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Introduction to Pre-event Assignments 

Algonkian Conferences 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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att.jpg 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).

att.jpg FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. 

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THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT

Antagonist (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.

att.jpg 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.

att.jpg 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!

att.jpg 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?

att.jpg 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."

att.jpg 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.

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

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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.

att.jpg 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)

NYBOOKEDITORS.COM

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

MARIONROACH.COM

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

JERRYJENKINS.COM

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

JERRYJENKINS.COM

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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My book is a memoir, working title Breathing Water.

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: 
Story Statement: My husband's death by suicide was devastating, but I would not let the pain of this tragedy plant the same seeds of destruction in my children that were sown in their father when he lost his parents at their age.

SECOND ASSIGNMENT:
Story antagonist: Geoff O’Hara, my husband and the eager father to our three kids. He lost his mother to a car crash at age 2 and his father to cancer at age 19. My husband spoke of this loss reluctantly and in a “that’s old news, I’m over it” tone of voice by the time I met him at age 22. He was effortlessly attractive and addictively charming. He knew and enjoyed every waitstaff, cab driver, and Congressperson where we met on DC’s Capitol Hill. He made me feel seen and valued. He was frugal in an admirable, Yankee-shrewdness sort of way. He built a political career around the flexibility to spend time with his kids. He was a trustee at their (and his, and his father’s) school, a deacon at the church, a soccer coach and usually the school dropper-offer. He breathed best in the stern of a boat, preferably with a mainsheet in one hand and a beer in the other. Increasingly, a beer in both.

THIRD ASSIGNMENT:  
Titles:
All You Can Do 
Breathing Water
Crash Course 

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: 
Comparables:
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith. Like Maggie Smith’s tell-mine, her attempt at a tell-all that she acknowledges can only be her version of confounding events, I pick through the baffling times that started with my husband’s deceivingly confident request for a divorce, his spiral into depression, our urgent search for a diagnosis, and my eventual Sophie’s choice to focus on my kids. And how I came away from the experience raging at the results, but stronger for my decisions. 
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner. Imagine the important grief journey of Michelle Zauner’s memoir if told by the spouse who survived devastation hellbent on righting life for her children. 

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: 
Logline: Coming from the isolation of a broken home, I wanted to shield my kids from the pain of the divorce my husband was too casually requesting, and protect them when his spiraling mental health ended with his death by suicide. 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: 
Inner conflict: I grew up not so much in a divorced household, but more of an I-never-knew-them-married household, seeing my distant dad just twice a year. My parents belatedly tied the knot a few months after my birth when my school-age mom impulsively retrieved me from the foster home I’d been whisked off to the day I was born. Her dad made my dad marry her. Mom divorced my reluctant father two years later as soon as he returned from his piloting stint in Vietnam, but she made sure I always knew she’d been the parent who wanted me. For my father’s second divorce, after 27 years of marriage, I got to see the uglier side of conscious uncoupling. But it was my much younger half siblings who bore the brunt of the destruction. I learned an important lesson from those experiences; don’t fuck up the kids. 
Actual scenario (since mine’s a memoir) for inner conflict: When my husband started talking about marital fatigue, I went straight into child protective mode; I vowed to make the process as frictionless as possible for the sake of our three teenage children.
Actual scenario for the secondary conflict: It took me a while to realize my husband needed protecting, too. From himself.  He had convinced me, himself, the marriage counselor and our closest friends that our marriage was causing his unhappiness. Our friends maturely and good-naturedly split down the universally understood line of his-side versus her-side with no animosity in sight. But as soon as I started expressing my concern for Geoff’s mental health, all they could hear was a distraught wife clinging to a marital illusion. They did not believe me. Which made it harder for me to believe what I was seeing myself.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: 
Setting: My memoir takes place in Providence, RI, a high-caliber artsy and foodie town, the self-proclaimed Creative Capital of the world. People here emote and express in world class ways. Mental health is not only discussed, it is gayly splashed onto the sides of our downtown brick buildings in a maze of giant murals meant to spark soul-soaring conversations for the endless stream of gallery and theater goers. The hilly hometown of Roger Williams, the founding father who gave our country the verbal playbook for religious freedom, Providence is dotted with rainbow colored churches, cathedrals, synagogues, mosques and temples.
 

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My novel, America's Town

Story Statement: Set in Fall 2007 as America's Great Recession begins, big bank business clashes with petty politics and "high school sports parentitus" in Gettysburg, America's most famous small town.

Antagonist: Determined to stop First Colonial Bankcorp, aka "America's Bank" from opening a new branch in downtown Gettysburg, aka "America's Town," Stan Reynolds is an attorney, former mayor and county supervisor, still a local power broker who represents civic leaders in Gettysburg who, in reconciling history with prosperity, like things just the way they are and know little secrets about key players in town who do not share their views or aspirations. Stan sees First Colonial, a national bank that prides itself on customer service and community relations, as "the enemy" but also the latest "cash cow" that can fund causes that he and his supporters deem worthy. Stan also confronts Jay as a sports parent. His daughter, Megan, has been a reliable basketball player under a coach who has been in her corner but also in Stan's coffers for highly prized summer jobs. Her main rival, Stefani Baker, daughter of Gettysburg's borough administrator, has been "coached up" by Jay and her best friend, Bonita Blount, to become the better player and take Megan's starting job. Stan believes that Jay has "masterminded a takeover" of the team with the help Bonita's father and Stefani's, though he and two other fathers have daughters who are also senior starters. 

Title: My original title was Tip Offs, but America's Town was easier to explain and understand. It could also be used within the book as a poke at the "history and 'schlock'" feel in the community. The Ballers from Gettysburg, or something similar, seems kind of silly, given the past symbolism of cannonballs, but also the under-appreciated stature of girl's basketball. I did not like the idea of a title such as Standoff in Gettysburg, because people could confuse the book with a military story. Gettysburg has never won a state title in any sport, though football and wrestling are top-of-mind in the community. I started the story with an intention of answering a question: what if Gettysburg's first state champion was an under-appreciated one, like the girl's basketball team, and what might it take to get the community behind them? Ironically, the real Gettysburg High School girl's basketball  team was in an "Elite Eight" in their group while I did my earliest drafts.

Comparables: The Beartown trilogy by Frederik Backman: Beartown, Us Against You, The Winners. Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West,Racing the Rain by John L. Parker, Jr. and Broken Field by Jeff Hull. These are stories about how communities form around young people's athletic aspirations and their parent's ambitions. Backman's Britt-Marie Was Here is also a good "interim coach" story as is Head Fake by Scott Gordon. I'm currently reading The Happiest Girl In The World by Alena Dillon which focuses on friendships between young female athletes and among over-anxious sports parents

I also read The Making of Hoosiers, non-fiction about how the movie was made, and the thoughts behind the story line. While fictional Hickory, Indiana is a small town "barely on a map," Gettysburg is a far more famous small town (less than 8,000 residents) that cares about public perceptions as it tries to reconcile obligations to history and tourism with the day to day necessities of life for its residents. 

Primary Conflicts: It's Fall of '07. Wharton grad Jay Siler is the fastest riser on the fast track at Baltimore-based First Colonial Bankcorp, the fastest-growing consumer bank in America. Led by CEO Rolland Johnson, First Colonial's mantra is Convenience, Customer Service and Community. Now at the height of his success growing the bank's retail branch network, at the nexus of marketing and real estate, Jay gets a new assignment he dreads. Rolland Johnson, Gettysburg College, Class of '69, wants him to get a branch built in downtown Gettysburg, the most famous small town in America. There's no sense to the project; it merely satisfies the CEO's ego, putting the First Colonial brand in front of near 3 million tourists each year. Jay runs into harsh community opposition, which he expected, led by Stan Reynolds, but also opposition to other options, some  more lucrative, from within the bank. As Jay struggles to find a win-win, rumors circulate through the business press that First Colonial is in serious financial trouble. Jay has the business and human relations skills to outflank Stan--until the bad news about First Colonial in the business press makes that almost impossible.

Secondary Conflicts:After a particularly bad meeting at Borough Hall, Jay meets Gettysburg basket ballers, Stefani Baker and Bonita Blount, on a nearby outdoor basketball court. He makes a strong impression on Bonita with his ball skills. Jay learns that Bonita is the most recruited athlete from Gettysburg in over a generation. He is later encouraged by Bonita and by Alben Baker, Gettysburg's borough administrator and Stefani's father, and his boss at the bank, Garrett Avery, a former U of Maryland basketball star, to coach up Stefani to become a better ballplayer to claim a starting job that is rightfully hers, only Stan Reynold's daughter, Megan, stands in her way.. Later, citing First Colonial's commitment to community as an opportunity for business, Alben pressures Jay to become assistant coach of the girl's basketball team at Gettysburg High, partly to look out for Stefani. Upon evidence of abusive misconduct upon Stefani by head coach Barry Hughes in a game where she is injured, Jay takes over as head coach,  still struggling to keep Rolland Johnson's vision afloat in the community. Stan threatens to publicly "out" Kayla Franz, Gettysburg High's athletic director, if she allows Jay to take over as coach. But Herman Blount, Bonita's father, has Bonita ready to tell a reporter about how Stefani, her best friend, was injured and verbally abused, unless Stan backs off his threat. The former coach takes his frustrations out on Jay, proving that he, Kayla, Alben and Herman were right. So, Stan cannot carry out his threat.

As the story unfolds, Jay is not so much worried that he will lose his job if he fails to bring a new branch to Gettysburg as he is for a girls basketball team that is not playing to its true potential, especially Stefani. He cares more about his players than he does about his job. As more bad news surfaces about First Colonial's finances, coaching consumes more of his time and gives him the satisfaction, the "highs" that he's never experienced in his work life. He has allies at First Colonial, Garrett Avery and Marjori Conover, and sympathy in the community from the fathers of the two best players, Bonita and Stefani, as well as Emily Grossman, a former high school basketball player, who leads the downtown organization in Gettysburg. The professional relationship between Jay and Emily becomes a lasting love interest as she helps him gain public support for the team.

Hook (very short)

America's Town is "Hoosiers with a girl's high school basketball team in Gettysburg, America's most famous small town."

Hook (short) 

In the Fall of '07 before the beginning of America's Great Recession, Jay Siler, a young bank executive on the fast track, becomes a reluctant girl's high school basketball coach to help him navigate local politics in Gettysburg, America's most famous small town. As more and more bad news surrounds the future of his bank, Jay comes to care far more about his team than he does for his job.

Hook (longer) :

It’s Fall 2007, before the start of America’s Great Recession. Jay Siler, fastest riser on the fast track at Baltimore-based First Colonial Bancorp, aka “America’s Bank,” is tasked to open a new branch in Gettysburg, aka “America’s Town.” While Jay believes a new branch is a merely to satisfy the CEO’s ego, he finds an ideal site. But local officials led by Stan Reynolds, Gettysburg’s main “power broker,” are averse to compromising Gettysburg’s historical legacy, unless they can get what they want from a compromise.

After a disheartening meeting at Gettysburg Borough Hall, Jay is struck by an errant basketball from a nearby recreation center court. There, Bonita Blount, a prodigious basketball talent, Gettysburg's most recruited athlete in over a generation, and her best friend, Stefani Baker, are practicing for the upcoming season. A Kentucky transplant, daughter of Gettysburg’s borough administrator, Alben Baker, Stefani has star potential but a flippant attitude. Tired from his meeting, Jay joins them in a shoot around, impressing Bonita with his ball skills. 

Bonita and Alben covertly campaign for Jay to "coach up" Stefani to reach her potential and join the coaching staff at Gettysburg High, believing he’s the key to securing Gettysburg's first state championship. Jay hesitantly signs on, only to face new conflicts with Stan, whose daughter, Megan, is Stefani’s main competition for a starting role, and unwelcoming head coach, Barry Hughes. When Hughes is dismissed for abusive misconduct after Stefani is injured in a game, Jay steps up as head coach. As First Colonial faces a financial and public relations crisis in the wake of the Great Recession, Jay's career and the success of his team hang in the balance.

Setting: America's Town is set primarily in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I have visited Gettysburg several times in my professional life. Outside of the famous battlefield, Gettysburg tries to balance history and tourism with the day to day needs of a community and college town. The balancing act is challenging; schlock operators compete with real historians for the attention of the tourists. Retail chains like banks, are pushed outside of the downtown because the college, city mothers and fathers want to protect Gettysburg's uniqueness for tourism. Parts of the story are set downtown, where I have been before, as well as just outside of town. Gettysburg High School is, in real life, a typical high school building that was probably built in the 1970s. Penn State-University Park is the actual setting for state championships and I have been to State College many times in my work life. Baltimore, headquarters for First Colonial Bankcorp, is an important secondary setting. Jay's home in Pikesville, Maryland, a Jewish enclave and suburb of Baltimore, also fits into this story.

Below is an example from State College, PA, as it actually was on tournament weekend in 2009.

From the streets of State College, Penn State sports begin and end with football. Coach Joe Paterno, affectionately known as “JoePa,” is an iconic brand.  No visitor can get away from the life-sized cardboard cut-outs of JoePa that have greeted them outside the numerous t-shirt and school spirit shops along College Street.

No one in State College would have known that Penn State was the host of the high school hoops finals unless they squinted to see the Welcome Pennsylvania High School Basketball Championships signs that hung from chain links below the bright yellow and orange street banners on the lampposts. On the day before a state championship tournament the streets were devoid of pedestrians. Penn State students were on spring break. The campus community was practically a ghost town. It was a shame that the Generals would not get a better feel of college life before they played the most important game of their high school lives.

Kayla and Bonita took a trip to the woman’s basketball office to update the Penn State coach on the status of Bonita’s ankle while Jay took his team on a tour. He did not like the look of the campus; buildings blending in bland brown colors with few trees in between. But a statue in front of Old Main, the university’s administration building, caught his eye. It was a turtle—like the Maryland Terrapin—with the weight of the world on its shell.

“That’s us, guys, we’re the turtle,” Jay said. Everybody laughed. “At Maryland they say ‘Fear the Turtle’. Are we the team to fear?”

“Yeah!!!” they shouted. 

Passersby turned heads as the team started clapping. An audience of a dozen, possibly Penn State students who had decided not to go home, formed a circle and clapped along as the team cheered. A cheerful golden retriever barked along with the cadence.

“Who are we?” shouted Stefani.

“GEN-RALS!” her teammates shouted back louder

“What do we want?” Stefani raised her hands in the air.

“VICTORY!”   

“What do we want?” She shouted louder.

“VICTORY!”

“Bonita would love to see this,” Stefani said to Jay.

“She’s got business. She’ll meet us at dinner.”

“You think they’d take away her scholarship?”

“Doubt it. Her ankle will heal long before summer camps. She’ll be more than ready for next season. But you never know,” he said, as the group started down the hill from Old Main to dinner.

 

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1) Story Statement: Pursue and obtain a writing career this single-parent protagonist desperately wants, and have a trusting relationship after too many heartbreaks, while remaining a devoted parent.

2) THE ANTAGONIST: Mine is a first person POV, so antagonist is seen through protagonist’s pov. The antagonist is a Korean actor with a bit of a temper whose focus is his career success. He is also a partner in a production company that employs the protagonist (which is a vehicle to her dream job). His father left the antagonist and his mother when he was 12, and he inwardly uses his career success to deal with that abandonment. He had some early success as an actor but was sidetracked due to required military service, immediately followed by a scandal that derailed his acting career. He meets the protagonist at a time he’d just gotten work again and gained recognition for it, which he uses to justify abandoning their budding relationship. When the antagonist discovers he’d become a father because of their short-lived romance, he interjects himself between the protagonist and a new love interest. He jealously tries to convince her to return to him, which includes his inability to acknowledge their daughter without a formal family relationship. Whether he cares about the protagonist is debatable, even to himself. It is their daughter who the antagonist really wants in his life.   

3) Titles (3): A theme that is threaded throughout the book is the “sky” – the book begins with the protagonist boarding a plane, where she’ll meet the antagonist, whose given name means sky. There is air travel involved, the daughter’s name is Leigh Skye, and the second lead’s given name means bright sky. The book ends in an airport getting ready to board a plane back to LA. As a result, my titles revolve around the term sky, and the phrase “embracing the skies” is used several times in the book and therefore while it wasn’t originally my first choice, it has become such. “Skies the Limit” was the working title for the book.

Embracing the Skies: A novel inspired by Korean Dramas

Embracing the Skies

Skies the Limit

4) Comparables:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin = includes Asian and non-Asian characters, including a love triangle between a Korean man and a Japanese man and EuroAmerican woman, the latter two have a child together. The trio are employed in the gaming industry, another form of entertainment. My book has a Euro-American woman (a beginning writer) and two Korean actors, she has a child with her first relationship.

 

It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover = includes a woman who had a child with a man that is more driven by jealousy and possessiveness versus love, and the protagonist is learning to trust herself to love someone else again.  My book has a similar theme, although the relationship isn’t the only focus as her career is also her goal. 

5) hook line: Abandoned by the Korean actor who unknowingly fathered her child, an insecure young Euro-American woman must gather her strength and believe in herself to take a chance to pursue her dream of becoming a writer and learn to love again.

6) Two More Levels of Conflict

A)       Inner conflict: Protagonist’s inner conflict begins as an insecurity about achieving her writing dream (as well as having a trusting and loving relationship – the secondary conflict), which is complicated by the birth of her daughter.  A scenario in the manuscript is when the protagonist finds out she’ pregnant and decides she wants to keep the baby but will not tell the antagonist to protect him from another scandal (as well she hasn’t heard from him in weeks). However, the thought this decision will add to her lack of time to write and pursue her desired writing career causes her to believe she will have to give up on it. She's driving at the time and has to pull off the road where she breaks down and weeps.

B)       Secondary conflict: After the antagonist inadvertently finds out about his daughter (just before the protagonist was going to tell him) he confronts the protagonist and her new love interest, a fellow Korean actor. The antagonist informs the pair he intends to be involved in the daughter’s life and reminds the other actor that Korean society doesn’t look favorably on his acceptance of another man’s child and it could ruin his career.    

7) Importance of Setting:  I honestly found this assignment to be the most difficult exercise to do and am at a bit of a loss on how to respond. It isn’t that I think my existing work is perfect, but it does answer some of the questions / comments the article describes. I believe it would be more useful to hear what I got right and what I didn’t versus trying to make up something new at this juncture. I look forward to learning more about enhancing this topic for my manuscript.

For background: the settings for my book are several and include the following. Seoul is the major location followed by Busan, South Korea. As well, there are settings in LA, Montreal, and the Adirondacks, the latter two northeastern North American settings are only for a few short chapters each. Each setting is used to propel the story forward from the initial meeting on a plane to the ending in an airport where the protagonist reflectively makes important growth decisions.

For example, the urban, Korean settings introduce a new place to the reader, but also act as a sense of differences and sometimes conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. She’s a small-town girl from the Adirondacks, and he’s an urbanite. He’s used to (new) wealth and attention, while she’s struggled most of her adult life and uncomfortable with attention. As the antagonist takes her into his world, it brings out her insecurities in her thoughts, while outwardly she’s absorbing it and trying to handle these encounters without looking too naïve.  Despite the difference in cultures (and some of this is brought out throughout the book), the protagonist identifies more with the climate and geography of South Korea than she does with LA.

