Write to Pitch 2024 - June

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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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After you've registered and logged in, create your reply to this topic (button top right). Please utilize only one reply for all of your responses so the forum topic will not become cluttered. Also, strongly suggest typing up your "reply" in a separate file then copying it over to your post before submitting. Not a good idea to lose what you've done!

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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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[S. R. Hatcher]

Assignment 1:

A notorious thief must find and steal the heart of the princess’s late betrothed while navigating a debt to a fire-breathing dragon and the vicious politics of the black-market trade.

Assignment 2:

 

The dragon, Arnevir, is a red herring antagonist.  He burns the protagonist, Odel, for pilfering his hoard and seals him to a debt that will end in Odel giving up the heart of his deceased beloved or falling slave to the dragon’s command.  But the dragon is testing him, for he knows Odel is more than a thief, but the heir to the Old Kings before imperialism destroyed the throne.

The true antagonists are Baron Vein and the Empress.  The Baron is the cruel leader of the heart peddling guild who manipulates Odel into stealing the most valuable heart in the Empire and trading it for the heart of his love.  Baron Vein is a womanizer, a crime boss, and motivated by his lust for flesh and coin.  He is but a puppet to his chief benefactor, the Empress.  She hoards the hearts the Baron collects and enslaves an army of half elves for their magic, which is fueled by said hearts.  She herself is secretly half elf and is determined to reclaim the immortality generations of human oppression have taken from her race.  But she wants all that power for herself, the rest of the half elves be damned.

Assignment 3:

The Heart Peddler

Thief of Hearts

The Heart Thief

Assignment 4:

The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty is my first comparison title.  This fantasy is set around a talented thief who has magical abilities she does not understand.  The thief embarks on a lengthy quest with someone of her ancestry who teaches her about the power she wields.  The setting for the first half of my novel is quite similar to Chakraborty’s – a land of desert sand where religion and magic intertwine. 

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo is my second comparable.  It is a thieving fantasy centering around an impossible heist, morally grey protagonist, and multiple antagonistic forces at play.  The utilization of flashbacks for character development is key to the storytelling.  Also, those with magic are feared, hunted, and enslaved, treated as second-class citizens or worse.  At the very end, there is a twist; a big reveal which unveils the true antagonist with a cliffhanger ending.

Assignment 5:

 

A desperate thief has been slave to the black-market heart trade for his entire life and seizes one final job which could grant him freedom.

Assignment 6:

Odel has a few drops of elven blood running through his veins.  He is still considered a half elf and identifies as such with his pointed ears and dark hair.  But he denies this part of his identity, hiding his ears like other half elves and disbelieving in the magical abilities his kind is rumored to possess.  His circumstances are grim, having been plucked off the streets as a wayward orphan and forced into a life of crime, he is constantly chasing freedom in the form of “just one more job.”  He must learn that chasing freedom is equivalent to running from it.

Hypothetical Scenario: Inner Conflict

Odel has taken “one more job” for the Imperial Princess and embarks on a journey with her to find and steal the heart of her late betrothed.  The Princess reveals to him that the Imperial line is not purely human as mandated, but tainted with elven blood and the magical abilities which come with it.  She is fully accepting of her identity as a half elf and attempts to teach Odel how to wield magic conjured from the memories held within the hearts he peddles.  In the hope of buying himself the freedom he so desperately desires, Odel tries to conjure coins from the heart, but the spell goes terribly wrong as he never truly believed in magic, only the power of gold.  He burns himself with the coins which turn to molten metal in his hand and must conjure another spell to heal himself.  The emotional toll of conjuring a memory of his own hand from the heart of his deceased love is overwhelming.  He angrily promises to never use heart magic ever again, the anxiety of coming face to face with the power he had denied his entire life and the shame of causing his true love’s death far too much to bear.  It is easier to continue chasing a life of freedom and deny his ancestral powers.

Hypothetical Scenario: Secondary Conflict

Odel’s lifelong love was killed by Baron Vein, the leader of his black-market heart peddling syndicate, and he subconsciously takes responsibility for gambling her safety on a risky heist.  Now he carries her preserved heart and is preparing to deliver it to the dragon to pay off his debt.  But he was again enticed by a job offered by the Imperial Princess to steal back the golden heart of her late betrothed – the same heart he peddled to the Baron to get his true love’s heart back in the first place.  He keeps this secret from the Princess and takes the job anyway.  Now he must return his love’s heart to the dragon and re-steal the heart of the prince-to-be for the Princess.

But Odel is falling in love… and of course denying it.  When the Princess sits up with him at night after an arduous day of battling their enemies, Odel holds her hand.  But in his pocket, he’s squeezing the heart of his love in the other.  He is feeling guilty for loving the Princess not only because he is in mourning for his deceased partner, but because the Princess is enduring the same loss.

Assignment 7:

The Empire of Gladius is rich in history.  Naervin, the continent to the North, is the ancestral land of the humans, who formed the Old Kingdom.  A greedy king stretched the Old Kingdom to the Southern continent, Sorros, the ancestral land of the elves.  With this imperial expansion, the Gladian Empire was born, and the power of the Old Kings lost to an undiscovered twin of the final King and first Emperor.  Humans slaughtered elves for fear of their magical abilities, but stole their anatomical religion and the practice of embalming the heart after death.  The Empress (or Emperor) rules Naervin and Sorros from Isle Meridi between the two continents, and the Imperial Princess lives in the Palace of Marion, Goddess of Women, in the farthest reaches of the South.  The heart of the prince-to-be, who met an untimely demise before his marriage to the Princess, went missing on its guarded pilgrimage to the Tower of Trell, God of Men, in the farthest reaches of the North. 

The embalming of hearts makes them particularly valuable for collectors, jewelers, and criminals alike for the precious metals and gems which decorate them.  The Hepatic Portal is the black-market heart peddling guild which controls the trade of these precious organs.  Heart peddlers are skilled thieves who make it their occupation to hunt hearts, uncover details of their former masters in life, and trade them for ample amounts of coin. 

The Imperial Princess is abandoning her duties to employ and accompany Odel on a quest to recover the heart of her prince-to-be, the heart Odel had just peddled away.  At every turn, Odel and the Princess are at risk of discovery not only by Imperial forces who would return the Princess to the shelter of her palace and execute Odel, but also from hired brutes enforcing The Hepatic Portal’s specific “no double dipping” policy.  Odel could get in serious trouble if he is caught trying to peddle the same heart twice, not to mention that he is keeping this fact a secret from the very intelligent, but naïve, Princess.

Odel is a Northern man with Northern customs, Naervin having been inspired by Anglo Saxon and Norse lands.  But he is thrown into the mysterious sands of the South, where the Princess is most comfortable, but he is not, forcing him to adapt to a culture completely alien to him.  It is a land inspired by Arabian myth and civilizations lost to war and time. 

Throughout their journey North through both continents, Odel and the Princess must challenge their cultural norms.  All the while, an all-powerful dragon is breathing down Odel’s neck for fulfillment of a debt and the nomadic descendants of the Old Kings are rampaging lost adventurers for their supplies in the remote reaches of the Empire.

[samihainlove]

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement.

To be free of the vampires and Empire that controls her homeland.
 

SECOND ASSIGNMENT: sketch the antagonist.

Set in a world where he did not die in 1476, Tsar Vlad the Impaler is the story's antagonist. Out of spite for the man who attempted to kill him (Sultan Mehmet), Vlad grew his empire to control most of the Asian continent, specifically its Muslim populations to fracture the empire Sultan Mehmet once had. With vast regions under his control, Vlad maintains subjugation of the people by use of vampires who feed on non-Russian citizens.

Vlad, however, is not satisfied with the vampires and his thirst for power makes him use human bodies (from the colonized areas) to experiment and create a more lethal monster. Vlad's only fatal flaw is his pride: he believes he is immortal, which blinds him to underestimate the protagonist.

 

THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title 

Blood Eater 
Daughter of the Blood Hills
 

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: - Two smart comparables for your novel. Blood Eater Vampires of El Norte
Vampires of El Norte
Castlevania

 

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound.

A young woman becomes a vampire slayer to kill the Russian tsar who has taken over South Asia to free herself and her people.

 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have.

Primary conflict: rid the land of vampires
Inner conflict: in her desperation to be free, she relies on rage, which threatens her to lose her humanity (becoming something who only kills) 

Secondary conflict: her cousin is loyal to the empire, and some of the townspeople aren’t supportive of her revolutionary movement 

 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail.

The book takes place in pre-modern Bangladesh and India during the early 1800s. Vlad has wrested control of it from its predecessors, and calls the entire region (Indian Subcontinent) the Southern Orient of Vlad, or Soov. The Russian Empire extends across most of Asia but stops at Arabia and Turkey since the Ottoman Empire has blocked Vlad from expanding.

Most of the setting is in townships and villages, including markets and hideouts for resistance. The time period includes an industrial revolution but is not as technologically driven. While there are automobiles and the introduction of electricity, most of the setting's advancements are replaced by a science-black magic combination instead. For example, Vlad's creation of the vampires is a mix of human enhancement and jinn possession. His later creation, a werewolf, is similar in vein.

[katiewalkergevedon]

Shadows of Siphons // Young Adult Fantasy // 99,000 words

 

Assignment 1: The Act of Story Statement

Keep family safe while discovering potential within. 

 

Assignment 2: The Antagonist Plots the Point

Within this novel, there are two antagonists, one being the main focus while the other lurks in the background. 

Griffin is a Vogullon, a dark, shadow-like human turned demon and subordinate to the Darkness Wielder (the “big bad”). The Darkness Wielder found him on the streets, nearly at death, and bestowed a fraction of his power on Griffin. After restoring his lifeforce, the dark energy allowed Griffin the ability to shift from his human body into one more demonic with black, bat-like wings, crimson eyes like blood, and skin covered with patchy green scales.

He is one of hundreds of Vogullon, but is who the Darkness Wielder tasks with stalking the protagonist from a young age to capture and bring her to him so he can claim a power she unknowingly wields. 

Over the eighteen years he comes close to capturing her but is unsuccessful. Griffin learns of the protagonist’s capabilities and breaks free of his shackles from the Darkness Wielder to claim that power for himself. 

He aims to bring the same pain, suffering, darkness, and humiliation to mankind that was bestowed upon him in his mortal life. He allows his greed to consume him and attacks the protagonist in broad daylight, something he was forbidden from doing while under the Darkness Wielder’s control.

 

Assignment 3: Conjuring Your Breakout Title

-Shadows of Siphons

-Destiny Written in Shadows

-Irreverent Shadows

 

Assignment 4: Deciding Your Genre and Approaching Comparables 

Young Adult Fantasy

My first comp title is Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. Set in our modern, present day world, the protagonist finds herself surrounded by ancient magic and shadow creatures that hunt her, as well as others. She learns she has a power she was unaware of before. She also must uncover the secrets of an underground society which does not accept her, eventually discovering she’s tragically one of the main parts of that society.
Similar themes include: self-discovery, facing one’s destiny head on, grief, uncovering and learning to control a hidden power. 
 

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo is my second comp title. The protagonist is discovered to have an uncovered and incredibly desirable power, one that the antagonist seeks to claim as his own. The antagonist wields shadows and plays a direct role in the protagonist’s journey to discovering her true potential. The story also includes volcra, shadow creatures that were once human, that feed off dark energy.
Similar themes include: light and dark as opposing forces, the allure of power, and self-control. 

 

Assignment 5: Core Wounds and the Primary Conflict

A young woman, after years of running, is filled with guilt after watching her friends become flooded with ancient magic and are now tasked with protecting the world from a shadow demon, all because of her.

 

Assignment 6: Other Matters of Conflict: Two More Levels 

Inner Conflict - Meira is driven by fear and anxiety, as her whole life has been spent running from humanoid shadows of the night that always appear to want something from her. Her grandmother packs her and her twin sister up any time Meira reports a sighting and takes them across the country to a new place. This happens frequently, and so often that Meira has lost her sense of belonging anywhere. After the shadows are revealed to be real and attempt to take her away, she finds her sister and friends are flooded with ancient elemental magic, and it’s entirely her fault. 

The others are taken to a magical facility to hone their magic. Meira is also dragged along, but she’s forbidden from seeing the others. And while they are being put on a pedestal by those around them for their magic, Meira is ridiculed and dismissed as a threat. Because of all this, and the numerous characters who express their strong disinterest in her being there, Meira struggles with a lack of belonging within this “world” despite being the sole reason that she and the others are there to begin with. 

Scene - In a scene where Meira sees her sister and friends for the first time in weeks, after being isolated from them, a side character who despises Meira rips her apart from them and tells her to “go where she belongs.” After some arguing and the other characters leave her, as she feels they always do, she replays the character’s words in her mind and states that she would go where she belonged if she knew where that was.

 

Secondary Conflict - Meira’s secondary conflict revolves around our sorcerer, Ryder. Ryder has known Meira and her sister since they were children, so upon his arrival, she anticipates their relationship to be the same as it has been; friendly, warm, genuine. Instead, she is met with a version of Ryder she’s unfamiliar with; one who is cold, standoffish, and can wield magic she had no idea existed before. She attempts to ask him questions about the things happening around her, but he is more concerned with the other four with magic. Upon arriving at their facility, Ryder casts Meira to the side and tells her he cannot help her. 

As the story progresses, Meira attempts to confront Ryder multiple times, growing frustrated and angry when she’s met with indifference. He even goes as far as to tell her he won’t speak to her as it’s for her own safety, which she doesn’t believe. After her own previously unknown powers awaken, she finds information on Ryder and thanks to her paranoia, believes him to be working with the villain. Ryder then informs her he’s going to take her away from where they are, separating her from those she cares about, which she believes is a way to keep her from stopping his plans to harm the Elementals.

Scene - While looking for someone, Meira stumbles into Ryder’s office and finds missing pages of a book highlighting that the Elementals, our four characters with magic, were the ones who created the villain long ago. These pages were previously missing from books she found, and upon finding them, she’s immediately suspicious and wants to know why he is hiding them.  She also finds notes within these pages with details about how the villain’s creation came to be, how it happened, and she starts to believe he’s hoping to recreate this process and that he’s secretly working with the villain. Ryder appears, and when she calls him on it, he responds by saying she doesn’t understand what she’s talking about, immediately followed by his announcement that he’s sending her away, permanently separating her from her sister and friends. Meira protests, but he gives her no choice, and then proceeds to tell her he has one reason for being in this world, and it’s to protect the Elementals from anyone, her included. 

 

Assignment 7: The Incredible Importance of Setting 

There are three main settings throughout the novel.

The story begins in downtown Denver, Colorado in modern day. We see Meira’s apartment; a tiny apartment with creaking floors and chipped paint, a kitchen so small only one person can properly fit at a time, and a dining room table and three chairs as the only real furniture. With the constant moving, they hardly have anything big to take with them, and anything accumulated within the time frame of being there is often left with the exception of the clothing they can fit into one or two bags each. Meira’s grandmother, the caretaker of her and her twin sister, has just enough money to help them survive, so technology is not a luxury they possess though it is present in the timeframe we’re in. It’s night time and incredibly dark, which makes Meira even more paranoid, as all the signs of seeing the mysterious shadows that haunt her are all around.

The second setting within our story is the setting found within a majority of the novel and comes following the catalyst events. Our sorcerer uses magic to transport our characters to Brooklyn, NY, and we find ourselves in a secret facility surrounded by followers of the Elementals. The magically warded facility is called the Center, and is one of our east coast locations for the Elemental’s Legion. The Center is a massive hexagonal training arena with halls leading down each side of the main arena. In its center we see multiple boxing rings and walls lined with weaponry the Legion uses in order to train and prepare to fight the Darkness. The ceiling is glass and allows the only access to the outside world, which later shows the dark clouds of the Darkness Wielder rolling inward as it closes in on the Center. 

All over the room Meira sees shields and banners with a golden six pointed star. Each member of the Legion, Meira included, wears gray and silver training suits with this symbol present, representing the elements. The Elementals wear similar suits but where there are silver accents on the Legion’s suits, the Elementals wear gold to match the symbol around the Center. 

Within the hallways around the hexagonal arena, each hall leads to something; sleeping quarters, the infirmary, the cafeteria. One hallway houses the Elementals and only captains or those of higher status are permitted to enter. This hall houses not only the living quarters for the four Elementals, it has an individualized training arena for each Elemental. The one we see most often is the water arena. This room is large and has pearl white walls and floors and water everywhere. The high ceilings are made of glass much like the main arena. Streams flow through the room and surround a central area for the water wielder to practice and train. 

