brianwood
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Joined: 19 Oct 2007
Posts: 2532
Location: Brooklyn, NYC
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 Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 3:50 pm Post subject: The New York Four - First Pass Proposal |
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Here is the first pass at the NY4 proposal, from January of 2006, such as it is. Obviously a lot changed, a lot just plain sucked, or was tweaked to better fit Minx. I always love this stage of the proposal process, when its more of a conversation, a stream-of-consciousness than a formal proposal.
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Hey Shelly
I think I'm still a step or two beyond writing a formal proposal, so instead here's another draft of notes and ideas.
After thinking about it, my inclination seems to be to write possibly a little older than you might want - college kids, although I think I could rework it younger, high school kids. Although I think the "older" option is more interesting and gives me a little more freedom in terms of what I can do with the characters.
So my "older" option is a group of college freshmen (18-19 yo), who's only other connection to each other is that they all answered the same ad on the back of the Voice, to be part of a test group for a pharmaceutical company. They've applied and been screened and selected to be a part of this, and even though the girls come from different walks of life, the common trait they have, the trait that qualifies them for the program is a mild kind of anti-socialism, the inability to full connect with others their age, to fit in with society, to maintain boundaries. They aren't overt freaks or "bad kids", they are just a little different, a little weird in their own way. This is where we get our klepto, our voyeur, our stalker, etc.
The nature of the drug isn't known at first - perhaps it never is? It's behavior-modifying, whatever it is, and if it has any visible effects at all on our kids its to enhance their tendency to act out, it makes them more inclined to stalk, steal, peep, etc. But these are cash-strapped students and despite the fact that they don't know exactly what they are taking, they continue with it. Each week they meet up for a group feedback session with a doctor at the test offices. This is the point where our characters intersect, where they talk and offer feedback on each other "progress". (I think over time, sooner rather than later, they'll develop friendships and hang out in addition to these group sessions.)
Without getting too overtly "sci-fi", the pharmaceutical company has a sinister edge to it, and it can't be discounted that they're doing something illegal, that the mood drugs are harmful, that this is part of a larger plan or program. I would leave that largely to the imagination of the reader, though, encouraged by a hint here and there.
So we have these kids, four girls (the boys are there, but they are all secondary characters, friends of the girls, not part of the group) who are in college, in NYC for the first time, living in interesting neighborhoods, meeting boys, and on top of all of that new stuff, all that change and demand and stress and thrill, they're on medication that just makes all of that more complicated.
We have a "star" of the book, and three supporting characters. The main storyline will focus on:
RILEY, our voyeur. She has a mild skin sensitivity - hates the direct sunlight and harsh fluorescent lighting - and often has rashes and bad skin as a result. Or, if she doesn't happen to have a rash, its because she obsessively maintains a regimen of applying topical medication and checking a wallet-sized card that measures UV light levels. She doesn't like being touched, in any way, or looked at much. She prefers to watch when other people aren't.
She's also attractive in that way that's hard to describe - technically rather plain, but with a quality that attracts people. But because she doesn't look like a girl in a magazine, she treats any admirer with suspicion.
(Riley is our main, as she'll be curious and will want to keep tabs on the others, our of sheer curiosity and as a way to learn more about them without actually having to directly engage.)
The others:
MERISSA - She is the only one of the bunch that comes from the city, although way, way out in Queens where people have big houses with front yards, so the city itself is fairly new to her. She is a textbook example of a user, a manipulator, an over-compensator and a kleptomaniac, feeding off the adrenaline and sense of power this gives her. She's also a total knockout, in all the ways that Riley is not, and earns a lot of resentment amongst everyone she knows, including her friends.
LONA - She is passive to a degree that's actually harmful to her, to her best interests, to her psyche, and her heart. Presumably any medication designed to help her would pull her out of it, give her a jolt of confidence, but our mystery drug just makes her more shy, more passive. She's taken to staking out those who have hurt her and exacting bitter, horrible revenge in her own subtle ways, in her own time.
REN - She is sort of a tomboy, a skater, "one of the guys", but actually really pretty boy-crazy. She has no sense of her own boundaries, of appropriate behavior, and is always making passes at the wrong guys at the worst moments, and they never ever reciprocate. She's not viewed as a sexy girl, or even a *girl* by most of the guys she likes.
So, the drug amps up these personality defects in all the wrong ways - Riley withdraws while stepping up her clandestine activities, Merissa's highs were never higher, but now come with crushing lows, Lona threatens to become the classic victim, but her dark side is emerging in ways that even freak her out, and poor Ren just keeps screwing up and getting lonelier and lonelier and more frustrated every day.
They go to Columbia, or some other, unnamed Ivy League-esque school. The atmosphere needs to be pretty button-down, rigorous, demanding. Their days are more or less average, but off-campus is where is all happens. These are kids in the city for the first time, the "big city", where it doesn't matter what time you get home, if you're 21 or not, where you can walk down any street and imagine being in a movie or in a band, where something totally weird and crazy and great is around every corner. What if every night you went out, it was like the film "After Hours"?
I wouldn't want any scene to be generic - if they're in a cafe, let's make it Yaffa. A bookstore - St. Marks. A Starbucks? Astor Place. Renting videos? Kim's, up by Columbia. The park, the 2/3, the Whitney, Southpaw, Warsaw, some shitty karaoke on Ave A, a bodega on east 13th st. It should all be real, no matter how ordinary the scene or the location.
The point of this is something I touched on a few times while writing Demo, the notion of people being crazy and dysfunctional and not-conforming to what people want, or what society wants. Of being who you are, warts and all, and making peace with yourself and learning to be happy with that. Our girls will recognize their problems, see them as that, and either work them out, modify them, replace them with something else, and learn how to live with it without hurting anyone else. Unlike Demo, these girls' stories should always have happy moments and positive resolutions, even if its just baby steps.
***In time, the drugs become less of the story, and the internal progression of the girls the focus. The story could run as long as we wanted - time could be stretched out, new characters could be worked in (they probably should, actually, and others can leave).
I could see this appealing to a lot of different types of readers. Its a book about cool and interesting girls in the city, but still young, not too far ahead of your target readership of 13 and 14-yo's. A little sister of an ex of mine once came to visit us in the city and all she wanted to do was to go to the places she saw in the tv show "Felicity", like Dean & Deluca. She was completely obsessed with the experiences Felicity had in school and in the city. There is also enough of a mystery and a sense of danger to the story, with the exploits of the stalker and voyeur, as well as the pharma company.
There is a vague sort of supernatural angle to this as well, similar to parts of Demo - altered behaviors without seeming typically druggy, alternate personalities and abilities, almost. I'm loathe to say "superpowers" to you, but parallels can be drawn if one chooses to, and that sort of thing never hurts, even if the direct market isn't your primary audience.
I also think that the personalities of the characters are such that any reader could probably see themselves in one of them, and if not, they certainly recognize the types.
(in progress)
-bri
1-19-06 |
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“I wish I had eight pairs of hands, and another body to shoot the specimens.” - John James Audubon |
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