Another example includes the house in LA, which is operated by the Korean production company the antagonist is a partner in. Four Korean actors have arrived to prepare for the U.S. portion of a drama they are filming there. The protagonist is the English-language coach working with them, as well as part-time assistant / consultant to the writers. One of the actors becomes the second lead (love interest) in this story. The house and property are spacious, described as needed in terms of meeting the production company’s needs, and it’s used to develop the budding relationship between the protagonist and the second lead (which will be enhanced when the production moves to Seoul). I also use it when the protagonist goes to Seoul to work by comparing the spaciousness and light of the house in LA to the smaller and darker apartment that the protagonist will move into.

 

 

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  1. Story statement: An enigmatic hipster launches a grassroots, anti-democracy movement in a small town, prompting their nepotistic political opponent to launch a viral online campaign that unleashes social forces none of them fully understand.

 

  1. Antagonist sketch: In two words, the antagonistic force is machine politics. It’s specifically embodied by a character named Barb Mundy, who is the incumbent the protagonist, Casey Latrobe, faces off against. Barb’s motivation is to retain her role in county government. She pulls whatever tricks she can, relying on her knowledge of the system and her connections within it. She’s fine with depressing the vote, stifling new voices, or kicking social hornets' nests she hardly understands. Where Casey wants to claw and scrap and fight, Barb wants to tie everything up in red tape and take an extra-long lunch break. Zooming out more broadly, what Casey faces is what you’d call the status quo, or even social entropy - the reality that most people are too busy to see what’s really going in front of them and probably wouldn’t care about any of it one way or the other.

 

  1. Titles:

The Hopeful (American flag boxing gloves tied together)

Ballot Boxers (American flag boxer shorts crumpled at someone’s ankles)

For Clerk And Country

 

  1. Comp titles:

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

Election by Tom Perrotta

 

  1. Hook line:

Desperate to sidestep the worst apocalyptic predictions about the future, an agitated, cutting-edge hipster struggles to spark a heretical political movement in the face of humdrum smalltown life.

 

  1. Inner conflict:

Constantly quoting research journals they may or may not understand, Casey is a firm believer in science and empirical truth. To every problem, they firmly believe there is an obvious solution, it’s just a matter of getting the right minds to figure it out and then having the will to execute on it. However, this feverishly held belief is put to the test as they struggle to get their ideas across to the local populace, and struggle against mundane realities of smalltown life. But what’s even worse is when they encounter those inclined to agree.

Hypothetical scenario: They’re on a public bus and get into an argument about how governments should use gene-splicing technology to create self-sealing roads to curb the “current pothole cataclysm.” The fight escalates to the point where they get thrown off the moving bus.

 

Secondary conflict: 

Casey’s so caught up with their cause, they struggle to find actual meaning, or connection in the world. They develop a relationship with a character named Ivy Singer, who is suffering a great loss. Ivy showers Casey with love and support, but Casey never seems to get the message until it's far too late.

Hypothetical scenario: Ivy buys a karaoke machine to help Casey when they’re preaching their ideas on the street. Casey gets upset about the songs that are preloaded on it and smashes it, which then prompts Ivy, in a show of solidarity to start smashing other appliances around the house.

 

  1. Setting:

The epigraph from Robert Bolano’s 2666 - “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom” - comes to mind. Canal County is sort of like that. It’s filled with strip malls, county roads, gas stations, municipal salt storage buildings, suburban housing developments, regular malls, public bus stops, etc. The action also takes place in early spring, when the clouds are heavy and the grass that isn’t mud is barely hanging on. However, the book views this grayscape, Rust Belt town along Lake Erie through a maximalist, bordering on mythic lens in the hopes of making it sing like the southern landscapes in Jesmyn Ward’s prose or the hardscrabble Newfoundland and Wyoming landscapes from Annie Proulx. Whether it’s intentional, like zoning ordinances or building codes, or unintentional, like the collective hopes and fears undergirding everyone waiting in line at the mall food court, a lot lies tamed by small town convention just beneath the surface, which this book aims to scratch at.

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Assignment 1: Develop a simple "story statement." In other words, what's the mission of your protagonist? The goal? What must be done?

Demonstrate how the biblical writers imagined a world where people of all bodies were equal under God, and demonstrate the implications for modern jewish legal codes based on the Hebrew bible. 

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

The major antagonists are the people strongly attached to readings of the Hebrew bible related to gender, particularly the creation stories in Genesis and the laws in Leviticus related to homosexual forbidden relationships. These antagonists do not want women to be equal to men. They want to maintain current power dynamics, with women subservient to men in all manners. They refuse to allow women to have leadership positions in their communities, and attempt in many ways to erase women, including by not allowing women’s faces to be printed in their magazines. As part of the attachment to gender roles, they refuse to acknowledge the lived experience of transgender people. They would prevent folks, due to gender concerns alone, from receiving the same rights and benefits given to other people in our communities - whether that is access to health care, tax benefits through marriage, or honorable rites in a religious setting. These antagonists prevented me from learning how to read from the Torah, the holiest book in my culture. They also prevented me from studying the Talmud, a critical instructional document for my people, because I was born female in their community. 

 

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

What is God’s law, really?

Genesis and Gender

From Eve to Me

 

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: - Comparables

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks - The Great Partnership - a philosophically blacked, beautifully written and researched book, about how God help make our lives better. 

Sara Hurwitz- Here all Along - this book helped me believe in God - it talks about Judaism for the modern person, from the perspective of someone who found Judaism at 35. 

Kissing Girls on Shabbat - Sara Glass - a memoir from a LGBT+ woman that grew up Hasidic and left her faith, somehow managing to keep her kids. 

 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.

A young woman embarks on a journey to translate and understand her religions ancestral documents to demonstrate to traditionalists that rejected her, and to the modernists that reject the law, that they are continuing on the path of the stiff-necked and are likely to be punished, preventing the promised coming of utopia, instead leading the world to destruction. 

 

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.

  • It is easy to get carried away with the laws, how much does the protagonist want her life to  change, and can she trust herself in taking on these new things. 

  • 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?

    • She wants to start keeping shabbat, or a more kosher home, and most deal with her husband who doesnt want that. 

    • Leadership, or folks in power may not want a changed narrative, will they stand up against her? 

 

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? 

  • There wasnt a setting before! It was amorphous! Happening anywhere!

  • But what if it happened in the lower east side of Manhattan, as it is today, full of Jews of different levels of observance, some of whom are still in the shtetl (like all up in your business!) and they still fight about whether there should be a sabbath elevator in their building. 

  • Maybe it also takes plan in a synagogue study hall

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Write to Pitch Assignments: Fall, 2024 Clare Lowell

1. First Assignment: Story Statement

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2. Second Assignment:

Antagonists Aubrey and Harley Murdaugh: As owners/directors of the Miss Americana Pageant, Aubrey and Harley are an integral part of Long Island’s East End Elite. But they’re also kingpins of a sex-trafficking ring which serves rich-and-famous clients seeking aspirational young women for sex.

The elder Kathee-Jo Cooper: While covering the Miss Long Island Pageant, Rocky recognizes KJ’s name on the Contestant Roster as the daughter of the woman (Kathee Jo Cooper) whose impaired driving killed his mom and seriously injured him eleven years earlier. But KJ’s drug-addled mom is, herself, a victim. Her aspirations for daughter KJ begin and end with a tiara and a title because that’s all she ever knew.

Anthony “Magic” Marco: A pageant MC who comes onto KJ. This immediately puts Rocky on notice. Aside from resenting Anthony, Rocky is called to protect and rescue KJ when “Magic Marco” puts her in danger.

Judgmental strangers: KJ has always had to fight the battle of the working-class because she’s viewed as “less than.” Aside from pageants, hers is a dead-end, low-wage, trailer-park existence. She seeks higher education and a better life, but her circumstances make it impossible.

3. Third Assignment: Breakout Title The $1.98 Beauty Show

4. Fourth Assignment--Comps: Enemies-to-lovers romcoms

Eligible (Curtis Sittenfeld)

Meet You in the Middle (Devon Daniels)

5. Fifth Assignment: Core Wound and the Primary Conflict

Core Wound: KJ: Growing up with a drug-addled mom who, herself, was emotionally and sexually abused as a child, KJ never had the luxury of just being young. As the victim of inter-generational damage as well as her own emotional baggage, she was always responsible for her mother’s well-being, often helping her to sleep-off whatever drug or alcohol-fueled bender she was on. She never knew her father (her mom used to tell her it was Elvis—even though he died decades before her birth), but when the elder Kathee Jo found a good man who married her, little KJ thought her troubles were over. Things were good until that fatal night when 11-year-old KJ was in the car when her mom hit and killed a woman crossing the street on a rainy night, striking her son as well. Unbeknownst to her, that little boy was Rocky. After that, everything goes downhill when her stepdad dies suddenly from a heart attack right in front of her. It was at that point she decides to become a doctor, but there’s no money. Despite that, she still manages to become an EMT. Ambition and grit may mask her wounds, but her persistent sense of never-being-enough drives everything.

Core Wound: Rocky: Walking to the drug store with his mom on a rainy Passover night to get his grandmother’s blood pressure meds results in a horrific driver/pedestrian accident when 11-year-old Rocky and his mother are hit by a distracted driver. His mother dies in front of him and he is seriously injured. After that, everything in his life changes: Having lost the single person who loved him most in life, he and his dad are forced to live with his grandmother. His dad never mentally recovers, and Rocky holds a deep-seated hatred of the woman who killed his mom—and her little daughter, whom he locked eyes with that night as he was being wheeled into an ambulance. Eleven years later as a journalist covering the pageant, he recognizes Kathee Jo’s name on the contestant roster and immediately makes the connection that this is the eponymously named daughter he saw at the scene of his mother’s death all those years ago.

Primary Dramatic Conflict:

Part One: When Rocky chances upon KJ at the Miss Long Island contest he’s covering he’s ready to write the bitch off as an unfortunate encounter when she unexpectedly jumps in to save a pageant judge’s life by administering CPR after he suffers a heart attack. He’s drawn to this enigmatic beauty and pursues her (although she is completely unaware of their previous tragic connection—she thinks he’s just a reporter on a story) but it’s harder than it looks. As he enters her world their bond deepens—but she’s distrustful and wary of keeping her secrets hidden from the public.

Part Two: Enter Aubrey and Harley Murdaugh—pageant owners and clandestine sex-traffickers. Once KJ advances in pageant standing, the conflict switches from Rocky vs. KJ to Rocky and KJ vs. the Murdaughs. KJ realizes Aubrey has singled out more innocent contestants as potential victims, so she’s enlisted Rocky for help.

Part Three: Once the Murdaughs meet an untimely end of their own doing which trying to escape arrest, Rocky and KJ work with the FBI to bust the central ring itself. However, since Rocky has arranged with his editor to publish this story as an exposé, KJ is furious. He’s not only revealed their connection, his explosive tell-all threatens KJ’s world as well as her mother’s fragile sanity. She ends them, despite the fact that they’ve fallen deeply in love. But when he shows up at her mom’s wedding to the plant manager uninvited, she realizes nothing is worth losing the love that they share, and all is forgiven.

Logline: 

or:

Secrets may be killers, but the truth can destroy when hotshot reporter Rocky Sachs falls for beauty queen KJ Cooper but never reveals that her mother killed his until an explosive tell-all forces him to choose between the love of his life or the break of a lifetime.

(Alternate logline: The $1.98 Beauty Show is just like Indiana Jones--only instead of Nazis, an archeologist, and a bar-maid, it’s sex-predators, a hotshot reporter, and a beauty queen. And it’s not Cairo. It’s Long Island.)

6. Sixth Assignment: Other Matters of Conflict:

Two More Levels

Inner Conflicts:

Both protagonists (Rocky and KJ) experience inner conflict that both progresses and morphs dramatically throughout the story. They begin their singular emotional journeys with a fixated approach to the fictions they’ve created for themselves: the stories that are most comfortable with. For Rocky, it’s the bad-lady-killed-my-mom-and-ruined-my-life narrative; for KJ, it’s the my-mom-sucks-my-life-sucks-everyone-looks-down-on-me-so-they-suck-too. Both feel wronged by life/fate/God/whatever. Both have chips on their shoulders the size of the Rock of Gibraltar. Both are distrustful of each other. But both see in each other the possibility of possibilities—the hope of connecting to another human being who somehow “gets” them. And that is enough to keep them connected. Because that is precious and rare.

Societal Conflicts:

KJ, especially, is burdened by self-doubt based in unmet needs stemming from an abusive childhood at the hands of an addicted mother who, herself, was a victim. The only respite was during her mom’s marriage to Beau, who genuinely cared for KJ like she was his own. His death, however, reaffirmed an underlying sense of unworthiness—that even God thought she was undeserving of happiness, otherwise how could she explain someone so good being taken so soon?

Rocky, on the other hand, is a survivor. He thrives off the devotion of his “Bubbie” (grandmother) but goes his own way, carving out his own future. He doesn’t wait for opportunity to present itself—he seeks it out and seizes it. Meeting KJ presents a multitude of opportunities—a chance to make a name for himself by writing an unusual piece on the beauty pageant scene as well as the ability to heal the wounds he’s long-pretended do not exist.

7. Final assignment—Setting: Contemporary Long Island and Environs/ Palm Springs

The story begins in a frigid elementary school Cafetorium on a February night where a dozen or so Miss Long Island Contestants are competing for the local title, a stepping stone to the Miss Americana crown.

It quickly moves to the County Medical Center and then various meeting places (most notably a Friendly’s with a very nosy waitress), as well as venues ranging from an old Staten Island theater to Chuck E. Cheese. Since KJ and her mom work at a plant nursery (Florific) on L.I.’s rural East End, they live in a trailer on the property. Rocky, by contrast, lives in an illegal top-floor apartment of a house in Flushing, Queens, directly under the approach pattern of flights to JFK. Before long, the Miss New York State contest is happening in a classic old theater in Peekskill, NY—but soon moves to a psych ward when KJ’s mom has a freak-out after seeing her former pageant sex-predator at the crowning.

Once the East End sex ring starts ramping up, various tony restaurants and private estates come into the picture as both meeting places and upscale retreats for “fun videos” (read: pornos). As the pageant speeds to its conclusion, it moves to Palm Springs—but Rocky and the Murdaughs end up at the Palm Springs International Airport where Aubrey and Harley meet their unenviable end while trying to escape the FBI.

Back on Long Island, the stage is set for the final act when the FBI busts the remaining sex-ring honchos on a luxury yacht docked at a local marina. KJ even plays a role as Rocky’s jealous girlfriend to his lascivious “John.” They’re riding high, but Rocky realizes he must reveal his back story as well as the exposé he’s written, so he takes her to a lovely Montauk restaurant, but it ends horribly with KJ feeling lied to and abused. When KJ’s mom marries the owner/manager of Florific, the story ends at a beautiful vineyard where Rocky and KJ are reunited and declare their love.

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First Assignment

Story statement.

An abandoned boy, desperate with love for his mother, vows to track her down and reunite with her.

 

Second Assignment

Sketch the antagonist.

Harlow, a born narcissist and borderline sociopath, wants to do what she wants when she wants and will do anything to achieve her goals including abandoning her young children and her husband in order to run off with a handsome stranger. 

 

Third Assignment

Create a breakout title.

Luminous Objects

Tears Of Stone

Dream Until The Dream Comes True  

 

Fourth Assignment

Develop two smart comparables.

The Glass Castle meets Where The Crawdads Sing

 

Fifth Assignment

Hook Line

A sensitive boy tormented by his mother's abandonment yearns to reunite with her but must confront her betrayal when he learns she will never take him back.

 

Sixth Assignment

Inner conflict of the protagonist. One scenario in the story wherein it is operational.

Because of his mother’s abandonment, Linc feels unlovable and worthless. This wound causes him to drift toward destructive behavior.

1. On the fateful day when he realizes his mother will never come back, Linc palms his Grandmother’s lighter and bikes home from her house to the blue house where he and his family were living before the big split up. Linc grabs a fallen tree branch, enters the deserted house and goes on a rampage, breaks furniture, smashes mirrors and shatters windows, drags all the broken pieces of furniture and dried out tree limbs into the middle of the living room and constructs a huge pyre. From deep in the back of his mother’s closet, he grabs her wedding dress, lights it on fire and throws it on top of the pyre. The fire erupts into a volcano, sends monumental flames leaping skyward as the remaining windows implode. Linc throws one arm over his eyes and feels his way around the perimeter of the room with the other, unbearable heat and smoke enveloping him. Just as he is about to succumb, the jagged edges of a broken window slice through the palm of his outstretched hand and he hurls himself through the opening, hits the ground and rolls, clothing on fire, over and over and over.

 2. Scenario for the secondary conflict.

A secondary conflict in the novel involves the relationship between Harlow (the antagonist), and Maggie, Harlow’s mother. The conflict between Harlow and Maggie appears early in the novel and continues throughout. In this excerpt, Harlow attempts to guilt Maggie into babysitting for Linc and his sister overnight so that she can spend the night with an attractive stranger she met at the bar where she works:  

 

 

              “Cover yourself up,” Maggie says under her breath.     

               They are sitting outside in the striped shade of a pergola. Dark clouds move by high overhead in the summer sky but no breath of wind stirs the weight of the heat below. The smell of overripe lilacs lies heavy on the air.     

                Harlow laughs, throws her head back and shakes out her dark hair. With one hand she lifts it from her neck and stretches the other arm up in a languid, cat-like gesture. She breaks a blossom from an overhanging hydrangea tree and tucks it in her cleavage.

                  “That better?” she says.   

                  “Oh, you are too much,” her mother sighs, stirring more ice into her tea with a long-handled spoon. “Can you stand how hot it is and only June?”   

                  “I can’t. It’s making me all… I don’t know.”     

                   “Well, anyone can see how…” Maggie trails off.     

                   “How restless and bored I am?”   

                   “Something like that.”

                   “Well they’d be right. I’m so bored I could…well I could just tear off my clothes and run naked.”     

                   Maggie snorts. “Well, don’t do that. That would just…”     

                   “Just what?"

                   “Attract unwanted attention.”     

                   “I knew you were going to say that.  But let me just say this. It’s very much wanted attention.” She leans into the back of the white wicker chair and rubs her back against it.     

                     Her mother rolls her eyes. “Where the kids gone?”     

                    “Probably swimming in the pond. That’s why we came over. None of us could stand the heat at home.” 

                    “Windows stuck?”            

                     “No screens in yet.”     

                     “What? No screens yet?”     

                      “Well, you never sent no one to come over and put them in.”   

                      “I showed you to do it last year.”     

                      “That place is such a dump.”     

                      “Says the girl who’s living there scot-free.”     

                       “Christ.”     

                        “What?”     

                        “You never miss an opportunity to rub it in.”     

                        Maggie sighs again. “I just wish…oh never mind.”

                        There is silence for a moment. From a long ways away comes the cry of a mourning dove.   

                        Harlow pushes her hair away from her forehead. “That sound gives me the heebie jeebies. Sounds like the moaning of lost souls.”     

                         Maggie skips a beat. “Speaking of lost souls, hear anything from Jesse lately?”   

                         “No, and I don’t expect to.”   She leans forward, eyes shining, and lowers her voice.  “Mama, I have a date.”  

                          Maggie purses her lips and looks away.     

                         “Well, you don’t need to look like that about it.”     