Upon leaving the Center in the final leg of the novel, we return outside to the streets of Brooklyn, NY. The skies are dark and filled with black clouds that unnerve all below. Those clouds roll in and out of view as the fight with the antagonist persists, with them being more dominant as our protagonist is “losing,” and seeming to disappear as she is “winning.” All around we see destruction and debris from the Darkness, sirens from cars sound all around, and fire burns along multiple storefronts and buildings. Many structures are nearly flattened by the final battle. 

[Anna-Christina]

Assignment 1, The Act of Story Statement:  

Catherine, captain of a secret supernatural order, must defy divine authority and partner with an unknowing human to save Santa Ana Island - and the world - from the effects of climate change.

Assignment 2, THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT

OnHigh, the antagonist in DOTK, appears as a beautiful older woman with an unplaceable European accent on her English.  Her age sometimes skips back and forth. She is charming, laughs easily, but there’s no question that she will do what is correct.  In her mind, things are as they are and there’s nothing to do about it.  There are others like her, and a hierarchy of even more powerful beings above her.

She travels among all the worlds in all the multiverses, overseeing their progress toward justice and equilibrium.  She thinks of herself almost as an editor, and even though she doesn’t expect things to end well, when a world ends badly, her heart breaks.  However she discards it and never thinks of it again.  There are many other worlds to engage with and guide to a better place.  

She has soft spots for some of the losers.  When a Guardian pleads with her to save a particular world, she finds it as adorable as a misbehaving puppy, but it doesn’t change her focus and there’s no change in the outcome.

She’s lonely, and still remembers the time when she had the everyday concerns of a human being, and she still craves the comfort of an embrace, a shared meal, any kind of human connection.

 

Assignment 3, Titles:

Death of the Kraken

Death of the Kraken, A Love Story

Shape of an Island

 

Assignment 4, Comps:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, comparable because it involves people in an alternate future dealing with a world-changing catastrophe, trying to preserve what they can of the before-times.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, comparable because its characters also live in a near future world of lost love and reduced circumstances, and they must fight to preserve their relationships and connections.

 

Assignment 5, Logline

In the year 2173 on an island protected from climate change, a 500 year old woman with supernatural powers defies divine authority to save the world for the child she never had.

 

Assignment 6, two examples of secondary conflict:

The first example of when Catherine feels inner conflict in a visceral way is when, having completed the removal of the ward the protects the island from sharks, a six year old boy is bitten.  He survives, but loses his right leg from the knee down.  Catherine is distraught.  She has done her duty, and it has resulted in grave injury to a child.

An example of secondary conflict also occurs around the fire, when she argues with one of the other Guardians, and he tells her to fuck herself before stalking away down the beach.

 

Assignment 7, Setting:

The island:

Shaped like a fat boomerang, Santa Ana lay just beyond the sight of the mainland, an arrow pointing east.  The northeastern shore rose to rocky bluffs where surfers lolled in the water, while to the southeast, wide flat beaches baked in the sun. On the western side of the island, the water was smooth and deep with a marina that was the center of town.  The fertile soil in the island's middle valley was fed. by underwater springs that filled a large freshwater lake.

Libertine, the house where the Guardians live:

The shadowed path onto Libertine’s drive was easy to find.  The two acres of lawn appeared before her as a shimmering green sea, with Libertine’s graceful shape rising in the near distance.  The smell of the thick even grass reminded her of watermelon, and underneath was the smell of warm clean earth.  

There were still lawns like this in formal public places, and in select conservatories and museums, but she had never seen one in the wild.  She bent down to run her hand over the smooth green, and it flattened and sprang back under her touch. “Oh,” she said. She didn’t know what she’d expected.  She remembered a book from the before time about guests at a party spilling out over a lawn, and the magic of that book fizzed out into the air and already this party felt like a place where something enchanting could happen.

She heard faint music from behind the house but didn’t see anyone so she slipped off her sandals and stepped onto the tickling grass.  Springiness, dampness.  She wondered if the greenness might rub onto her feet.  She turned around and tried to walk in the indentations of her footsteps so she wouldn’t mar the grass further.   

She slipped her shoes back on and floated up the drive toward the house, three stories of white stucco and a red tiled roof with wide front steps and arched doors, which were propped open.  To the right was a modern addition, also white stucco.  There was an arbor with climbing roses and set a little bit toward the back a stone cottage.  

The music led her through the open doors into a large foyer, and she walked through the house and out the French doors into the back garden.  There were tables of food set up along the patio, and steps down to another fresh lawn and a pool, bordered by a stone walkway and parapet. Beyond that was the sea. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[AA Bastian]

The Act of Story Statement (Assignment 1)

An out-of-work seaman becomes a Mormon missionary who must survive a dangerous journey in the 1850s across Asia without money, on a mission he did not choose, and record it.

 

The Antagonist Plots the Point (Assignment 2)

Levi Savage, a farmer from Ohio with enough pluck to repeat his version of events in several variations is the most important person on the mission, or so he tells everyone. He overcomes any secondary status he and Luddington have as alternates on the mission, by promoting himself. In the process no one notices his wagon mate, the quieter Luddington, who has heard every whim of Savage's ramblings on the long journey over months, and can only just bear it. Savage writes Luddington into near oblivion--into his side show for subsequent generations. Luddington, mid-journey, gets rid of Savage's influence only to meet new antagonism. He barely survives the new strangers he is now dependent on.

 

Conjuring Your Breakout Title (Assignment 3)

Asia Unsigned: The Uncolonized Letters 

The Unsigned Uncolonized Letters

Letters Uncolonized: The 1850s Journals

Misrepresented: The Secret 1850s Asia Journal

The Secret 1850s Asia Journal

The Writing Seaman

 

Deciding Your Genre and Approaching Comparables (Assignment 4)

Narrative Nonfiction/History

American Zion by Benjamin Park meets The Anarchy by William Dalrymple

 

American Zion: A New History of Mormonism by Benjamin Park is a social exploration of the history of the Mormon faith and how it shaped the United States. Park critiques the faith while humanizing it in the context of evolving American socio-political forces.

 

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple is a history of the political chaos wrought by the British East India Company’s wars and blunders during the 19th century in India. Dalrymple captures the humanity, sometimes comedy, but also the misjudgments of both the British and South Asians as they struggle for the continent.

 

Core Wound and the Primary Conflict (Assignment 5)

After a former seaman's chosen career comes to a halt he seeks purpose by joining the Mormons, who in turn send him on a dangerous mission to Asia during the height of British colonial ventures, telling him not to take money, to record it, and then forget about him.

 

Other Matters of Conflict: Two More Levels (Assignment 6)

Inner Conflict

Elam Luddington fights the stigma of being chosen as an alternate on a mission and lacks religious zeal. Luddington finds the social and political disconnects of British relations with Asians more compelling than his original missionary purpose, which further relegates him in the eyes the others. He must find something to report to redeem his himself. He finds a mid-ranking British sergeant with secrets that give meaning and purpose to his writings. No one else understands the import of his new found interest in recording or why he’s veered from his missionary topic. The result is an unparalleled, and hitherto unknown, account deconstructing the foundation of what we know about colonial Asia and East-West relations.

 

Secondary Conflict

Luddington struggles to survive the storms at sea, lack of funds, and disdain for Mormons. Luddington determines his missionary work has been fruitless and charity doesn’t sustain him. He wants to return home but the journey is still far. He has already begged his way through the last days in Siam. Merchants and other Christian missionaries see his repeated rough sea voyages as an ill omen and punishment for his conversion to Mormonism. They refuse to support him on his final leg home. Not only he but his rare record is in jeopardy of not making it back home. He is conflicted by his role as a missionary and the rougher crowd of opium dealers and sex workers willing to sustain him. His status among the British in Hong Kong keeps him from getting a passage aboard a ship back to California. 

 

The Incredible Importance of Setting (Assignment 7)

 

 In 1854 as Elam Luddington walks off the boat in Bangkok with thick foliage and glinting pagodas along the shore it is not a given yet that Thailand would remain uncolonized or that Anna Leonowens would become a household name. Yet, with our modern conversations on colonialism, all these stories need a rethinking. Through the eyes of a Mormon, not loyal to the British empire, having been kicked out as a Mormon out of the East coast, and mainstream America, he’s got a one of a kind view.

Siam of the 19th century is in the throes of these critical choices. Where most histories divorce Asian countries from their neighbors, this one travels through multiple, and their dilemmas, all watching each others’ moves to model a response to the British. Official colonial histories told the condescending story that Siam’s king preserved his country from colonization because he alone among his neighbors understood the power sway of the British empire.

Now we know that it’s not true. Due to unsigned letters, in which we reveal the author for the first time through Luddington’s writings we discover that Siam’s king has very different motives for taking the unprecedented turn.

Monsoon winds and ferocious storms at sea nearly drown Elam Luddington and alter his route several times throughout the journey. His lack of funds and the difficulty of the journey leads him to engage with a society, which he might not have had he been more welcome. From the ships’ crews to British governors, to American diplomats about to sign the treaties that will become infamous, Luddington writes from an angle not found in any other first person account of this tenuous time.

Non-Mormons and Mormons alike dismiss him and his lack of missionary success, relegating his writings to an archive shelf, preventing them from critiquing this colonial history. Ironically it was Mormon leaders who requires him to write the detailed, one of a kind reports that men of his class of seamen did not.

What could only have been imagined through fiction now has the authenticity of a primary source. With the color and drive the stormy seas bring against the colorful backdrop of Asian countries from India to Hong Kong, Luddington’s letters come alive in this narrative history.

 

 

[Celeste Simone]

Assignment #1: “A fish and a bird may indeed fall in love, but where shall they live?” A girl and a boy from different classes must escape an oppressive society that aims to control and torment them so they can finally be truly themselves.

Assignment #2:  Oriana must face a few antagonists and one main force. The first antagonist is Odon, a half-blood tyrant who threatens her life and the lives of those she cares about. He at first appears as a God-like force to Oriana, until she learns of his true nature as an actual person. She constantly questions if he can read her thoughts and is watching over her. He becomes her own conscience.

Then she faces individual antagonists throughout her journey who force her to reflect on her “goodness.” Azura causes her to question herself as the protagonist of her own story because to the rebels she is an enemy. Her sister Lenora is an antagonist who gives her up to the authorities at the University. We see through her eyes how each individual in a corrupt society can become an antagonist through their limited perspective and depending on the agenda of those in power.

Assignment #3: 

1. Oriana’s Eyes: Book One of the Great Oak Trilogy
2. Oriana’s Rebirth
3. The Half-Blood’s Destiny

Assignment #4: 1984 by George Orwell but make it a YA fantasy novel. This story is The Giver meets The Hunger Games, meets Romeo and Juliet. Perfect for readers who loved Delirium, Divergent, The Cure and The Selection.

Assignment #5: A girl questions the inescapable oppressive University and is drawn to the secrets that a forbidden young man can offer her about the outside world. As their Rebirth draws nearer a secret transformation could be their one opportunity to overthrow Odon and free her people from his tyrant grasp.

Assignment #6

Oriana is a pureblood Winglet who has grown up under Odon’s rule. Her existence was confined to the University where purity and obedience are commended. Her conflict begins when she meets Dorian, a forbidden half-blood boy who shows her a world outside the University’s walls. She struggles with her awakening love and the reality and truth of the world she lives in. The more she learns about the world beyond the University, the more she realizes that escaping is only a small piece of the puzzle.

When Oriana finally escapes and goes from being the highest revered race to the enemy, she must face the truth about her people and how they have been treating those “beneath” them. She also must face that everything she grew up learning was a lie and propaganda. 

Assignment #6 Part 2:  The secondary conflict that Oriana faces is that although she has escaped there are others still trapped inside the University and under Odon’s control. She must now join in the fight to overthrow Odon and free her friends. This is at great risk to her own life and freedom. Similar to Plato’s cave scenario, Oriana escapes and becomes enlightened. She then must return to the cave to try and save the others. 

Assignment #7: Oriana’s Eyes takes place on an imaginary planet that is being controlled by half-blood tyrants. Oriana's world is much smaller, she has no idea what the outside world is facing. Her perspective is limited to the inside of the University, ruled by Odon. A University is usually known to be a place of education, instead Odon's University is a place of mind control and oppression with the illusion that it is teaching valuable lessons. 

The University is stark white and futuristic in its cold, minimalistic design. The physical coldness of the stone and metal keeps its students on edge and uncomfortable. They are forced to be on high alert constantly to maintain obedience. 

Everything in the University reminds students of the importance of purity. They are divided by their race to maintain this purity. The modern design also defies the chaotic randomness of nature. It shows the need for control and order that Odon is trying to force on his subjects.

The University represents the desire for perceived perfection through sameness, repetition, and order. Rather than uniqueness and diversity.

The University has one place of escape, a garden, walled in by protective hedges. This is a stark contrast to the University and the natural world, which Oriana desperately yearns for. She fears making a mistake and stepping out of line, which is wearing her down.

When Oriana is captured and brought into the caves beneath the University, she is trapped in darkness physically, but ironically she wakes up to the illusion that the University provided. Whereas the brightness of the University should coincide with clarity, it was blinding. The caves represent a modality to enlightenment. She finds herself in the underbelly of the true darkness that Odon was trying to hide. 

Rather than being oppressed though, Oriana is reborn. When she escapes the caves it’s like she is awakening to the truth and seeing the light for the first time. She finds herself in the wilds of nature, which includes variation, disorder, and death. Undesirables are no longer hidden away. Life becomes raw, honest, and real.

Lastly, Oriana is introduced to the Great Oak. This is the location of the rebels' hideout. The Great Oak is a massive tree with an extensive network of platforms and homes set among its branches. The Great Oak represents both a family tree and the tree of life. Oriana finds a new life and is awakened to the deep knowledge of her ancestors at the Great Oak. It holds the connection between the people and their planet as well as the perfect place to remain hidden.

In some ways, the Great Oak is both a setting and main character in the book. She is the embodiment of Mother Nature and is personified through the love of her people. 

[Sammy Krouse]

Assignment 1:

I have two POV characters.
Hektur: An orphan must slay monsters to cure his terminal illness.
Akylien (‘Kyl’): An ennui-afflicted, soul-crafting prodigy leaves his utopic home to rescue a prince.

 

Assignment 2:

Hektur’s storyline:
Primary Antagonist - Septimus
In nearly every sense, Septimus acts as a foil to Hektur. At the novel’s start, Hektur is physically weak, underestimated by his peers, and lacks connections to societal power. He is also unconditionally supported by his older brother, best friend, and his best friend’s family. Conversely, at the novel’s start, Septimus is physically powerful, is well-regarded, and his mother is an influential figure within Vulcarian society. Unbeknownst to the reader at the novel’s start, unlike Hektur, Septimus is only validated for his achievements and has no one that gives him unconditional emotional support.

The inciting incident in the Hektur’s story is the Fabremile Trials, a dangerous test of inborn ability and mental fortitude. Hektur’s mental fortitude holds, but his body fails. Septimus suffers the opposite fate. 

Septimus sees Hektur’s partial victory as a personal insult, as it makes him look weak by comparison. Before Septimus flees town in shame, he attacks Hektur and nearly kills him. Septimus isn’t physically present for most of the rest of the novel, but the threat of his return and his influence still propels Hektur forward.

Secondary Antagonist - Beastmen
The beastmen are the ancestral foe to Vulcarians, and all of humanity. Vulcarian society is centered around warring with the beastmen hordes, and Hektur is roped into this conflict in the last third of the book. The reader figures out midway through the book that beastmen are Challaens (the Challaens are an alliance of sapient non-humans).

Akylien’s storyline:
Primary Antagonist - katarari
Akylien tek’Thetis’s story starts in the utopian Phethian grove. Like all hadiians, Kyl lives in abundance and practices the shape-shifting magic of soul-craft. While Kyl is well-respected by his community, and talented in soul-craft, he feels stifled by the comfortable confines of his world. His best friend, Petra, is a psywren, a race of beautiful, telepathic humanoids. The psywrens are also a generally well off, unlike the sators, bear the brunt of the ‘savage’ katarati’s aggression (the reader discovers halfway through the novel that the katarati are Vulcarians). 

