has a clever and well-educated wife to offer advice, but this isn’t enough for her. Throughout the story, Gorgo must come to terms with her desire and inability to achieve her goal.

Scene: The king offers his heir Leonidas a task (traveling to another city to investigate a political situation), and he balks. Gorgo inserts herself into the conversation and says that she would happily go in his place, but this only encourages Leonidas to accept the task. After he leave, Gorgo asks her father if he has a task for her, and he tells her to take a bath and then complete a task her grandmother previous gave her to deliver a basket of sundries to a new mother and wife of a fallen soldier. Gorgo wants a more important task, but the king tells her that there is no more important task than that. They argue and Gorgo explains her desire to be important and do important things, like Leonidas. The king interprets her position as jealousy and he tells her that she and Leonidas are on the same team, working together to achieve the same goals. She disagrees, and he explains how vital his wife and mother are to him when he makes important decisions. This does not resolve her feelings of inadequacy either. The king gives in and offers Gorgo as a task—the next day, he invites her to join him for a meeting with a foreign dignitary. He wants her to observe only. She is not to speak. She hates the idea of sitting silently in a room, but the king convinces her that she may find it more exciting than delivering baskets.

2.       Secondary conflicts:

The power dynamics and struggles between King Cleomenes and his co-ruler King Demaratus highlight the primary conflict and serve as a backdrop to the narrative. This conflict comes to a head in a scene when Cleomenes learns that Demaratus does not support the envoy’s request for aid his “Ionian Revolution.” Cleomenes decides Sparta will support the foreigner, even though his reasoning is baseless.

3.       Inner conflict:

In addition to power, Gorga has a longing for connection. She once had a friend in Chrysanthe (who is part of the Chorus), but their friendship ended in childhood when Gorgo’s father didn’t elevate Chrysanthe’s father to a position of power. Gorgo gets another chance at friendship with Lycus, the nephew of the foreigner who wants Spartan aid for a war. However, near the end of the story, Lycus betrays Gorgo.

Setting:

This story is set in ancient Sparta between two perspectives: Gorgo and the Chorus of Spartan Women. 

Gorgo’s perspective:

Gorgo’s story begins in 490 B.C. in the home of her father and King of Sparta. The king’s house in ancient Sparta would not have been identical to every other dwelling belonging to a Spartan citizen. Made simply with mud bricks, wood planked floors, and a red clay roof. The Spartans believed real treasure could never be found within the confines of bricks. Instead, treasure is experienced in the morning dew in the meadow at dawn, the smell of clean basil and pine in the air, and the song of river rambling over and around the rocks.

Important locations within the house include: the courtyard and his andrōn (his favorite room, like an office or study). This would have been a space where the king worked and relaxed. There is a large worktable, limewood table and stools by a window with a view of the Taygetos mountains, and a hearth with a klismos. Gorgo has fond memories of time spent in this space. This was the room where her father tutored her, played strategy games with her, and read to her from his collection of treasured scrolls. During the king’s life, the cluttered table was covered in scrolls, wax tablets, and dirty bowls with dried bits of wine. However, now it holds the body of the dead king. Throughout the narrative, Gorgo remains in this hot room (she cannot open the shutters for fear of letting in the birds) preparing the king’s body for burial.

Near the end of the story, Gorgo describes Cleomenes’s jail cell on the night he died. The king had drawn a game grid on the ground and he and Gorgo play three rounds of their favorite strategy game, using acorns and feathers for game pieces.

Gorgo often reflects on the past, and she returns repeatedly to a three-day period in 499 BC when an envoy from Miletus comes to Sparta seeking militaristic support. In these memory sections, more of the king’s house and estate are described, including Gorgo’s bedroom, a dining room, a kitchen, an atrium, the olive orchards that surround the house and a barn.

Outside of the house, Gorgo visits a meadow where she practices throwing the javelin; King Demaratus’s house where she spies him meeting with foreigner envoy; a barn where she helps deliver a foal; the wrestling ring outside of the agora (market) where she gets knocked unconscious; the agora; the acropolis; and up into the mountains where she looks down at the agora, acropolis, and the agoge (military school for men aged 7 through 60). She also visits the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia.

Also, through the character of Lycus of Miletus (part of the foreign envoy), the bustling seaport town of Miletus is described.

Perspective of the Chorus:

While Gorgo is at her father’s house in 490 BC, the Chorus of Spartan Women gather on an altar behind the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, where a fire has been lit. The Sanctuary sits in the marshy area near the Eurotas River where the smell of decayed plants and sound of marsh life (frogs, crickets, birds) are ever present.

The Chorus describes a variety of places within Sparta including incidents that happen at the agora, the gymnasium, at the Sanctuary at Artemis Orthia, an aristocrat’s house, and in a meadow.

The chorus leaves Sparta to describe a battle that happened in Argos in 494 B.C., and two choral members detail a journey they took to Argos to learn more about the battle.

[Jeanie]

The Act of Story Statement

Ellison must navigate the tricky social situations at a new job to keep her career, and heart, intact.

Antagonist—200 words or less

John Collins—morally inept and overly moussed senior VP at iLumen. He is responsible for driving the plot in the following ways.

1.      Entangles Ellison in a romantic triangle with himself and her company-appointed mentor Tessa Winslow on Ellison’s first day on the job.

2.      Despite Ellison’s protest, he chooses to pursue Ellison and dump Tessa, putting the two women at odds with one another, making Ellison’s daily life at iLumen challenging with his constant unwanted attention.

3.      The women decide to team up and hatch a revenge plot against him. This plot grows to include more and more women throughout the company who use the power of suggestion, gaslighting, and weaponize classic etiquette practices to undo him.

4.      He created a terrible product, with a significant design flaw, and Ellison faces the impossible task of successfully launching it.

5.      Ellison learns he’s been embezzling from iLumen through a fictional design consultant, Donovan Bradley, who is responsible for the problematic look and feel of the product.

Breakout Title:

Emily Post’s Guide to Saving Lives and Losing Lovers

Genre:

Women’s fiction/comedy of manners

Comparable: 2 comparable…and why

1.      Emily Post’s Etiquette (which I recently learned is the second most stolen book from libraries, after the Bible.) meets a comedy of manners—Legally Blonde, Bridget Jones’ Diary, or Jane Austen books.

2.      Julie & Julia by Julie Powell. A modern-day person dives into an iconic work and takes a humorous look at how it impacts their life and the lessons they learn.

Hook Line

On her first day at a new job, a young woman becomes the unwitting third wheel in her boss’s affair, will the rules of Emily Post’s Etiquette help her save her career, her heart, and her self-respect?

Primary Conflict:

Exacting subtle revenge on John Collins until he is broke, humiliated, and alone in the parking lot.

Other Matters of Conflict—Interpersonal/Inner personal

1.      Inner Personal—Ellison still feels the effects of a revenge she exacted on a friend years ago. She still feels an incredible amount of guilt and remorse for how she handled that situation.

2.      Inner Personal—She doesn’t dive into new friends. Because of her previous experiences, Ellison harbors distrust among women and it takes her a long time to drop her guard and welcome someone in as a true friend.

3.      Inner Personal—Over the course of the story, the way she views the Emily Post edicts changes. At first, they are tools to help her manipulate people to get what she wants—with varying degrees of success. Then she realizes they are more powerful at enabling her to navigate the crazy and unusual she faces, and still like oneself in the morning.