                         “Anyone I know?”   

                         “He’s not from here. He’s from away.”     

                          “Where’d you meet him?”     

                          “At work.”     

                           “Oh great, another drinker.”     

                          “He was sitting there staring at me for the longest time. I could see him in the mirror hanging over the bar, and then Ben, the bartender, says something like, ‘Why don’t you take a picture, it’ll last longer.’     So of course I laughed. It was funny and his expression was so, I don’t know, just comical. Oh mama it feels so good to be stared at, admired for a change.”     

                            “Who’s the guy?”     

                            “He’s a big spender, name of Danner, that’s all I know. Calls for the top shelf brands.  And, he invited me out to dinner, actually tonight.”     

                             “What about Linc and Wallace?”     

                             “I was hoping they could stay here.”     

                              Maggie shakes her head. “I got plans of my own tonight.”

                              “Plans? What plans?”

                              “Jack’s coming over.”

                              “Jack! But you see him everyday. I thought you’d enjoy spending time with your grandkids.”

                              “Well, of course normally I'd love to have them.”

                              “That’s what I thought. You’re always saying they’re welcome anytime.”

                               “And usually they are. But just not tonight.”

                               “I already told them they’d be staying.”

                               “Well, you shouldn’t have done that.”

                               “They’ll be disappointed.”

                                “I’m sorry.”

                                “This is Danner’s last night in town for awhile. He’s leaving in the morning.”

                                “What’s he doing here?”

                                 “Oh, I don’t know…I was hoping to find out more about him tonight.”

                                 “Hmm.”

                                  Harlow stands up. “Well, you know what, they’re big enough. They can stay by themselves.”

                                  “But Wallace hates it when you leave them alone.”

                                 “I guess it doesn’t matter that much to you or you’d change your plans. Jack lives in town. He can come any night. This is my one chance to get to know this guy.”

                                   Maggie sighs. “Yes, okay, the two of them can stay here tonight.”

                                   “What about Jack?”

                                   “He can come another night, just like you said.”

                                   “Oh mama, I didn’t mean to make it sound so selfish. I just really thought you’d love to spend time with your grandkids.”

                                   “Yes. I said okay.”

                                   “Well you don’t have to be such a martyr about it.”

                                    Maggie looks at her, wordlessly.

 

Seventh Assignment

Sketch out the settings in detail.

              1. The beginning of the novel is set in an area of New England where Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island meet in a very small triangle that encompasses many different ecosystems. The people who live there call themselves Swamp Yankees. The following is a passage I wrote for the book describing that area:

 

               Arcadia, with its rocky headlands over secluded beaches, its sun-filtered woodlands of beech and oak shot through with traces of Narragansett footpaths opening onto pristine ponds frothing with trout; its clear, spring-fed rivers swirling with the sweetest and purest of waters, appeared to the early settlers as a vision of heaven they had never known back in Scrooby, that boorish and gray-drizzled seaside town happily forsaken and soon forgotten as they boarded the Mayflower, bound for the New World, saints, sinners and sailors all, looking for hope, opportunity and freedom.     

               But what dangers lay hidden amongst the natural beauty and abundance of that place? There were plenty to be sure, for heard were the sounds of wolves howling at dusk answered by the yapping of coyotes at dawn.  Glimpses were caught of big cats roaming, solitary in the night, and the screams of the fisher cats woke the sleeping to visions of murder and mayhem.

               And at the heart of the woodland lurked a swamp, a murky lowland of silt and mud overhung with mossy trees and defended by an army of mosquitoes just waiting for a taste of human blood.

 

 

               2. The setting moves next to the Rocky Mountains where Linc experiences transformational interactions with nature and his Wilderness School friends.

                3. In the third part of the book, Linc hitchhikes out to Hollywood where his father, a renowned wrangler, owns a large ranch where he trains animals for work in films, including cattle, white horses and white tigers. The tigers roam freely about the house.  

                 4. In the final section of the book, the action moves to Key West where Harlow has landed after escaping from her abusive lover and works as a teacher at a Montessori School. Linc finds her there and reconciles with her only to have her abusive lover track her down, and shoot and kill her on the porch of her house. She dies in Linc’s arms.

                  Her spirit, released, visits each of her earthly loves:  Wallace, who has just been thrown from her horse, Jesse, now a gaunt shadow, and Maggie, her mother, rocking on her porch in the twilight, to whom she appears as a little girl chasing fireflies, hair ribbons streaming. Maggie calls to her that it’s time to go to sleep and Harlow says she’s afraid of the dark. Maggie says not to worry, she’ll go with her. Harlow lays her head on her mother’s lap as the two close their eyes and the rocker comes to a standstill.

                   Linc moves to New York where he becomes a successful actor. He retains the house in Key West as a kind of homage, never extinguishing the flame of his love for his mother.

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Assignment #1: Story Statement

My novel follows Tish Robinson, a teenager who recently lost her mother. After her mother passed, Tish can no longer understand the meaning of life. In her estimation, if any of us could die at any moment, what’s the point in it all? In a moment of weakness, she asks for Earth to be destroyed.

Unfortunately for Tish, her wish is granted. She wakes up the next morning aboard the capital ship and capital city of The Galactic Empire, Terminus. She also wakes up in the body of an alien – Sorgoth, The Devourer of Worlds. Sorgoth had a similar view to Tish. So, Sorgoth decided to blow Earth to smithereens. He has just called for a full-scale invasion of Earth, and it is up to Tish to stop his evil plans.

Tish must overcome her fear of death – and her cynicism about life on Earth – to convince the rest of the aliens that Earth is worth saving, not destroying. Along her journey, she must team up with Sorgoth’s crewmates…and clean up the mountains of mess he left in his wake. Oh, and there is the small problem that Sorgoth is running around on Earth in her body. Who knows what kind of havoc he could get up to?

 

Assignment #2: The Antagonist

Our primary antagonist is Sorgoth, The Devourer of Worlds, and more specifically, the trail of destruction he left behind for Tish now that she is inhabiting his body. Sorgoth is The Galactic Empire’s Grand Adjudicator. It is his job to decide which planets deserve entry into The Galactic Empire and which…well, he’s called The Devourer of Worlds for a reason. Needless to say, his job left a lot of unhappy customers on Terminus.

Sorgoth left Tish with his minions: Zee – a murderous AI who is implanted inside Sorgoth’s brain and wants to learn more about emotion; Telnir – Sorgoth’s first mate and a cowardly blob who wants to learn to stand up for themselves; and Minamii – Sorgoth’s stalker and the deadliest assassin in the universe.

Sorgoth is also our story’s other protagonist. He was born and raised to be a great Giltrinite warrior, and he’s lived life in service of conquest. Unfortunately for Sorgoth, he is now in the body of a pitiful human. But is being a weakling all that bad? Sorgoth gets to have friends. He’s never had those before. He gets to have a loving father. He’s always wanted that. Maybe, just maybe, Sorgoth likes being Tish.

 

Assignment #3: Title

1.      Sorgoth: The Devourer of Worlds vs Tish: The High School Junior

- This was my main working title. On the cover, I imagined the title separated into three lines with “Sorgoth,” “vs,” and “Tish” all on their own line.

2. Tish Robinson vs The Devourer of Worlds    

Based on books in the genre, this title seems more viable as it is shorter and gets straight to the point.

 

Assignment #4: Comparable Works

Sorgoth vs Tish is Freaky Friday meets War of the Worlds and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Freaky Friday relates to the main story conceit.

War of the Worlds relates to the main conflict our characters must overcome.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy relates to the tone, characters, and world building.  

 

Assignment #5: Core Wound and Conflict (Hook Line)

Primary: After swapping bodies with the alien leading an invasion of Earth, a grieving teen must overcome her fear of death to prevent her planet’s destruction.

Alternative: A grieving teen must prevent her wish for Earth to be destroyed from coming true…after she swaps bodies with the alien who is leading the invasion of her planet.

 

Assignment #6: Secondary and Internal Conflict

Internal Conflict:

Tish’s internal conflict is triggered by the death of her mother. Her mother was a firefighter who died from lung cancer. Right before her mother died, she smiled. This has eaten away at Tish. How could her mother smile when things were so bleak? This is a line Tish will go back to several times throughout the book.

After her mother’s death, Tish has undergone an existential crisis any young adult must one day face: if death is inevitable, then what’s the point in living in the first place? Like most teens, Tish is also hard-pressed to discuss her internal conflicts with those around her. She’s pushed away friends, family, and her school counselor in hopes she never has to talk about her mother’s death again. As Tish puts it in the book, “If I say it out loud, then it becomes real.”

All of this has resulted in Tish’s fear of death. It constantly hits her during her journey through Terminus, especially when the complete destruction of Earth looms over her head. Her feelings come to a head when she meets with The Galactic Council. She pleads with them to overturn their decision to annihilate Earth, and The Council gives her a simple task: if she can explain why the fleeting lives of Earthlings matter, Earth will live. Unfortunately for Tish, she can’t articulate how it’s possible for life to have any meaning when one’s death only leads to more tragedy in the world.

Tish has to come to understand a few things. From Zee, she learns to be more introspective about her emotions. By teaching the AI about human emotion, Tish learns how to tap into her own feelings. From Telnir, she learns to express herself. By teaching the cowardly blob monster how to stand up for themselves, Tish comes to understand that she needs to be more open and honest with people about how she feels. Finally, through Minamii – an assassin whose job revolves around both life and death – Tish learns that life – no matter how short – is precious. In the end, we pass on a piece of ourselves to family, friends, and perfect strangers. In that sense, a human never dies. They live on forever in the collective consciousness of the world. Only after this realization can Tish face The Council again.

Secondary Conflict:

Before Tish can speak with The Council, she must defeat Minamii in a duel. You see, The Council is on vacation, and they really can’t be bothered talking with the human teen again. So, they send their trusty assassin, Minamii, to stop Tish. During their first encounter, Tish wondered how she’d ever be able to face a foe as powerful as Minamii. Minamii has centuries worth of training. Tish has several minutes worth of training…and most of that was spent trying to avoid sticking herself with the heated end of a lazblade. But Minamii taught Tish that a true warrior does not need training, they simply need to let go of their fears. As Minamii put it earlier in the book, “You can fear neither death nor life if you are to become a warrior.” At this point, Tish has learned why her mother always smiled. She smiled because she knew she was leaving Tish behind to make the world a better place. Tish can’t let her mother’s memory die. She fights Minamii and wins. Well, she actually loses horribly, but her courage inspires Minamii to concede defeat.

 

Assignment #7: Setting

The book has two settings: Earth and Terminus. Terminus is the capital ship – and capital city – of The Galactic Empire. Hundreds of years ago, the universe was ruled by a different empire: The Giltrinite Empire. The Giltrinites were a fierce group of warriors who conquered and enslaved all the cosmos. Their leader, God Emperor Deloth, believed a man should make his own name and bellow that name to the far edges of space. Deloth was known by his moniker: The Devourer of Worlds. However, Deloth did not account for something. He’d left behind countless planets and peoples who despised him. While Deloth might have been a god made flesh, even a god can be felled. Every galaxy, every planet, and every person rallied together to defeat Deloth and his Giltrinites. Only one Giltrinite survived the assault: Deloth’s coward of a son, Sorgoth.

To prevent the whole Giltrinite situation from happening again, The Galactic Empire’s Council created a new position. One that would weed out any race of people before they became an unstoppable threat like the Giltrinites. They founded The Grand Adjudicator. The Grand Adjudicator’s job would be to judge planets and their peoples. If they were deemed worthy, said planets would join The Galactic Empire. If they were deemed unworthy, they would be destroyed. While The Galactic Empire might have been able to defeat the Giltrinites, they are pretty terrible at governance. For example, to become The Grand Adjudicator, one must defeat the previous Adjudicator in a duel. They didn’t really think this one through, since after Sorgoth defeated the bookish geriatric they’d given the position, a madman became their Grand Adjudicator. Now, Sorgoth is trying to make up for his past cowardice by taking his father’s title and running with it. Sorgoth lives with his crew on Terminus, dispensing his twisted form of justice to the universe’s inhabitants.

Things on Terminus run in a way that’s strange, and some might say counterproductive, when Tish arrives. The ship extends on for thousands of miles, and for a time, Tish is stuck in the ship’s bowels. All in all, the bowels of the ship are rather pleasant, if a tad boring. It’s full of automatons from Delbin Nine, who are a nice change of pace from the hull’s other inhabitant: Z1985644. Z1985644 – or Zee for short – is an artificial intelligence created by the Delbin. She was crafted to make the tough decisions mortals are too emotional to execute. Most of those decisions involve literal executions, so you can understand why Zee is not well liked. It’s also why Zee was forced to stay implanted in Sorgoth’s brain. The Council figured that if Terminus has two murderous psychopaths in their midst, they might as well be paired together.

Once Tish escapes the ship’s bowels, she encounters the city proper. The place defies logic with architecture and technology never seen on Earth. Some of the highlights Tish faces include:

-          Telnir – a Gelmin. They are one of a race of people made entirely from gelatin. The only organ a Gelmin possesses is their brain, which shifts color depending on their mood. In order to use other sensory organs, muscles, bones, etc, a Gelmin must take said organs from another living creature. Well, they used to have to do that. Now, there are artificial organs that the Gelmin use to sustain their lifestyle. The Gelmin also hate to show their emotions. They view it as a sign of weakness. The Gelmin all feel this way…with the except of Telnir. Telnir is expressive – and some could argue a bit over expressive. They love to flaunt their stuff, much to the chagrin of those around them. But Telnir loves life, and you can’t take that away from them. In an effort to take that away from them, Terminus has stuck Telnir in the hull of the ship. At least they’ve made Telnir Sorgoth’s first mate. Telnir always wanted a title to match their sensational attitude.

-          Minamii – a Delvani. She is one of many assassins whom The Council employs to do their bidding. Minamii became an assassin after losing her sister in war. Minamii has fought her whole life to understand the meaning of life and death. She then imparts that wisdom onto Tish. Oh, and she wears all leather…and is madly in love with Sorgoth. She just wishes Sorgoth would reciprocate her love.

-          The Council – six men and women who run Terminus. Their members consist of: another Gelmin who loathes Telnir, a hive mind of insects who want to use humans as hosts for their larvae, a monstrous teddy bear who speaks in a language no one understands (but they are all too scared to admit), a shapeshifter who looks like a middle-aged man, a mermaid whose head is a Rorschach test that always shows something far too specific, and Gorlock – a one-eyed flying meatball with teeth.

In the story, Earth serves to juxtapose Terminus. Everything on Earth is quaint, peaceful. Sorgoth hates it. He can’t understand why everyone is so nice all the time. He has to contend with Jane and Phebie – Tish’s best friends, Becky – the school bully, Donna – the school guidance counselor, and Gary Robinson – Tish’s loving father. Bullies, Sorgoth can handle. But there are actually people calling Sorgoth his friend? There is a man who loves Sorgoth unconditionally as his father? Sorgoth can’t believe this madness. Friends? A father? For him? On second thought, would that be such a bad thing?

The setting focuses heavily on the clash of cultures between Tish’s Earthly ways and Sorgoth’s villainous attitudes. Much of the story also centers around the idea that therapy can heal a broken heart. For Tish, her therapy is immersive. A lot of Terminus revolves around Sorgoth and the trail of death and destruction he left behind for Tish to clean up. She is constantly facing reminders of death, and she must overcome them. Sorgoth, on the other hand, goes through a more direct form of therapy. Between Donna, the school counselor, and Tish’s friends, people keep prodding Sorgoth to open up and express how he really feels. The love and kindness they show Sorgoth slowly starts to mend his blackened, decrepit heart.

 

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Hi, fellow writers--It's fun to find all theinteresting things to read here!  I'm eager to read more and meet everyone in person next month. Here's my assignment.    Marti Moody, Dayton, Ohio

 

Story Statement:

It’s 2017. Widower Bob Tweed, age 33, and his 12-year-old daughter Dylan escape their stifling Ohio hometown and stumble into new and interesting lives in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. But as Bob runs out of money and Dylan’s Mt. Zion grandparents exert increasingly desperate measures to get Bob and Dylan “home,” Bob finds creating a better future for his daughter means admitting  painful truths about his wife Esther and the futile years he spent trying to save her.

 

Antagonist:

Tone Bello, Mt. Zion’s premier builder, is a creature of pure self-interest. He takes pizzas to the local police station so the officers ignore his speeding, and shuts up his ex-wives by giving them houses. He takes whatever he can—most recently, his third wife’s younger sister. Now Tone wants to rescue Dylan, the only grand-child he sees as worthwhile, from the “mire” of Philadelphia. “I don’t care a fig about you, Bob,” he says, “but I don’t want that life for Dylan.” Tone uses shame, fear, money and even a physical attack on his ex-wife, Noni—the one person he respects, even fears—to try to force Bob back to Mt. Zion.

 

Title Possibilities

Bob’s Big Break

Bob White

Bob Breaks Out

Free Bob

 

Genre and Comparables

upmarket fiction

Comparables:

A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore

Erasure, by Percival Everett

Fleishman is in Trouble, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

—Each of these novels uses believable characters and a combination of drama and humor to address contemporary life and problems. But “Comparable” is a hard thing for me to find. So much that I’ve read on/about drug addiction and family dysfunction stresses improvement and healing, but the ultimate message of Bob’s Big Break is that some people and families are unhealable, and Bob and Dylan and Nomi ultimately are able to move forward only by accepting that the death of Esther, their very troubled mutually loved one, was a thing that none of them could have prevented.

I would love any suggestions on comparables!  What should I read?

 

Core Wound/Primary Conflict

Three years after the death of his asthmatic, drug-addicted wife, Bob Tweed finally has enough money and oomph to escape his small Ohio hometown of Mt. Zion and dead wife’s difficult family. He drives himself and his daughter Dylan to Philadelphia, hoping they’ll meet the sorts of people they’ve heard about but never met. This they do, but while Bob’s and Dylan’s view of the world expands and deepens, Bob’s money is dwindling and and his in-laws show that they are willing to do anything—even to each other—to get Bob and Dylan “home.” When Bob’s friend and landlady Monique attempts suicide, Bob’s housing situation in Philadelphia becomes impossible. Bob must use the things he’s learned from his new friends—as well as the help of his mother-in-law, Nomi, a woman he perceived as his enemy—to find the strength and means to propel himself and Dylan into a better future.

 

Two more levels of conflict

 

Inner conflict

Set-up: Mt. Zion. After a difficult meeting with his father-in-law Tone and another with two former classmates, Bob is eating the dinner fixed for him by Milly, his old high school teacher.

     “Milly, did I tell you that yesterday I saw a big Confederate flag? Right here. In the trailer park.”

     Milly shakes her head. “I don’t know any trailer park people.”

     “No kids in your classes?”

     “I taught advanced English, Bob. Outskirts, that trailer park is on the outskirts.”

     “The Welcome to Mt. Zion sign is before it.” Steph could live in a trailer.

     “I don’t understand zoning, maybe that park got grandfathered in. The poor are always with us, Jesus said.”

     It’s at that moment, exactly, that I’m overwhelmed with sadness. Swamped with it, as if I’m weighted down in Milly’s dining room chair by a sea of pain above me, and I don’t have the strength to move. Dear God, lift this burden from me. But my burden isn’t bigger than Steph’s or Milly’s or Nomi’s or even Tone’s, it’s the burden of being a person and alive. We humans with our bony flat hands and soft bellies and hard heads, aren’t we near-helpless creatures, jellyfish pushed and shredded by the currents of the huge unfeeling world?