Suddenly, seemingly without cause, a psywren encampment is brutally attacked by the katarati, and a psywren prince is kidnapped. The Challaen Alliance organize a rescue mission to save the prince. Kyl volunteers, both to support his best friend and as an excuse to have an adventure.

For much of the novel, the katarati are a brutal, faceless enemy that signify senseless violence. As the novel progresses, Kyl sees hints that the katarati may be more than mindless savages.

Secondary Antagonist - Ambasador Torvas
Torvas is the sator ambassador to the Challaen Alliance, a sator prince, and leads the mission to rescue the kidnapped psywren prince. Unbeknownst to Kyl, he is responsible for instigating the attack that led to the psywren prince’s capture and is using the situation to further his political goals and to fulfil the terms of a secret prophecy. 

As a hadiian, Kyl feels a strong sense of superiority toward the other Challaen races. This feeling is reinforced by soul-craft, as one of the abilities inherent in soul-craft is that hadiian’s can read a person’s emotional state with their soul-sense.

Using soul-craft, Kyl can see that Torvas is earnest in his convictions and unwavering in his loyalties. The flaw in Kyl’s reasoning is that he makes incorrect assumptions about those convictions and loyalties. Another major contributor to Kyl’s blind spot for Torvas is that he feels a sense of self-congratulatory progressivism in how generously he treats Torvas, a ‘mere’ sator,’ which blinds him to Torvas’s manipulations.

Assignment 3: 

Memories of a Soul Thief
The Ismari Incident
Beings That Lived

Assignment 4:

Brandon Sanderson is a master of crafting rich second worlds with hard-magic system that are both breath-taking and internally consistent. My novel is also set in a world with a deep history and hard-magic system, and holds many themes present within Sanderson’s work: magic as a developing ‘science,’ clashing cultures with limited understandings of a shared, complex history, ‘inhuman’ characters that challenge our assumptions about humanity and otherness.

James Islington creates worlds that feel grand in scale, with magic systems and histories that make readers hungry to turn the page. The Licanius Trilogy is a world-altering epic full of twists and turns that follow characters as they confront a seemingly unstoppable evil. The world’s development, and the central place that the characters end up playing in this world, is very similar to the scale that my novel goes for.

Assignment 5:

Hektur:
Terminally injured by a failed attempt to join the elite legion his parents died serving, a sickly orphan is forced to choose between pitiful subsistence or hunting monsters for a chance at becoming something greater.

Akylien:
Bored beyond belief in a stifling utopia, a soul-crafting prodigy ventures into the dangerous outside world on a mission to rescue a kidnapped prince.

 

Assignment 6:

Hektur:
Primary Conflict:
Hektur’s primary goal is to overcome his terminal illness. His older brother, Cass, wants him to address his illness in the safest manner possible. If Hektur followed his brother’s direction, he would be permanently stuck in poverty and sickness: relying on expensive temporary cures. The alternative is to slaghunt: extract the cure himself, and gain superhuman power, by hunting dangerous monsters.

Midway through the novel, Hektur has slaghunted his way to tentative heath and has the option to limit his slaghunting to safe levels. Hektur’s ambition is slightly less potent than his sense of familial duty, so he follows his brother’s wishes and choses to not pursue the great power that slaghunting could offer. This decision is short-lived. His boyhood tormenter’s cronies find Hektur and maim his best friend. This traumatic experience convinces Hektur that he needs to be strong enough to protect himself and those he loves, driving him back to slaghunting.

Secondary conflict:
An undercurrent within Hektur’s storyline is that the beastmen war is ongoing a close, but safe, distance away. Suddenly, when beastmen attack Hektur’s home, he must decide how to respond. His slaghunting mentor urges a self-centered mercenary’s perspective, while his Hektur’s brother represents a more dutiful, patriotic approach. Hektur was teetering on the edge of this decision, but was pushed over the edge when visiting the brutal carnage Kyl caused during an attack on a Vulcarian supply caravan.

Akylien:
Primary Conflict:
Kyl starts the novel feeling lost and bored by his insular circumstances. His decision to join the rescue mission is a stark departure from his comfortable life, and Kyl must learn to navigate the dangerous outside world. Unlike the Phetian Grove, the stake are real and permanent, and the consequences of his carefree, reckless attitude are far more dire. After Kyl makes the rash choice to use soulcraft in an experimental procedure to increase his regenerative abilities, Kyl is forced to question his overconfident nature. A conversation with Prince Torvas gives Kyl the validation he need to reject any serious self-reflection of change.

Secondary Conflict:
Kyl is superficially tolerant of the other member-races of the Challaen Alliance, and is blind to the ways he looks down on others. Slowly, as he is shown proof of the capabilities and worth of others, and through his close friendship with a member of one of these races, he is forced to challenge his beliefs.

Assignment 7:

Memories of a Soul Thief is set in a war-torn world shaped by Chaos—the primordial force seeded within all life that pushes for growth and change. The human (Vulcarian) and non-human (Challaen) societies have different understandings of Chaos, which informs their cultures and Chaos-based magic systems.

Hektur:
The Vulcarian Imperium is the last free human civilization, named after Vulcaries, god of fire and metalworking. Vulcarians use two forms of magic: Kushkui, a half-lost language that directs the power of Chaos, and tempering, a process of ingesting raw and filtered Chaos that imbues superhuman strength, durability, and various magical abilities.

Hektur’s scenes are set within or around the outskirts of Castralimes, the largest and most strategically important frontier city near the ever-expanding warfront against the ‘beastmen’ hordes. Within Castralimes, most scenes are set around the Quench Tank, a tavern run by Hektur’s best friend’s family. Other settings like the palestra, a training ground for Vulcarian citizens, and a couple of different important neighborhoods, are also featured. 

Many of Hektur’s scenes are set outside of the city proper. Hektur’s slaghunting and Kushkui scrivening mentor has a cottage within the outskirts of Castralimes, which becomes a second home for Hektur. A good number of his scenes are set within or around the cottage. There are also a few different wild landscapes bordering Castralimes in which Hektur goes monster hunting.

Kyl:
The non-human races (Challaens) have a diverse range of magical abilities. Hadiians, the most influential Challaen race, are capable of soulcraft—the ability to modify the souls of living organisms. Their soulcrafting abilities have made hadiians a near-immortal species of shape-shifting craftsmen, artisans, academics, and statesmen, and their culture, bearing, and environment reflect such an ideal situation. 

The hadiian homeland, the Phethian grove, is a magical, utopian forest that has been soul-crafted over centuries to be the ideal environment for hadiians. Soul-crafted mushrooms (selenospores) fill the air with glowing spores that are nourishment for hadiians and poisonous for all other lifeforms. 

This environment is upheld through costly labor extracted from the less stable Challaen peoples, who are reliant on the hadiians for moonfruit, a crop integral to the survival of these ‘lesser’ races. While Kyl understands this oppressive system, and is generally more critical of it than most of his people, his disapproval is a self-congratulatory, ‘progressive’ disapproval that is more cerebral than pragmatic.

When Kyl leaves the Phetian Grove, he spends some time on a greatship traveling across the Median Sea (modeled after the Mediterranean) with other Challaen member races. Eventually, the greatship lands on the Sarvyian Peninsula, which is katarati (or Vulcarian) land.
 

[Jess]

Assignment 1

 

When a daring matriarch’s scandalous will is unveiled, it launches her four conflicted grandchildren from NYC’s most elite circles into an international scavenger hunt where they must confront their deepest traumas and mend broken bonds to claim a life-changing inheritance. 

Assignment 2

There are several antagonists in this story: 

Vivi, herself, is the main antagonist. After watching her grandchildren allow themselves to be held back by their own traumas and conflicts for years, she uses her death and the instructions in her will to manipulate them into a global scavenger hunt where she leverages people from her past to force each grandchild to confront their trauma or conflict - in sometimes brutal and painful ways. Her good intent leads to unforeseen damage and disaster. 

Rodney, Mallory’s husband, is a lesser antagonist. He wants to keep her bound to him and their superficially perfect life in the upper class of Manhattan, through emotional abuse and manipulating her depression and drug addiction. 

Another, lesser antagonist is M, the artist who lures Ellis’s girlfriend Helen into a compromising position and then arranges for Ellis to witness it, leading to their breakup. 

Luz’s abusive mother is an antagonist whose brutality has resulted in Luz’s inability to connect intimately with other people, leading to panic attacks when she tries. 

Yet other, almost faceless antagonists are the two men who trick Marcus into a dangerous situation where he is isolated and vulnerable to their brutal hate attack. 

 

Assignment Three:

You Shouldn’t Say That

The Pussy Statue 

In the Act of Becoming 

 

Assignment Four:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Fiction) - For its representation of trauma;  including gay hate crimes, depression and suicide, addiction, betrayal, abuse, and parent/child dynamics. Both books make you feel deep emotions through the intimate character development, showing flawed, damaged, yet inherently good protagonists — and the salvation that can come through love from unexpected places. The setting of New York City encompasses both the underlying poverty and excess wealth, and the desperation with which both classes struggle to survive. 

The Sun Sets in Singapore by Kehinde Fadipe ( selected for the TODAY show’s Read With Jenna List)- This novel by an up and coming author depicts the unique challenges and privileges of women living as ex pats - and the deep bonds of friendship that form between them. It also demonstrates wealth and class across a rich global background, and connects four very different protagonists with varying levels of inter and intra personal conflict. 

 

Assignment 5:

Their grandmother’s dying wish forces four grandchildren on a global scavenger hunt where, in order to win, they must painfully face the trauma, conflict or betrayal that is holding each of them back. 

Assignment 6:

 

Marcus is facing the damage that was done to him in a brutal hate crime attack, and the way it’s affected his ability to give and receive love with his long suffering partner, Pablo. He also struggles to resolve the blame he feels towards Luz for leaving him alone the night of his attack. Can he finally forgive her? And can he be the lover Pablo deserves?

 

Five years ago, Ellis watched his childhood sweetheart Helen betray him with another man, and he walked out of her life without giving her a chance to explain. When he sees her with a four year old boy who could be his doppleganger, how will he react? He knows that he still loves her - but is love enough?

 

Luz was brutally abused by her mother, who was herself a victim of sexual abuse. She’s never been able to be intimate with anyone as a result, often suffering panic attacks when she gets too close. When she runs into a pre teen girl named Jazzmin in Central Park who suffering similar abuse at the hands of her father, Luz steps in to help. But she can’t be what this girl needs if she can’t heal herself. Can Luz work through her trauma to be there for Jazzmin - and learn to trust a handsome stranger?

 

Mallory was seduced by a rich and glamorous sexual predator named Rodney when she was sixteen. After she marries him, he takes over her life through emotional abuse, instigating and feeding her drug addiction. When Mallory discovers that, twenty years later, Rodney has impregnated another sixteen year old girl and denied her any support, she steps in to help the woman and her baby get back on their feet. The inheritance from ViVi would be a way for Mallory to go to a fantastical celebrity rehab and have enough money to leave Rodney. When it all falls apart, Mallory falls into despair and takes her own life. Will her death be enough of a wake up call for her remaining family members to resolve their differences? 

 

Assignment 7:

 

This novel starts in New York City, exploring the boardrooms, penthouse apartments and entertainments of the rich, as well as the gritty streets of the unhoused, the mentally ill, and the humble transitional homes of those in struggle. 

 

From there, our characters travel the world: from Basel to Barcelona to the Canary Islands, from Singapore to London to LA. There is a flashback to a natural disaster in Marrakech and luxurious vacations in places like Dubai and St. John. The four grandchildren land together in the vibrant city of Istanbul, where the conflict between them explodes and ends in a traumatic death. 

 

A dramatic funeral in Connecticut brings this emotional novel to a climax. When the remaining family members finally decide to take the exodus to Paris, it culminates in the tentative mending of relationships and a path forward. 

 

The rich, international background of this story keeps the reader intrigued and supports the drama that is unfolding across the world. 

 

 

[Elle Milewski]

 1.) The Act of Story Statement

 Stop her violent thoughts from manifesting in reality before they can do irreversible damage. 

2.)   Antagonist/Antagonistic Force

The primary antagonistic force in The Fog Descends is Leila Howard’s own thoughts. From the moment we meet Leila, the violent thoughts that are product of her OCD are the power that stands between her and peace. When her father dies, this force explodes in magnitude as her thoughts begin to actually affect the physical world, causing irreversible harm.

Jamie Franklin provides another antagonistic presence. Though Leila and Jamie wouldn’t necessarily be categorized as antagonists by themselves, they become each other’s antagonists upon meeting. Leila’s abilities short-circuit Jamie’s fact-driven mind and she becomes the obstacle that stands between him and his ability to cope with reality. Meanwhile, Leila desperately needs someone to believe her, show her kindness, and help her escape the torments of her mind. However, Jamie’s cold treatment of Leila leads him to become a major obstacle to her healing.

3.)   Breakout Title 

The Fog Descends 

4.)   Comparable Titles

In Excess of Dark visits Midnight Mass while paying fiery homage to Carrie.

5.)   Logline

When a young woman’s violent thoughts begin physically manifesting in reality, she confides in a man whose desperation for understanding and hunger for control will put countless lives at risk and leave her more dangerous than ever.

6.)   Conditions of Inner Conflict

INNER CONFLICT

Internal conflict is the dark heart of this story. Since this story is told from two POVs, there are two driving internal conflicts:   

Leila Howard – Intrusive, violent thoughts have plagued Leila’s entire life, eating away at her psyche until, at a tragically young age, she stopped believing she was a good person. Upon being diagnosed with OCD, Leila learns to cope with her pain, motivated by the knowledge that she is not alone and that they “are just thoughts.”

When her father is killed, everything changes. The depth of Leila’s grief unleashes a power within her that causes her greatest fear to come true: her intrusive thoughts begin physically manifesting in reality. As Leila becomes a danger to everyone in her life, she is slowly torn apart by the undeniable fact that she isn’t experiencing the nightmare: she is the nightmare.    

Jamie Franklin – Jamie’s childhood has left him obsessed with control and understanding. He believes that people are nothing more than concoctions of chemicals and has spent his career as a psychiatrist fueled by the knowledge that there is always an explanation. However, when he encounters a patient who displays abilities he cannot comprehend, his worldview teeters on the edge and he desperately attempts to keep it from plummeting.

Hypothetical Scenario (Leila) – On the night of her father’s funeral, Leila’s thoughts physically alter reality for the first time. As her drunk mother stumbles away, Leila is overcome by grief, anger, and abandonment. Suddenly, a “fog descends” and reality is replaced by a terrible image. Pain and heat engulf her mind and even as she can feel her body stationary on the couch, she watches a horrific scene unfold that leaves her mother hospitalized.   

Hypothetical Scenario (Jamie) – While trying to acclimate to the small town of Citrine, Colorado, Jamie decides to attend service at Saint Peter’s Church of All Faith: the local church with an infamous history. During the service, the young pastor sermonizes that “knowledge could not expand without darkness to expand into.” The very reminder that there are things in the world beyond comprehension triggers Jamie, causing him to flee the church as he remembers the patient whom he could not save.

SECONDARY CONFLICT 

The secondary conflict is the relationship between Jamie and Leila. While they both share the same goal of putting a stop to Leila’s preternatural abilities, the inherent conflict between their motivations gives rise to dangerous resentment.

Leila is living proof of something beyond comprehension, which is Jamie’s greatest fear, while Jamie’s cold treatment of Leila as some terrible mistake only fuels her violence and anguish.

Hypothetical Scenario – Jamie is convinced that if he is able to see Leila’s brain activity, he will be able to understand her “episodes” and diagnosis her “illness.” He pulls strings and juggles lies in order to gain use of an fMRI machine at the hospital. When the scan shows brain activity that is utterly impossible, Jamie confronts the doctor and is left humiliated. After dragging Leila from the hospital, Jamie speeds down the mountain roads that claimed the life of Leila’s father, and Leila breaks down in tears, asking Jamie why he didn’t just stay away from her in the first place if he hated her this much. Jamie responds with a heart-wrenching blow: “staying away would not have changed your existence. And that is the problem here.”

7.)   The Incredible Importance of Setting

Citrine, Colorado is the epitome of a small town: insignificant to the world, yet so full, it is its own world. With a population of just under 3,000, Citrine rests on the shore of Lake Stephen, a magnificent body of water, cradled within the mountains.