4.      Inner Personal—She tries with varying degrees of success to be both more truthful and more tactful in her responses, identifying her inability to balance these two qualities as the problem that springboarded this whole initial situation.

Example—When Ellison first learns that Tessa and John are romantically involved, she lies to Tessa and camouflages John’s dinner invitation as a business dinner, although he has made other intentions clear, because she doesn’t want to hurt Tessa’s feelings. (All tact, no truth). At the “business” dinner, she unleashes a torrent of truth on John (no tact) which he ignores to both her and his detriment. As the story progresses, she attempts to balance truth and tact better.

5.      Secondary Conflict—Relationship with Tessa. This is a complicated relationship. It begins with Ellison lying to her. Then they decide to unite for a common goal—destroying John Collins, although neither trusts the other. The relationship evolves bumpily and culminates in a deep, lasting friendship, when they prove their friendship to each other by their actions.

 

Example: Ellison gets a final revenge on John, while Tessa is incapacitated. Ellison learns that Tessa has been carrying around anger for the man who destroyed Ellison.

 

6.      Secondary Conflict—Ellison wants to succeed at her job, but she faces obstacles that continually threaten that end goal.

7.      Secondary Conflict—Ellison falls for the iLumen Lothario Ames Randall. She falls for him. They sleep together. He dumps her. She has to deal with it in the public arena of iLumen. Then he becomes her boss and the team prepares to move to London to launch the Cleo internationally.

8.      Secondary Conflict—Ellison meets Roan Tyler—a beloved chef/owner from Chicago. She doesn’t want to fall for him, but she does. He wants to move the relationship to the next level…which can’t happen if she moves to London…what will she choose?

Setting Scene by Scene:

The book is anchored in the advice of Emily Post. Every chapter begins with a rule taken from Etiquette, from either her original 1920s work or the recently released Centennial edition. Much of the action revolves around Ellison attempting to follow, or flip, this good advice to deal with difficult situations.

Settings

1.      PROLOGUE—Ellison’s childhood bedroom. Special surprise—Her best friend posted a video of her running around nearly naked at a sleepover. It goes viral.

2.      iLumen—large corporate campus next to a goose-infested lake.

a.      Surprise: Ellison gets into a car accident with a goose. Meets John Collins.

b.      Surprise: Ellison realizes the product she has to promote has an odd look.

c.      Surprise: Weaponizing edits of good manners—holding doors for him,

3.      Manayunk—upwardly mobile neighborhood in Philadelphia. Ellison’s apartment.

4.      Tuck’s dive bar—this becomes Ellison’s safe space—with the wise bartender, the rowdy regular Ricky Mickey

5.      Tessa’s backyard—complete with a pool and encased in roses.

6.      Romantic Italian restaurant—where the business meeting/dinner date occurs.

7.      Ellison and Tessa get stuck in an elevator.

8.      Party at Ames Randall’s loft.

9.      Des Moines airport bar—Last Call

10.   Bon Moi Dumpling Den

11.   RSVP and the World of Chocolate Event in Chicago

[ElainaP]

Elaina Portugal

Assignment One:

Story Statement:  Maggie, a middle aged widow, tries to avoid her grief by meddling in her adult children's lives as well as the lives of others and stumbles upon crimes that can only be solved by more meddling

Assignment Two:

Antagonistic Force: Maggie's grief is the antagonistic force. She invades her children's and best friend's privacy and demands they live their lives within parameters she deems safe, all in her efforts to keep them out of harms way. While many of her antics are humorous to the reader, her children and best friend become suffocated by her intrusiveness.  As Maggie grapples with her grief and the boundaries her children and friend set, the other antagonist is introduced. This is the coyote who smuggled women and children in over the border and now have them trapped in a sex trafficking ring. Maggie rented a storage facility for her deceased husband's belongings when she noticed children playing at an end unit. She recognizes one of them as a former student and when she goes to investigate, the coyote blocks her attempts and threatens her. Maggie switchers her attention away from her grief and onto helping these women and children escape their captor while trying to make sure they do not get deported. 

Assignment Three:

Titles: My goal is to make this into a series. I think having "Maggie" in the title of each book could be an identifier. However, I am not married to the idea. 

#1: Maggie and the Sex Ring

#2: Oh, Maggie!
 

#3 Meddling Maggie and the Storage Unit

 

 

Assignment Four: 

Genre and Comparable Novels:

Genre: Contemporary Women's fiction, suspense, humor, crime.

Comparable titles:

The Meddler: A movie with Susan Sarandon. She is a grieving widow who insinuates her way into her daughter's life, causing humorous situations for the viewer, but her antics push her daughter away.

The Body Movers Series by Stephanie Bond - Carlotta Wren, the main character in this series is trying to manage her life after her parents abandon her, leaving her to raise her younger brother. Through their job moonlighting as body movers for the morgue, they solve mysteries. 

One For the Money by Janet Evanovich: In the first book of the Stephanie Plum series, the themes re a bit more serious, the emotions a bit more tense, but yet there is still humor throughout. I wouldn't consider the rest of the series as comparable.

 

Assignment Five: 

Hook line: When Maggie loses her husband in the throes of anniversary sex, she must learn to overcome her grief and stop meddling in her children's lives in the guise of keeping them safe. Through her antics, she stumbles onto a sex trafficking ring that forces her to face her grief head-on.

Assignment Six:
 

Inner Conflict: Maggie's inner conflict is her inability to let go of her deceased husband. She smells his clothes in the closet and squirts his cologne on his side of the bed. She meddles in her kids' lives because she is afraid of losing someone else. Her concerns become obsessive and impact her children's personal and professional lives. 

The first chapter opens up with Maggie's daughter Rose and her husband Jim, having their Saturday morning romp. They hear lawnmowers outside their window and realize that Maggie must have hired a landscaping service since she's done similar things. They also realize that Maggie would be over at any moment, even though it was only 8:00 on a Saturday morning. Rose had on a blindfold and was tied to the bed, and her husband couldn't get her untied before Maggie rang the doorbell. Jim scrambles to get the door because Maggie knows where the spare key is and has used it before.  Rose, trapped in her room and tied to the bed, prays her mother will not barge into her room to check on her. Jim convinced Maggie to leave, but not before Rose struggle against the ropes and gave herself bruises. That night, at the fourth annual memorial dinner of her husband's death, Maggie notices the bruises on Rose's wrists and when she finds out what they're from, she demands that Rose and Jim stop having "that kind of sex" and reprimands Rose telling her she did not raise "that kind of daughter."

 

Second Conflict: Trying to get back into her children's good graces, Maggie lies to them and tells them she donated her husband's belongs to charity. However, she rented a storage unit for them instead and visits them every day. Her nosey and meddling ways pay off when she stumbles onto a sex trafficking ring at the end unit. She installs cameras on the garages across from the unit housing the women and children. She is confronted by the coyote a few times and he threatens her to back off. She works with her best friend, Tay, and tries to devise a way to get the women free and keep them from being deported. Her efforts compromise everyone's safety. 

Assignment 7:

Setting: The setting is in Western North Carolina in a town 15 miles southeast of Asheville. This mountain town has a vibrant apple orchard economic system and is home to many legal and illegal migrant workers. This setting is imperative to the sex-trafficking sub-plot because it is easy to hide these women and children in broad daylight.

The storage unit is an important part of the setting. It is located in a valley and the flat land gives Maggie a reasonable excuse for getting in her steps for the day on some flat land. 