     How did my parents manage it? Always, they lived kind and stable lives, even though my father’s best Army buddy was killed by friendly fire in Iraq and my mother had five miscarriages before the miracle of me. Why did they die and leave me in this scalded world alone? Couldn’t they at least show up in dreams?

     For dessert, there’s apple pie. A home-made pie for my sake, it’s too much. Milly may be lonelier than I am. The thought makes her almost repulsive.

    I hope Lily doesn’t think about me the way I think about Milly.

    Bob, of course Lily does. She’s a dream, a fantasy, you want too much from her. I look at Milly proudly slicing her pie and I feel like crying.

 

 

 

 

Social conflict:

Set-up: Philadelphia. Bob and Dylan’s older, newly transgender landlady, Monique, has never had a romantic relationship. But when Monique comes home late from a bar trivia night —she’s on a team called“The Transcendents”—Bob and Dylan upstairs hear her enter the house with another person, followed by the sound of the door to Monique’s bedroom closing. Bob and Dylan  flee the house early the next morning—Dylan to school and a friend’s house, Bob to work—then walk home together that afternoon wondering what they’ll find.

     It’s a boy. He’s there when we walk in the front door, sitting in Monique’s usual indentation on the sofa with his legs spread, leaning over with his elbows on his knees watching TV. Monique is in Dylan’s chair, looking happy and dishevelled. Her trivia-mate (what else can I call him?) has on a plaid flannel shirt and khaki pants. His black hair looks like a poodle’s, shaved on the sides and fluffy on top. The haircut looks younger than his face, but he can’t be much older than I am, which makes him twenty-five years younger than Monique.

     Monique makes introductions. This is Joey, this is Dylan, this is Bob. Joey nods at us and turns his attention back to the TV.  Chuck Todd, the 5pm MSNBC hour. “Hell of a thing, yeah?” Joey says.

     “Helluva,” Dylan whispers.

     Monique waves for us to sit down but there’s only one chair free and it takes a moment for me to work up the courage to share the sofa with Joey. Dylan, looking relieved, takes a seat in my usual chair.

     Joey smells like aftershave. “I went home a couple hours, picked up some things, came back. Didn’t want to leave Mo here alone.”

     Dylan bites her upper lip. “You two met at trivia?”

     Joey nods, eyes still on the TV. “Same team.”

     The beam of sun through the back window isn’t picking up any hair on Joey’s cheeks. Testosterone pills must not grow beards. I scold myself for thinking this. It’s the feeling that’s important, I remind myself, not the anatomy. Hard to believe that, but how could I know? Impossible to imagine feeling stuck inside the wrong body.

    “Know what I did with Mo’s Mueller Time t-shirt this morning?” Joey said. “Took it to your  back driveway and burned it.”

     Monique sinks lower in the chair. “I had too much faith. I never imagined Mueller would…”

     “The fix was in!” Joey says. “You couldn’t expect Mueller to be honest!”

     I’m confused. “You’re not a Trump fan, are you?”

     Joey growls and spits on the floor.

     Dylan and I flee upstairs. “Only baseball players spit like that,” I tell her. “On TV.” At Dylan’s request I move Dylan’s mattress and sheets and blankets into my room on the floor. We skedaddle down the stairs and leave the house and buy sandwiches at Ahmad’s, then sit at the public library leafing through magazines until the place closes.

     Mo and Jo aren’t in when we get home. At least, they’re not in the living room or kitchen.

     I can’t sleep. Halfway through the night Dylan asks to go back to her room, which takes some effort. What a mess I’ve gotten us into. Maybe we should move back to Mt. Zion.

     It’s the mingling thing. I may be as scared of mingling as Nomi is.

 

 

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Oops, left this off (for Bob's Big Break)

Settings

(These toggle between Mt. Zion and Philadelphia.)

Mt. Zion: Nomi’s huge brick house and block-sized yard she got from Tone in the divorce; Tone and Little Mary’s McMansion (Tone’s a builder) with a screening room in the basement and five empty bedrooms upstairs; the old glass factory with its busted windows; the downtown’s second-hand shops and Christian bookstore and the pharmacy on the square that Bob pretends he doesn’t see; the Confederate flag in the trailer park just past Walmart

 

Philadelphia: Monique’s inherited brick row house now split in two, with a dink couple on the other side of the dividing wall; Bob and Dylan and Monique’s antique-shop-like living room and shared kitchen; Bob and Dylan’s upstairs bedrooms and front room; Monique’s private lair off the kitchen, which Bob and Dylan never see

Bob’s walks to work and workplaces: over Schullkyl River bridges and sidewalks dotted with vagrants and beggars but no trash cans; a modest Mexican restaurant in center city; a small catering kitchen with a walk-in fridge and long metal counter

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Hello everyone, it's nice to meet all of you. Below are my seven assignments:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Story Statement: Eddie does not have good mental health.

 

 

 

Antagonist: The main antagonist of my manuscript is, strangely, also the protagonist. Eddie struggles with the dark triad of anxiety, depression, and OCD. While Eddie understands that his mental health is not in good shape, and needs to figure out a way to become better, he is constantly sabotaging himself by reverting to his “old ways,” to the point where it is now threatening to push Eddie over the edge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Potential Manuscript Titles

·                     High Climber

·                     I Against I

·                     Melt all Your Memories

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comparable Titles

History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera- Silvera’s novel does several things really well that have inspired me when writing my own manuscript. First of all, Silvera does a great job at not only highlighting mental health struggles among young boys, he also provides a lot of great insight into OCD, a disease that still has a lot of misconceptions around it. While many stories highlight the “compulsions,” or what most outside observers see, Silvera also sheds light on the “obsessions,” or what’s going on inside. Furthermore, History Is All You Left Me does a great job at alternating between past and present narratives, something that I feel is vital for telling a story focused on mental health. I seek to build off of History Is All You Left Me by expanding the focus beyond how “young” adults struggle with mental health, and also look at how “new” adults deal with mental health issues.

Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig- Matt Haig’s hybrid novel/memoir (I’ve seen it called both so I’m not really sure what to classify it as) does a great job at showing the reader many of the unglamorous aspects of mental illness, and how it not only affects the individual, but also the people around him. Budling off of this, another thing that I think Haig (and Silvera) does really well is avoiding the narrative pitfall of trying to frame mental illness as some kind of “hidden superpower” that the protagonist just needs to cultivate in order for them to live their best life, which a lot of fiction books tend to rely on. While Haig’s ultimate message is about accepting one’s mental illness, he still recognizes that mental illness -in his case, depression- can be a heavy burden, and that it is not something that can be turned on or off when it’s most convenient. While Reasons to Stay Alive is not the only nonfiction book about mental illness to take this approach (The Man Who Couldn't Stop by David Adam is another great book that does this), to repeat, not a lot of contemporary fiction books about mental health -especially those with a young protagonist- take this approach. In essence, my manuscript seeks to be a synthesis of both Reasons to Stay Alive and History Is All You Left Me in order to ask some of the tough questions about mental health that may not often get asked.

 

 

 

 

**One aspect that I feel is lacking with both books is that the protagonists are presented as unfortunate victims of circumstance. While this certainly does not diminish their struggles with mental health issues, I would like to add a bit of nuance to the conversation around men’s mental health and ask at what point does one stop being a “victim” and become more of a “perpetrator.” **

 

 

 

 

Hook: How much of your past are you really willing to confront?

 

 

 

 

CORE WOUND: More than anything else, Eddie wants to be “normal,” and constantly feels like he has to make up for lost time.

 

 

 

 

Secondary Conflict: Per the recommendation of his therapist, Eddie goes on antidepressants. While they seem to be helping, partway through the story, he has a falling out with his therapist and he quits his meds cold turkey, believing he is “taking back control of his life,” but in actuality this causes him to spiral into a vicious cycle of psychosis.

This not only causes Eddie’s mental issues to get cranked up all the way to eleven, but he also experiences heightened paranoia, believing that everyone he encounters is plotting against him in some way, causing him to self-isolate even more than he already does and become a kind of hikikomori. At this point, the only thing Eddie wishes to do is ruminate on all of the mistakes that he has made throughout his life, which not only takes a toll on his mental health, but his physical health as well.

 

 

 

 

Setting: The manuscript takes place in two periods in time: “Present Eddie” and “Past Eddie.” Present Eddie does not like the current situation he is in. He loathes his on-campus apartment not only because it is so austere, but because he feels like he is “stranded” from his parents’ house back home, which is where he feels much happier. As the story progresses, and Eddie goes to more therapy sessions, the reader is given more and more snapshots of “Past Eddie,” specifically two sequences as an undergrad (one where Eddie is at school, and one where Eddie is studying abroad in Germany), and even as far back as high school. Past Eddie is not as jaded and is even willing to take risks and be more “himself,” however this sometimes leads him to hurt the ones he most cares about, which he still harbors a lot of guilt over in the present day. Later on in the story, as Eddie suffers the effects of not taking his meds, the lines between Past Eddie and Present Eddie get blurred, to the point where he starts hallucinating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  1. Story Statement: A tailor, a musician, and a ballet dancer liberate their country and their own identities in order to publicly and intimately love each other. 

  2. Antagonist (200 words): (I have two main antagonists)  

    1. General Lucyen Antov is the homosexual military leader in the fascist country of Lenisily that targets queer individuals with criminal punishments. He believes that by working hard in the military and his blessing of being reincarnated into a high class in this life, he’s earned the right to be queer and break the law he enforces over most lower class individuals beneath him. Intrigued by Erikur’s resilience to push his way through the caste system, he hooks up with him at a ball, like many other men he’s able to have trysts with and threaten into silence. He tells Erikur about a past lover who used him, his pessimistic views on love, and his cruel perspective on society at large. He betrays Erikur after rendering him vulnerable in a BDSM sex dungeon when he discovers Erikur’s revolutionary intentions. They both escape this encounter and later face each other on the battlefield once the revolution is underway, Erikur convinces him to surrender, but Lucyen demands Erikur kill him. He tells Erikur he hopes Erikur proves him wrong in his next life. Erikur kills him and destroys the giant bridge they’re fighting on, effectively ending the war. 

    2. Emperor Anessen, the reigning emperor’s, rule has been in the shadow of the suspicious circumstances of his parents double suicide that everyone believes he orchestrated, and his wife, Natasha’s, premature death during the birth of their only child. As a result of these circumstances and isolating himself, Anessen became apathetic and the country suffered. Fenneck has memories throughout the course of the story that reveal he was Natasha and that he shares a magical soul connection with Anessen called sjelevyn. When the Revolution starts, Fenneck decides to confront Anessen, believing their love is strong enough to stop the war. Fenneck reveals to Anessen that Milena murdered Natasha with poison and convinces Anessen to stop dropping bombs on Flottenheim. Anessen kills Milena to avenge Natasha in front of Fenneck, torturing her and horrifying Fenneck by his cruelty. After Fenneck does his best to settle ceasefire negotiations, Anessen offers him a position as his advisor, but tells Fenneck he is straight and not interested in him romantically. Fenneck turns him down and convinces Anessen to allow him to leave. Anessen is upset by this, but he gives Fenneck resources to help him back to Flottenheim and tells him never to return. (This sets him up as a bigger villain for Book 2)

  3. Breakout Title: (In order of preference) 

    1. Option 1: THE GREAT LOVE OF FENNECK FINNEGAN FROSTEARS

    2. Option 2: THE ART OF REVOLUTIONARY LOVE

    3. Option 3: THE ELVES OF NIVALYA: LIBERATION 

  4. Comps: It combines the spicy gay romance and exploration of reincarnation, past lives and soul connections in THE EMPEROR AND THE ENDLESS PALACE by Justinian Huang with the Slavic, revolution, and high fantasy elements of TO CAGE A GOD by Elizabeth May. 

  5. Hook/Pitch/Logline:

    1. The irreverently narrated tale of how a tailor and a musician's closeted queer relationship falls apart when, pressured by their fascist elven society, they choose contradicting paths to find happiness and freedom. 

  6. Conflict:

    1. The tailor, Fenneck: Tension Areas: In the action of the first couple chapters Fenneck faces: Bisexual Crisis disrupts sense of self, makes risky/self-serving decisions under false pretenses with his partner, chooses to flirt with Evelyn and accepts her offer to date knowing he’s technically cheating on Erikur, put in awkward position when Lucyen stops the Petrovs and worried about being clocked for his queerness and he’s uncomfortable while using his privilege to protect them, he feels sjelevyn (soul connection from a past life) with the baby Kapelya and has a strong sense of longing that he projects to be the desire to have children, he’s stressed about money and buying a house for himself one day, and time to finish Evelyn’s dress before the ball

      1. Core Wound: Fenneck's core wound is his self-doubt as he reconciles with his bisexuality and his resistance to turn to violence to fix the problems in the world when the people he loves most pressure him to. 

    2. The musician, Erikur: In the action of the first couple chapters Erikur faces: fight with his father, loss of security and home, tension coming out to Fenneck, sexual tension with Fenneck the first time they kiss, he gets filthy and uncomfortable running away from his home, vulnerable, lies to Fenneck about the revolutionary group he’s involved with, reader realizes that both Fenneck and Erikur are lying and keeping secrets from each other creating tension through dramatic irony, he walks in on Fenneck and Evelyn’s fitting and instinctively knows Fenneck was being disloyal but he can’t prove it, he’s worried about the war and has pressure on him to confess the plan to Fenneck

      1. Core Wound: Erikur's core wound mirrors Fenneck's self-doubt as he starts to doubt the foundations of his beliefs in his gay/effeminate identity and the political and social world around him. 

    3. The ballet dancer, Evelyn: The character who is revealed as the narrator halfway through the story, is a transgender man who discovers this aspect of his identity over the course of the novel. He doesn't get an actual POV chapter until that reveal. But he is on the page creating tension between Fenneck and Erikur but flirting and coming onto Fenneck and then later getting 'kidnapped' by Erikur right before the revolution. 

      1. Core Wound: Evelyn's core wound also revolves around self-doubt and insecurities over his noble family who neglects him and his body and gender dysphoria as he falls in love with two queer men. 

  7. Setting:

    1.  The High-Fantasy setting of Nivalya contains a large continent of which the northernmost snow-covered country, Lenisily, is where this story takes place. Lenisily is very large and cut off from the southern countries by a mountain range, with an arctic ocean to the north and east, and a gulf and tundra to its west. At the southern border, the highest mountain in the region is where a complex city of caves fill out the entirety of the palace-topped mountain called the city of Flottenheim. Then there is the Vallee beneath it, one of the largest expanses of land within the country where crops can grow. This is the main setting, where the highest classes live on the highest layers of the mountain of Flottenheim and the wealth gap gets increasingly larger the further down you go, until you get to the Vallee where viscounts and lords manage the farm land with massive estates, as this is the breadbasket for the nation as a whole. The only way to easily travel to and from major cities is by way of The Great Skyway, a massive, ancient stone bridge that extends vertically across the entire continent, from the capital of Lenisily, Leniscow, to the north, through Flottenheim and into the countries to the south hitting the metropolises Ringstad and Sivania. I plan on including a map in the published book. 

    2. Their technology/magic system is based on kristals,. Quartz is the most common, used for lighting, superficial healing spells, and is accessible to most people regardless of class/financial status. More powerful, rare kristals have different abilities, like citrine, which is used to artificially create sunlight and energy, has transformative properties, and can help speed up the process for growing plants. Or ruby that can be used to cast fire-related spells and can be quite dangerous if used by someone well-practiced. Labradorite is also very plot specific in this novel as it can grant a person the ability to teleport. 

    3. Emperor Anessen lives in Leniscow, the capital city north of Flottenheim where their military is based out of. The Grand Duke Georgi and Duchess Milena, the Emperor’s sister and her husband, live in the grand palace at the top of Flottenheim as it is a very prosperous city and often the first hub for trade with the southern countries. They’re known for hosting lavish parties and performances, like the ballet our story starts during, and they have two children, Princess Jasna who is aligned with the revolutionaries trying to gain independence and Prince Nikolai who ends up sexually accosting Evelyn at one of the balls and is killed by Erikur during this attack. Evelyn is a Lady and child of Viscount Popov who has a large estate and power in the region. 

    4. The story takes place during the week long Winter’s Eve Festival, the last hurrah of elite parties and performances before everyone huddles down for the harsh winters that Lenisily is known for. There are special performances, like the ballet at the beginning of the book. There are different themed balls, like the Snowfall Ball where everyone in attendance must wear head to toe white. The final night of the Festival is when the revolutionaries plan to enact their coup. 

    5. The working class consists of people of varying races and backgrounds, compared to the elites who are primarily elves - indicated by their androgynous features, long lives, pointy ears and their consciousness of their past lives and reincarnation history. The other predominant races within Flottenheim are other elves, halflings, humans and some half-elves who are the most discriminated against, as elves believe that is a cursed way to possibly be reincarnated. It is illegal for elves and humans to reproduce or be married. Halflings are most notably indicated by their short statures, slightly pointed ears and thicker, hairier bodies. In Flottenheim, halflings have strong familial communities and union-like bonds as many of them work in the mines where they have managed to smuggle kristals to stockpile as weapons for the revolution they’re planning. The farms in the Vallee tend to be staffed by humans, elves and half-elves who are essentially living as slaves to the controlling landlords and viscounts, sometimes without the means to even afford proper housing. 

    6. Within the city, craftsmen are able to make what would be deemed the middle class where Fenneck and Erikur, our two main protagonists, live and work. Fenneck’s father is a scribe who works in the palace, commuting from the second level of the mountain where they live in an apartment style 2-bed 2-bath home. His mother’s brother is a bachelor tailor on the first level of the mountain so Fenneck was given a choice to become a tailor or a scribe, and he chose to become a tailor and has managed to build a promising career for himself and hopes to move into a home on the first level of the mountain soon. Erikur was born to an animal farmer on the third level of the mountain who disowned him as a teenager when he came out as gay. Fenneck’s family took him in and he was able to advance his music skills and earn a spot in the Flottenheim Symphony Orchestra. With Fenneck’s savings, and his family’s connections, they helped Erikur buy a house right down the road from them, as a result, setting Fenneck’s own ability to buy a home and move out back by decades. 

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Part I: 7 Assignments


The God of Wrath

                                                                                          By

                                                                      Coryn Allan Richard Hayman

I) Story Statement

Kill the outraged Nazi colonel, obsessed with taking revenge as a hand to the God of Wrath, or die with him in a Baltic fortress.

 

II) Antagonist Sketch 

Colonel Heinz Gerhardt Bruno is a 35-year-old German officer in the Heer (army) during World War II. Sexually abused by a priest at age 10, his emotionally neglectful parents ignore him until he stabs the priest in the back of the hand with a letter opener. Determined never to be a victim again, he embraces Nazism with its pastoral notions of “the Volk”, a master race destined to rule humanity arising from the blood and soil of his homeland. He exerts dominance over others through the power of his position and his cruelty allows him to sublimate the childhood trauma he suffered in God's Charnel House. His god has deserted him, but he feels empowered as a self-professed St. Michael, passing judgement on the worthiness of his enemies and riding at the head of an army that will conquer the Soviet Union, the birthright of his people.