Citrine’s Main Street spans only four blocks. Some of the storefronts and restaurants are reminiscent of other places and times: the town’s only club could have been designed by Gatsby himself; the bizarre surf shop looks like a misplaced piece of California; the cozy Irish Pub could be in the highlands; and the local coffee shop’s twinkling lights and fresh French pastries invoke dreams of Paris. Other buildings are pure Citrine: The small antique shop; Sam’s Hardware Store; The Old Theatre and it’s burnt out marquee; the strangely elegant and well-kept Town Hall; and the white Oak walls of Saint Peter’s Church of All Faith, the town’s infamous place of worship.        

While Citrine used to be a summer tourist destination for families living in Denver and Colorado Springs, it now has more past than future. The commercial hotels on the outskirts of town have been shut down and scheduled for demolition and an entire block of storefronts sits boarded-up and abandoned. Everything that remains – though still charming – has an underlying sense of decline.

But the part of Citrine that reeks strongest of decay are the very roads that lead in and out of town. Tormented by the harsh winters, the cement has been left fractured, split open, and covered with potholes the size of craters. During the harshest days of winter, the roads are often left untreated, becoming so treacherous that the town becomes inaccessible for 24-72 hours at a time. No one goes in. No one gets out.

Luckily, there is a bigger town called Fayetteville just 12-miles away (though the twisting, winding roads make it feel much further). Fayetteville is a familiar suburban sprawl. Many residents in Citrine work in Fayetteville and rely on it for everything from grocery shopping to getting their teeth cleaned. Citrine’s heartbeat is slowing, and Fayetteville is like it’s pacemaker: providing enough support to keep the small town running. Except, that is, during those periods in the dead of winter, when Citrine is truly on its own.     

 

[Barb de Normandie]

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: 

Many women struggle once we have children to define where the need to nurture ourselves ends and the responsibility to our children and by extension, our community begins. I was inspired to begin this project because I wanted to explore these relationships and how trauma and self-doubt can skew our sense of self and our view of reality.

SOUL WATER SOLE HEIR begins as a devastated woman discovers her missing child is being held in a parallel dimension ruled by a tyrant seeking the final stage of immortality. This ruler must absorb the Soul Water of a direct descendant of pure Nepheshite blood in order to achieve his goal and this woman is his last remaining option.

Risking her freedom and her life, the woman navigates dangers in an alternate dimension triggered by greed, indifference, indignation, and politics to save her child only to learn more is at risk. She must decide if it is her responsibility to join the fight to end civil war in her newly discovered native home world and prevent the destruction of the world she calls home.

 

SECOND ASSIGNMENT:

Chancellor Barzel, ruler of the Nepheshites, seeks the final stage of immortality reserved for the elites. He must consume the Soul Water of a direct descendant and complete the ritual within the coming year or lose this zenith of existence forever, but no descendants live in his world.

After decades of searching, the Order of Absolution locates Barzel’s sole heir living in the Realm of Humans. This heir, Eliana Fortner, is Barzel’s granddaughter who was whisked away as an infant by Hokmani, one of Barzel’s most trusted courtesans. Hokmani took the infant from the arms of her dying mother. She couldn’t bear to have her last surviving child subjected to a life of serving as Barzel’s breeding courtesan or worse, being interned in the River of Souls. Then Hokmani with her own surviving child, Kavua, joined the Balamsian rebels fighting the bloody war to end the brutal quest for immortality.

The passage of an adult between the Nepheshite world and the Human Realm requires the individual to open and enter a Pyramid of Radiance portal willingly. So in a desperate attempt to facilitate Barzel’s ascension, the Order of Absolution kidnaps Eliana’s daughter and uses her as bait.

 

THIRD ASSIGNMENT: 

River of Immortal Souls

Soul Water and Sole Heir

Soul Harvester: River of Immortality

 

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: 

Missing Daughter by Rick Mofina (2019) for missing children & mystery meets The Library of the Dead (2022) for portal travel & lost souls

The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker (2013) for female protag, family & portal travel

Witchmark by C.I. Polk (2018) for fantasy, romance & world war

NOTE: The project might also appeal to fans of N.K. Jemisin (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms), Samantha Shannon (The Priory of the Orange Tree), Tasha Suri (Empire of Sand), Robert Jordan (Wheet of Time), and Terry Brookes (Shannara Series)

 

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: 

The sole heir of an interdimensional tyrannical ruler must stop the consumption of her missing daughter’s soul and prevent the enslavement of humanity.

 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT:

Inner Conflict: Eliana needs to feel loved in spite of being betrayed by her husband who is moving on with a pregnant fiancé even though the divorce isn’t final. She blames herself for asking Paul to pick Deidre up from school instead of leaving her job as originally planned. She blames herself for not being strong/good enough to hold onto Paul through the pain of losing Deidre. And she even wonders whether there was something wrong with her that caused her biological mother and father to throw her away. Maybe she doesn’t deserve to be loved.

Hypothetical Inner Conflict Scenario: Deidre is safe in the Balamsian camp but has been brainwashed to believe that Eliana abandoned her in the woods, leaving her to die. Eliana and Deidre argue causing Eliana to question whether all this happened because she failed as a mother. Eliana’s response is to run away and sulk providing the perfect opportunity for Deidre to sneak out of their confined quarters in an attempt to run back to Barzel. When Deidre is recaptured by the Balamsian patrol and taken to Hokmani, a wise mother who suffered great loss, Eliana listens to Hokmani explain the error of Deidre conclusions. In the process, Eliana begins to evaluate how she feels about her worthiness to be a mother.

Secondary Conflict: Eliana wants to be in control, often at the expense of reading other people’s feelings. This is a protection mechanism to stay her fear has served her well in her goal of being totally self-reliant and doing so with the precision of a perfectionist.

Hypothetical Secondary Conflict Scenario: Eliana drops out of Pyramid of Radiance portal in the woods near home like a sack of potatoes landing with a thud. Half crawling and limping, she drags herself up the back stairs of the house with only enough strength to lay on the porch and bang on the locked door with frustration. Who the hell locked the door that she deliberately left open since she was only going for a short walk!?!?!? To her surprise, Cameron cautiously looks through the glass and rushes to help her into the house. He stayed at her house, searching the woods, and praying for her safe return even though the police and Paul hadn’t taken his concerns seriously. When he tries to console Eliana or offer aid, just like when they were kids, Eliana shoves him away and talks over him, ignoring his attempts to show her how much he cares. She’s oblivious to the pain in eyes or the bent shoulders from the rejection and she charges ahead to activate a plan to get back to Deidre. No woman is an island, but she doesn’t seem to understand that.

 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: 

Human World: Eliana’s home base is located in the Pacific Northwest on a thickly wooded small island with approximately sixteen thousand inhabitants. There’s a small village near the ferry docks with a few much-appreciated restaurants, a well-stocked grocery store, and boutique shops. Eliana is the principal at the one public high school that is highly regarded throughout universities across the country. She lives within walking distance of the 240-acre Grand Forest which is a setting steeped in local mystical legends where some have been known not to return from.

Land of Nahar Am: The hidden land of Nahar Am is accessible through a portal open only to those tied to the mystical world of water. It was once a beautiful and peaceful land benevolently ruled by the magical Iyrin who were worshiped by the Balamsians. The Iyrin Temple was located in the middle of a jungle but visible from the sea to the west. It was an honor for any Balamsian to make the annual pilgrimage to the temple to present the fruits of their labors. Life was simple and the Iyrin prevented pestilence and disease, providing for the basic needs of the inhabitants. Technological advances were few and weapons other than swords and spears used to defend against wild animals was all that was needed.

Life as the Balamsians knew if was destroyed when the Nepheshites from a distant kingdom adjacent to Nahar Am invaded seeking the secrets held by the Iyrin for an eternity… the secret to immortality. The Nepheshite conquerors killed all but a handful of the Iyrin forcing them to uncover how to adapt their science for use by the Nepheshite elite.  The Nepheshites saw no reason to destroy the temple, so it fell into disrepair with only the shell to represent what has once been a great civilization.

Nepheshite Supreme Ruler Barzel was so enthralled with achieving immortality that his only interest in the Balamsians was interning the young in the River of Immortal Souls to achieve his ultimate goal. He ordered Balamsians slaves to extend the Iyrin complex over the River of Immortal Souls and called it the Citadel. In this place he set up his home and installed a garrison of elite soldiers to allow the Iyrin research to continue without interruption. And he harnessed the volcanic fires on the island to the south of the Citadel for power. A walled city for the Nepheshites was created to the west of the Citadel where all manner of temptation and vice was entertained without question.

The surviving Balamsians fled during the war forming four clans: Bal Clan of the North, Bal Clan of the Green, Bal Clan of the East, and Bal Clan of the Seas. But one rebel group made the decision to fight for freedom. Beyond the ruined remains of a Balamsian village far to the west, they uncovered a secret passage behind a waterfall. Descending more than 100 steps from the plateau, the passage opened into a forested area.  The Balamsian rebels built a raised encampment in the tree canopy to house their warrior Protectors and families. Life was hard living in the trees, but it afforded them critical protection and allowed them to conduct clandestine patrols and launch attacks against the Nepheshites. So had life continued in the land of Nahar Am for more than three hundred years, but change is the horizon when a young mother discovers that she was born in another dimension and her child has been kidnapped to lure her back.

[JamieFrei]

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement.

A young woman sets out to find a missing girl to try to forgive herself for the cousin she couldn’t save a decade ago.

SECOND ASSIGNMENT: sketch the antagonist.

The antagonist of my story is a drug dealer named Lucifer. He is the one that Fiona witnesses kidnap the missing girl, but a twist comes in the final battle scene revealing who he is conspiring with. Lucifer is an antagonist to two women that Fiona becomes, giving her two perspectives of him and his capabilities. He’s a tattoo-covered skinhead, small and scrappy, seeking power and control wherever he can get it.

The reader also learns about Lucifer’s back story through third-person POV threaded throughout the novel, which gives insight into who he was before he went “bad” ahead of when the protagonist figures it out. The third person POV gives more information about Kevin, the supporting character/love interest/missing girl’s brother, and informs the reader that Lucifer was Kevin’s best friend turned nemesis. Lucifer kidnaps Kevin’s sister (the missing girl, Hannah) in retaliation.
 

THIRD ASSIGNMENT: BREAKOUT TITLE

The Vicarious Life of Fiona Ferguson

The Lonely Life of Fiona Ferguson

The Mystical Mind of Fiona Ferguson

 

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: - Two smart comparables for your novel. 

Genre: Magical Realism (could be marketed as Mystery or Book Club fiction)

Comps: Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore meets All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda  

 

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound.

When a socially awkward young woman gets the power to immerse herself in the past lives of clothing in a secondhand store, she accidentally witnesses a missing girl’s kidnapping and descends into a web of small-town secrets and lies as she tries to find the girl and battle her inner demons.

 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have.

The primary conflict is finding Hannah, the missing girl Fiona witnessed being kidnapped. Fiona feels more like an underdog than a heroine, but her cousin’s unsolved case drives her forward despite her lack of confidence.

Inner conflict: After being depressed for a decade, Fiona struggles with self-doubt and insecurity.  After ten years of seclusion, she feels left behind by her peers who have all grown up and built lives for themselves. Due to her lack of real-world experiences, she's older on the outside but still feels like a child within. 

When Fiona runs into an old friend and hears about the girl’s family and career, Fiona feels small, unaccomplished, and insecure. While others were building their lives, she was secluded from the world and missing out on life. She must grow beyond her victim mentality to become a victor, move forward, and get what she wants out of life.

Secondary Conflict: Fiona and her mother have a difficult relationship. Her mother's neurotic behavior and hypervigilance toward her daughter strain their ability to connect. This conflict is subtle, but their interactions are ungenuine and forced when they see one another. Fiona's mother never gives her the encouragement she needs to become the woman they both want her to be. As Fiona grows throughout the story,  her mother stays the same, but  Fiona's newfound understanding of her heals their wounded relationship.

Core Wound: Much of Fiona's social struggle and years of depression resulted from a secret she had kept since childhood. After accidentally witnessing her parent's friend sexually assault her older cousin, Sarah, at a family party, Fiona lives with immense guilt and shame that she didn't tell anyone what she saw. After the assault, Sarah begins to spiral out of control, partying and getting into trouble with the law. When Sarah disappeared, Fiona couldn't forgive herself for what she knew, and she felt that if she had reported what happened, things may have been different for Sarah. The pain Fiona felt drove her into a clinical depression that put a pause on a decade of her life. In order to heal and move forward, Fiona must forgive herself.

 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail.

The setting of my novel takes place in a small town in New Jersey. Freeman is a made-up place modeled after a little town along the Delaware River just over the border from Pennsylvania. Built upon Native American soil, the town is filled with ancient stories about early settlers who built their fortunes by establishing the area’s first railroad system, their ancestors continuing their legacy of wealth and power, generation after generation. The town is similar to many small American towns where everyone is connected somehow—through work, school, church, etc. My story is set in the present day, but  I chose not to use modern technology heavily to make it a timeless story.

Much of the story occurs at Second Chances, a thrift shop where Fiona works. Here, she finds the enchanted sculpture that turns her life upside down.

Fiona’s apartment is also part of the plot. It is a little garage that she moves into early in the story as her parents urge her to be independent.

Many other settings in my story are briefly visited as Fiona travels into the lives of others—an alleyway, a burger joint, Princeton, a lavish estate, a nightclub, and a gym, to name a few. The settings change to different places, periods, and seasons in New Jersey, with one exception briefly taking Fiona to the West Coast. When Fiona travels into the former life of donated merchandise, each new setting is vividly described as she experiences the moments she’s vicariously living, embracing them with all of her senses.

[s.park]

Assignment 1: Act of Story Statement
To save humanity aboard the spaceship Igaia

Assignment 2: The Antagonist
Senator Aules sponsored Guadalupé to join the ruling Corporation’s religious Order. Her meteoric success is a point of both pride and envy for him.  

The Senator is the architect of a secret Corporation plan to enslave the farming community who joined Igaia to escape oppression on Earth.  When Sister Guadalupé learns she has been his unwitting accomplice, she must face the true nature of their relationship and the mission.

Aules reports to Patron Jones, the charming Elite funder of Igaia’s mission, virtually present on board via Walker Jones.  Neurological alterations and implants allow Walkers to link to their Patrons, so that the reclusive ultra-rich can experience what their Walkers do.  Guadalupé has ‘served’ Patron Jones regularly through Walker Jones, and has strong affection for both.

When Aules’ secret plot is revealed, we learn that the Patron has a contingency plan to destroy Igaia and all on board, thus enabling a new narrative on Earth in which the Patron is the hero who safely disposed of Earth's greatest enemies. Revealed now as the greater antagonist, the Patron sexualizes the countdown, demanding Guadalupé’s presence as he links to his heartbroken Walker, to extract the ‘Ultimate Gift’ climax at the moment of death.

Assignment 3: Breakout Title
Dea ex Machina
Hymn to our Stars
Semper Supra 

Assignment 4: Genre and Comparables
Genre: Sci-Fi

In a bold sound byte: Beyoncé’s Run the World (Girls) meets Brave New World, an eco-feminist 2001: A Space Odyssey

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
Similar in bringing to life complex characters, centering women and LGBTQ+, driven by love and adventure and conspiring to help each other in impossible circumstances and a speculative context - whose joyous, page-turning story also invites us to forgive and better ourselves and our society.

Cloud Cuckooland by Anthony Doerr
Similar themes of future climate crisis and institutional/governmental use of technology to ‘get us through’ the trauma of a dystopian future, with a story of surprising hope driven by complex, highly intelligent characters willing to sacrifice for love, our planet, our future and as atonement.

Assignment 5: Hook Line (logline)
Spiritual leader to a colony bound for a distant planet, Sister Guadalupé must face the truth that her religion has been weaponized to impose the destructive social order that is dooming humanity.

Assignment 6: Inner Conflict and Secondary Conflict
Inner Conflict
Sister Guadalupé is a High Priestess of the Order, pop-star meets preacher meets sex worker in the new religion of ‘self love’. Kind and friendly, she struggles with the selfishness her role is intended to promote. She believes in the tenet of Free Love, and wrestles with the degradation she feels in some contexts of this ‘service’. Lupé has been admonished for her intellectual pursuits and reprimanded for pushing the boundaries of spiritual-societal concepts of the Order. Igaia’s mission gives the priestess the freedom to live into her potential and beliefs, more than she expects or may be ready for.