Another important piece of setting is the health club that Johnny frequents. It is there that the reader understands not only how her husband died, but also how she intrudes on her children's lives in embarrassing and humiliating ways, without meaning intent. The health club is also the place where Johnny begins a relationship with a detective who is integral in breaking up the sex trafficking ring.

The other important piece of setting is the therapist's office where Rose brings Maggie to get help for her obsessiveness and grief. It is in this space that Maggie begins to confront and work through her grief and the impact it is having on the lives of those around her. 

 

[Meg]

Seven Short Assignments

 

Assignment 1: The Act of Story Statement

 

After her beloved foster mother is kidnapped by a drug cartel, fifteen-year-old Finch Delaney must work with her estranged older brother to track down her whereabouts and prevent abandonment and loss yet again.

 

Assignment 2: The Antagonist Plots the Point

 

Stephen Purnell was once a staunch gun lobbyist living a peaceful life in Key West with his family. Framed for a crime by an aggrieved victim of gun violence, Stephen's brief incarceration became the crucible for a dark transformation. Although exonerated, the scars of his imprisonment and a deep-seated anger toward the flawed justice system drive him into the arms of the Aryan Brotherhood, a terrifying prison gang.

Once freed from prison, he established Lethal Strike, a drug trafficking gang wielding power through fear, marked by their Nazi-inspired insignia and brutal signature of leaving victims with lightning bolt burn marks.

Now in control of Key West's drug monopoly and an arm of the Aryan Brotherhood, Stephen's life takes another sinister turn due to a seemingly innocent prank by his daughter and her friend. Their playful swap of phone contacts inadvertently exposes his criminal underworld to an unsuspecting local artist. Faced with the potential unraveling of his empire, Stephen is propelled into a desperate act to protect his secret.

 

Assignment 3: Create a Breakout Title

 

Channel Fever

Kid Boots

Ships in the Night

Coffin Varnish

 

 

Assignment 4: Deciding Your Genre and Choosing Comparables

 

Mother-Daughter Murder Night (Nina Simon) meets The War Widow (Tara Moss)

The Kingdoms of Savannah (by George Dawes Green)

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (Maria Semple)

 

Assignment 5: The Hook Line

When an orphaned teenager comes home from school to find her foster mom missing, the only person she can turn to for help is her fly-by-night older brother who refused to be her guardian.

 

Assignment 6: Two More Levels of Conflict

 

Protagonist’s inner struggle:

 

Finch, a sensitive and precious 15-year-old girl, has experienced a series of misfortunes that caused her to be abandoned multiple times by those she loves. While the circumstances were different each time (her mother’s death, her brother’s decision that he was not equipped to be her guardian, and now her foster mother’s mysterious disappearance), Finch believes that if she has been left behind so many times, it must be her unworthiness and unloveableness causing it.

Hypothetical scenario: Throughout the novel’s progression, Finch knows that her older brother, Les, must return to his seafaring job after two weeks are up. She counts down the days and hopes that Les might choose to stay on land this time instead of abandoning her once again and returning to sea. However, Finch cannot bring herself to believe that Les would stay because of her and instead latches onto the idea that if she gets lucky, Les might stay because of the new woman he’s been flirting with.

 

Secondary conflict: Finch’s older brother, Les, had a markedly different upbringing than Finch due to their 10-year age gap. Although Finch barely remembers their father, who had been a history professor for the U.S. Navy, he was a formative influence on Les and taught him to embrace a life of adventure, freedom, and self-determination. For these reasons, Les is hesitant to become Finch’s guardian and give up his free-roaming, seafaring lifestyle. Finch does not understand this drive to the sea, and she lashes out at his unwillingness to stay nearby and create a life with her.

Hypothetical conflict: When Les decides to return to sea at the end of two weeks, Finch interprets the decision as a personal attack and decides to seek revenge. She stows away on his sailing school brigantine and, hidden, goes out to sea undetected just to prove a point and ruin his plans.

 

Assignment 7: Setting

 

The story takes place in subtropical Key West, Florida. There are several different facets to the setting that I believe have verve and energy and which I’m currently developing further.

Old Town Key West is a vibrant, walkable corridor with brightly-colored wooden buildings of Caribbean influence, tidy front porches, and shuttered windows. As part of their investigation, my characters have to explore several iconic Key West destinations. They take a raucous Prohibition-era booze cruise from Sunset Square (with its fire jugglers and leaping cats) to the Dry Tortugas, an isolated National Park off the coast. During a ghost tour, they throw a coin in the famous gaping fish mouth adorning Captain Tony’s Saloon, learn about the history of the hanging tree growing up through the floor, and see Robert the Haunted Doll at East Martello Tower.

Simultaneously, my characters are forced to explore Key West one layer deeper (and one layer more subterranean) as they uncover a labyrinth of tunnels beneath Old Town. By visiting historic destinations such as the Gato Cigar Factory and the LaTeDa Hotel where Jose Marti gave a famous speech, they discover that the tunnels began as a place to hide weapons during the Cuban Independence Movement. In the LaTeDa, they see a portrait of a famous Key West Rabbi and begin to learn of the (real) historical alliance between the Cuban and Jewish populations of Key West.

As they trace the tunnels through time, they realize that the same key historical players who were hiding arms during the Cuban Independence Movement went on to use the tunnels to smuggle alcohol during Prohibition. Even later, many of the same people—in the same tunnels—went on to help European Jews sneak into the United States during World War II, using a citizenship loophole that was less restrictive if immigrants came from Cuba rather than Europe. The same boats used for rum running and arms smuggling became a method of safely delivering refugees to Key West. Unfortunately, all of this action played out under the threatening gaze of the Klan, which was powerful in Key West in the 1920s and 1930s.

In parallel, my characters, who are attempting to save a local artist and Finch’s guardian from the clutches of a white supremacist drug smuggling ring must rely on the secret documents they’ve found from the days of World War II humanitarian smuggling to get the upper hand on the bad guys, who are predominantly relying on old intel from the Klan. All parties sneak around the mildewy, low-ceilinged, brick-lined tunnels below Old Town in a cat-and-mouse chase below Key West.

Finally, much of the story takes place in Finch’s guardian's bungalow in Key West. The bungalow is a vibrant little place because Connie is a quirky character who has left her unique mark on the house. Obsessed with sea urchins, Connie has metal urchin bookends, colorful, blown-glass urchin lamps, and even succulents potted in dried urchins. As a working-class artist, the house is stuck in the 1970s with its burnt-orange shag carpet and claustrophobic hallways. However, Connie has left her mark of love on every inch of it, adorning it with homemade paintings and hand-written notes she’d left for Finch.

[Lisa Fordham]

Act of story statement:

 

Find the way to her kingdom, marry Merlin's descendant, and escape the werewolves.

 

 

 

The antagonist plots the point:

 

Antagonist #1

I’m not exactly sure how to write this because I have more than one antagonist. The second description was kind of hard because the antagonist has a ton of things that happened to her to make her so evil and hateful. My MC will have to face her later in the story after she marries her son.

Centuries ago, the human kingdom of Blue Haven flourished until there was a dispute between the humans and drow king Tazenlan. Out of desperation, King Tobias turned to the wizards and witches for help. Upon agreement, they studied their book of spells day and night until finally, they came up with a spell that would create guardians for the realm while everyone slept. Little did they know, these guardians would crave blood and could eventually procreate. 

Several months later, a vampire named Dante and Princess Jane were found together in the stables. When brought to King Tobias, the princess told him she was carrying his grandson. King Tobias was furious about the abomination growing in her womb, and he ordered their deaths. First, he made Dante watch the princess die by beheading, and he was executed shortly afterward. 