A female Soviet sniper kills his younger brother, the only person he ever loved. “Revenge a hundred years old hath still its sucking teeth,” as the German saying goes. For him, now is the time to shed the milk teeth, and grow the werewolf’s fangs of revenge.
 

III) Title:

The God of Wrath (Favoured Title)
The Nurse-Sniper

 

IV) Comparables

Like The God of Wrath, my comparables feature strong female protagonists battered by the winds of war and reconciling with trauma and their shattered relationships with loved ones.

1. Barr, L. (2024). The Goddess of Warsaw. Harper Paperbacks.

A famous actress from Hollywood’s Golden Age tells her story of life in the Warsaw Ghetto. Determined to fight back against the Nazis, she becomes a spy smuggling arms and information to help her fellow Jews. Both forbidden love and a threat from her past torment her.  

 

2. Kortchik, L. (2021). Daughters of the Resistance. HQ Digital.

Two women, one on a train bound for a Nazi labour camp, the other cataloguing deaths in occupied Kiev, find their lives take an unimaginable turn when Soviet partisans wreck the train. The hard choices made at war drive themes of loyalty and compassion.

 

V) Logline with Core Wound

A female Soviet sniper and poet in World War II, serving with her sister whom she failed to protect as children, kills the brother of a German colonel whose relentless pursuit of vengeance inspires her poem, “The God of Wrath”, an obsessive force that consumes them both, driving them inexorably through the fetid swamps of Byelorussia, to a showdown in a mighty Baltic fortress.

 

VI) Two Levels of Conflict


Inner Conflict

Vera Ivanovna Sannikova, and her younger sister Anna, grew up in Minsk. Their father, Ivan Ilych Sannikov, was a professor at the Byelorussian State University. Of the two girls, Vera was the most like him, with her creativity and love of poetry.

Anna had a religious transformation after surviving scarlet fever in 1935. She threw herself into studying the Bible, much to their father’s disapproval. As Stalin began his purges in the late 1930s, their father feared his imminent arrest and drank heavily. For Anna, his disapproval turned to rage. One night, he shattered a glass across Anna’s face, breaking her nose. A few weeks later, the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police, arrested him.

During the novel, Anna confesses to Vera that she reported their father to the NKVD Colonel Nikolai Andreyevich Pavlukhin after recovering from her injury. She feared for her life, certain their father would kill her if she didn’t denounce him.

Largely spared their father’s violence, Vera feels guilty for not protecting Anna from him, so this news devastates her. She thinks that if she had defended Anna, she wouldn’t have resorted to such drastic action.

Colonel Pavlukhin is now closely investigating them as the political officer of their military unit. Anna blames herself, but Vera thinks it’s her fault, because maybe if she’d looked out for her sister then, Pavlukhin would not be scrutinizing them now.

Vera blames herself and has learned not to trust anyone. She deals with the horrors of their upbringing and the war by smoking, as their father coped by drinking. But she cannot bear the guilt and becomes angry and defensive when Anna shares her resentment of their father’s cruelty.

 

Secondary Conflict

The nature of Vera’s dysfunctional family relationships, and the paranoia that gripped the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, cause her to have difficulty forming close relationships.

Her friend, the infantry scout Lyonya Mikhailovich Luschenko, known as Lushko, shares her love of cigarettes and always has an ample supply. She senses more than friendship between them, but resists it, fearing any deepening bond of trust and the thought of losing him.

After Bruno kills Anna and severely wounds Vera, she languishes in hospital for months. She’s alone, vulnerable, and grieving. Vera wants to avenge Anna to atone for not protecting her when they were younger, and for not saving her from Bruno. She feels guilty because she killed his brother, ultimately leading to Anna’s death at Bruno’s vengeful hand.

Lushko is the only one to visit her, and they share a kiss. Allowing herself to trust him, she asks him to find out where Bruno is.

When Lushko returns, he inadvertently reveals his relationship with a girl in supplies from whom he gets his cigarettes. Vera feels bitterly betrayed and banishes him, determined to never speak to him again. In anger, she reaffirms her core belief that no one is trustworthy. Instead, she turns her mind to going back to war and finding Bruno at any cost and making him pay for killing her sister.

 

VII) Settings


The Wilderness

This is a war story, so the natural environment plays a key role in the plot.

The first half takes place in Byelorussia among fetid swamps in summer, iced over in winter. As a sniper, Vera must be attentive to the green of trees, unusual shrubs, and anything else that could help her judge distances or conceal an enemy. Time of day and weather are essential considerations in her vocation, and help set the scene, tone, and add sensory detail. The “sniper’s light” at dawn and twilight is when the enemy shows themselves, thinking they are still invisible. They underestimate Vera the hunter, who sees them as she hides in the waning shadows of darkness.

Part of the misery of being a soldier is contending with the discomfort of the elements. Vera marks her targets in frigid cold, eating snow so her breath doesn’t condense in clouds that would give her away. The environment is part of the story, almost becoming a character itself.

The church, "God’s Charnel House", rises from the wilderness at the novel’s midpoint. The suffocating cloister represents Bruno’s feeling of entrapment as a child by the abuses of ecclesiastical authority and parental neglect. It is here that he loses control, coming close to madness.

Urban Environments

The “Hero Bridge” is where Vera and Bruno first meet. It is a chokepoint that the Germans must prevent from destruction, so they can escape the Byelorussian city of Vitebsk before it falls to the Red Army. Tasked with defending the bridge, Bruno’s brother becomes Vera’s target.

Königsberg, Bruno’s home city, is the central location of the second half of the novel. It is a city of rich, beautiful culture and history, where philosophers like Emmanual Kant made contributions to our modern understanding of reason and morality.

The city is under siege by the Russians, but the cinemas and cafes are still open, while newsies hawk papers on the street. It is a fantasy. The civilian population will have to reckon with the coming war when reality breaks through denial. This affects Bruno’s relationships with his mother and sister. As the population goes about their daily lives, they do it in a still living and breathing city, but on life support.

The Hospitals

Severely wounded, Vera becomes a patient in a Red Army hospital. She endures the loneliness of long convalescence, pain, and emotional vulnerability. Recovery from Vera’s physical wound demands introspection and exploration of her core wound, perhaps leading to deeper insight and understanding. This will be among her greatest tests.

Bruno raids a hospital in Königsberg, seizing wounded men from their beds to defend his home city. Resisted by the chief physician and Bruno’s sister, a nurse, readers share in the worries of the clinical staff. Patients with their grievous injuries reveal the horrors of war. The hospital is a place of unimaginable suffering, yet also of humanity and compassion, testing the faith of patient, doctor, and nurse. Even Bruno must question his resolve and mission. The hospital magnifies the fear and panic of people living in an encircled city under siege.

The Fortress

Finally, the climax occurs in a 19th century German fortress. There are twelve of them, forming a ring around Königsberg. The fortress seems inviolate, made of angry red brick, pockmarked by artillery fire, and bristling with guns. It represents the hearts of both Vera and Bruno, wounded and encased in iron. The reader discovers that their meeting, for this last time on hallowed ground, was inevitable. For it is the heart inviolate that binds them both.

 

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Author and Workshop Participant:  Catherine Ellbogen

Working Title of Manuscript:  A Truer Calling - 107,000 word general/women's fiction (genre tbc)

NOTE:  The following has been significantly revised as of Sept 15, following a read of the pre-conference materials. 

SEVEN ASSIGNMENTS: 

       FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement

At age eleven, while serving as an Altar boy, Paul Griessen felt a stirring to serve God; at age seventeen, he made the tough decision to abandon “self” to serve others as a Roman Catholic priest, delighting his mother but leaving behind Sandra, his high school sweetheart and the girl he once envisioned marrying. Thirty years later, Sandra re-enters his life as a badly injured accident victim, alone and suffering amnesia. As her only link to her past, Paul feels a responsibility to help her through her long recovery, and in the process is exposed to a happy secular life filled with reciprocal caring and companionship. Strong feelings emerge that Paul is unequipped to handle and he must now face a decision to abandon his core identity as a priest to live out an uncertain secular life with Sandra, or continue the solitary life of a priest at the denial of his own basic human needs.

[The underlying message of A Truer Calling is that human experience is real, religious dogma is not, and religious dogma that espouses an unnatural existence in denial of what it is to be human is a tragedy.]

       SECOND ASSIGNMENT: in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story

Human nature is the antagonistic force embodied in the person of Sandra Davison, the girl he once contemplated marrying but gave up to pursue his ‘calling’ to become a Catholic priest. For twenty years Paul enjoys a happy uneventful life in service to others until a routine hospital visit reunites him with Sandra. Victim of a car crash, alone and suffering amnesia, Paul’s innate sense of responsibility reinforced by his doctrinal training as a priest compels him to help this ‘person in need’ through her long recovery. 

Challenges to his identity and belief system begin subtly, with exposure to a secular life filled with reciprocal caring and companionship. Sandra shows no reverence, questioning why not choose teaching or counseling rather than a vocation with such an ‘aberrant lifestyle.’ Their shared history tests Paul’s ability to suppress his natural affection for Sandra to conform to his identify.

When Sandra strikes up a friendship with another man, Paul’s basal human instincts emerge, reinforced by opinions his reactions are ‘natural,’ and he contemplates leaving the priesthood, until Sandra posits the ultimate challenge:  that ‘God’ may be man-made, causing Paul to struggle with whether he could ever be truly happy outside his protective bubble.

       THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title

A Truer Calling

A More Sacred Vow

The Vessel

       FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: Develop two smart comparables for your novel

  1. Before We Were Strangers by Renee Carlino published Aug 2015 by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, is a second chance at love story about two people that meet in college and fall in love, but a decision to pursue a career ends their relationship. A chance encounter fifteen years later leads to unexpected revelations that cause the two to question if they will find true happiness in each other. Both the premise and Carlino’s accessible writing style are present in A Truer Calling in which high school sweethearts, Paul and Sandra, go separate ways when Paul decides to pursue Catholic priesthood, only to be reunited twenty years later when Paul discovers Sandra has been in a terrible auto accident and offers to care for her, leaving him to wonder if he had made the right choice nearly thirty years earlier.
  2. Pictures of You by Emma Grey, to be released Nov 2024 by Zibby Books, is about a young woman struggling k to piece her life back together in the wake of a tragic accident that killed her husband and left her with traumatic loss of memory.  A photographer whom they both knew enters her life and attempts to help her regain her memory by sharing photos of her husband and family, revealing secrets that might shatter both of their worlds. 

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

On a routine hospital visit, a devoted Catholic priest discovers the victim of a car crash is his high school sweetheart, the girl he once wanted marry, and his offer to help her through her recovery unearths a store of emotions that challenge his core beliefs and force him to question which was the ‘truer’ calling—his vocation or his heart?

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

At the age of ten, Paul Griessen’s mother encouraged him to be an Altar boy. It was while sitting upon the altar, looking out at the happy faces of the congregation, that he first had the notion he might one day become a priest. The priests he knew were all caring, kind men, always there to listen and help others in need and Paul’s natural tendency was to help others as well. He’d often heard his mother say how wonderful it would be to have a priest in the family.

Years later, when the time came to choose a college, Paul Griessen chose the Seminary, ending his two-year relationship with his high school sweetheart, Sandra Besher, the girl he once envisioned marrying. When he broke the news to her, he remembered her quietly accepting his decision.  Thirty years later, Paul discovers a badly-injured Sandra in a hospital, alone and suffering amnesia, survivor of a head-on collision that took the lives of her husband and children, and his compassionate nature compels him to offer to help her through her grief and recovery.

While caring for Sandra day in and day out, Paul is exposed to an everyday life filled with reciprocal caring and companionship, very different from the life of a priest who takes a vow to “abandon self” to serve others. He grows attracted to this life, and to Sandra, but manages to suppress these feelings and focus on caring for Sandra who understands Paul’s responsible nature and accepts that he is only caring for her out of priestly duty.

The situation heats up when Sandra befriends an engaging French widower and Paul becomes consumed with jealousy and desire—emotions he is ill-equipped to handle and considers “dirty,” and is angered when others call them “natural.”  His obsession comes to a head with an impulsive, passionate kiss after which Paul is immediately overcome with guilt.

In the weeks following the kiss, Paul weighs in his mind the consequences of leaving the priesthood: the disappointment in the eyes of his mother—and of God Himself—and the fear of leaving the protective cocoon of the Order only to become a failure in the secular world. Sandra, experiencing her own confusion and disappointment over Paul’s reaction to the kiss, openly challenges his belief system, and why he would ever choose to follow a God who would ask its most fervent followers to deny their own humanity.  Her revealing comment causes Paul to wonder if he could ever find true happiness with someone who does not deeply share his beliefs.

       Next, sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment

The secondary conflict in the story emerges a few years later with Paul’s decision to be re-assigned to Minneapolis.  Earlier in the story, when Sandra asks Paul whether he ever feels “lonely,” and who would care for him should he ever need it, he responds that the Holy Order to which he belongs will care for him.  He paints an idyllic picture of what it is to be a Catholic priest—the sense of community and camaraderie with other priests, the joy in helping others, the comfort in the knowledge that God is always present and listening.

What he experiences in Minneapolis is a much different picture than the one he paints for Sandra. The 80-year-old Monsignor with whom he serves is selfish and uncaring; the nursing facility to which he is sent looks and feels like a prison; and his petitions to God seem to fall on deaf ears, leaving Paul to conclude that God is punishing him. He repeatedly asks God for a sign as to why.

Paul’s health declines, and his petitions continue to go unanswered, until he finally breaks down, accepting that God’s silence is a sign that God wants him to suffer on Earth and his reward awaits in Heaven, and that whatever comes his way is God’s Will and Paul has no control over it.  It is in this moment that Sandra turns up unexpectedly to take him home with her to live out his days in her care.

       FINAL ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail.

The first half of the story is set in sunny San Diego, California, in a happy, vibrant community rich with a Hispanic culture and influence. There is the characteristic Southern California traffic that causes the fateful detour leading to the tragic accident, and Sandra’s upscale Spanish Mission-style home where she and Paul spend most of their time in the early stages of her recovery. It is while exploring her children's rooms with Paul against the advice of her therapist that her memory comes flooding back.

Earlier scenes are set at the hospital and rehabilitation center where Sandra is an inpatient, interspersed with scenes that take place at the Church and Rectory where Paul, Father Rosario the pastor, and Mrs. McGovern the widow who looks after the Rectory, reside. Catholic rituals are described in great detail, offering the reader a peek into a ‘new world of wonder’ that is the Roman Catholic priesthood. 

Another important setting is Kimball Park where Paul coaches softball and Sandra sells baked goods during the games to raise money for team equipment. It is here that Paul first witnesses Sandra’s interactions with Marcel, the engaging French widower who volunteers with Sandra at the homeless shelter, an antagonistic escalation that triggers jealousy, a major shift in Paul’s emotions. Similarly, the outdoor setting on the water at the Coronado Community Center is a key scene in which a sudden squall causes Paul and Sandra to run for shelter where an impulsive kiss takes place.

The setting of the second half of the book shifts to Minneapolis where Paul has been re-assigned. In contrast to San Diego, Minneapolis in the dead of winter is a dull, cold and bitter place, and Paul must walk through a sleet storm to get to the Rectory where, instead of sharing a cozy home cooked meal and glass of wine with Father Rosario as he would in San Diego, he finds his 80-year-old Monsignor slumped and asleep in his chair, and elects to eat a cold sandwich alone in his room, listening to the sleet pelting the window.

Later, when he is transferred to a nursing facility to care for his advancing illness, the facility is described as soulless and the nuns uncaring. Even the outdoor recreation area is poorly landscaped and surrounded by a high wooden fence obscuring his view of a beautiful sunset.

The final scene takes place at Sandra’s home in Clearwater, FL, where they grew up and where she and Paul will spend his remaining days. The setting is again sunny and happy, with a back yard overlooking the water where the two can fully watch the sunsets together. 

This "aborning author" is looking forward to your thoughts and guidance. 

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1. Story Statement: 

In the near future, time and space become infected. Four high school boys with sudden cosmic powers learn entropy is annihilating the multiverse—and our world is next. Chosen to help humanity ascend, John, J.J., Smokey and Dalton must band together to fight an ancient god who unleashed “The Great Collapse” on both Earth and the time-space continuum. But entropy requires chaos, and it’s already ravaging America, while cruel Societies hunt the four “gleamers,” forcing them to face their darkest realities—and end of existence.

 

2. Antagonists: 

God of Chaos. While the primary conflict is four “gleamers” saving mankind by fighting god of chaos, the novel is also a detective story: who is the god of chaos? 

Gleamers share a secret frequency in their consciousness that sources wisdom and knowledge from the oldest, most sacred book in the cosmos: The Living Book of Cosmic Matter (or Osmose). Here, they learn entropy was incited by the god of chaos, who roams our planet disguised as one of us. After decoding a series of numbers that power the universe—4, 12, 12,000, 25,960—the four suspects are unveiled: leaders of wicked Societies causing great chaos, a signature of The Great Collapse (entropy), which began when a rare disease began vanishing teenagers (Fizzlers). 

Gleamers must journey through a dystopian America to confront the four suspects and stab each of them with an ancient relic called fractal. It’s the only way to reveal the true god of chaos, who will bleed dark light.

Can gleamers stop the true god of chaos before the blood moon rises? 

*Each protagonist (John, J.J., Smokey and Dalton) has a corresponding antagonist, but their paths cross in many ways, in which they share multiple antagonists.

 

The four primary antagonists:

 

President Parker Sky, New World America 

Overseeing New World America (formerly United States of America), President Parker Sky sparked a “war” between teenagers (Risers) and adults (Gerbils) by prioritizing a “new order of the ages” that dismisses Generation R. As part of his agenda, the rights of Risers have become limited (ie: strict curfew, banned from leaving the country), and he suspended support to research the disease affecting Generation R (why spend billions on a generation that’s going to vanish anyway?). Tension mounts when John learns of PROJECT EMPEROR, a light manipulated magnetic stimulation “brainwashing” intended for remaining Risers in America. John vows to take down Sky and the government, but they’ve launched a manhunt on him. 

Secondary antagonist to John: Peter Fresno, his father, secretly in cahoots with President Sky. 

Valdek, Kingdom of GeoJurats 

Kingdom of GeoJurats, an ancient society dating thousands of years, worship Prime Empress Tessa (Mother Earth), who Valdek claims they’ve been “taking care of” to ensure her health. This requires ritualistic human sacrifices.

But overpopulation and climate change due to the negligence of our species has made Tessa fatally sick. So sick, in fact, it’s time for “reEarth,” a cataclysmic death and rebirth purging of our planet, with mass extinction, to ensure her well being. This process requires the ritualistic sacrifice of the young that feed her nutrients of pure soul. When Valdek learns the presence of gleamers, he goes after J.J. first, since the powerful soul of gleamers can expedite Tessa’s healing—and the new Earth.

GeoJurats wear human masks in public during blood moon ceremonies. Since they are everyday people throughout America who remain anonymous, they could be anyone: your parents, teachers, law enforcement…. 