Scenario 1: We meet Senator Aules 
As Guadalupé revels in the spectacular journey through space and in meeting the ship’s crew on the bridge, Senator Aules arrives and interrupts.  He jovially insists on a hug, while Sister Guadalupé is ‘intensely aware of the crew's eyes on them, as she was of the Senator's hand sliding rapidly down her back to a less avuncular position. The priestess skillfully slipped back and held the older man's hands at arm's length, masking the defensive move with a coquettish smile.’ Lupe tries but ultimately fails to cover her embarrassment at his repeated broadcasting of sexual and social ownership of her.  They leave together, taking a circuitous public route, his ‘pet priestess on parade’, as usual.  In the end, she’s grateful for the extra time for her Service Pill to take effect, so that by the time they reach his chambers, she’s ready and willing to service him as expected.

Secondary Conflict
People all around Lupé underestimate and demean her because of her appeal and her role in the very religion they all subscribe to.  Whether it’s Aules treating her like his property, Lieutenant Kali assuming she has no understanding of science or technology and is a tool of the Corporation at best, or the Patron angrily reprimanding her for daring to think she has the ability to understand much less the status to question the plans of the Corporation. Yet Guadalupé, to a fault, responds by trying to connect, however she can.

Scenario 2: Kali uncovers a sinister connection
Lieutenant Kali is a top coder with the Military Protectors, on board with a tight group of friends and a Captain she’d follow anywhere.  Following the trail of barely detectable aberrant code, Kali and her friend Will uncover Aules’ plot and a connection in it to Guadalupé.  Immediately suspicious, Kali then stumbles upon Lupé leaving Will’s quarters. Spurred on by jealousy, the coder ignores facts and gaps in data to assume that Guadalupé is a collaborator in the plot with Aules.

Assignment 7: The Incredible Importance of Setting
Dea ex Machina opens with an unattributed letter to an unidentified friend.  In it, the writer proclaims, ‘The Mars colony failed.  Catastrophically.  This is the truth the world must believe.’  Our story begins some twenty years later, aboard the first interplanetary colonization expedition since.

On Earth, humans live in an Epoch of Distance, characterized by an extreme caste system, with the reclusive ultra-rich Elite at the top. In the words of Creator Duanna, ‘We looked away as laws were re-written to turn billionaires to trillionaires, and the rest of humanity to an indentured workforce. We cleaved that caste chasm with our own labor, feeding it with our colonized data and debt and selling our voices in government. Elected officials and judges became corporate hires.  Pop stars became sex idols, sex became religion, and religion married business. Together they embraced and excelled at disseminating opiates to the masses of the ever poorer global working class.  Daily life went on. And the earth was slowly consumed.’

Our story occurs on board the spaceship Igaia, transporting a complete colony and all necessary equipment to a distant planet, to begin the extraction of fuel resources desperately needed back on Earth. Among the passengers, the Agrarians aim to learn from terraforming the new planet so that they can return to Earth with new advancements in adaptive regeneration.  The Corporate Senators speak in other rooms of the planet as a possible new home for humanity, should efforts to rehabitize Earth to our needs fail.

Igaia is the AI running the eponymous ship, in partnership with its inventor, Creator Duanna. The spaceship’s adaptive intelligence, revolutionary regenerative fuel use, and iterative well-care for passengers, all while moving at unprecedented speed, make the expedition possible. We learn that the AI was born of necessity, designed by Duanna to save her own life.  The two function symbiotically, as both aggressively evolve. Duanna wrote our opening letter, and at the moment of crisis and opportunity on the ship, she exposes the annihilation of the Mars colony by the Corporation. In the final chapters of the book, we discover that Duanna secretly assembled her most beloved people on Igaia, so that they all might escape Earth to create a new kind of society.

[Tom McCarthy]

ASSIGNMENT ONE

Story Statement:

Find the missing cross and the murderer without getting killed by narco-ranchers and return the cross to its rightful home in the wild borderlands.

 

 

ASSIGNMENT TWO

Antagonist:

Wade Baudette knows that God chose him for great things. Born into poverty to shiftless, heathen parents, he left home the day after graduating high school and travelled Central and South America, scraping by on odd jobs, learning the language and connecting with the people. He learned that he was endowed with three undeniable qualities that propelled him to be an instrument of the Divine: faith, eloquence and ambition. Over the next two decades, he built his Miracle Ministry into an international brand and multimillion-dollar juggernaut, filling stadiums and proclaiming the “Prosperous Miracle of Belief.” He’s a true believer who never took a false or dishonest step.

Then came the pandemic. Unable to fill stadiums, travel, or sustain his Dallas mansion and megachurch, he and wife Sharon decamped to her family’s ranch in West Texas. Even in the depths of poverty as a boy, he never knew the kind of desperation that consumed him as he watched his empire collapse. There’s nothing he won’t do to fulfill his destiny and re-establish his rightful position atop the spiritual hierarchy, even if it means the sacrifice of lesser lives. 

 

 

ASSIGNMENT THREE

Breakout Title:  Border Cross

 

Alternatives:

Crossbreed

Daughter of None

American Girl

Not Molly

Border Babe

 

 

ASSIGNMENT FOUR

Comparables: 

 

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden [2020, DEBUT fiction]

Comparable to Border Cross in the following ways:

·      Setting: small town, rural, fairly isolated community but vast in terms of geographical area

·      Protagonist: recently returned to birthplace, where he must confront his own murky past and about which he has mixed feelings; minority identity; seeks justice

·      Spiritual element/theme/undercurrent

·      Cross-cultural and Indigenous themes

·      Drug issues and drug cartel

·      In the end, protagonist learns about his/her heritage and finds personal redemption

·      Gritty and raw, but with a heart

 

 

Old Bones [2019] and the Nora Kelly series (Scorpion’s Tail [2021], Diablo Mesa [2022] and Dead Mountain[2023]) by Preston and Child

·      Set in American southwest

·      Historical artifact with cultural significance is at the heart of the mystery

·      Wilderness and nature play key role in atmosphere, mystery, themes, character and resolution

·      Within that context, (wo)man vs. man remains the primary conflict

·      Strong women characters with inner conflict 

·      Long-hidden history erupting into present

 

ASSIGNMENT FIVE

Hook Line:

A deputy sheriff must overcome a desperate killer and confront the truth about her own birth in order to expose the narco-ranching operation, recover a priceless artifact and return the artifact to its home in the remote US-Mexican borderlands.

  

ASSIGNMENT SIX

Inner Conflict

Conditions:

Terra grew up as Teresa Flynn. She has known from a young age that she was adopted. She has always had a small cross that her parents told her was with her at the time of adoption. They knew nothing about her biological parents. Raised in an Irish-Catholic family, she was lovingly taught to be color-blind and to disregard her light brown skin, black hair and dark eyes. She was no different from her fair-skinned, red-haired parents and (not-adopted) sister. Growing up, these earnest reassurances were undermined by manifest realities—e.g., she was short and restless, her sister statuesque and scholarly—and by her own feelings. Through her teenage years, the physical, emotional and psychological gap between her and her family became harder for her to ignore. The appreciation she felt for their attempt to elide the differences was supplanted by questions and resentment. When she joined the military after high school, she decided to research her adoption and discovered that her given name was Terra and that her birthplace was someplace called Hades, Texas. Google Maps showed a small town east of El Paso and not far from the Mexican border. Under “Mother’s Name” and “Father’s Name,” the papers indicated “Unknown.” She decides in that moment to call herself Terra, but her newfound knowledge brings mixed feelings and more questions: she wanted to learn more but was afraid of what she might find. She desperately wants to know more about her origin and identity, and possibly forge a connection to people—Does she have blood relatives?—and a place. But will her efforts only drive a greater wedge between her and her adopted family? And what if she learns something that only makes her feel like more of a misfit than she already is? Should she, instead, put her energy into repairing ties with her parents and sister and trying to forge more of a connection with them? She decides to take a job that will put her face-to-face with all these questions—and more.

 

Scenario:

She knows she is “from” this town but doesn’t feel like it, feels nothing like a sense of “hometown” or roots. Since moving to Hades six months ago, people ask her where she’s from and she doesn’t know what to say. What did she expect? Before, she had always said Boston. Since researching her adoption papers, the question of origin has become hopelessly complicated. 

After Alma (the woman who cared for her as an infant foundling) provides more details (trigger)—namely, that she was found as a newborn in the arms of her dead mother somewhere in the borderlands along the Rio Grande, that a migrant came upon her and rescued her, along with the small silver cross that hung from a chain around her mother’s neck—Terra’s first impulse (reaction) is to get away from this town, this job. As far away from the border as possible. She feels more intrigued by her own origin story and drawn to explore the borderlands, and yet horrified, saddened, afraid to learn more. Moreover, Alma tells her that the Atrial Cross stolen from the church must, like Terra herself, return to its origins. And that Terra herself must undertake that journey.

Terra knows little about her origin and birth. Her adopted family has told her next to nothing, and despite her skin color and features, they tell her she’s as Irish Catholic as they are. As she grew to adulthood, she could no longer deny the feeling of disconnect from them and their whitewashed sense of her identity. Flouting her family’s expectations of her, she joins the Army after high school. She quickly earns a reputation for extreme toughness and a no-nonsense attitude. Hoping to learn more about who she is, after her discharge from the Army she has taken a job in the West Texas town where her adoption papers say she was first found. She wants to learn everything she can about her background and parents, though something tells her it’s complicated and that she may not like what she finds.

Trigger: 

Within a few months of beginning her new job, Terra accompanies the sheriff on an emergency call to the border. Border Patrol is asking for assistance with a group of migrants on the run, some of whom are reportedly injured. When Terra arrives on scene, her heart is pumping. Something visceral stirs in her gut. She feels some kind of connection to these strangers fleeing for their lives. Without consciously deciding to do so, she finds herself disregarding the sheriff’s order and undertaking an arduous and treacherous effort to reach two migrants rimrocked in a canyon. Risking her own life, Terra eventually reaches a young mother clinging to the side of a rock face gazing down at the lifeless body of her little girl a hundred feet below. Terra calmly and skillfully harnesses herself to the mother and leads her to safety. Throughout the emotional ordeal of laying the child’s broken body in the woman’s arms one last time, then staying with the woman as she was taken to the county hospital, Terra remained more composed and self-controlled than most of her male colleagues. 

Later that evening, upon arriving home, Terra closed her apartment door, removed her gun, curled up in a ball on the floor and sobbed as she had never done before. She wants to be here, to search out her origin story, to ask the hard questions, but does she want the answers? She wants to do the law enforcement work, but does she want to see the pain, let alone feel it?

 

Secondary Conflict

An unremarkable cross hanging at a side altar of the Holy Angels Catholic Church in Hades, Texas, has recently been attributed with the power to work miracles. Desperate believers are flocking from afar to seek miracle cures, putting the town in the national spotlight. While Deputy Sheriff Terra Flynn finds such claims to be nutty, she can’t deny the cross’s importance: when the cross suddenly goes missing, the parish priest reveals to Sheriff Cal Wetter and Terra that it is actually a rare and valuable Aztec artifact with a complex origin far beyond Holy Angels. Belying her initial impression, the cross fascinates Terra with its unusual, hybrid identity. Early in the investigation, she begins to suspect that her boss, Sheriff Wetter, may have stolen it. He has been sheriff for many years and is leading the investigation, and she’s relatively new to the job and Hades, putting her in a delicate and tenuous position. What should she do about her suspicions? How can she pursue them without alerting the sheriff or one of his allies? What if she’s wrong? The extraordinarily rare cross captivates nearly everyone, and Terra knows that it must be recovered, no matter the cost.

 

ASSIGNMENT SEVEN

Hades, Texas. Population 7,238. Cutler County seat. A couple hours east of El Paso and an hour from the Mexican border. Summers are hot and dry, winters cold and windy. The horizon feels a long way off and skies are endless. Ranching is big around Hades, but it draws a smattering of tourists, adventure seekers and artists. 

 

Some key sub-settings depicted in the novel:

·      Known as an artsy town with galleries selling unusual gems, paintings and one-of-a-kind handcrafted products. Proud of its quaint downtown, with a handful of cafes, restaurants and coffee shops and a historic library overlooking the peaceful and inviting village green. A short drive from canyons, rock faces, mountains and the Rio Grande, it provides the perfect base for hikers, rock climbers, off-road cyclists and outdoor enthusiasts looking for wilderness adventure away from the crowd.

·      From the beginning, which depicts migrants on the run from cartel thugs while being pursued by a US sheriff’s deputy, to the end, where that same deputy, our protagonist, is being pursued by the villain, himself a collaborator with the cartel, the novel takes readers into rugged wilderness in its varying landscapes and topography. Between Hades and the border, vast open stretches of Chihuahuan Desert sit side-by-side with rolling hills that give way suddenly to dramatic cliffs and rock faces which, in turn, spill open and cascade down into the variable waters of the Rio Grande itself. Near the novel’s first plot point, the body of Cutler County Sheriff Cal Wetter is found along the banks of the Rio Grande.

·      Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park: two enormous areas of rugged natural beauty and deadly terrain rarely if ever trodden by human feet. Deep canyons, sheer drops, dramatic rock outcroppings, remote and little-known slot canyons. 

·      Zino Ranch: 50,000 acres that span the distance between Hades and the Rio Grande. A vast spread of majestic isolation where it’s not unusual to stumble upon a carcass—even a human one—which could go undiscovered for days, weeks, or indefinitely. Home to Patsy Zino, whose husband of 55 years died of COVID two years ago. During his illness, it also became home to their daughter, Sharon and her husband Wade Baudette, who live in a separate house on the ranch. The ranch consists of numerous houses and guest houses along with countless other buildings and facilities, including barns, stables and, since COVID forced him out of his expensive Dallas location, a small bakery that produces Wade Baudette’s communion wafers for his Miracle Ministry. Zino Ranch is ostensibly a normal Texas ranch, on whose southern border are security cameras that help the US government catch drug smugglers. What the government doesn’t know is that the ranch foreman runs a narco-ranching operation. Herds of cattle are legally brought across the border onto Zino land, after which select heifers are herded and prodded into stalls where they are injected with a vaccination against Blackleg—all of which is normal and legal. During the vaccination, however, bags of fentanyl are swiftly and deftly extracted from the heifer’s vagina. The fentanyl is then moved to the bakery facility, where it is baked into communion wafers and distributed throughout the Southwest in unassuming station wagons marked with the Bread of Heaven logo.

·      In the two years since Wade and Sharon have lived on the ranch full-time, the Big House has become a reflection of Sharon’s extravagant taste. While the views from its generous windows and wrap-around porch are expansive and breathtaking, the visitor’s eye is drawn at least as irresistibly to the interior furnishings thoughtfully procured from around the globe.

·      For the past several months, claims have been made that a small cross in Holy Angels Catholic Church has been the source of miracles. These claims have gone viral, bringing a steady stream of hopeful and desperate pilgrims from near and far to the small town of Hades—and with them a throng of media. Outside the church, a long line of these miracle-seekers snakes around the church and down the block, a mix of migrants and Anglos, rich and poor, young and old, many manifestly hobbled, sick, weak or disabled. Once inside, they kneel before the cross and submit written prayers and petitions. Some pray in breathless silence, others wail and cry out, all with desperation in their eyes. Hades is ill-equipped to handle the spectacle, and conflict ensues: among the miracle-seekers, jostling and vying for position; for Holy Angels pastor, Fr. Tim Day; and especially for Sheriff Cal Wetter and his deputies, who have their hands full.

·      When the cross goes missing, Wade Baudette has an idea for shifting attention from Holy Angels to his own Miracle Ministry. He will host a Revival weekend. It is a spectacle attracting several thousand participants who gather beneath enormous marquee tents to be inspired by Baudette’s unique brand of preaching. Loudspeakers, huge video screens, cameras that livestream the event, port-a-johns, food trucks, and emergency medical people/vehicles, which come in handy when people start swooning and passing out (either from the Holy Spirit or the stifling heat, depending on one’s viewpoint).