Many years later, vampire attacks were becoming more frequent, and one day, King Tobias went to the witches and wizards for help. Once again, they created another creature, calling them Lycanthropes and werewolves, or Lycans for short. They created them in hopes the vampires would go extinct. 

In 1519, the Lycans found Princess Scarlett of Stone Ridge and learned her blood could make them stronger and faster and break the curse of the moon, and they could change at will.

Antagonist #2

When Princess Desdemona was a three-year-old child, a witch named Cassandra took her from her kingdom in the middle of the night. Out of spite for the girl's parents, she imprisoned the girl in her home. As she grew older, Cassandra made the girl her personal slave and kept her in the house, never allowing her outside. 

When Desdemona turned ten, she tried to escape but failed. Cassandra grew angry, and out of cruelty, she cursed Desdemona that she would turn into a vampire when she came of age. When the news about the king and queen's deaths spread around the land, Cassandra gloated in front of Desdemona. She went as far as telling Desdemona she was her slave forever and the villagers would never accept her back to the kingdom because she was a monster. 

Cassandra went to the forest on Desdemona's fourteenth birthday to gather supplies. Before leaving, Cassandra warned Desdemona to be present when she returned. While Cassandra was away, Desdemona found her spell book and used it to make a potion. When Cassandra returned, Desdemona was ready and threw the potion at her, which killed her. Afterward, Desdemona returned to her kingdom and found that her Aunt Eliza was the ruler of the kingdom. She introduced herself, and Eliza, after looking at her, realized that Desdemona was her long-lost niece. Eliza arranged for Desdemona's coronation and threw a grand ball, inviting noblemen and royals to meet the missing princess. Soon enough, Desdemona married the vampire Prince Stephan of Bloodstone Keep.   

When she turned sixteen, the curse took effect, and Desdemona became a vampire. The royal couple had two children. Prince Sabastion and Princess Sorsha. She and the king tried for years to have more heirs but without success, and eventually, King Stephen grew tired of her and her failed pregnancies.

A few years ago, the queen discovered that the king was having an affair with a noblewoman named Lady Elizabeth. After seven months, Lady Elizabeth gave birth to her illegitimate son, around the same time as Desdemona had given birth to Prince Sebastion. The queen wished to behead Lady Elizabeth from the court for sleeping with her husband, but King Stephen disagreed. Instead, he sent Lady Elizabeth to an abandoned farm near the village, granted their son a title and lands, and provided them with financial support. 

Twelve years had passed since the king went away on a hunting trip. In his absence, Prince Sabastion succumbed to a curse. The Queen urgently needed another son to secure the throne, and she remembered hearing about Lady Elizabeth's illegitimate child, who bore a striking resemblance to Sabastion. 

The Queen sent her guards to accompany her to the farm where Elizabeth and the child lived. They saw little James tending to the horses and cattle as they approached the cottage while his mother tended to the chickens and collected their eggs. The Queen watched the boy from afar and couldn't believe how much he looked like Sabastion. She proceeded to the cottage, where Lady Elizabeth welcomed her, with James standing by her side. 

Desdemona complimented the mother on her farm and began conversing about her son. Suddenly, she snapped her fingers, and the guards quickly dismounted and seized the boy. Desdemona told Lady Elizabeth not to say a word, or she would order her death. They took him to the castle, where Desdemona forced him to forget his real identity and mother. She replaced his true memories with false ones that she had of Sabastion's. From that moment on, little James was heir to the throne.

 

 

Conjuring your breakout title.

 

Centuries Mine, The Curse of the Witch

Centuries Mine, The Hybrid Princess

Centuries Mine, The Princess of Light

 

 

Deciding your genre and approaching comparables

 

My first comparison is The Saviors Sister written by Jenna Moreci. I compare my book to this one because the main character is a female. She must marry someone and finally finds the man she loves; however, she isn’t supposed to marry him according to her father. She has magical powers to help her realm and uses them for good only. She is a strong young woman that goes through lots of struggles to finally find out her place in life.

 

My second comparable is The Serpent and the Wings of Night: Crowns of Nyaxia because the main character is constantly under attack from dark forces just like my main character. She falls in love with a forbidden person, but that person can protect her and give her a safe life. She struggles against the world and must rely on unexpected circumstances and creatures for survival.

 

Assignment 5

Core wound and the primary conflict.

A young woman that finds out she is not human and has to struggle with her own identity and fight the dark forces after her while maintaining peace in a war-torn kingdom.

 

Other matters of conflict: Two more levels

Scarlett’s conflict:

Princess Scarlett was raised as a human not knowing how special she truly was or even knowing she was really a princess. She will discover the power that resides inside of her and how awesome and dangerous she truly is.

This power she discovers will cause friction between her parents and her because they did not tell her the truth. She will not be able to be with the man that she loves because she must leave the land of the humans because it is no longer safe.

 

The incredible importance of setting

 

In the world of Anglorium, medieval style realms are encased in magic, supernatural creatures, mythical beings and gods. The setting is of medieval England. The country is engulfed in fighting from every angle. Creatures are fighting for power and to rule over one another. At this time in the kingdoms there are only two types of people. You either have power or you have nothing. Disease runs amok because medicine is not very sophisticated. Most turn to magic for major ailments. Women are not educated and are viewed as only good for bearing children and working the kitchens unless you were a noblewoman then you were given an education and taught how to be a “lady”. People would travel all over the country for religious purposes and to “find themselves”. While coins were a prominent source of trade for services or goods, trade in goods was also very prominent. Finding good food is becoming scarce because the population is steadily growing, and the land used to grow crops and raise animals is shrinking. New fortifications were sprawling up across the land for castles for the nobles that actually had money. The gods walk amongst the common folk. Mythical creatures are alive and well. Supernatural creatures cause havoc across the land.

[George]

Assignment 1: The Act of Story Statement

A self-loathing teenager finds herself in the World in the Wall, an effervescent institution within the Universe intended for the supernatural in head and heart. There, she must work against the Magistre, the school’s mysterious faculty, to find her place in one of the World’s four creations: the Airs, the Waters, the Fires, or the Earths, if she wants to remain in the World—for at-least a second term.

Assignment 2: The Antagonist Plots the Point

The Magistre, the school's faculty, introduce the students to deadly extraterrestrial friends and foes, wicked games designed to kill students for sport, and a dangerous new world, Amare and the rest of the First-year students will have to overcome if they want to find their place in the World. 

*The antagonist shifts from external to internal as the students realize they are the only ones that have the power to stop them from finding their places in the World. 

Amare must overcome her own depression by learning to love every part of herself no matter how different. Amicus must control his insecurities brought up by his autism by coming to terms with his true brilliance. Viva must manage her own insecurities regarding her family taken by her by immigration by learning that we're all still connected no matter the distance. Caerule must learn to cope with the death of his family by learning to let go of the past and forgive himself completely.

*Amare and friends face their inner demons head-on in climactic, surrealistic, explosive action sequences (The Earth is Viva, Fire 'N' Amicus, Caerule, The Seven Sins of Amare...)

Assignment 3: Create a Breakout Title

Amare and the World in the Way is the name of the first installment in my series because it introduces my protagonist, Amare, and my main setting/conflict, the World/in the Way. This also works thematically in the sense that the overarching goal of every character is to overcome "the world in their way": depression, autism, immigration, or forgiveness, in order to find their place in the World and return for a second term.