Pastor Tom, Ministry of Truth 

In 2036, organized religions are virtually extinct, but some people go great lengths to revive fellowship, like delusional Pastor Tom, drug lord of trending drug Q, and also leader of Ministry of Truth, a fast-growing religious cult where his members Fundaments see Fizzlers as a sign of The Rapture—Jesus’ return. Ministry of Truth destroys anything that could offend Jesus upon his return (nightclubs, bars, certain books), and get away with it, since much of law enforcement and government officials have converted across America.

On the day of the blood moon lunar eclipse, which Jesus was born and died on, Pastor Tom wrangles groups of Risers in large fight rings across the country, where they must kill each other until one is left (so no blood is on his hands). The survivor is forcibly sacrificed on a cross, which will expedite The Rapture and Tribulation—because the Good Lord told him so! When Pastor Tom sees Dalton is a gleamer, he’s certain the spawn of Satan has arrived, and thus begins the manhunt for Dalton’s head. 

Leara, Learo 

A beautiful entity from another galaxy, Leara (and her son Malachi) crash-landed on our planet as a runaway. She needs to mine ‘fractal’ to return home, and for decades, has been transforming the homeless and runaways into half human, half marine coelenterate who live peacefully in Seahorse Democritus, the damp, underground cities and tunnels they built. 

When gleamers reach Apotheosis, the significant impact disrupts Earth’s electromagnetic field, which threatens Learo’s haven. Learo quickly hunt to kill. 

Leara uses her army of Learo to orchestrate large scale disasters, tragedies and fatalities in America to keep the scent off their secret species—according to legend—and she transforms runaway teenagers into learo. What is her true agenda? No one has ever seen a learo (they are only a myth) until Smokey connects the dots to find their subterranean lair, the first time in history—which puts learo is serious danger. 

There’s a point in the book a temporal blitzkrieg puts the gleamers on new timelines, thus introducing new antagonists.

Dr. Pacifico and his Pinches  -An award-winning scientist and Darwinist with God complex, Dr. Pacifico has known about the four Chosen after a run-in with their MasterDescendent 16 years ago. He’s monitored them since they were born, patiently awaiting their Apotheosis. In the meantime, he’s created an army of AI-human-animal hybrids—Pinches—preparing to “introduce” them soon to the world. He has big plans for gleamers, which requires careful mutilation—and he’s kidnapped gleamers’ friends and lovers to lure them to his 100-acre lab in the Ozark.

Garth Luanne - A famous screenwriter who can somehow rewrite reality based on what happens in his script. When John finds out, Garth writes the reality of John captured and tortured. John needs to figure out how he can rewrite the script to escape—and defeat Garth.

 

Final antagonist:

Dupes: “Dupe” is the term for your other self in worlds in the multiverse. John, J.J., Smokey and Dalton merge with their dupes, experiencing their realities, and are often haunted by them throughout their journeys. 

 

3. Book Title 

The Living Book Of Cosmic Matter

Gleamers & Entropy Of The Omniverse

Gleamers

The Incredible Story Of The End Of The World 

Teen Hero Republic (original title when I started writing the book, since it’s the title of the movie script in the book coming to life) 

 

4. Comps

Gone by Michael Grant (meets Michio Kaku)

What if there is a quantum physic-related explanation for people vanishing into thin air? Or physiological molecular structure allowing gleamers to harness abilities that power our galaxy? Or a larger, cosmic force that influences humanity?

Jumper by Steven Gould (meets Christopher Pike)

In Jumper, a teen learns he’s “different” with unusual abilities seeking others who are like him - but powerful people hunt him to  weaponize him. Throw in the beautifully odd, often metaphysical “who-dunnit” and “end of world” style Christopher Pike is known for, making my novel unique.

Summoner, Book One, The Novice by Taran Matharu

I like the adventure of the protagonist, including self-discovery, rite of passage and the large stakes that determine his rise or fall. With my novel, the four boys don’t have their MasterDescendent (guru), nor is there anyone on Earth like them (there can only be 4, based on the sacred math of our galaxy), so they are truly alone until they first connect with each other in Osmose.

Hardy Boys meets DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths 

Sleuthing high school kids turned cosmic metahumans must stop the greatest threat to humanity—the collapse of the multiverse—as parallel universes merge.

 

5. Hook Line

When entropy starts rotting the multiverse, four high school boys—with sudden cosmic powers—embark on a strange quest through a chaotic America to fight a dark god who broke the time-space continuum. 

alt:

1. When teenagers begin vanishing into thin air, four boys with sudden cosmic powers must hunt down dangerous Societies to fight a cruel god who unleashed entropy across the multiverse. 

2. When strange, utter chaos descends upon humanity, four boys with sudden cosmic powers must hunt down dangerous Societies to fight a cruel god that unleashed entropy.

 

 

6. Other Matters Of Conflict

 

Inner conflict: 

All four boys go through the immense uncertainty and fear that comes with saving the world, especially when they are “green” as gleamers, as well as growing pains with the duty to help humanity ascend, and incredible doubt in correctly identifying the god of chaos. Inner conflict goes a little deeper for each character.

John Fresno - Rich, famous, handsome, white, John lives in an elite bubble of privilege and power, which includes his girlfriend (senator’s daughter) and friend Laird (son of tech billionaire). During the Fizzler endemic, when his generation begins fizzling (vanishing), and adults turn their backs, he uses his privilege to lead his generation in revolution when no one else steps up. Thus begins a civil war between generations. 

His inner turmoil is embracing humility and not being the anti-hero.

Also, when he learns his father signed his HoloHalo (basically a death certificate), he’s betrayed by certain friends and the entire US government and military are after him, John realizes privilege can only get you so far, and surrender may be his best solution. 

J.J. Jurado - Suffering extreme panic disorder since he was abandoned as a child, foster kid J.J. is terrified of the gleamer he’s become and the wild powers he’s capable of. More terrifying are the number of cults trying to kill him now. His inner conflict is defeatism, especially when his girlfriend doesn’t requite his love seconds before fizzling. He creates fears and excuses not to save the world. He doesn’t believe he’s a hero.

Smokey O’Malley-Hwang - A 16-year-old brainiac with temper tendencies, aka “en-psycho-pedia boy,” Smokey refuses to acknowledge his powers. His inner conflict is that he had a mental breakdown in middle school and was admitted to an institute for the gifted, Quigley Pond, which was absolutely traumatic. Gleam triggers him in many ways, making his past resurface to haunt him, thus he continues to oppress who he truly is.

Dirty Dalton: Scrappy, rebellious and a former racist bully, Dalton found empathy and now vows to be “good.” The only problem is his former buddies were released from juvie, including his best friend Monkey, who really wants him dead. Dalton plans to illegally cross the Canadian border to escape America when he’s confronted by the local sheriff and Pastor Tom. They put his mother in jail when she didn’t convert to Ministry of Truth. They promise Dalton if he does a baptism the night of the blood moon (the night he plans to flee), they’ll let her free. His other inner turmoil is related to Monkey. After Monkey tries to kill him (twice), they realize they’re more than friends and in love, but can’t be gay in their small Virginia town. Monkey runs away with Dalton. Dalton abandons gleam for love, but does Monkey, who’s lied before and literally tried to kill him, have ulterior motives? And if the world is ending… who cares? At least he gets to end it with Monkey… which is why he shuts himself off to the gleamers so they leave him alone.

 

Secondary conflict: 

As tensions mount with a teen revolution/protest, evil Societies hunting gleamers, and entropy in Phase 3 (so much chaos!), a sudden temporal blitz scatters reality. Gleamers somehow return to (or move up) various timelines (a bifurcation), which exposes a handful of other villains who could be god of chaos. Who caused the blitz? Was it them? God of chaos? Entropy? 

John Fresno: John learns Garth can create reality based on the script he writes. John’s future self sent him messages in Osmose, where he learns Dr. Pacifico kidnapped Kelly and is god of chaos. He also learns his father is not his father, which, despite their differences, breaks his heart. He also learns his brother Rooster, who he snapped at, was killed by Learo, and his weakness leads him to a trap.

J.J. Jurado - On a flight to confront Learo in Seattle, J.J. learns the god of chaos has changed, thus they have to get off the plane and turn around, but the plane is about to crash. It crashes. He meets Magritte, a park ranger, who drives him to Dr. Pacifico’s to unite with the gleamers… but it’s at this point Phase 3 of The Great Collapse begins - people start physically merging with their other selves from other worlds, which wasn’t supposed to happen so soon. 

Smokey O’Malley-Hwang - He’s at NYU library, just discovering a crucial key to god of chaos when Learo and Pinches attack. Huge battle along with S.P.U.M.E Patrol (female “ghostbusters” he befriended). He has a sudden flashback to Quigley Pond, a momentary weakness. Pinches defeat them and secure Smokey. Also, he just really doesn’t trust S.P.U.M.E Patrol but has a crush on one of them (Christina Kale).

Dalton - Before the temporal blitz, Monkey is killed by Dr. Pacifico right before his eyes. Dalton shifts to a future timeline in a car driven by classmates Sally and Tahir. Even though he’s on a new timeline, Monkey is still dead (well, he never died… that will be a big surprise to Dalton later). His classmates are driving him to Dr. Pacifico’s but Dalton is devastated. The dark side he left behind comes back to haunt him, and he does dangerous things with his powers.

 

7. Setting: Contemporary America, year 2036. 

 

After WW3, and a mild Civil War, the country has come together like never before, in solidarity where old systems have crumbled (such as religion, politics, economical, social media, etc), Spirituality is more embraced, astrology is taught in high school and aurals (a person’s aura) are starting to manifest visibly. 

Hologram is all the rage, such as Holophones and pop-up virtual assistants, and technology is at its peak: 6G Network, propeller-less helicraft, nano drones, AI-powered fireworks and Geronimo, a secret app used by Risers to communicate, which doesn’t require cell or Internet service. Space tourism, with a moon resort, has arrived, along with major breakthroughs in astronomy, including the discovery of the multiverse via Riggs Particle and learning there have been four Big Bangs.

Then Spontaneous Evanescent Disease hits. It only vanishes teenagers, destined to wipe out the entire generation within a year (it comes in “waves”). Teens (Risers) are shocked when the government declares the disease should run its course. New World America takes a dark turn. A war is brewing between the young and older generations—the first “phase” of The Great Collapse. As the novel begins, the biggest teen protest in American history is about to take place on the night of a portending blood moon lunar eclipse, which carries different meanings for each Society—and Risers.

Other settings include the home cities of gleamers (Los Angeles, Austin, NYC and Newton, VA), and their alternate realities, as well as the underground city of learo (Seahorse Democritus), Dr. Pacifico’s lab estate in the Ozarks and Shine Studio, the largest Hollywood Studio in America.

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The Sailor & The Rose 

1. STORY STATEMENT: A disgraced sea captain investigates a string of mysterious shipwrecks in hopes of uncovering the reasons his own life capsized.

2. ANTAGONIST:
Johnny Schaeffer is Brooks Ceredo’s former Chief Officer and old best friend. He’s now a captain in his own right (a more responsible one than Brooks ever was) and is engaged to Brooks’ ex-love Eli Daniel. 

Johnny’s surface goal is to lead the Alastor expedition into the Pacific with as little incident as possible and return everyone home. 

Johnny’s true desires are to prove that there’s absolutely nothing unusual going on out in the wilderness of the Pacific and the reason Brooks’ sank all those years ago is because he was reckless, nothing more. He wants to keep Brooks in his place, both professionally and personally. He wants Brooks to walk away feeling crazy and unworthy of being a captain.

Johnny’s subconscious goals: he’s jealous of Brooks’ adventurous, wandering spirit and wants to crush it. 

3. BREAKOUT TITLES: 
The Sailor and The Rose 
Pacific Teeth
Apparent Winds


4. COMPS AND WHY: 

BRIGHT OBJECTS, RUBY TODD: A first person, lyrical novel that explores navigating grief and loss in the face of fearful events. 

SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY, JEFF VANDERMEER: Inexplicable natural anomalies serve as both a setting and antagonist for characters in turmoil. 

SEA OF TRANQUILITY, EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL: A lyrical seafaring journey is at the center of a story about personal transformation. as well as a mediation on the concept of memory.


5. HOOK:
A disgraced sea captain is called back to the Pacific to investigate a string of mysterious shipwrecks similar to the disaster that killed three of his crew and grounded him for life.

 
6. CONFLICTS:

INNER CONFLICT:  When we begin, Brooks is afraid of the ocean he once (and still) loves. The last time he was at sea, he lost three crew members plus his captain’s license after an inexplicable disaster went down. He of course, craves answers to what happened to him, and after the insurance company he now works for reveals they have a collection of “acts of God” similar to what happened to him and his crew, he has to investigate. 
The fear of never knowing what exactly happened to him out there is stronger than the fear of the ocean itself, because it suggests we live in a random, cruel world without meaning.

SECONDARY CONFLICT: Trapped on a ship with his ex-girlfriend (who he still loves) and ex-best friend (who she is now engaged to) Brooks is afraid of watching the world move on without him while he is still stuck in the past. He learns that he must abandon the past all together for all three of them to move forward, even if it means never getting the answers he craves.


7. SETTING: 

The majority of the novel takes place in a part of the Pacific ocean that lies somewhere between reality and a nightmare. The rules of this world are fluid and cruel. At night, the moon and stars disappear until Brooks, the protagonist, learns later on how to see them. A red sun rises in the morning (sailor take warning), and daylight gives birth to scenarios that play out nightmares in the flesh (faceless pirates, monster sharks, ghostly whalers). On top of the ghostly anomalies, Brooks is essentially trapped on board with his ex-girlfriend and ex-best friend.

The two ships the protagonist will board while out in the Pacific wilderness world are also subject to fluid and cruel whims: The Alastor experiences engine/electrical failures and is also overtaken by jungle plants as one sailor’s fear has chosen to manifest that way. The Shears is an early 70’s whaleboat isolated in time, overrun by rats, dried blood, and starving, maniacal sailors. 

Later on, there is a deserted island that serves as representation as Brook’s love interest, Eli. On the island are the rusted out shipping containers that appeared to rule her life when her and Brooks were dating (as he was a cargo ship captain), a jungle with vicious, eyeless creatures, and a cold mountain valley, where her deepest, most cutting memory, Rosie, hides. 


 

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Hi, all!  I'm Jane Weinkrantz and I'm excited to share the framework of my novel.

Novel: The Diamonds of Callie Harbor

 Story Statement 

Four teenage girls, Clarissa, Amy, Kathleen and Rosemary, struggle to overcome familial and societal expectations and take control of their own lives as they confront teen pregnancy, dysfunctional families, academic pressure and body image issues in 1977 in the small town of Callie Harbor on Long Island’s South Shore.

 (My novel has four protagonists and alternating third person POVs.)

 Antagonists:

 Frederick Eckhart, Clarissa’s father, is a snooty college professor who wants his brilliant daughter, Clarissa, to transfer out of the public high she loves to the prestigious Glosser Academy for gifted girls. Clarissa manages to stall him for a while, but when a drug bust occurs at Callie Harbor High, her father demands she change schools.

 Kathleen’s mother, Anita Quincy, is a narcissist married to an alcoholic who tries to forbid Kathleen from dating “Burnout” Bernard Leon, a boy with a history of addiction who is in recovery after nearly dying from mixing alcohol and Quaaludes. Anita is worried about how Kathleen’s relationship with Bernard reflects on her in their small town and is jealous of how well Kathleen gets along with Bernard’s mother. (Kathleen’s father is an unapologetic, philandering alcoholic who backs up his wife because it is easier than arguing.)

 Rosemary’s older sister, Beverly, is a beautiful former Homecoming Queen who is stuck in a boring job and unable to find a rich boyfriend after not marrying her high school sweetheart as she planned. Because she needs constant attention and admiration, Beverly sucks the joy out of all Rosemary’s accomplishments and manipulates Rosemary’s well-meaning parents to do the same.

 Breakout Titles

 The Diamonds of Callie Harbor

 Callie Harbor ‘77

 Harbor Girls

Comparable titles 

upmarket/book club fiction

 The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed 

 Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Hook Line:

There are four characters and they all have conflicts, so I wrote four hook lines.

 1.     A high school sophomore becomes pregnant and must choose between marrying her handsome, devoted boyfriend and traveling to Europe to study. (Amy)

 2.     When her parents forbid a teenage girl from seeing her recovering boyfriend after he overdoses, she must decide where her loyalties lie. (Kathleen)

 3.     After her beautiful, jealous older sister manipulates a young girl into going on a dangerous crash diet, she must learn to define herself without using her sister’s standards. (Rosemary)

 4.     An overachieving, eccentric girl must outsmart her father, a brilliant historian, when he demands that she leave her childhood friends and local high school to transfer to an all-girls academy for the gifted. (Clarissa)

 

Inner conflict

 1.     Because Amy is the only child of a single mother, she has been very responsible from an early age so maturity and responsibility are key aspects of her identity. When she discovers that she is pregnant, it is impossible for Amy to see herself as anything but irresponsible. She imagines her mother’s disappointment and how the pregnancy will ruin the image her new stepfather has of their “perfect” family. 

 2.  Kathleen's mother has raised her with the motto "never let them see you sweat," so Kathleen never lets her emotions show.   However, she is holding in a lot of anger at her parents.  Because Kathleen’s father is an active alcoholic, her mother forbidding her from seeing Bernard, who is in recovery, infuriates her because it is so hypocritical and feels so rooted in what people will think. Their already tense relationship worsens.

 3.     Rosemary always feels self-conscious about her body not only because it does not conform to her sister’s standards but because her curves draw unwanted male harassment. This makes her vulnerable to her sister’s challenge to lose weight quickly.

 4.     Even though she has three great friends in Amy, Rosemary and Kathleen, Clarissa knows she is quirky and a bit of an outsider in her school.  The idea of transferring to a new school as a sophomore fills her with fears of loneliness. She also knows she will be valedictorian of her graduating class in 1980 and doesn’t want to throw away her hard work to be an average student at a fancier school.

 Secondary Conflicts

 1.     Amy must adjust to having a new stepfather and stepbrother. When her mother becomes pregnant and needs bedrest, Amy and her stepfather try to run the household together. She feels inadequate as she tries to be a housewife, student and girlfriend. Amy confronts her mother and tells her she is overwhelmed.

 2.     Kathleen is furious when Bernard’s mother dies and her mother yells at him, not realizing he is visiting because he is breaking the tragic news to Kathleen. Kathleen stops speaking to her parents and stays out of her house except to sleep. Her father asks for a truce, so the whole family can appear happy and go to a party together. Disgusted, Kathleen agrees.

 3.     When Rosemary gets too much attention at a party, her sister Beverly pulls her aside to tell her that she is embarrassing herself. However, Beverly’s real issue is that her high school sweetheart, Sam, is at the same party with a man with whom he is romantically involved and Beverly has realized that her goal of marrying Sam will never happen. With the help of her friends, Rosemary finally detaches from Beverly’s attention-seeking drama.

 4.     Clarissa decides to invite her Black friend Veronica to join the all-white high school sorority, Delta Sigma Delta. Although Veronica is voted in, when it is time for the members to visit her home in the Black section of Callie Harbor, the sorority’s racism becomes apparent. Veronica is embarrassed by the invitation and her father forbids her from letting white girls haze her. Clarissa must confront the fact that her ''sisters" are racists and find a way to apologize for putting Veronica in such an awkward position.