·      In several scenes, the reader is taken behind the small house that the Dzul family has called home for over 100 years. Its current resident, Alma Dzul, is a 69-year-old artist, craftswoman, woodworker, stone-carver and blacksmith. She is a member of Holy Angels parish but also a practitioner of Indigenous and Aztec (spi)ritual dance. She privately performs this dance at night within a carefully cultivated and curated bower on the edge of her property that borders but is indistinguishable from an endless landscape of desert and mountain. In and around the well-stocked workshop that she first constructed as a young girl and has lovingly re-fashioned and extended ever since, she exercises her craft, using an array of chisels, knives, hand saws and hand planes, hammers and mallets, files, carving gouges, rasps and countless other tools and implements. Hanging from the walls and ceiling are colorful drawings of Aztec gods and figures, along with objects hewn from stone and carved in wood, earthy as well as brightly-colored objects and works of art depicting the sun, moon and figures from Aztec religious practice.

 

 

[Kelly Owen]

Assignment 1. Story Statement:
A scientist must choose between protecting her daughter or stopping the disease destroying America’s food supply.

Assignment 2. Antagonists:
Primary protagonist Tracy Hart’s antagonist.
Senator Ransom Stone (primary antagonist) has an undiagnosed form of Derealization Disorder where he takes on the personality of characters from novels—the condition brought on by a radical, unlicensed addiction cure used on him by the CIA. Rather than a hinderance, the ability to be whoever he wants or needs to be, helps him become wealthy and get elected to the Senate. Using information from his days in the CIA and his position on the Senate Intel Committee, he has his private bioresearch company illegally resurrect a cancelled government program to develop a fungus genetically engineered to attack coca (cocaine) plants. He releases the fugus into the South American fields intending to extort the cartels for the cure which the protagonist, Dr. Tracy Hart—who is completely unaware of the disease’s origin or Stone’s plans—has developed. But someone has altered the disease. No longer susceptible to Tracy’s cure, it is spreading to food crops.
The cartels learn the disease was lab created, and believing Tracy does have a cure, send their most lethal killer (secondary antagonist) Rojas Gordillo after her. Needing to satisfy his cartel overlords, Gordillo kills everyone who worked on creating the fungus, then kidnaps Tracy’s daughter to force Tracy to cooperate and provide the cure.
With his plans falling apart, Stone covers up his connection to the lab and sends his own hitman, Earl Tinmen (another secondary antagonists) to eliminate anyone left, including Tracy.

Secondary protagonist Michael LaCroix’s antagonist.
Earl Tinmen—Michael’s handler when he worked as a government field agent—is one of Ransom Stone’s operatives. Unknown to Michael, acting on Stone’s orders Tinmen was responsible for the death of his daughter, the distraction intended to cause Michael to fail on a mission Stone wanted ended. But when the cartels begin killing people at the lab, Stone tasks Tinmen with finding Tracy Hart a bodyguard who won’t—or can’t—ask questions. Tinmen approaches Michael and threatens to destroy the lives if Michael’s friends if he doesn’t take the job. When Stone decides to bury his connection to the lab, it is Tinmen who takes on the job of eliminating both Tracy and Michael.

Assignment 3. Titles:
White Plague 
Open Wound
The Meaning of Anything

Assignment 4. Comparable Thrillers:
Whiteout, Ken Follett 
Contagion, Robbin Cook
Bloodstream, Tess Gerritsen 
The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton
Clear and Present Danger, Tom Clancy

Assignment 5. Hook Line/Conflict and Core Wound:
A scientist who lost her military husband because she chose the career she loves over moving when he was transferred must now choose again, this time between protecting her daughter or staying on the job to stop a disease destroying America’s food supply.

Assignment 6. Inner and Secondary Conflict:
Inner Conflicts. 
Mycologist Tracy Hart (primary protagonist) has spent her life working to reach the top of her field, overcoming prejudice about women in science from nearly everyone, even her mother. Determined to keep her dream job, her last conversation with her military husband before he was killed is an argument because she chose to stay in Seattle with their daughter rather move when he is transferred. But now her lab is ground zero for stopping an unknown disease destroying America’s food supply and she must again choose. Stay on the job at which she excels or leave it to protect her daughter from the danger posed by killers hunting her research team. 
Tracy’s internal wounds and struggles are shown in scenes with her laboratory boss, her daughter, Michael, and flashback memories of conversations and arguments with her mother and husband.

Former government agent Michael LaCroix’s (secondary protagonist) inability to save his daughter drove him to give up violence for life as a jazz musician. But when his former handler, Earl Tinmen forces him back into the field as Tracy Hart’s bodyguard, Michael must decide how deeply to immerse himself in the world of brutality he renounced. He is forced to ask himself what he is capable of to protect Tracy and her daughter, Melisa—who reminds him of his own child—and what will it cost him if he fails.
Michael’s inner struggles are shown in scenes with Tinmen, Tracy and Melisa, a flashback, and a climax confrontation with the primary antagonist, Stone.

Secondary/Social Conflict.
Tracy and Michael struggle to work together. Their old wounds and prejudices line up to ignite each other’s hot button issues. Tracy doesn’t like taking direction and is appalled by Michael’s underlying anger and automatic recourse to violence at the slightest hint of danger. For his part, Michael is frustrated by Tracy’s inability to comprehend that the people after her—the same kind of people who killed his daughter—are far more violent than anything she can imagine. When Malisa is kidnapped, they struggle to find a way to work together if they are going to save her.

Assignment 7. Setting:
Primary setting: Seattle and Western Washington, Christmas time, the cold dark skies and rain contrasting with the holiday lights.
    Specific Washington Settings:
    Two Seattle craftsman style homes, Tracy’s with a ‘lived in” look, Michael’s immaculate, with pristine restoration details, the difference between the houses a metaphor for the inherent conflict arising from their disparate personalities and lifestyles while hinting at where on a deeper level they overlap. 
Research Lab on a university campus/Tracy’s safe place, until it isn’t.
Downtown Seattle jazz club/Michael’s safe place, until it isn’t.
    Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park
    Friday Harbor, San Juan Island
    Various locations around the city, including ferry docks, music venues, a sleazy motel, an apartment, and the airport.
Secondary Settings:
    Ransom Stone’s private/isolated Minnesota lake mansion 
White House and Camp David
    Mexico City and South American coca fields 

[Andrea Garcia]

Assignment 1: Story Statement

Find a way to get her boss, the actor/musician, and his agent to agree to a cover story to save her career. 

 

Assignment 2: Antagonist

The main antagonist in the story is James Burkhold, Ben’s agent. A short, bald, stout man, James is brash and controlling. He’s a sort of modern-day Colonel Tom Parker- older, but exceptionally skilled at his job, using his expertise to manipulate and control those around him. Nothing gets passed him without his approval. So, when Leah tries to make an initial connection with him, she is literally brought to tears when he rejects her by telling her to “piss off!” Moreover, when he finds out that Leah has gone through Ben to get the interview, he is furious and tries to make Ben’s time with Leah as uncomfortable as possible. For example, he attempts to hijack her charity event by bringing his own photographers, who have nothing to do with her article. He questions her qualifications, demands to see the articles before it is published, and tries to prevent Ben from leaving the awards show to see her. 

 

Assignment 3: Breakout Title

Running Down a Dream

Taking the Lead

The Perfect Cover

 

Assignment 4: The Comps

Genre: Romantic Comedy 

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

• Sally Milz is a 36 year old comedy writer, who hasn’t been in a relationship in a long time, starts to work with musician and guest host, Noah Brewster, on the show. Sparks start to fly between them when they start to work on a comedy sketch together.
• Both novels center around mature women writers who have a professional relationship with a celebrity, repressed feelings turn romance. 
• Both novels start off with the pitch!

The Fastest Way to Fall by Denise Williams

• Britta is a freelance writer for a lifestyle website. Her latest assignment has her reviewing  a hot new fitness app, which could help her advance her career in working for the company full-time. Wes Lawson is the CEO of this app, who among other things is struggling in his personal relationships, so he decides to go back to what he loves: personal coaching, and Britta is his first client. They begin by corresponding Online, but when they start to work out in person, their harmless flirtation challenges them as they try to maintain a professional distance. 
• Both novels have their female protagonist trying to use their present assignment to advance their careers. 
• Both novels have their main characters trying to keep their relationship professional. 

 

Assignment 5: Hook line with conflict and core wound

A GenX expatriate American rock music journalist, struggles to earn a cover story to save her job and career. 

 

Assignment 6: Other matters of conflict

Inner Conflict:

Leah hasn’t had one of her pitches approved in months, but with faster, quicker, younger colleagues, it’s getting harder and harder to keep up. Jeffrey, her editor, who has been at the magazine as long as she has, reveals he is being pressured to make cuts sans the “first one in; first one out” protocol. It will come down to sheer performance. Who is not bringing in the money for the business? Leah is struggling to get off that short list. She has to do something bold to make herself stand out. 

 

When Jeffrey later approves her pitch, he does so with the condition that she include Krystal, Ben’s ex-fiance and current co-star, in the piece; however, Ben only agrees to it by leaving Krystal out of it and making it mainly about the music. 

Leah arrives at Ben’s flat unannounced because he has started to ignore her calls and texts. She is pretty much ready to write the article, but needs to make one final attempt to get him to agree to include Krystal in the piece. Among other things that occur during this visit, he asks her to help him private message Krystal because he is not too familiar with how social media works. After asking him a few probing questions, Leah tells him Krystal is fully aware that he looks at her social media page because Instagram lets the creator know exactly who views their “Stories” leaving Ben embarrassed at his whole misunderstanding of not learning how to work the app better.

 At this point, James arrives for a meeting. 

Before Leah leaves she makes her big push by trying to reason with him by saying that if Krystal already knows he is keeping up with her every move on Instagram, it’s not going to be a big shock that he reveals in the article that his flame has not extinguished for her. Ben wavers, but ultimately agrees. Overhearing their conversation, James enters the room in a rage and belittles Leah telling her that she is taking advantage of a vulnerable man to get what she wants. He then warns Ben that making this move, is going to ruin his negotiations with Krystal on their TV series contract that is on hiatus. Ben shows little backbone in this scenario and agrees with James leaving Leah more frustrated than when she arrived. 

 

Secondary Conflict: 

Leah is falling in love with Ben. The more she learns about him; the more she admires and falls in love with him. 

One scenario could be when they are talking about his upbringing, she realizes he is sharing more than he has ever shared. She asks him why she hasn’t heard any of these stories before in previous interviews or on his wikipedia page. He tells her that he is usually a very private person. That’s why he doesn’t have an official social media page. He only uses his current one to “stalk” (humorously) his ex. She realizes that he is comfortable with her and is not afraid to be vulnerable with her. She struggles with having the privilege to hear about his private upbringing, but is careful in what aspects she will include in her article as his tangents were technically all “on the record.”  

 

Final Assignment: Setting

The story takes place in London, England. Many of the scenes in it take place in Leah’s flat where the story begins. One significant detail at her place are the displays of photos and decor, which Ben later notices and plays a critical part in their personal relationship. 

The first scene begins in Leah’s bedroom. This is her workspace where the primary conflict begins as well. However, it is also where she makes connections with Ben. It is where Ben arrives in the middle of the night. It is where she cooks for him and plays a meaningful song for him. It is where they make love. It is where he arrives to try and talk to her after getting back with Krystal. It is also where he finds out she is sick. And finally, it is the place where he returns to try and win her back. 

Leah’s flat is located in Camden. The borough is very unique with a myriad of cultural diversity. It is where she meets her best friend Janice who exemplifies the quirkiness of Camden Town. 

Notting Hill is where Leah sees Ben for the first time in person at his concert. There is a young crowd there and she is once again confronted with her age and how being older is not necessarily an advantage. She confronts Ben’s agent for the first time at the Notting Hill hangout and clearly shows her she is out of her league. 

 

[Marc Curtis Little]

STORY STATEMENT

A high-profile man sets out to devise a history-making event that will improve the economic conditions of a struggling municipality.

SKETCH THE ANTAGONIST

The antagonist of my novel is Lena Ashby Mosley, the first-term mayor of Newark, New Jersey. She is a self-serving former superintendent of schools in another state, who moves back to her native city to allegedly care for her elderly parents. Lena wins the election with help from her childhood friends and older citizens who were friends of her activist parents. Just three years into her term, Newark gets national attention from publicity about an African American multibillionaire couple making a serious bid to purchase a legacy professional football team with the intention of moving the franchise from New York City to Newark. Lena begins to craft a web of deceit that includes the selling of valuable city land to a group of real estate investors that have their sights set on making Newark a target of gentrification. Lena's two-decade dalliance with a man twenty years her junior places her in the company of forces attempting to block the sale of the football team. She plans to use both her relationship with the land speculators and her feigned attempt to salvage the sale of the team for the purpose of elevating her to Newark's patron saint.

BREAKOUT TITLE

Game Knows Game

Dark Alley Friends

GENRE AND COMPARABLES

Genre:  Thriller

Comp:  Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Comp:  If You Want Something Done by Nikki R. Haley

LOGLINE

As Newark, New Jersey's mayor leverages a major real estate deal to secure her legacy, she collides with the desires of the potentially first majority African American owner of a professional football team, forcing her to navigate a web of political intrigue and betrayal.

OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT

The primary conflict is for Curt Felton Jr. to find a path for his son and daughter-in-law to become the first African Americans to be majority owners of a professional football team. Curt Jr.'s aggressive personality buts heads with the duplicity of Lena Ashby Mosley's leadership style as Newark, New Jersey's mayor, which manifests into aberrant behavior from Curt Jr.

The inner conflict is Curt Jr. returning to personal relationships from his past as a celebrated elected official and prosperous businessperson who cultivated fruitful relationships that followed him for more than four decades. Conversely, his recent machinations create dubious scenarios and foster misgivings about his character, leading to a relationship chasm between him and his son.

The secondary conflict is the debate over the perception that a millennial African American couple would be able to accrue the kind of capital to secure a majority share of a professional football team. Moreover, the couple's fragile relationship with certain members of the oft cited Black community is creating mistrust about their silence when questioned about creating an environment where diversity, equity and inclusion goals are paramount.

SETTING

The setting of the novel is Newark, New Jersey, a real-life city in the northern portion of the state approximately twelve miles from New York City. Newark is a city with a checkered past and a promising, yet uncertain future. The city's deplorable earlier days are a mixed bag of redlined neighborhoods, unequal educational opportunities, and inequitable distribution of governmental resources. Those dilemmas were fully illuminated four years before the popularly titled Rebellion of 1967. That five-day insurgence sent the city into a spiral of massive residential flight to surrounding suburbs, creating a weakening of the all-important property tax base. As a result, the perception of Newark slogged for nearly fifty years, despite three African Americans serving as mayor of the city for four and a half decades.

Much of the story occurs in post-pandemic Newark, beginning in 2023. Newark has experienced phenomenal growth under the leadership of Rashad Jelani since 2014, so much that he campaigns in a special election for governor and wins the seat in a landslide. Lena Ashby Mosley is elected mayor to fill the open seat. While she campaigned for the office, she discovered that while Newark's political leadership is comporting itself in a more transparent manner, she could use the spotlight as the city's female mayor as an opportunity to manipulate the notoriety for personal gain.

Several other settings are visited as Curt Felton Jr. travels to venues while promoting his son's ambitious plan to purchase the New York Monarchs professional football team. The settings vary from present-day locales in Florida, Philadelphia, and southern New Jersey, to time periods as far back as the 1970s. There are also settings via omniscient narration, which is employed in the book.     

[Jenna Essenburg]

1. Story Statement:  Struggle to control, and end, the Sleeper curse

 

2. Antagonist Sketch

 

The antagonist of this story is The Assembly, primarily embodied by Leader Dyser. He mysteriously survived Queen Ornesses’ deadly attack that brought about the Sleeper curse, and, alongside Leaders Spenler and Gawyn, rose to power after her death. Though magic disappeared with the death of the last queen, The Assembly maintains an active anti-magic stance and blames it for ruining the lives of Viragoans. 

 

In the wake of the curse, The Assembly reorganized society into critical roles (Waker, Sentinel, Enforcer, Leader, Ordinary) and created Lacuna, a shadowy haven for the care and confinement of the Sleepers. They claim to be actively working to “cure” the Sleepers and end the curse, but little progress has been made in the fifteen years since its onset. There are those in Virago that trust The Assembly implicitly, believing that they are serving society’s best interests and working for the good of the world. But there are also a number of people that are distrustful of The Assembly’s actions, fearing the secretive nature of their plans. Our three protagonists have varying opinions on The Assembly that range from wariness, subservience, and down-right hostility.  

 

3. Breakout Title

• The Sleepers

 

4. Comparables

• Divergent by Veronica Roth (society, dystopia)

• An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

 

5. Hook Line

• Magic, once created, cannot be destroyed–but that won’t stop three teenagers from upending societal expectations and seeking to end the curse that haunts and hunts them. 