Amare and the World in the Wall (alternative choice)

Amare (alternative to the alternative choice)

Assignment 4: Deciding Your Genre and Choosing Comparables

A Wrinkle in Time

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 

Assignment 5: The Hook Line

After the Pignus, the Same police force, chases Amare out of the city and nearly kills her for blowing up her school, she finds herself on a spaceship to the World, an effervescent educational institution within the Universe, where she’s introduced to extraterrestrial friends and foes, unfinished haunted houses that finish on their own, wicked games designed to kill students for sport, and an entire world in the way she’ll have to overcome if she wants to remain in the World—for at-least a second term.

Assignment 6: Two More Levels of Conflict

Protagonist's Inner struggle:

Amare’s depression makes her feel everything more than the average thirteen-year-old. She mourns all the lives that had ever been lost to the world’s avoidable pandemics, pointless wars, inhumane police brutalities, wrongful persecutions, and astonishing ignorance. She refuses to stand for her society’s moral, social, and “traditional” injustices. And she despises her world that is hypocritical, immoral, and wrong. All she wants to do is hurt the world in the same way it hurt her, by ending her life altogether; but she can’t because of Regina. Amare is willing to live and die for Regina, but the only way she can live is if she proves to be the Same, a member of her society that believes in conformity, the only problem is that everything about her tells her that she’s different, a member of society that believes in individualism.

Excerpt 1:

I have one reason for living, and one reason only. 

Prince Charming? You’re a fairy tale. You’re not living in a fairy tale, you are a fairy tale, and you need a reality check yesterday. George Clooney? I’m only thirteen, which is an acceptable age in some societies, but not this one and I’m not moving. Elvis Presley? I’m all for a hunk-a-hunk of burning love, but I mean a different species of man entirely.

Standing at a whopping thirteen inches tall. Weighing in at seven pounds of pure awesomeness—under a tiara. He is the one, the only love of my life because all boys are revolting. Regina, the Pomeranian princess is the reason I’m alive.

I wish I was lying, but I’m not.

And I’m not sorry.

 

Excerpt 2:

Fiery hair that burns bright red when upset. Check. Doe-sized ambrosia eyes that change with the times. Check. A heart with the power to save the entire Universe. Mate. All of that would make me the Same and never Different, correct? Think again.

Conflict:

The entire first installment in Amare’s story is dedicated to her finding her place in the world. First, it's in the world of the Sames as a Same. Then, it’s in the World in the Wall, where she has to literally find her place as a First-year student if she wants to return in the Fall. Amare is so caught up in the self-loathing, self-deprecating nature of her character that she fails to understand that the only person keeping her from finding her place in the World is herself. It is only once she is able to love every part of herself that she hates that she is able to find her place in the World and overcome the World in “her '' way.

Assignment 7: Setting Scene by Scene:

      1. The Begging of the End

*The Whatshername Willow, the largest orphanage in all of Woodholly, the smallest state in the States that claim to be United, a dystopian version of the United States, split between the Sames, a member of society that believes in conformity, and the Differents, a member of society that believes in individualism. 

*The Same School, the school system for those thirteen and younger run by the Sames of the Sames, forces Amare to realize it's not about being the Same or Different, but it is what she chooses to do with “it” that makes the difference.

2. Fireworks

*Lucifer’s Edge, the outskirts of town pushes Amare to the edge of her life, where she comes to terms with her depression, and the realization that she needs to change. 

3. The Spaceship to the Stars

*The Spaceship takes Amare out of Woodholly, through the home of the deadly Stars, celestial beings composed of hydrogen, helium, and “celebrity”, and to the World, an educational institution within the Universe, another world hidden above the one we all know and love.

4. The World in the Wall

*In the World in the Wall, Amare meets hundreds of other First-years, the Magistre–the school’s dangerous faculty, and the notion that she must find her place in one of the World’s four creations if she wants to return for a second term. 

5. The Earth is Viva

*The world of the Earths

Viva Vivet, a sweet but sour first-generation World student, finds her place in the world of the Earths, the Earths’ dormitory filled with a rainforest, the wildest life in the form of different-colored plants, flowers, and animals, and a life-sized-living rendition of the Earth.

6. Earth, Wind, and Amicus

*The world of the Waters

Amicus Peculiar, a golden-haired einstein on the spectrum of brilliance, finds his place in the world of the Waters, the Waters’ dormitory filled with different-colored animals in water tanks, insulators, and aquariums. 

7. The Action in the Americas

*The Americas

In the classroom dedicated to the Americas, Amare and friends are under attack by a living, breathing interpretation of New York City: the Statue of Liberty, Empire State building, and two twin towers that teach them the importance of living every moment to its fullest.

Note: Every classroom in the World physically changes with the vision of the faculty in control of it.  

8. The Unfinished

* In the World’s unfinished Haunted House, the old and decrepit home to the Writer’s sick and twisted nightmares, Amare gives the Writer the confidence he needs to love himself unconditionally, finish his story, and ultimately find his place in the World.

9. The World’s Sport

*At the World’s Sport All-Star game, the World’s “Super bowl”, Amare is introduced to the World’s Sport, all of the Universe’s different extraterrestrials, and a story that puts her journey to self-love back on course.

10. Caerule

*The France of Fruition

Caerule, a tall-dark-and-mysterious sinking dreamboat of a boy finds his place in the France of Fruition after a war with a water monster manifests out of his own familial trauma.

11. Alien

*In the world of the Fires Amare finds her place in the world of the Fires, the Fires’ dormitory engulfed in flames, after finding the love she needs to love herself unconditionally. 

12. The World in the Way

*Outside the World in the Wall, Amare, Viva, Amicus, Caerule and the rest of the first-year students celebrate the passing of their first year and eventual return for their second.

[Tracy Ballinger]

• Act of Story Statement

Robin cannot find a good hiking partner, let alone a good romantic partner, so she wanders across Iceland alone, trying to quench her restlessness and keep hope in love.

• 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. 

The antagonist in this story is Alonzo, an Italian glacier guide working in Iceland, who, like many men, both desires and rejects the protagonist.  He shamelessly flirts and leads her on while also railing against her and flaking out, leaving her confused and conflicted.  He inflames her hope for love and connection, but ultimately fails to fulfill those hopes, leaving her disappointed and alone.  Like the main character, he desires romance, but, having experienced devastating heartbreak in the past, he holds himself back from forming truly intimate relationships.  For him, love seeks to enslave and destroy him and, hence, is a dangerous force he must resist and fight against.  Hence, while drawn to the protagonist, he also treats her as an enemy, and in turn makes himself her enemy.  He represents the larger antagonist force of the comfort zone: the conformity of people to safe, predictable, and superficial things and their fear of the divine unknown.  The protagonist, on the other hand, is driven to seek God and adventure, no matter the cost.

• Create a breakout title (3 options)

1. Robin Walks Across Iceland
2. The Viking, the Glacier Guide, and the Man from Kentucky
3. Prudence and Passion

• 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. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - Gilbert’s book is like a travel blog and diary, weaving her travel experiences with her larger personal story.  It also involves some romance and self-discovery.  My book is also about a person traveling and seeking inner and outer change and has a bit of romance. The protagonists are similar demographically, as well, though they are very different characters. 
2. Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Like, Eat, Pray, Love, Strayed’s book is her memoir of a journey during a transitional period in her life.  Like my story, the action takes place in the wilderness, with the main character having to battle the elements and experiencing growth and transformation through nature and solitude.  My story is more of an adventure story, like Wild, than a travel story, like Eat, Pray, Love, but, as in both, the story involves an expose of the heart of the character, her interpersonal relationships, and her pursuit for meaning and a new way of being in the world.