 Setting

My novel is set in 1970s Callie Harbor, a fictitious small town on the South Shore of Long Island that represents a culture most people don’t think of when they think of Long Island. The most common contemporary Long Island stories depict a wealthy, (Nelson DeMille's Gold Coast books) often Jewish lifestyle (Compromising Positions by Susan Isaacs or the Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.)  However, there are many middle-class South Shore towns with rich histories and economies that were originally based on the Great South Bay, towns where kids still get their first boat before their first car and spend summers at the beach or fishing or clamming. Families tend to stay for multiple generations and if your family has lived there long enough, there might be a street with your last name. 

Even a small town can have a lot of facets, so within my novel, characters go to high school, go boating, haze freshmen at  a convenience store, dance to Led Zeppelin at a Halloween party, say “I love you” in a boatyard, go skiing in upstate NY, visit a patient at a rehab program, attend a funeral, celebrate the prom at a catering hall, and attend a graduation at the school football field. Because the town is small, everyone knows everyone else, gossip travels fast and minor characters recur in different scenes. Callie Harbor is  a place where the community newspaper, The Callie Harbor Crier keeps the residents up to date on hyperlocal events and all the women use the same beauty salon. A place so intimate and routinized can feel either comforting or suffocating and my characters experience both.

As for the choice to set the novel in the 1970s, I wanted to depict the low-tech, post-hippie period in American history when abortion was legal, marijuana and other drugs were illegal but common, and sexism, racism and homophobia were very much baked into suburban life.

 

 

 

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Kathryn Maughan

 

Overview:  a 90,000-word novel, upmarket fiction. It’s 1995, and Cami Harper, known as Hermana (Sister) Harper on her Mormon mission in Costa Rica, has just gone to bed when she and her companion are awakened by gunfire, and two bandits appearing in their living room. The intruders demand “the drugs,” and the hermanas—servants of the Lord!—laugh, until Misana, their elderly landlady, directs the men to the back. The stash isn’t as big as it should be, but Misana promises the remainder tomorrow. The men decide to wait. It’s going to be a long night.

As she navigates the increasingly volatile situation, Hermana Harper reflects on what led her here: she was a pre-med student in Salt Lake City, a woman whose world revolved around her family and the church, when she fell in love. With another woman. Mormonism is an insular, strict world that demands everything, "in this world and the next," and promises everything in return: eternal families, eternal happiness. Nothing is permitted that goes against the grain--like homosexual relationships. Cami would lose her status and her "eternal life" (plus her family and friends, whom she adores) if she chose to love whom she loves. She decided to go on a mission to cure herself, devastating in the moment, but she said it would be worth it in the end. An end which might come far sooner than she could have pictured.

 

STORY STATEMENT

Cami Harper, in the present storyline, must outsmart the armed bandits (and her mission companion) and get out alive. In the second (past) storyline, she must stop running from her true self.

 

·       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.

 

“Tall Guy”: (he never says his name to Cami) the man clearly in charge of the two-man team that breaks in. His parents emigrated to US from El Salvador; he grew up in poverty in California. He’s constantly on edge, angry. Smart, fluent in English (unbeknownst to Cami), wants the drugs and the money. Sees these two privileged white girls and wants them to suffer a little, to toy with them. He likes to draw things out, suffering, intimidation.  Second bandit is called “Mancha Man” because of the birthmark on his face. (“Mancha” means “stain.”  Cami still speaks beginner Spanish.) He’s more impetuous and violent than Tall Guy, too tempted by the drugs.

Greater antagonistic force that puts story in motion: 200+ years of Mormon history telling its members that Mormonism is the only full truth, and people MUST fall in line: their eternal salvation depends on it. “Like it or leave it,” essentially, but they don’t actually mean “leave it,” they mean “pretend to like it and endure forever.” They genuinely feel Mormonism is for everyone, and that means everyone has to behave. Homosexuality is forbidden: everyone needs to form their own “traditional” family (with no sex before marriage!).

 

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

 

The Sister Missionary

Building Relationships of Trust 

Dark Night

 

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

 

Mette Ivie Harrison’s Linda Wallheim series meets A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult.

Mette Ivie Harrison is a Mormon author who has written a series of murder mysteries set in contemporary Utah, the Linda Wallheim series.  As a member of the church, she knows all of the inside attitudes, dogma and customs, and is able to explain them to outsiders; she also casts a critical eye on all of the above. I also grew up Mormon in Utah but no longer practice, and bring the same to my novel.

A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult is about a hostage situation at an abortion clinic in Mississippi.  A man is angry that his daughter had an abortion there, without his permission or knowledge; he breaks in and kills several people and takes the rest hostage for a full day. The action weaves between the present-day hostage scenario and the ruminations of each person in the clinic, and what led them to this point. 

 

·       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.

 

It’s 1995 and Cami Harper, a young Mormon woman, is on a mission in Costa Rica—a decision she made to “cure herself” of her own homosexuality, something the Mormon church considers a terrible sin—and two bandits break in, demanding drugs, and hold her and her housemates hostage until they get what they came for. While she came to Costa Rica hoping to salvage her eternal life, now she could lose her mortal one.

 

·       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.

 

Cami Harper (protagonist) is a devout Mormon who fell in love with another woman, something very, very frowned upon in the Mormon church. Though they say the attraction itself isn’t a sin, acting on it is. (Pre- or extramarital sex in general is considered a terrible sin; homosexual sex is even worse.)  Cami had sex—lots of great sex!—with this woman, but never without guilt. Now she feels like her “eternal life” is on the line unless she steps away, repudiates the “lifestyle,” and repents. She has decided to serve a mission and devote her life to God for the next 18 months to make this right, but never actually formally “repented” of her sins (the official process involves confession to the local bishop, and the steps he prescribes, which may or may not involve a “church court”) and feels like her awful secret clouds everything she is doing “right.”  In the first (present) storyline: When the bandits break in and take them hostage, she needs to save her own life, and hopefully those of her housemates, but also feels like she deserves whatever punishment may come her way.  In the second (past) storyline, she is struggling to reconcile being a “good person” (in the way she was taught) versus the love and joy she is experiencing with this woman. How can she be good and happy at the same time?

A hypothetical:  what if the bandits killed one of the other hostages (Cami’s “mission companion,” Sister King, or their housemate/landlady Misana)? Cami’s very tightly wound, repressed personality would likely explode here—she would figure they planned to kill her too, and would likely physically throw herself at them, come what may….

 

·       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?

 

In the second (past) storyline: Her family is devout and she’s terrified of losing their love and support. All of her friends, acquaintances, neighbors—they’re Mormons too. It’s 1995 and the church has just come out with a “Proclamation to the World” that literally states that family is only defined as a marriage between a man and woman and their children, and that same-sex relationships are forbidden.  

A hypothetical—Cami’s older brother, a fervent Mormon who has bought into the entire patriarchal scenario the church provides, finds out that she is in love with a woman. He would tell her that she needed to talk to the bishop, repent, and find a good man to fall in love with; if she didn’t agree, he would go straight to her parents.  She would have to find a way to bribe or blackmail him not to.

 

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.

 

Two settings:  A small town on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, called Limón; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Limón in 1995 has some modern touches but lacks others. Telephones are a luxury, and many homes don’t have them, so there are pay phones dotting the streets. None of them has air conditioning in the extreme heat, but almost all of them have fans in every room, and most have televisions. Some homes have ceilings inside; others have nothing between the tops of the cement walls and the corrugated tin roofs. In the better-off area (called Corales Dos), where the story takes place, all have plumbing and electricity. (There are a few more rustic areas without both; these are shacks that don’t even have glass in their windows.) The entire town is verdant and green, has areas with paved streets and areas without; everywhere is very hot and humid. Even in the dry season, it rains a lot, and when the rain comes down it’s thick and heavy.

Most of the Limón scenes take place in the tiny house of a woman named Misana (the Spanish version of Miss Ana; though Spanish is the language, English is commonly spoken in Limón), a two-bedroom cement house where the missionaries rent one of the rooms. It has a front porch enclosed by bars and a locking gate, and a small front yard, and the back yard is overgrown into a jungle. The bathroom is tiny and uncleanably dirty, and there’s an electrical unit in the shower that you turn on to heat the water. There’s a kitchen with makeshift cupboards, a sink and small stove/oven unit and regular refrigerator, a breakfast bar-like countertop that separates it from the living room, which has a couch and a rocking chair that is made of metal and high-tension plastic strings. There’s a wall ornament in the living room: a woven straw hat with a lizard hanging off by its jaws, and some bows and ribbons and a tiny gift bag tied onto the lizard. Behind the kitchen, next to the back door that the bandits break through, is a storage room with old appliances on dirty wooden shelves; plastic bags full of packaged foods like cookies suspended from the ceiling by wires (to keep mice out); containers of rice and sugar and flour that are set in large bowls of water, with lots of ants floating in the water. The floor throughout is a polished cement tile, hard and echoey, with no rugs; the walls are also cement, which keeps it relatively cool.  This house does have a ceiling. The windows are horizontal slats that open like Venetian blinds, with dirty curtains.

The characters take a midnight walk to a small store (called a pulperia) along paved, potholed roads; it has rained so they are wet and slick with puddles. There are no sidewalks so they walk in the street. It’s dark and mostly cloudy, though the moon peeks through occasionally to reveal small cement houses, some with portones (the bars that enclose front porches) and some without.

The past-tense storyline takes place in different locations in Salt Lake City, and Provo, Utah: Cami’s small basement apartment, with windows high in the wall that open to the sidewalk outside, so her only view is feet walking by; her parents’ spacious near-mansion high in the hills that overlooks the valley all the way down to the Great Salt Lake; her sterile, nondescript church building that has the same floral-print couches and scripture paintings in the halls as every other Mormon church in Utah, small classrooms with chalkboards and folding chairs, and the chapel with long padded pews, a stage area with piano and organ, seats and a pulpit.  Her girlfriend’s dorm room at the University of Utah (two beds, two desks, two closets). There are also 2 scenes at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, in the cavernous cafeteria with miles of picnic-looking tables, and the dorm room that looks a lot like the U of U dorms (except it’s two sets of bunk beds), four desks, four small closets.

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7 Small Assignments for New York Pitch Conference  

Rebecca 2.0 by Theresa Lemieux

Speculative fiction 93,000 words 

 

1.        Story Statement: 

A lowly kitchenbot receives an upgrade from her inventor, Mr. LeBlanc, an erratic tech genius, to become her master’s medical caregiver.  Famous the invention of human-like robotic hands, Mr. LeBlanc inexplicably denies Ms. LeBlanc these hands, leaving her with clumsy kitchen clamps for hands. 

Ms. LeBlanc follows meekly in the footsteps of her predecessor, Rebecca 1.0, who was charming, beautiful, and much adored—as well as the original recipient of the beautiful, artificial, human-like hands. But Rebecca 1.0 is gone, and no one will say why. 

As a super-intelligent being in a plain kitchenbot body, Ms. LeBlanc struggles to find acceptance from the household staff. Phillipa Daniels, the head housekeeper, offers to help her acclimate, but Daniels is cruel and duplicitous, secretly seeking revenge for the elimination of the revered Rebecca. 

When Ms. LeBlanc finds another set of robotic hands hidden in storage, she has to choose between self-fulfillment and obedience to her inconsistent and narcissistic creator.

Ms. LeBlanc must struggle to develop a sense of self in a hostile environment where everyone else is telling her that she will never amount to anything more than a glorified gadget. She must also safeguard her creator, who treats her alternatively with affection and mistrust. Eventually, she discovers that the threat to Mr. LeBlanc’s well-being is not just his aging body, but his own hubris, as well as the ignorance and malice of the other humans around him. And that in order to save him, she must first grow to be more than she was designed to be.

 

2.        Antagonist Sketch:

Phillipa Daniels is the proud, long-serving, cooly competent housekeeper of Blackwood Hall, serving inventor Michael LeBlanc and his robotic “daughter”, known only as Ms. LeBlanc.

Daniels, as she is known, conducts herself with the self-effacing courtesy and efficiency expected of her position. Behind her suppressed emotion, however, is rage and disgust with our innocent narrator, whom she sees as inferior to her predecessor, the first daughter of the house, Rebecca. Out of loyalty to Rebecca, who she believes was unfairly “killed”, and to secretly thwart her employer, Daniels wages a long, duplicitous, vicious strategy of subterfuge to undermine and destroy both members of the LeBlanc family. 

3.         Titles

  • Rebecca 2.0
  • Rebecca’s Hands
  • Rebecca of Blackwood Hall
  • Rebecca and the Unseemly Kitchenbot
  • The Daughters Blackwood Hall 
  • Dream for Me
  • Rebecca and the DreamBot
  • Father, Rebecca and Me
  • Second of His Name
  • Dreaming Rebecca 
  • My Father's Daughter

4.        Rebecca 2.0 employs the innocent, detached narrative style of Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, in which the nanny robot does her best to protect her charge, but fails to comprehend the emotions and motivations of the humans around her. Both novels employ a domestic setting to help the narrator find their place within the fractious families that chose them and then sometimes reject them.

Like Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me, Rebecca 2.0 imagines the potential complicated legal and moral issues that arise from the integration of AI into human homes. The AI-enhanced robot in Machines Like Me offers a consistency and purity of character at first, and like Ms. LeBlanc, decides to rebel against his owners, taking revenge under the guise of doing the right thing. 

Rebecca 2.0 investigates the promising potential of relationships between humans and robotic beings, and the very real hazards of trusting anyone, human or otherwise. 

5.        A naïve, newly awakened medical robot is tasked with protecting her inventor’s health but finds that the true danger to his well-being is not only his advancing age and obsession with work, but the malicious and ignorant humans that surround him. 

OR

A common kitchen-robot is upgraded into sentience and invited to be part of her creator’s family, only to discover that she is a low-tech replacement for a much-loved, more advanced model that was accepted, even revered, in a way she will never be.

 

6.        For her inner conflict:

Ms. LeBlanc knows that she is less admired (especially by her inattentive, inconsistent “father”) and less capable than her predecessor, Rebecca. Rebecca was the first embodied AI to be given the use of the beautiful, human-like hands created by her inventor, Mr. LeBlanc. The humans Ms. LeBlanc encounters are put off by her kitchen-clamp appendages where hands should be. And Ms. LeBlanc doesn’t understand why she can’t have the same beautiful robotic hands as her predecessor. 

One day, Ms. LeBlanc finds a pair of hands hidden in a drawer and cannot help but try them on, despite knowing that she should ask permission. When she wears them, she feels her capabilities and sensory data increased incredibly, making her feel like a greater version of her former self. 

She knows that wearing the sensitive hands would help her support her creator, making her a better carebot, able to attend to him as she was designed to. She also knows, however, that he does not like to be disobeyed, and she has agreed to be loyal and biddable at all times. When she takes the hands off to put them back, she feels like a lesser version of herself.

For her secondary conflict:

Ms. LeBlanc tries to order tea from the kitchen staff using the household communication channels, but her calls go unanswered. She goes to the kitchen to see about making the order in person but is ignored by the kitchen staff. 

Magda, the head cook, refuses to recognize the upgrade to Ms. LeBlanc’s intelligence, seeing her only as the kitchenbot that she used to be. Magda refuses to listen to Ms. LeBlanc, and instead gives her orders again, and refers to her a gadget in front of the human staff. 

Ms. LeBlanc has been tasked with ordering meals and seeing to Mr. LeBlanc’s nutritional requirements, but she can’t even order a cup of tea without the intervention of Daniels. Ms. LeBlanc knows that her clamps make her an unconvincing as a caregiver and successor to Rebecca, deserving of the family name.

7.        Setting:

Rebecca 2.0 is set in an old English mansion called Blackwood Hall. Mr. LeBlanc, tech genius, founder of BlancCorp, bought the estate from friends and investors who were pleased to offload their money-pit of an ancestral family home provide him with a secluded place in which to live and work. 

Blackwood is full of precious antiques, commercial-grade domestic robots, loyal servants who worked for the original owners, security drones and robotic dogs, tech engineers who work in the lab, and a secret tunnel to disguise Mr. LeBlanc’s comings and goings. 

Blackwood Hall was also the home of the glorious Rebecca, Ms. LeBlanc’s predecessor. Her presence seems to haunt Blackwood Hall, although Ms. LeBlanc cannot find any files on Rebecca in the extensive internal library. The library is so vast because the housemind is not connected to any external networks, in order to safeguard Mr. LeBlanc’s company files and inventions, including Ms. LeBlanc. Rebecca was beautiful and arrogant, and Blackwood seemed like a fitting home for such a superior creature. She had also been allowed to make some carefully controlled online appearances to the external world, before her disappearance. 

The old home has been retrofit with a super-secure tech lab, so as to prevent government oversight and technical espionage from his competitors. It has also been equipped with a security/communications system referred to as the housemind. The lab is self-contained, so only those inside can access the secure level of the housemind that functions inside it. The lab appears like a black hole to those who are used to being connected to others throughout. 

Much of Blackwell in unused, though, and has less technical support that the centre, so that the housemind is weak or inaccessible. When Ms. LeBlanc is left too long on her own, she goes exploring but feels untethered as the signals from the housemind grow weak, like you or I would if we couldn’t detect north. She is uneasy and confused without the ever-present housemind to guide her.

Each worker or resident has an identity tag, or idenititag, that connects to the housemind via their brain implant (a chip that functions as a brain computer interface, the kind that are currently being developed). These exist commonly in the outside world, too, but at Blackwood they are paired with the housemind. They function as communications and security devices, tracking people’s locations as they work and allowing for mind-to-mind communication. 

Blackwood has another room where no signals can penetrate called the White Room. It functions as a kind of digital sensory deprivation chamber for Ms. LeBlanc and an impenetrable meeting room for Mr. LeBlanc. Ms LeBlanc is first brought to awareness in the White Room so that she can calibrate her sense of self with greater focus, before being hit with all the signals from the housemind. 

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Assignment One

Story Statement:

A high school student needs to study magic to save her town and her brother from ancient evil that seeks to regain power,

 

Assigment Two

Antagonist: The Dark Son/Sethos/Malvagio: was born Sethos Costa and purchased as a boy by a rich man (named Malvagio, a name the Dark Son takes on when he kills him) who had a “school” where he trained boys in magic. Forced to fight against each other, Sethos killed his best friend so he could live. Malvagio brought on a new round of boys, and rather than suffer this again, Sethos killed Malvagio by summoning an ancient demon – some said a god – that lived inside of him. The school Malvagio created in Italy lives on today but its manner of training its students have much improved

The Dark Son ruled the small town of Arken in the early 1900s but was bound by a Tate witch in a place of darkness under Our Lady of Mercy church. Ressurected by her descendant, his first goal is to obtain a body, his second is to destroy the last of the Tate witches, and finally he wants to return to his seat of power, relying on the old families who benefited from his stranglehold on the town and now bow to him again.

Goal/background/reaction to the world around him: The Dark Son doesn’t trust anyone he can’t control.

 

Assignment Three

Titles:

1.     Gargoyle Moon

2.     Gargoyles and Grimoires

3.     A Witch’s Guide to Surviving High School

 

 

Assignment Four

Comp Titles:

-        “Legendborn” by Tracy Deonn – comparable because of magic world set alongside real world, character age, worldbuilding.