• A magical curse haunts and hunts three teenagers on the precipice of adulthood, building ties and breaking hearts. 

 

6. Inner Conflict

While the overarching conflict is with the curse itself, surviving it and taking up their mantle in society to try and end it, each of the three main protagonists face multiple internal and external conflicts in the course of the story. 

Avelley (Elley) Harker is the daughter of the famous, and unknown, Sleeper Assassin and she struggles with her father’s choice to give “mercy” to those stricken with the curse. She herself has lost both her mother and younger sister to the curse and no longer believes in the Waker propaganda spread by The Assembly about supposed “awakenings,” or instances of miraculous curse-breaking. When she herself is chosen as a Waker in society, she must confront her disbelief and work on the side she once vowed to hate. She struggles with the changing nature of her relationship to her childhood best friend Caspian Ryger and a growing, severe dislike of Caspian’s other best friend, Fenner Graves. 

Caspian Ryger is the prodigal son of Tiren Ryger, the hero of Queen Ornesse’s attack and lauded right-hand man of Leader Dyser. Caspian tows The Assembly line and genuinely believes they are doing what is best for Virago. He struggles with the institutional distrust his two best friends, Elley and Fenner, have for The Assembly, and he desperately wants to prove them wrong. He has recently realized he is in love with Elley, but is unsure of her feelings for him. He wants to live up to his father’s reputation, but struggles with making a name for himself. As the “man on the inside,” he is privy to plans of The Assembly and the many ways they must try and serve “the greater good.” 

Fenner Graves is the jaded son of Carina’s Head Enforcer whose wit and sarcasm get him in constant trouble. He has grown comfortable with being disliked, or so he says, but he is tired of being third-wheel to Caspian and Elley. He will never admit that he wishes he were accepted by his father and older brother and he wants to do something meaningful with his life, despite the fact that no one expects anything much from him at all. Fenner struggles with himself–self-sabotage is his favorite game–but he is actually a kind, compassionate, and heroic young man beneath all his bluster and posturing. Fenner later struggles literally with the curse, as he is stricken with it towards the middle of the story. 

 

7. Setting

This story takes place in a fictional world called Virago that is similar to our early 1900’s  world, but was once ruled by magic, which has now disappeared. Virago is made up of three major cities: Carina (a cape/port city), Mirus (a forest city), and Audere (a bustling border city that overlooks the wild lands). There is a fourth “city,” called Lacuna (a lightless underground city within the capitol where Sleepers are kept). 

 

Virago has a rich matriarchal history of enchantresses–those rare women born with magical powers—but was politically divided for many years over the fairness of their “divine right to rule.” Divided, that is, until the last ruling queen went mad and killed everyone in her castle, including herself, besetting Virago with a curse that makes those stricken have their reality altered to a horrific parody of itself. The past fifteen years of curse-fighting have been rife with mistakes, embarrassments, and, more recently, scattered successes. The society has been divided based on needed skills and all Viragoans take an assessment at the age of 17 to determine their “worth” to society. Our story picks up with the three main protagonists being assessed and assigned their roles.

[JLC]

STORY STATEMENT

A fresh take on the American Jewish experience and the immigrant experience more broadly, “90 Charles Street” is a vivid portrait of an eccentric, dysfunctional, loving family navigating intergenerational trauma.

SKETCH

Jennifer’s father, Henry, is a devout Orthodox Jew and a brilliant mathematician and Bell Laboratiories.  His childhood was spent in prison in a Soviet Labor Camp in Siberia.  Her mother, Julie, is both an avowed atheist and at the same time an Orthodox Jewish mother.  Jennifer is a quiet rebel who constantly questions the way things are.  In contrast, her brother Zeph follows in his father’s footsteps as a mathematician while re-enacting Henry and Julie’s dynamics.

BREAKOUT TITLE

90 Charles Street

GENRE AND COMPARABLES

Genre:  Personal narrative

Comp:  Backman, Fredrik, A Man Called Ove

Comp: Cisneros, Sandra, The House on Mango Street.

LOGLINE

90 Charles Street is the real story of a family and their house, one that will touch many hearts because it resonates with the life-affirming struggles of families everywhere to raise children, go grocery shopping, take care of a home, to age and manage grief.  The story narrates Jennifer’s growing understanding of the complex emotional lives of her family.  Family coping strategies include the practice of Jovial Unhappiness, the belief that the Past is Unpredictable and the conviction that Mathematics in the One Irrefutable Right Answer.

OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT

The secrets unspoken truths and tragedy create a searing yet hopeful story about coming of age.  The small events of daily life come together to inform the big world view questions of power, religion, men and women, identity and culture.

SETTING

The primary setting is 90 Charles Street.  Other settings are grandmother’s house, and vacations.  At the end, 90 Charles Street reveals itself as a sentient, hidden, broken ally to the Landau family.  Home is celebrated.

[Liz LeCrone]

First Assignment: The Act of Story Statement

Reina must face her own traumatic past to defeat the supervillain Vulcan

 

Second Assignment: The Antagonist

Vulcan is a pyrokinetic supervillain whose main goal is to discredit society’s faith in super-powered people, despite being one himself. He firmly believes that superheroes are a threat to democracy and that relying upon them will only make the world more dangerous. He kills two prominent superheroes and takes control over the state of California, just to prove he can, reigniting a contentious debate around how society should treat—and regulate—super-powered individuals.

 

Third Assignment: The Title

After You Kill Your Heroes

The Last Superhero in San Francisco

I’m Not the Hero I Play on the News

Supervillains and Other Fragile Things

 

Fourth Assignment: Comparables

Genre: Romantasy

 

Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews

This is an urban fantasy romance with a strong female character, Nevada Baylor, who is a reluctant heroine who has to accept both her power and her place in society at the urging of the handsome male love interest. Like my novel, this story is set in modern-day USA, with some characters who have magic and others who don’t, which creates an interesting political landscape. My protagonist is also a reluctant, secretly powerful heroine who requires cajoling by a handsome male love interest. There are strong familial relationships and similar-scale disasters to prevent.

 

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas

This is also an urban fantasy romance. This world is bigger and has a more fantastical setting than my novel, but the main character, Bryce, is very similar to my protagonist in that we see her most traumatic memory to kick off the story, watch her struggle with grief, and realize very late in the game that she’s an unreliable narrator who has been hiding key information from the reader. She also has to face the reality that she’ll have to give her life to save her city and the people she loves, a fact which devastates and infuriates her handsome male love interest.

 

Fifth Assignment: Hook Line

After losing everything to Vulcan, a dangerous new supervillain, Reina Smith flees San Francisco to wallow in her grief. But when her friend and famous reporter Jack Vera makes himself Vulcan’s next target, Reina must accept that she has a responsibility to defeat the monster she had a hand in making, before it’s too late.

 

Sixth Assignment: Two More Levels of Conflict

Inner conflict

Reina’s biggest secret is that she used to be the superhero Sound, and everyone thinks that her alter ego, the Sound, died when Vulcan rose to power. In that confrontation, she used all of her powers to clamp down on Vulcan’s explosion, locking it away inside herself and turning her into a ticking time bomb. She firmly believes that without the Sound, without her powers, there’s nothing she can do except keep those she cares about at arm's length so that they aren't subjected to more grief when she dies. Jack, who has loved her for years and already experienced the grief of losing her, fundamentally disagrees that Reina was only ever useful for her powers. Reina needs to reconcile her bold, fearless alter ego with the person left behind in her wake, and Jack is a major catalyst for her ability to do that.

 

Scenario

Reina expresses to Jack in a heated moment that nobody back in San Francisco needs Reina, nobody noticed that she was gone, they only noticed the Sound’s absence. Jack, in a rare emotional outburst, says he needed her, he noticed. He felt the hole in his life so acutely that he kept sending her emails because he couldn’t quite let go of her, and if she had bothered to pay attention—if she had let someone, anyone in—she would know that her life is and was more than just being the Sound.

 

Secondary conflict

Vulcan killed hundreds of people the night of his debut, most prominent among them the superheroes the Sound and Fury. But not all is as it appears in the news spilling out of San Francisco, and Reina is proof that heroes don’t go down easy. Her reluctance to face Vulcan is not just that her powers are locked away. No, it’s that Vulcan knows her, perhaps better than anyone else ever has or ever will. He’s killed her before, and she’s afraid she won’t be enough to stop him this time either.

 

Scenario

When Reina and Jack finally make it to San Francisco and come face to face with Vulcan, Reina makes the choice to pull off her disguise and show him her face. Jack watches with growing dread as Vulcan recognizes her and calls her by name.

 

Final Assignment: Setting

My novel is set in an alternate universe of the modern day where superheroes are rare enough to be prominent when they emerge but common enough to not be surprising when new ones crop up. The story takes place just as a new supervillain rises to power in San Francisco, and dated news articles, email exchanges, social media posts, and flashbacks will help us piece together what happened on that fateful day when Vulcan killed the Sound and Fury. This will also give us glimpses into politics, popular culture, and people with and without powers, and how they have all been shaped by the existence of superheroes—for better or worse.

 

The main narrative will give us an explosive glimpse of San Francisco before trapping us in the isolation of rural Michigan, where Reina fled after nearly dying in San Francisco. Her parents’ house is not without its own traumas, however, and she cannot escape the truth she has ignored at every turn: her story is written in her scars. Her attempts to avoid the news are in vain, and she learns more and more of what happened to her city in the wake of her unlikely escape. 

 

As her conscience grows ever guiltier and her determination to do something stronger, she’ll leave the safety of her hometown to make the trek across the country with Jack Vera, meeting with superheroes in Chicago, Denver, Santa Fe, and Las Vegas, before finally facing her destiny back where it all started. Each city is marked by the presence of larger than life superheroes, each with their own personalities, flaws, and reasons for staying exactly where they are—and leaving California to burn.

 

San Francisco is a shell of its former self—news reports have told us of the power vacuum under Vulcan’s reign, the lawlessness without any government presence and the danger it presents to those unfortunate enough to still be living there. Classified documents reveal failed attempts to remove Vulcan that underscore just how dangerous facing him will be. 

[Kaitlyn]

Assignment 1: Story statement.

Catch the scammer and make it out alive.

Assignment 2: Antagonist
The antagonist is an online scammer who is posing as Hollywood’s biggest celebrity. They are baiting women in their early twenties into having conversations, getting them alone, then transporting them to a holding area for human trafficking in New York City. The protagonist does not realize that the scammer is her boss at the coffee shop until she finds herself blindfolded in a shipping container. He “accidentally” runs into her while she’s sitting as bait for a sting with the FBI, and as she goes to quickly help him, away from the agents, she’s taken by his henchmen. 

Assignment 3: Breakout Title
Private Messages
Celebrity Scammer

Assignment 4: Deciding Genre
You by Caroline Kepnes and The Idea of You by Robinne Lee

Assignment 5 Hook Line:
After Charlie receives a message from a scammer on Instagram posing as Hollywood’s Golden Boy Declan Graham, the real Declan flies to New York City to work together to find who is sending the messages, and how they might mean real trouble for Charlie and more women in the area. 

Assignment 6 Conflicts: 

Inner conflict: Charlie wants to prove to herself and her parents that she is on the right path in her career. Her parents think she is wasting her time pouring coffee instead of using her business degree. She is a little timid, but not a pushover, and tends to question often if her parents are right. Declan is torn between loving the work of acting, and hating the spotlight that comes with it. Someone using his name and doing nefarious things means that he may have more of a lens on him that he doesn't have any control over.  

Initial Conflict: Charlie commented on Declan Graham’s social media post after an awards show where he didn’t win in his category. She wakes up the next day with a message from an account that claims to be the real Declan. Charlie is thrown into turmoil- knowing that this is likely a scam, but heart pounding and butterflies at the “what-if”. After messages continue to make her hackles raise, she decides to reach out to someone on Declan’s team in Hollywood to let them know what is going on. 

Secondary conflict: Declan’s publicist has been getting messages about scammers, but is then contacted by the police because girls in New York have been going missing, and the common denominator is screenshots of what appears to be Declan’s messages. The authorities know that Declan isn’t actually to blame, but fear that the missing girls are part of a trafficking ring that they’ve been investigating.  

Assignment 7 Setting:

The novel takes place in New York City during the winter, in the Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan areas.

 

Subsettings:
Charlie and Brooke’s apartment: safety net and familiarity becomes a danger when the scammer alludes to knowing where she lives. The apartment is a tiny 2 bedroom walkup in Brooklyn. The temperature in the space is just above freezing due to the cost of oil, but cozy blankets and large wine glasses keep the best friends warm. The ground outside is accumulating snow, which turns to a gray sludge/slush as conflict continues. A big snow storm doesn’t stop the hustle and bustle in the street below, with traffic noises, despite being dampened by the falling flakes, still make their way through the kitchen window. 

Brewvana: The coffee shop where Charlie and Jamie work, a short walk from Charlie’s apartment. The soft  lighting and dark walnut wood counter is an easy combination on Charlie’s eyes in the early morning start of her shift. The smell of the espresso machine hits her as she opens the door, making her mouth water immediately. The counter on the back wall houses all they need for operating the small coffee shop. The sound inside ranges from bustling with early morning commuters on their way to work, to college students chatting about assignments, test scores, and what parties they’ll be attending.  The black honeycomb mat behind the counter helps her move quickly around without slipping on any splashes of coffee, creamer, or melted ice cubes. 

Declan’s Hotel: Located in the East Village of Manhattan, it is a known hotel for celebrities. The penthouse suite where he is staying has two rooms with a built-in fireplace in the wall that you can see through from both sides. The small couch and two arm chairs make the meeting feel more comfortable and easy than why they’re actually meeting there, but the inclusion of FBI agents and Declan’s publicist make the room feel like it’s the size of an office closet. The bar downstairs is where Charlie plans to meet the scammer. The dark wood finishings and velvet upholstery give a darker atmosphere. Instrumental music is just barely noticeable over the buzz of conversation. It smells like wine and whiskey. 

Shipyard: Mist and fog hang in the air. Cranes stand tall, their shadows visible in the twilight of the day. Shipping containers are stacked up six high, in rows upon rows. Boots crunch on the dirty concrete, and forklifts litter the pier. Declan can only hear his own breathing and the pounding beat of his pulse in his ears. Meanwhile, Charlie lands on a hard, gritty surface that smells like urine and sweat. Blindfolded, she hears whimpers of several women, and the scraping sounds of them shuffling quickly toward the back wall of the shipping container that they’ve all been stashed in. With her other senses heightened, Charlie tries to figure out who belongs to the familiar voice that she can hear whispering as the door to the container creaks closed before slamming so hard it makes her teeth clatter. 
 

[Steamboat Heather]

1.  Story Statement

 

I have based my novel on a captivating and under-represented time in the historical fiction genre: England’s mass deportation to Australia of those citizens it deemed to be “criminals” in the late 1700’s. Many of those purported crimes were trivial, and many of those criminals were innocent women and even children.  As with many events in human history, the stories are filtered through a male lens, the female experience either sanitized or completely omitted. 

 

This novel is told through the eyes of three female protagonists: A seventeen year old girl driven out of her home onto the streets of a cruel and indifferent London, a prostitute determined to build a better life in the new world, and a young aborigonal girl whose curiosity and bravery creates a bridge between English and Aboriginal women.  Although set in the late 1700’s, the themes addressed in my book mirror the struggles that continue today, including inequality, racism, and sexual exploitation.

 

The Canaries begins in London in 1787, an epicenter of human suffering where filth, disease, and crime fill the streets.  Widespread unemployment and hunger force the government to execute a drastic solution: The expulsion of the unwanted. Poor and uneducated, seventeen-year-old Cora Barton is convicted of a crime she did not commit. Like many others -- including the young man she loves -- she is banished half-way around the world to Australia. 

 

While attempting to establish a new colony, the convicts, together with the free English, struggle against the ever-present threats of starvation, disease, and violence. Strangers in a foreign and unforgiving land, they encounter native Aborigonal people as the fight for resources and sovereignty begins. Mary, a prostitute from London, aligns herself with an English officer, carrying his child.  As tensions rise between the English and the Aboriginals, Myree, a young girl, encounters Mary and a friendship between the two evolves. Meanwhile, Cora, separated from all she knows and the man she loves, must use her wits and the aid of an unlikely companion to gain freedom and a life of her own.