• Write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound. 

A woman rejected by adventurous men for being too religious and by religious men for being too adventurous, struggles to find love while keeping true to her faith and herself.

• Primary dramatic conflict which drives through the work from beginning to end

Her desire to give and receive love, to be in an intimate committed relationship where she is seen and accepted for who she is, including being able to pursue her other loves: God and His wilderness.  

• Secondary conflicts or complications that take various social forms

1. Conflict with Alberto - does he want her or not?  Will he commit or not?  Is he a good man or not?
2. Conflict trying to find a hiking partner to go across Iceland with.  Should she go by herself or not?  Who should she ask?  
3. Will she be able to successfully traverse Iceland?  Various physical challenges will present themselves such as bad weather, long distances to walk, lack of water, changing terrain, and difficult river fords.
4. A relationship evolves with a new character she meets on her trek.  Does she have feelings for him?  Does he have feelings for her?  Could a relationship work between them?

• Inner conflicts and core wounds

She is unwanted, unimportant, and forgotten.

• 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.

Alberto flirting with Robin and sending her a half naked photo of himself will cause her turmoil.  She’ll be torn between hoping something real could happen between them, because she does like him, and between giving up on him as a romantic prospect because he is too flaky and seems to only want something superficial.  This will manifest as her flirting back, trying to direct the relationship into something more, and then reaching an impasse or a block with him and letting the relationship go for a time, as she experiences disappointment and disillusionment in him.  This pattern of anxiety and turmoil will repeat as she vacillates between hope and despair with him and other men that enter her life.  

• 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 secondary conflict will involve friends as she tries to find someone to hike across Iceland with her.  She will struggle to convince anyone to join her on her adventure, a metaphor for how she struggles to connect with others in general, due to her fearlessness and contempt for things that are safe and comfortable.  

• 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?

The setting is Iceland, a barren land covered in grey sand, plains of black rock piles, the remains of old lava flows, and pock-marked by cone and plateau formations. These dry desert regions are broken up by glaciers and huge waterfalls, where silty glacial runoff carves canyons through the land.  The glaciers themselves provide an amazing backdrop as they dominate the horizon at times and provide a sense of awe. Their movement and melt change the landscape around them, sometimes flooding the plains, forming lakes and rivers where there previously were none.  The setting is both astoundingly beautiful as much as it is dangerous and intimidating.  The glaciers and other natural features give a sense of wonder, but are also ominous in their power and indifference to those who dare to explore them.  Iceland is mostly uninhabited, so in the story, the main character encounters few other people and must battle Iceland’s challenges on her own.  Though, when she does find others in these remote regions, they tend to share kindred spirits and form a quick bond.  

[Judy]

#1 THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT

Nora must come to terms with a history she didn’t know that she had and determine how that history will affect her going forward. She has to move to a new city, and piece together information provided by the characters, some of whom are dead but have left written words. 

#2 THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT

The primary antagonist is Stacey, the mother of Maria and Audrey and grandmother of Nora. At 17, Stacey’s goal was to get a boyfriend and find out what sex was all about. As a girl, she was second fiddle to her older sister and living with a mother who didn’t care too much for her. She got pregnant in high school and married David (a secondary antagonist), who ultimately forced her to give Maria away in a secret adoption arrangement. Three years later, Stacey and David have a second child, Audrey, whom they keep. Stacey treats Audrey with anger and resentment and occasionally gets drunk enough to tell her about Audrey’s older sister, Maria. After Stacey kills David, she is determined to live the teenage life she never had. Audrey gets in the way of Stacey’s plans, which makes Stacey treat her even worse. When Audrey gets pregnant at age 16, Stacey locks her in the house and sets out in earnest to find a man before she becomes a grandmother at age 34. 

 

David, a secondary antagonist, was Maria’s father. He was a self-centered senior in high school ready to get out of this small town until his grandfather forced him to marry pregnant Stacey. He entered into a backroom agreement to trade his daughter for a ticket out of town – ownership of a house in Belton and a small grocery store in that town. He didn’t know anything about grocery stores, but it was better than working in the textile mill and well worth it to get rid of the kid he never wanted. He was still stuck with his wife, which proved to be his ending.

 

#3 CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE

Lost and Found

Sisters in Deception

The Giveaway

 

#4 DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES

Then She Was Gone (Lisa Jewell) – tells a family’s history and the presence of a child who is difficult to explain. Ultimately, that child ends up where she belongs and with an understanding of how she got there.

 

#5 CORE WOUND AND PRIMARY CONFLICT

Raised by a single mother with a hidden past, Nora must confront a family history that threatens the bond that’s sustained her and decide how she’ll live the rest of her life.

 

#6 OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS

Primary conflict

Nora’s inner conflict stems from learning about a history she didn’t know she had and figuring out her place in life when she suddenly doesn’t know if she can trust her mother, who has lied to Nora for and about her whole life. She has to decide whether she wants to know about where she came from and, if so, how much she wants to know.

 

SCENE –  

The book begins with Nora opening a letter from a lawyer in Pennsylvania. She doesn’t know anyone in Pennsylvania, but the letter looked official so she opened it. In the letter, Nora learns that the person she always thought was her mother did not give birth to her. 

Nora confronts Maria, who tells her that she acquired Nora when Nora was a few months old. A woman handed baby Nora to her and asked her to take her and care for her. Faced with such a traumatic event, Maria decides to keep the baby and cut all ties to her parents so she doesn’t have to explain the baby’s presence. 

Nora arrives in Belton, N.C., and enters the house. As she is giving it a cleaning so she can stay there, she discovers a letter from Audrey (her biological mother) telling her that she has written the family history in a series of emails addressed to Nora. Nora must decide whether she wants to know the history and find out about the past she didn’t know she had.

Another conflict Nora has is with the relationship she’s always had with the person she thought was her mother. Maria said Nora didn’t have a father or any grandparents and Nora has relied on her relationship with Maria for her whole life. Now she finds out that she has grandparents who would have loved to be involved in her life, and that her grandfather was behind the backroom deal that took Maria from her own parents. She’s angry that Maria was given away and that Audrey, her biological mother, wasn’t saved from that same environment.

 

Secondary Conflict

Nora must overcome the rage and confusion she feels at the way the women in her family were treated, and deal with her own sense of conflict about whether she wants to meet and get to know her grandparents, who were part of the plan that removed Maria from her parents 40 years ago.

 

SCENE –

 

Nora has been talking to Brandon, the lawyer who helped Audrey find Maria 22 years ago and who had grown up next door to Audrey. He has filled in some holes in the story that weren’t answered in the emails thus far. 

Brandon has been very helpful up until this point, but becomes less helpful when asked about the arrangement that ended with Maria going to the people who raised her. Nora decides that she wants to know the truth and that she must confront her grandfather.

 

#7 STORY SETTING

 

This book starts by juxtaposing two kitchens, one in western Pennsylvania and one in Belton, N.C. The protagonist is entering the Belton kitchen and wondering what she’s doing there while thinking back to the conversation she had with her mother in the Pennsylvania kitchen where she learned that she was just handed to her mother on the street when she was a baby. The idea of the kitchen as the center of the home serves as the starting point for the story the protagonist is about to learn.