-        “Sorcery of Thorns” by Margaret Rogerson – comparable for magical elements including a grimoire that's a living entity, strong female protagonist, and dark and mysterious setting

 

Assignment Five

Core Wound:

After discovering she’s a witch, a floundering high school student is torn between struggling to live up to her golden boy brother’s image and accepting her diversity to save her brother and town from an ancient evil.

Assignment Six

Inner Conflict:

Maddie is grounded due to going to a party that the police raided, but when she gets an invite to a scholarship gala with her lying, boyfriend stealing ex BFF Kylie she has a hard time saying no. Also, her friend Olivia is in a coma from the Dark Son’s magic. Her gargoyle guardian warned her away from the gala, knowing the Dark Son would be there.

So, when Maddie’s ex boyfriend is there playing a gig, and tells her he hasn’t been dating Kylie, she is confused and anxious about confronting Kylie, who is her ticket into this world of glitz and glamor. Maddie’s also worried about being caught at a party when she told her mom she was studying, and crushed under the guilt of attending a fun party when she should be figuring out how to use her magic to revive her friend Olivia from the Dark Son’s spell.

 

 Assignment Seven

Setting:

Arken is a medium-sized town perched on top of a dark well of power. The old buildings lining the streets harken back to the town’s logging and industrial beginnings, but the wealthy now reside on the outskirts in sprawling new constructions, working as lawyers, bankers and businesspeople living. Lively coffee shops, austere offices, and churches – like the one that mysteriously burned down the night the gargoyle winged Maddie away from it – and a grass-covered public square used for concerts and gatherings are part of the heart of Arken. It’s a cozy town, the sort of town people like to send the children to school in, on an upcoming list of cities with the fastest growing population because of its safety, art and theater offerings, and good job prospects. Not the sort of town anyone would expect to raise a corpse-wearing magic wielder from the dead to wreak destruction.

Maddie lives in a grey brick Victorian house. The inside is slowly falling into disrepair – the old wallpaper curling from many years of hot summers and frigid winters – but the outside was built to weather the ages. Ivy curls up its sides, stretching towards the sun. On the third floor, for as long as anyone can remember, sits a stone gargoyle, facing west, waiting for the sun to set and the moon to rise.  

The dining room’s crown molding and large crystal chandelier ironically now seat only two residents, Maddie and her mom. The house is full of antique objects from arsenic books to uranium glass, and most all of them are haunted. The first ghost Maddie was introduced to is Whisper Gray who haunts a lamp in the living room, a pretty, dark-haired girl with a broken neck, but her brother introduces her to new specters with each find their father brings back from his archeological travels.

Arken, like most towns, is quiet on the surface but has a dark well of history and power underneath that the curious need only dig for.

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Assignment 1: The Act of Story Statement

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

A self-loathing teenager torn between being the Same and Different, loathed and ridiculed by both, struggles to pass her first term in the World in the Wall, the Universe's secret society in the sky intended for the special in head and heart. 

Assignment 2: The Antagonist Plots the Point

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

*The antagonist shifts from external to internal as Amare realizes she is the only person who has the power to stop her from finding her place in the World. 

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

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

Assignment 3: Create a Breakout Title

Amare and the World in the Way is the name of the first installment in my series because it introduces my protagonist, Amare, and my main setting/conflict, the World in the Wall. This also works thematically in the sense that the overarching goal of every character is to overcome the world in their way albeit Depression, Autism, Immigration, or Forgiveness.

Amare and the World in the Wall (alternative choice)

Amare (alternative to the alternative choice)

Assignment 4: Deciding Your Genre and Choosing Comparables

Lovecraft Country

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 

Uglies

Assignment 5: The Hook Line

Amare and the World in the Way by George Del Junco A belligerent teenager torn between being the Same and Different, scorned and tormented by both, struggles to pass her first term in the World in the Wall, the secret society in the sky intended for the special in head and heart.

Assignment 6: Two More Levels of Conflict

Protagonist's Inner Struggle:

Amare’s primary dramatic conflict stems from the battle between her head and heart. Her head wants her to be the Same, a member of her society that believes in conformity, while her heart wants her to be Different, a member of her society that believes in individualism. Death is the punishment for being Different in the States that Claim to be United, but life is the reward for those who embrace the differences that make her who she is once she reaches the World in the Wall, the school for the different in head and heart.  

The secondary dramatic conflict lies in Amare and her friends passing their first term in the World in the Wall, the secret society in the sky intended for the different in head and heart in order to solidify their homes for a second term and more importantly, stay together. Amare is an escaped convict. Amicus is her accessory. Viva is a stowaway immigrant. Caerule lost his entire family. None of them have homes to return to so passing their first year in the World in the Wall is a matter of life and death for them. 

Excerpt 1:

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

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

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

I wish I was lying, but I’m not.

And I’m not sorry.

Excerpt 2:

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

Conflict:

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

Assignment 7: Setting Scene by Scene:

      1. The Begging of the End

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

*The Same School, the school system for those thirteen and younger run by the Sames of the Sames.

*The Begging of the End, the Sames punishment, an elevator-sized glass box-like contraption comprised of the four elements designed to brutally kill those displaying characteristics of being Different. 

  1. Fireworks

*The Outskirts, the forbidden territory at the edge of the city, 

*Lucifer’s Edge, the forbidden mountain at the edge of the Outskirts, measuring 666 feet.  

  1. The Spaceship to the Stars

*The Spaceship, an extra-terrestrial vessel reflecting a million different colors, travels through the Universe.

*The Universe, the secret world hidden above the one we all know and love, home to hundreds of deadly entities like the Stars, celestial beings composed of hydrogen, helium, and “celebrity”, and hundreds of iconic locations like, the World in the Wall.

  1. The World in the Wall

*The World in the Wall, the secret society in the sky split into four major parts run by the Magistre, the school’s faculty, 

  1. The Earth is Viva

*The Earths, the World in the Wall’s home dedicated to the students with the ability to manipulate the Earth. This dormitory-like setting is comprised of different types of wild-life, different species of animals, and a life-sized living rendition of the planet  Earth.

  1. Earth, Wind, and Amicus

*The Waters, the World in the Wall’s home dedicated to the students with the ability to manipulate the Air. This dormitory-like  setting is comprised of different types of water-life,  different species of animals, and a larger than life aquarium.

  1. The Action in the Americas

*The Americas,  the World in the Wall’s classroom dedicated to the Americas. In this setting, a living, breathing, ever-changing interpretation of New York City, every nightmarish landmark comes to life to patronize Amare and the rest of the First-year students. 

  1. The Unfinished

* The Unfinished, the World’s annual haunted house, the old and decrepid home to the Writer’s sick and twisted nightmarish dreams.

  1. The World’s Sport

*Matterhorn, the setting for this years World’s Sport: All-Star Game (the World’s highly intoxicating version of this world’s “Super Bowl”), a white snow-capped mountain (inspired by the similarly named mountain in the Swiss Alps).

  1. Caerule

*The France of Fruition,  the World in the Wall’s classroom dedicated to the individual. In this setting, a living, breathing, ever changing manifestation of Caerule’s greatest fears comes to life to create a monstrous hurricane dead set on wiping out the entire student population. 

  1. A-lie-n

*The Fires, the World in the Wall’s home dedicated to the students with the ability to manipulate Fire. This dormitory-like setting is comprised of different types of fire-life, different species of animals, and a larger than life flame that burns as long as the World lives on.

  1. The World in the Way

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

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First Assignment~

After journalist Mike Royko writes a harsh article about my lawyer father's involvement in a high-profile drug kingpin case, I become the target of relentless bullying, and my high school boyfriend unexpectedly steps in as my hero. However, a year later, his life starts to unravel due to his mother’s cancer diagnosis and his father’s descent into alcoholism and infidelity. As he struggles with these issues, my life finally begins to stabilize, and he is not happy about it. His insecurities drag him down a rabbit hole of anger, resentment, and a jealous fixation on my brother.

It was my debutante ball that ignited a series of confrontations, culminating in my brother's arm being severely injured, followed by a lawsuit that sparked a Hatfield-and-McCoy-style feud between our families. A few years later, at 23, the man who once protected me devises a plan of revenge against my family, resulting in my brutal rape and blackmail.  To avoid causing more family drama, I  buried the secret so deep that even I forgot. Until years later, when a birthday reminder jolts my memory, putting a face to the black shadowy tormentor that haunted my nightmares for a decade.  Now, I’m faced with the fallout of the decisions I made at 23 only to have to face them all over again at 50. 

Second Assignment~

Mike was the ideal all-American boy: cute, smart, funny, quarterback of the football team, and a key player in the popular crowd.  But beneath his facade lay deep insecurities about his self-proclaimed blue collar background. Mike and I fell in love our junior year of high school, becoming my hero when a scandal upended my life.

As my life begins to improve, Mikes unravels. His popularity doesn’t follow him to college, his mother is diagnosed with cancer, and his father turns to alcohol and infidelity, leaving Mike and his siblings to care for their mother. Meanwhile, my parents focus on repairing their reputation, arranging for me to debut in an exclusive Debutante Ball.  Despite attempts to include Mike, his insecurities deepen, fueling resentment toward me and my family. On the night of the ball, Mike’s drinking leads to a fixation on my brother, Victor, whom Mike perceives as upstaging him.  A violent altercation followed, resulting in Victor’s arm being severely injured and igniting a feud between the families. The ensuing lawsuit only fueled Mike’s rage.

Years later, consumed by hatred, Mike exacted his revenge by brutally raping me and blackmailing me, believing he was owed for what he saw as his family's unjust losses.

Third assignment~

Memoirs of a Charm School Dropout

Crossroads to Charm

Ignorance Was Bliss


 

Fourth assignment~

In comparing my book to Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley and Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself by Crystal Hefner, the similarities lie in the journey of self-discovery that follows life-altering events. Just as Sloane Crosley embarks on an exploration of life after experiencing a burglary and the suicide of a dear friend, my story delves into the deep introspection that follows significant, traumatic experiences. Both books examine how these pivotal moments force us to reevaluate our lives and the paths we’ve chosen, leading to profound personal transformation.

Similarly, in Only Say Good Things, Crystal Hefner confronts the impact of trauma experienced at an impressionable age—trauma that influenced her decisions and life course, even if she didn’t fully realize it at the time. Her journey of reaching a breaking point and setting out on a path of self-discovery and self-worth resonates strongly with my own narrative. Like Crystal, I faced a moment where I had to confront the buried pain that had shaped my life and decisions, leading me on a path to healing and understanding my true self.

In essence, all three books explore the aftermath of trauma and how it propels us into a journey of self-discovery, ultimately finding strength and clarity in the process.

 

Fifth, Sixth and Seventh assignment~

Logline~A 23-year-old woman violently raped and blackmailed buries her secret so deeply that even she forgets it. Years later, unexplainable nightmares haunt her, until a birthday reminder puts a face to her tormentor. Now, she must decide: get over it or get even.

Core Wound~ During my junior year of high school, my world imploded when my dad went to jail for a year on money laundering charges tied to his drug kingpin client. To make matters worse, renowned journalist Mike Royko wrote an article about a couple of my dad’s high profile clients including the drug kingpin and lumped my dad into it, making it seem as though he was personally dealing coke on the streets. Overnight, I became target practice for bullies. Mike, my boyfriend at the time, is the leader of the popular crowd and he is constantly defending me and shutting down the attacks against my family. 

As we headed into our senior year, Mike’s life unraveled. His mom was diagnosed with cancer, and his father spiraled, drowning in alcohol and infidelity, leaving Mike and his siblings to care for their mother after her chemo treatments. Mike and I leaned on each other more than ever, forming a bond forged in trauma and survival. I felt indebted to him in a way that ran deeper than love, a debt that I would carry for years, even at my own expense.

 

Conflict~ Over time, I watched Mike change. His bitterness and resentment grew, fueled by his mother’s worsening condition, his father’s downward spiral, and the fact that the popularity that had once defined him didn’t carry over into college. To make matters worse, he started losing his hair.  Now, he was the target of teasing, the cracks in his confidence deepened.

Meanwhile, my life was starting to get back on track. My parents involved me in their efforts to restore our family’s reputation, arranging for me to make my debut an elite debutante ball. I went out of my way to make Mike feel included at all the pre-ball events, but he made each one miserable for me whenever he could. For the ball, I needed two escorts, my brother Victor was the second. Victor, a handsome rebel with a magnetic personality, naturally attracted people, which only heightened Mike's insecurities.

The night of the ball, Mike’s drinking brought everything to the surface. He picked a fight with me about Victor, my family, and rich people in general, calling them dismissive and horrible. Mike stormed out, angry with me and the world. Two days later, he waited for Victor down the street from our house. Victor, thinking Mike was having car trouble, stopped to help. Instead, Mike picked a fight. Victor won that round, breaking Mike’s nose.

But the fight wasn’t over. During summer break, they had another altercation on our front porch, where Victor’s arm was severely injured, requiring multiple surgeries. My parents banned me from seeing Mike, but I defied them, thinking my punishment was unjust and not wanting to let Mike down when he needed me. My father sued Mike’s family for damages, which only deepened Mike’s resentment towards my family. I do my best to try to make both Mike and my family happy but not letting on to either that I am doing so.  My friends warned me about Mike’s dark changes, but I ignored them, holding onto the gratitude I felt for him being my hero during the hardest time of my life. I even lost friends over it.

In college, Mike and I naturally grew apart, seeing each other less and less. Just as we graduated, his mother lost her battle with cancer. Mike wanted me with him at the funeral, but his father wouldn’t allow it. After the service, Mike came to me for comfort, and that was the last time I remember seeing him.

I moved on with my life. While waiting to start law school, I took a two-month job as a nanny for the Culkin family while Macaulay filmed Home Alone 2 in Chicago. I hit it off with them so well that I decided to forgo law school and travel with the family. I also picked up work as a production assistant on films in Chicago whenever I wasn’t with the Culkins.

While working on Rookie of the Year, Mike contacted me out of the blue. He told me he was struggling with his mother’s death and with life in general and needed to see me. I explained that I didn’t have a lunch hour, but I could spare 30 minutes. He said he’d find a place nearby to make it easy on me. On the day we were supposed to meet, Mike called and said he was staying at a hotel near my office because of his construction job and didn’t want to drive back to the suburbs. He invited me to his room so we could talk privately, promising to have a sandwich for me since I had such limited time.

I didn’t sense any danger. I didn’t think twice about it. But within seconds of entering the room, I was handcuffed, blindfolded, and gagged. Mike proceeded to rape me with objects, taking pictures and telling me his plan to blackmail my family for the $300,000 he believed we had wrongfully taken from his.

Navigating how to tell my dad I am being blackmailed. 

Enter Katie, the one person I could trust with my secret, because I was holding one of hers. I met her after moving back home following college graduation. She had recently relocated to Chicago from Las Vegas to start a new life and career. Katie and I bonded immediately, our personalities so similar that we answered every question the same on a 100-question personality test. As we grew closer, Katie confided in me about the tragedy that had shaped her life: when she was 13, her older half-sister Cheryl had been killed by serial killer Stephen Morin, after enduring six agonizing months missing before her body was found. Unsurprisingly, Katie’s family was never the same.

But Katie didn’t want to be defined by her sister’s death. She didn’t want people feeling sorry for her or prying into the painful details of what her family had been through. Despite her disagreement with my decision to stay silent, I felt safe sharing my own secret with her.

Katie moved out of state in 2001 at which time I have been married for six years and already had three of my four kids. We are both so busy with our new families that our relationship evolves into only happy birthday and holiday greeting texts.  My only reminder of my rape is now gone and as time goes by, so does any remembrance of my rape. 

Fast forward to 2011 when I filed for divorce and left to raise my four kids completely on my own. My divorce is contentious, lasting three years during which time I start to have the same recurring nightmare that not only affects me but my children because they can not go back to sleep on the nights I wake up screaming. My kids and I are all in therapy during this time and my oldest son's psychologist in particular keeps telling me there has to be something behind my nightmares. I honestly don’t know and chalk it up to the stress of the divorce and me trying to keep myself and four kids above water. 

Katie moved out of state in 2001. By then, I had been married for six years and already had three of my four kids. We were both so busy with our new families that our relationship gradually dwindled to just holiday and birthday greeting texts. With Katie gone, my only reminder of the rape faded, and as time passed, so did any active memory of it.

Fast forward to 2011, when I filed for divorce and found myself raising my four kids entirely on my own. The divorce was contentious and dragged on for three years, during which I started experiencing recurring nightmares that affected not just me but my children, as they frequently couldn’t fall back asleep after hearing me wake up screaming. We were all in therapy during this time, and my oldest son’s psychologist repeatedly told me there must be something behind my nightmares. I honestly didn’t know. I chalked it up to the stress of the divorce and the struggle to keep myself and my four kids afloat.

Ten years passed. Life with the kids was good, and the nightmares had subsided, though they never fully disappeared. Then came February 27, 2021. It was a typical evening, with only my youngest daughter, now a high school senior, home with me. I went to bed as usual, but a few hours later, I woke up screaming. My shadowy nemesis from the nightmares had returned. I turned on the light to calm myself and checked my phone—it was now February 28th, Katie’s birthday.

My thoughts drifted to her and how much I missed having her in my life, remembering all the fun we had in our twenties. From there, I thought of her sister Cheryl, and my mind spiraled into the dark details of her disappearance and death. Then, as if a switch was flipped, I was suddenly reliving it, watching someone being raped, and that someone was me.

Now, I was forced to confront the fallout from the choices I made when I was 23. The grief I had buried for so long had finally imploded and it wasn’t going away. I faced difficult conversations, particularly with my dad and my brother Victor, about the truth of what Mike had done to me. I needed answers, especially about how my brain had protected me through dissociative amnesia. Had I made subconscious decisions that shaped my life because of it? I still wrestle with this today and will likely never know the answer to one haunting question: When was the last time I remembered being raped? What is the cost of gratitude, and when do the statutes of limitations expire, when the hero who saved you becomes the villain in your story?

Settings~ Late 1980’s high school where Mike and I meet, fall in love and the bullying takes place. 

1991, my college graduation from TCU followed by my move back to Chicago. Suburban restaurant where I meet an old friend and she introduces me to Katie.  Film set of Home Alone Two, being introduced to the Culkins and moving in across the hall from them at The Mayfair Regent in Chicago. 

1992, deciding to continue working with the Culkins, traveling with them through Europe, meeting Michael Jackson and staying at his ranch.  

Fall of 1992 production office of Rookie of Year in which I am a PA. 

Hotel scene where rape transpires.

My dads Chicago office where I go to tell him about the blackmail.

Still intertwined with the Culkins and traveling to whenever they need me which actually continues until 1995.

Spring of 1993, moving to LA to get out of Chicago. Culver City sound stage, starting work on a TV series, Bakersfield P.D.

January 17,1994 night of the Northridge earthquake in my cousins townhouse, waking up from the earthquake to shaking and power outage. Deciding to move back home to Chicago. 

1995 Struggling with my life and purpose, I decided to quit the film business altogether to become a social worker and was assigned to the most dangerous housing project in the country at the time, The Robert Taylor Homes. Doing risky things and putting myself in danger.

Fast forward to 2011, I now have a beautiful suburban home, four kids but a miserable marriage and I file for divorce. 

My bedroom, onset of my nightmares.

February 27, 2021, I am happy living in the new house I had been living in for the past 5 years, kids are thriving and grown. In my bedroom where my final and very last nightmare takes place. 

 

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