 

2. Sketch of antagonist or antagonistic forces

 

The primary antagonist is England.  The English people and her government determined the fate of these three females, either by calculated intension or cold indifference.  For the desperate women who find themselves sentenced to deportation, England has deemed them so unworthy of care or consideration that she sends them across the globe, regardless of the suffering which will most certainly occur.  The young aboriginal girl will also feel the weight of English influence and power, her life destroyed by the invasion of this new enemy.

3. Title options

 

My working title has been “The Canaries”.  This was a derogatory term referring to the Australian convicts as historically they were clothed in yellow and black.

 

The Great Deportation

4. Comparable novels in terms of genre and common themes 

 

     Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

     Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

     Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

 

5. Logline

 

Convicted of a crime, seventeen year old Cora is sentenced to deportation from England.  Boarded onto a ship full of mostly male convicts she is headed for a strange new land, now called Australia.  She must overcome not only the cruel months at sea but also find a way to establish a new life in a harsh and unforgiving land.

 

6. Inner conflict

 

Cora, forced from her home, is filled with fear and feelings of unworthiness.  She sacrificed her own security for the love of her sister and her sister’s unborn child.  This act thrust her into a world where she is at the mercy of society.  She has no power, no money, no protection-the streets of London immediately determine that she is prey to be consumed.  

 

Her inner conflict of fear and lacking is amplified as she is sentenced to transportation across the world.  Both in the gaols of London and on the ship to Australia, her dignity is assaulted daily, not only due to her status as a criminal but also as a victim of a violent assault.

 

Her inner battle with fear and unworthiness continues as she is separated from the man she loves, but whom she cannot believe could love her in return.  Despite the inner struggle she escapes from her indentured servitude to grasp at her one chance for independence and a life of her own.

 

7.  Setting

 

1700’s London is a dirty urban center filled with the smells of chimney smoke and excrement.  Soot covers everything from the walls of the buildings to the clothing of the poor who spend most of their time on the streets.  Chamber pots are emptied from apartment windows directly onto the streets below.  Horses also use the cobblestone as their personal lavatory.  Soap and clean water for a daily bath are too great a luxury for the general population.  Body odors are strong and with increasingly densely populated common areas, the stench permeates all enclosed spaces.

 

The ships, only recently made seaworthy, have served as floating prisons for their inhabitants.  Held below deck, little light penetrates the small portholes.  Each partition of space has been haphazardly constructed by inexperienced convict labor.  Wooden walls hastily erected to contain groups of 10 or so prisoners.  Pallets of hay are used for bedding, vermin and bugs are abundant.  A community chamber pot is routinely emptied out of the small windows, inevitably producing overflow of human excrement that drips along both the inside and outside of the window walls.

Botany Bay Australia is ruggedly beautiful and unforgivingly harsh.  Nothing seems familiar to the English, convict or free.  Flora and fauna are a mystery needing to be solved and quickly.  The English also learn they are not alone in this daunting new place.  Aboriginal tribes will defend their homes with all means necessary.  Lives are in constant peril as the race to adequately feed, house, and protect hundreds of people has begun. 

[Ian Caskey]

Pre-assignment - Seven Story Elements

 

Story Statement - In a Faustian bargain to become an industrial/goth rockstar, Lukas must rid himself of a cursed magic lantern before it kills him and his pregnant wife.

Antagonist Sketch - The magic lantern is like an evil battery. It serves as a wish-fulfillment device. It has one owner at a time, bound by blood. It is a deadly force, harming or killing those who opposes its owner. It has the ability to create illusions, ghosts of deceased loved ones. It also incites creative genius. Whoever possesses always makes great gains toward their personal pursuits, but at the cost of disturbing hallucinations, death and/or devastation toward those close to them by way of fire and/or spontaneous combustion.

There are three human antagonists in the book.

1) a Viennese artist under the spell of the lantern, who uses it to destroy his landlord (prologue, Vienna 1915).

2) A jealous ex-bandmate who wants ownership of a song made under the influence of the lantern by the protagonist. (Winston-Salem, North Carolina 1993).

3) A conniving boyfriend to the protagonist’s mother in-law who intends to sell a much-cherished lake house. This is the primary desire of the protagonist’s wife, to own the lake house. She uses the lantern to destroy the conniving boyfriend to get ownership of the lakehouse. (North Carolina, 1993)

 

Breakout Title -

We Live in Fire

Burn F#%ker Burn

Set Me On Fire

 

Genre and Comp Titles -

GENRE: Occult Horror/Music

Comp Titles: 

We Sold Our Souls - Grady Hendrix

Your Band Sucks - Jon Fine

Gothic - Phillip Fricassi

Our Band Could Be Your Life - Michael Azerrad

Michael McDowell - The Amulet

John Saul - The Blackstone Chronicles

 

Logline Conflict Core Wound - Set in the early 90s, an unknown musician records a song destined for greatness, but when terrifying hallucinations besiege him and a jealous former bandmate dies in a horrific fire, he must rid himself of the cursed lantern before he and his pregnant wife go up in flames.

 

Inner Conflict - A pizza-delivery guy, soon-to-be, full-time Mr. Mom, Lukas resents the impending sacrifice of parenthood interfering with his desire to be an industrial/goth rockstar. His main inner-conflict is Fame Ideation versus Family Obligation. 

EXAMPLE:

On an errand at an antique shop to pick up a cradle, he cuts his hand on a magic lantern, once used in horror theater shows in the 19^th century.

Seduced by its dark history of inspiring  great works of disturbing art, and only with enough money for the cradle, he wants to purchase the lantern, but is there to get the cradle. A historical preservationist comes into the antique shop anxious to purchase the lantern in Lukas's hands. 

A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION:

Lukas must rid himself of the curse object and discovers the way to do that is to pass it on to an unsuspecting person.

Yes, this will free him and his wife of their impending doom, to be burned alive, but how does he determine who he should pass the curse on to?

His asshole friend has already been scorched to death by the lantern, so this puts Lukas in position of essentially choosing a random person to be hellishly cursed. He less than 12 hours to pass on the curse.

Setting -

There is historic Vienna in the early 20^th Century. Given this is about a cursed object, rooting it in an earlier time is imperative. The book opens in Statdpark, a famous park in Vienna next to a river … The object itself, a magic lantern/antique slide projector is revealed in an apartment fire.

There are several settings:

- Winston Salem, North Carolina

- Old Salem, with a historical roadside attraction

- Dank-ass night clubs

- Night Club Parking Lots

- Garage Band Rehearsal Space

- A Lake House

- A Spooky, Druggy House/Former Mill Town House

- A Rural Antique Shop/Former Gas Station

- A Gothic House

- A Small Two-Bedroom Apartment

- A Beater Car for Delivering Pizzas

[ValerieKinsey]

Valerie Kinsey

Write to Pitch Conference

June 20-24 2024

First Seven Assignments
 

1. Story Statement

 

Tesor’s struggle to raise her daughter free of her grandfather’s control 

 

2. Sketch the Antagonist(s) - 200 words

 

Primary: Archangel Levi 

 

The patriarch of an orthodox religious tradition, Archangel Levi seeks to accumulate power, wealth, and ultimately control over his legacy by finding and trapping his granddaughter, who may have the power to give him a male heir. Levi is charismatic, patient, manipulative, and convinced of his god-sanctioned right to dictate his granddaughter’s reproductive choices. He uses every tool at his disposal – bribery, murder, spiritual blackmail – to get what he wants: a great -grandson. 

 

Secondary: Plinth

 

Plinth - Tesor’s nickname for her husband - is described as a large, cold and unmovable object. He is co-founder and co-owner of Fuerte Construction and seeks to maximize profits and build the biggest and strongest infrastructure projects in the Territory. Unhindered by false hopes of a legitimate heir, Plinth sets his sights on being a tycoon, ascending to the top of the economic hierarchy of the Territory. He is pragmatic and dogged in his affairs, and choses Tesor to be a helpmeet in building his enterprise as she is an orphan and will be forever unencumbered by family obligations. He is also drawn to her unusual looks and amber eyes. 
 

3. Breakout Title

• The Angel’s Trumpet 
• Girl with Golden Eyes
• You Have Been Chosen

 

4. Develop Two Smart Comparables

Literary /Dystopian

The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood): 

• dystopian, female-centric novel set against an ultraconservative religious government

The Blue Ticket (Sophie Mackintosh)

• dystopian, female-centric novel with a pregnant woman on the run

 

5. Write Your Own Logline (Conflict and Core Wound)

 

Unexpectedly pregnant and trapped in an orthodox religious tradition, a young woman must re-enact her own mother's flight from a religious patriarch and would-be suitor to raise her child on her own terms.

 

6. Conflict (Primary Conflict, Inner Conflict, Social Conflict)

 

Tesor’s Inner Conflict: Tesor believes her impulsive action – specifically her desire to meet her lover at a Gathering, or meet-up of subversives, artists and other counter-Territory types – has led to her mother’s permanent exile. Given that her mother raised her alone, Tesor feels a bond of love and debt to her mother, and cannot forgive herself for going against her mother’s prohibition and betraying her mother’s trust. Complicating matters further is the fact that her mother never shared some important elements of her life with Tesor, leading Tesor to question her origins, her mother’s motives, and the purpose of their constant wandering across the Territory.

 

Tesor’s Secondary Conflicts: 

 

1. Tesor has made a terrible mistake marrying Plinth, a man she thought would grant her legitimacy and tranquility. Instead of finding peace, she finds she is lonely and begins an affair with Plinth’s business partner and childhood friend, Christopher Maddox, which, shockingly (due to the catastrophically low birth rates) results in a pregnancy. Because Plinth knows the child cannot be his, he vows to have Tesor exiled after the baby is born. However, the Territory would grant him paternity and enable him to keep the child. Although Plinth originally plans to have his mother help him with this task, he later deduces the identity of the baby’s father,and conspires with Maddox’s wife to wrestle the newborn from Tesor as revenge. 

 

2. Tesor’s biological grandfather (Levi) and step-mother (Grandma Joan) contrive to marry her to the new Visitor, a glorified sperm donor, at the Blue Sage Settlement. Although Tesor has little choice but to submit to the union on paper, she refuses to consummate her marriage, ultimately leading to the final confrontation with Levi. The Visitor, called Stadler Nash, is a far kinder man than Plinth and through duty and inclination, wants his arranged marriage to Tesor to evolve into a true marriage after his turn as Visitor ends, with potential for more children and a stable lifestyle with his family

 

3. Tesor will not consent to consummating her marriage with Stadler Nash for two reasons: first, because she rejects his orthodox faith; second, because she has fallen in love with a different man, the one who helped her escape from Plinth. Jamie has also fallen for Tesor, but is reluctant to get involved with her due to his participation in an illicit secret society, the Misericordia, which seeks the peaceful end of humankind on planet earth. Aside from keeping him occupied, Jamie knows these actions run afoul of the law in the Territory and may result in exile– a fate he has accepted, but doesn’t want to impose upon Tesor and her daughter.

 

Social Conflict: The ultra-religious world portrayed in this novel divides women into categories based upon their likely ability to bear children and is organized – at least on the surface – to promote the perpetuation of humankind through social and financial incentives for marrying and bearing children. The novel follows five different women, Tesor, Grandma Joan, Aunt Maybee, Esther Weaver, Freya as they work both separately and collectively to affirm women’s custody of their own bodies and lives. All of these women face multiple conflicts as a result of the society, although each makes separate, different choices about which actions are morally permissible in the circumstances.  

 

7. Setting

 

Years before, a series of calamitous events collectively called “The Plagues” transformed the land, politics and people of North America. Although no part of the country formerly known as the United States of America was immune, the coasts suffered the greatest impact, spurring the Inward Migration as surviving populations moved toward the center of the landmass. The oceans rose. Pestilence descended. Millions died. Great cities were abandoned. 

 

The novel takes place on the western frontier of the Restored Nation, in what is now called the Fraternal Territory of New Mexico. Tesor and her mother visited nearly every part of the Territory as permanent wanderers seeking Guests for the Blue Sage Settlement, a one-time Northern New Mexico motel that’s been converted to a women’s shelter. The present plotline takes place primarily in a reimagined Albuquerque and Taos. 

 

 From the novel:

 

The Wall is a great, disemboweled stone snake that crawls through the desert from Mexico up to Colorado, west of the Rio Grande. At the moment, its stone head and tail are joined together in spots by metal fences of chain link and barbed wire. Plinth planned to replace that metal lattice with rock, erecting a section from the border of the Vulcan sub-development in the south around the ancient volcano to the far north of the city. This was, oddly, the oldest portion of the Wall in our Territory, but also the last to be replaced with stone and steel. 

 

I crossed the river and drove west to where The Wall would be. At that moment, it was a series of concrete pylons, wide as a man and tall as a fortress, stacks of stone and bags of sand. The earth-moving tools were lined up in a row beside the trailer Plinth used as an office. In spite of the fiery orange sun and its dull light— the last of the day—the site was quiet. I knew, from Plinth’s griping, his crew were waiting on more fuel. Fuel drove The Wall. 

 

Beyond the construction site were the formidable wire fences, the desert plain, and the darkened highway, a thin, undulating line I could only imagine, which once connected the east and west of the continent. The highway was still lined with rows of abandoned cars, pressing eastward in their unmoving even rows. Their fuel had been siphoned years ago; their engines requisitioned for parts. They were shells, now, cast out of the sea to bake on the sand.

 

[Lauren Weiss]

Assignment #1

A high school senior must be accepted into UNC to play women’s soccer. 

Assignment #2

Lex, the protagonist, is also the antagonist, along with her mom’s cancer diagnosis. Lex’s goal in life is simple: play professional soccer for the US women’s soccer team. But when her visit with an admissions counselor at UNC does not go according to plan (the first step in her ultimate life plan), Lex begins second-guessing her chance at the future she so meticulously worked towards her whole life. As she deals with her feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy, her mom is diagnosed with cancer. Instead of leaning on those closest to her, she pushes them away, straining all of her relationships. She begins struggling emotionally and academically, which is only exacerbated as her mom’s health rapidly declines. She is then faced with a new reality: even if she was admitted into UNC, would she even be able to go, knowing the inevitable?

Assignment #3

Promises We Can’t Keep

Broken Promises 

A Future Without You

Assignment #4

The Names they Gave Us by Emery Lord (Bloomsbury): Lord’s novel presents a similar plot line & themes: Mom’s cancer returns and the MC struggles to cope with this news, as the world as she knows it is crumbling around her. Other themes include finding oneself through relationships and self-reflection.

 

The Lucky List by Rachael Lippincott (Simon & Schuster): This novel touches on the loss of a loved one (mom) and the subsequent feeling of being lost without them, and wanting to remain close to them, even after death. This novel heavily focuses on self-discovery, especially as much is changing in the MC’s life, which is a major theme in mine as well. 

Assignment #5

After learning of her mother’s cancer diagnosis, a high school senior must decide if her well-planned future is still worth fighting for. 

 

Assignment #6

Internal conflict: Lex’s major inner conflict is presented after she learns of her mom’s cancer diagnosis. Although she has spent her entire life working towards her goal (attending UNC to play women’s soccer), she becomes conflicted and doesn’t believe that she (in good conscience) can leave her mom, especially as her mom’s prognosis becomes bleak. Throughout the novel, Lex is torn between trying to overcome the challenges presented to her during the UNC visit and wondering if the future she had planned for herself is even worth it at all. 

Secondary conflict: As Lex deals with her inner conflict and the stress of her mom’s diagnosis, instead of leaning on those closest to her, she pushes them away. As a result, she breaks up with her long-term boyfriend and begins fighting with her lifelong best friend, creating rifts between them. 

Assignment #7

The opening scene of the novel takes place at UNC (University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill), Lex’s number one school. Lex meets with an admissions counselor where she learns that getting accepted into UNC will be more difficult than she realized, presenting the major conflict and plot point. 

The remainder of the story takes place in Springtown, a small fictional town outside of Albany, NY. It’s one of those towns where everyone pretty much knows everyone else. (It’s important to note that Springtown is quite far from UNC.) Throughout the rest of the novel, the scenes fluctuate between the following: home, school, Sweet Treats (Lex’s best friend’s family bakery/job), soccer field, and doctor’s office/hospital. Each location presents the opportunity for the reader to observe Lex in different environments with each character, as the dynamics shift from one location to the next.