 

We won’t really return to the Pennsylvania kitchen, but will spend a lot of time in the house where the Belton kitchen is. The house was part of the deal that led to Nora’s adoptive mother being given away. Later, it’s the house where Nora’s biological mother grew up and where Nora learns the story of her history.

 

The house sits in the town of Belton, which also has the local grocery store that was part of the plan to adopt out Nora’s mother. The grocery store is a setting where people from all over town come in and interact with Nora’s grandparents. 

 

A third location in Belton is the diner where Nora goes to work while she’s learning her history and where she meets many people who fill holes in her story.

[jody tate]

Assignment #1  THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT

 With humor and a child's growing wisdom, this is a young girl’s story about finding herself within her eroding family.  While the world is in chaos around her she watches  each member cope in their own way while their home crumbles around them.  She begins to realize survival means loneliness as she accepts her individuality and hangs on to the hope for a better tomorrow. 

 

Assignment #2  THE ANTAGONIST OR ANTAGONIST FORCE

My childhood family pretended we were what all families were; happy.  But under the picket fence facade lay a brutal truth.  My gracious and kind school principal dad would also refuse to let a black worker in the house ‘for safety’ or refer to the orchard laborers as ‘spics’.  His frustrated housewife was never recognized for her intelligence and was left feeling irrelevant.  Her unpredictable behavior towards my siblings and I would swing from being over protective to overly unkind.  My perfectionist sister learned to stay in her lane. She knew what our parents wanted and made sure to do it, even when it wasn’t what she really wanted. Disappointing them was not an option.  My brother was the epitome of trying hard. His desire to be everything and more of what my sister was, radiated out of everything he ever did, yet, he never achieved. My little brother was spoiled and provided distraction.  Even as a little boy, he played his part, which gave mom someone to worry about and take care of, her only solace in the later part of the 70’s in my ‘perfect’ and crumbling childhood home. 

Assignment #3  BREAKOUT TITLE

Home Grown

Time of Chaos

Nuclear Family 

 

Assignment #4 TWO COMPARABLES

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (a Mostly True Memoir) and Furiously Happy by Jenny Larson

This author uses a sense of humor to deflect pain or hurt in the stories that she lived through and to soften the blow to her family as well.  This is the approach I am utilizing as well.  

A Christmas Story

This author also uses humor to tell a memoir and to soften some of the elements of his youth. 

 

Assignment #5 HOOK LINE

The 70’s era influenced what I perceived as truth, and how my family grew and imploded.  The white middle class myth of happiness and success was slowly pulled away like the revelation of Oz.  Much as the music of that era, my life was a story unfolding and reflecting back the changes around me.   

(Protagonist Hook;  Jody; tiny, freckled, observant, naughty, fights for underdogs, doesn’t want high expectations, escapes family turmoil on bike, watcher as family erodes and has to learn how to find herself in the aftermath. 

Core Wound; Never really accepted for who she was and the strengths she carried, she battled understanding herself in the light of what her family tried convincing her she was.

Antagonist; my family, potential was only seen as belonging to the males in the family as I came to realize it was a devaluation of females in general in my father and brothers minds. 

‘Agon’; Fighting to be who I am while simultaneously wanting to avoid conflict, my brother abusing me and not being believed, questioning/understanding sexuality, wanting loved but feeling unwanted and abandoned. 

Setting;  Each chapter will be a year starting in 1965, up to 1979.  This will encompass my childhood and end with the year that my mother moved with me and my little brother out of my hometown to begin anew in her childhood town. (2nd book or 2nd part of this book is the 80’s).  Each year will include the influences of pop culture, news events and music.  Each year will also show the slow progression of my awakening (as I matured) to the inequities around me and how much I stood apart from much of my family’s thinking.  (Book 2 - the 80’s would show even more of this as I enter adulthood and self responsibility.  Book 3 - 90’s to now would be how my decisions impacted my life and several very serious life events that spotlighted how my early journey prepared me for what I was going to need to do.))

 

Assignment #6 CONDITIONS FOR INNER CONFLICT AND SECONDARY CONFLICT

The primary conflict is between the protagonist (myself) as a child and my belief that my family is everything that they pretend to be.  The truth that emerges shows all the imperfections and brutal truths about my family.  The conflict gradually materialized as I matured. I gained insight and understanding of the people around me as well as the motives of their actions and the impact it will have on me. 

The secondary conflict is between me and my older brother who sexually abused me for several years, while also verbally and emotionally abusing me.  Once I told my mom, it stopped although she did not believe me.  The events of those years were added to the list of family events that were molding my thinking and beliefs. My self worth was demolished and the healing took decades. 

 

Assignment #7  SETTING

My Town (Setting the Stage)

Our evergreen tree rose above the power lines and stretched for the sky as it stood sentry in front of our home, 2 stories of concrete bricks capped with a green tin roof. A neatly trimmed hedge braced the front yard opposite of the pine tree, filled with kid created paths and nests to play in.  Large square pillars dignified the warm and welcoming large front porch that decoratively announced each season. The cement steps bridging the patio and the sidewalk that brought neighbors and friends to our front door.  Our home was a perfect square, a child’s drawing with windows on each side of the door and a pitched roof with a chimney.  The image of perfection.

Our home was one of many on our side of the street that lined a gully. Each facing away as if to protect a secret.  Being at the west edge of our town each end of the street curved and dropped off into orchard and farmland.  This would become my bike route, my small world, nestled in a sleepy little family community at the base of the Grand Mesa, in Cedaredge, Colorado.  

 The road leading north through Cedaredge climbed Grand Mesa and dropped back down again, ending at interstate 70, leading to all places heard of but never seen during my childhood. The road that leads south from Cedaredge would wind its way through more farmland and sleepy little towns, leaving you with the option of going to Hotchkiss, Delta or Grand Junction.  Each of those leading to even more agriculture-based communities throughout the Western Slope.  An area rich in Native American culture and history, Spanish influences, gold mining and early ranching and farming families.  People who learned to make what they could of the area and often left it richer than it was before.  Richer in experience, opportunity and memory. 

Hugged by mountain terrain, orchards and tree covered slopes, my little hometown seemed like the center of the universe.   Main Street in Cedaredge is lined with businesses that still hold residue of my childhood. oThe post office has broken bricks on one side from my first day driving. A local pizza place has gum under one or more of the tables from Friday night pizza with friends.  I always wonder if there is any mark left on the sidewalk, where I dropped the jar that held my tonsils, which I was so proud of. In my mind, the jar is frozen in time halfway to the sidewalk and my mother’s alarmed face frozen in a scream ‘NO!!’.  I had begged her and my doctor to keep them, they were mine after all... 

The small-town grocery store kept groceries on a monthly tab allowing me to provide my own lunches on long biking days.  Yet my personal favorite place to visit was the Dime Store, where you could buy a candy bar for yourself and three of your friends for a dollar. Lawn mowing money could be spent cautiously on long awaited matchbox cars or tiny meticulously created glass animals.  Long summer days were spent on bikes exploring with friends, letting the setting sun remind us of when to go home. Neighbors knew you by name, and kids knew which neighbor would give you cookies and which ones would run you off.

In the ‘70’s, I never realized there was any other way to live. (Cue; John Denver's Country Roads)

 

…and a white picket fence.

My[JT2]  family, the George’s, included two parents, two boys and two girls.  A perfect mid-century family.  My dad, Marlin, was an intelligent and handsome man. His black nappy hair lined his head but left the top shiny.  He never let his hair be long enough to get a solid curl, and the little waves it attempted to achieve were Brylcreemed smooth. He had an engaging smile that endeared him to many.  Dad adored his family and did everything he could think of to keep us, specifically mom, happy and occupied. He supported his stay-at-home wife and kids as a school principal in the local public school system. He was well educated, a community leader as well as involved in a local Methodist Church. He made sure we all had quality time as a family, taking short vacations or just going camping. Ensuring that we all pursued things that he believed interested us.  He had strong opinions, and until I was an adult, I didn’t realize how biased his opinions could be. I always felt a strong connection to him and wondered at times if my siblings felt left out.  The reality I was to discover was that he found me humorous, a side note to his sons whom he had put all his faith in.  

At barely 5’ 4“, my mom, Patty, was a pretty, small town cowgirl. Impoverished as a child and raised on a ranch, she understood work was what you did and did daily.  There was never an excuse to be idle. Very little was too much for her, and she was willing to try anything at least once.  Dark brown wavy hair circled her face.  Soft brown eyes glistened with a smile that slid to one side in an effort to hide her mischievousness.  She loved being around people, and people tended to love being around her.  We couldn’t go anywhere without her finding a good conversation to be had.  Our friends all loved coming to our house, the house to be at, often leaving me to wonder just who my friends came over to see. She smoked heavily all the while pretending she didn’t.  I still see her driving the old red truck, with a cigarette dangling off her lip while she informs me, “It’s just one.  I’m not really smoking anymore, so, your dad doesn’t need to know.”  It was glorious to be a part of something that I thought was just between us. She always had a project, as she went through phases of refinishing treasures found in the dump, making doll clothes or gardening.  She could work harder than most anyone I ever knew.  Our home was always clean, home-made dinner on the table and the yard trimmed and blooming.  By all superficial appearances she lived as the perfect stereotypical housewife of the midcentury.

           In our small family my siblings and I each held a very specific place and purpose.  Our personalities were molded and rooted into the place we inherited by birth order.  Edy Lynn, my sister and the oldest, was almost 6 feet tall with seamless olive skin and a sheet of long straight hair as dark and shimmery as the deepest sea. Her gentle nature displayed itself gracefully on her beautiful face with a warm smile and kind brown eyes.  People could not help but love her any more than they could avoid noticing her. I idolized her yet was destined to live under her shadow. She dreamt of entering a modeling career after high school, which was quite exotic to my mind.   She was a cheerleader, a student council member and in the secretive Rainbow Girls.  That mystical arm of my mom’s sorority, which itself was an extension of the Masons. Once a week she would leave the house in an elaborate floor-length dress, with a little leather apron tied to her wrist spotted with pins she had earned, attached to it.  She looked so important. I believed her to be my parents’ dream child.   She was never called to the principal's office for anything other than an award.  A leader, respected by teachers, neighbors and friends, she was admired by our entire little community. She earned class valedictorian. Edy was who I longed to be, yet I owned no ladder tall enough to reach that star.   I loved her greatly then and even more now.

My older brother, Jim, was over 6’, but his insecurities kept him small.  His soft brown eyes peered through pop bottle lens glasses and sat below a thick mop of wavy, unruly light brown hair. Tall and lanky, and hard to miss, especially since he looked enough like dad that people immediately knew who he was. His small circle of friends was quite different from my sister’s. He struggled with school loudly and defensively.  His unrelenting stubborn streak led to many nights of him arguing with dad.  My ears missed very little in my hiding spot at the top of the stairs.  What my sister and I refer to as the ‘George’ mentality was on full display during these arguments.  Neither could admit they were wrong, too loud, had a poor choice of words or anything else.  It was a testosterone and family chemistry driven battle to exhaustion.  There were never any winners, only casualties.

Despite all the fights my dad and brother seemed to truly love each other.  They shared a love of sports and Jim tried hard to be a notable athlete.  He committed himself to whichever sport he tried and earned respect through his effort and commitment.

Jim and I never really got along, as we competed for what little parental attention was left after my littlest brother was born. That strife between us would develop into actions unforgivable as well isolating. Between my sister and my youngest brother, not much was left for the two in the middle. He and I were in competition for all the good things in our home.  We were the most alike in many ways, not that either of us would have ever acknowledged it. We both found ways to be heard, Jim through his stubbornness and me through my antics. School and extracurricular activities were difficult for us.  He at least made an effort and put in time to be noted.  I did not.

My younger brother Tom, who ended up being taller than me, was not as tall as my other siblings.  As a little boy he tended to be dressed in overalls or plaid which often accented his roundness. When first meeting him, though, it would be his sharp blue eyes, one with a sliver of rust striking through it, that people would comment on. Everyone noticed and coddled this plump and quiet little George boy, especially since he was pretty - sweet most of the time.  He had a Campbell soup kid appearance and a crooked smile that won people over.  As my mom’s last attempt to save the marriage, he was adored by all our family, friends and neighbors and never lacked for babysitters. Not one to involve himself with sports, he was a quiet, thinking kid. Consequently, he remained round throughout his elementary years.  Vehicles eventually took his interest, and he spent countless hours sitting on a dirt pile with his Tonka trucks moving dirt and making truck noises.  Bathing him seemed futile, for as soon as his bath was done, he would be back in the middle of a dirt pile pushing around a truck. 

I was third in line, last in size and worst in temperament.  As my uncle used to say, I looked like I had gotten a ‘suntan through a screen door’.  Literally none of my skin was left unmarred by freckles.  My disruptive hair attempted to be curly, mixing shades of brown, blond and sometimes red through it. My most appealing quality was that I looked younger than I was, a turtle shell of protection for me in my teens, it helped me avoid trouble.  I was very observant and learned as I watched my oldest siblings interact with each other and my parents.  These observations were to be what defined me and my approach in life.  I gleaned small pieces of information from their actions and built upon it to create a wall of safety from things I feared the most; disappointing my parents or letting someone down. 

I saw how proud they were of my amazing sister.  I loved her as much as anyone did.  I saw how hard my brother tried to be appreciated and how little I perceived he was.  It helped me understand that trying wasn’t worth it unless it worked and in that there was no guarantee.  I set no high expectations and never gave anyone the idea I could achieve.  The thought of trying and failing was too much.  I became quiet, but naughty.  I found that doing the exact opposite of what my elder siblings were doing gave me freedoms that I enjoyed. 

I could make my dad laugh.  I could gain appreciation from my mom as she always saw herself as naughty as well.  Edy just loved me no matter what.  Jim despised me no matter what. Tom was the baby in the family, and solidly played his role by often unknowingly providing distraction when needed.  So, all in all, I found my childhood niche.

The small community spotlight tended to shine on our family since my father was a local school principal in a very small town. My older siblings were involved in sports and other community activities, so I often felt as though we were on display. Being third of four and not in sports or other activities kept me mostly inconspicuous. Occasionally someone would spot me at these events, and I would hear them ask in a disbelieving tone, “That’s Edy’s sister?” Their shocked expression poorly hidden.

Yes, I always assured them with a smile.  I am.

But the dialogue in my head would continue.

Yes, I am short.

Yes, I have mousy brown out of control hair.

Yes, those are freckles.

Yes, I realize what I am up against.

Believing that the bar was set at a point unattainable, I took the path of least resistance. I wasn’t mean, or stupid, just not willing to always be ‘the other daughter’. Thus began my life of pranks, rule-breaking and a persistent, blatant effort to do the opposite of what Edy or Jim would do. My father, the principal, would have his work cut out.