Introduction to Pre-event Assignments 

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

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

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

Michael Neff

Algonkian Conference Director

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR POSTING

Several Algonkian groups utilize this forum. After you've registered and logged in, create your reply to this topic (button top right). Please post only one reply for all of your responses so the forum topic will not become cluttered. Your reply post, submitted by clicking on the "Edit Topic" button, will appear on the last page of this thread.  And one last thing, we suggest typing up your reply to the seven assignments in a separate text file then copying it over to your post before submitting. Not a good idea to lose what you've done.

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THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT

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

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

FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement. 

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THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT

(Photo : Javert from "Les Misérables")

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

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

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

CONTINUE READING ENTIRE ARTICLE AT NWOE THEN RETURN HERE.

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

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CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE

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

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

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

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

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DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT 

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

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

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

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

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

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

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication.

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OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS

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

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction.

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

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THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING

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

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

CONTINUE TO READ THIS ARTICLE THEN RETURN.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it.

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

We have reviewed these and agree 110%.

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

MEMOIR MUST INCLUDE TRANSCENDENCE

WRITE IT LIKE A NOVEL

MEMOIR ANECDOTES - HOW TO MAKE THEM SHINE

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Write to Pitch- Seven Assignments.  Please see the attached PDF.

Write to Pitch - Seven Assignments.pdf

NYC Write to Pitch Pre-Event Assignments.docx 

 

 

1: THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT

Overcome her trauma with men and find her best friend.

2: THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT

The primary antagonist in Madison’s story is her best friend, Frankie—an enigmatic and reckless character who deliberately pushes Madison beyond the bounds of her comfort zone, coaxing her into encounters that stir a deep fear of boys and urge her toward teenage hedonism. When Frankie abruptly withdraws from their friendship, Madison is left unmoored, her absence a wound that festers in silence. Then, after Frankie disappears, her shadow lingers, consuming Madison’s world as she retraces her friend’s illicit and intimidating path in a desperate search for answers. Thus, even in her missingness, Frankie’s overwhelming presence remains a complicated, often antagonistic, force. 

A secondary antagonist emerges in Dylan, a fellow high school student and varsity lacrosse player whose cruel harassment resurfaces the buried traumas Madison has long sought to shove to the bottom of her consciousness. Through her encounters with him as lacrosse team manager, she is forced to confront the specters of her past—ones that continue to distort her present with a quiet, debilitating fear.

3: CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE

A Bite from the Grapefruit Sun 

In the Sun Washed Silence 

Gentle Voices Speaking 

4: DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES

The dark exploration of coming-of-age possesses similarities in tone and narrative to The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. Although the gender of the narrators is inverted, both my novel and The Virgin Suicides explore the fragile, electrifying, and, at times, terrifying experience of girlhood. Also, both center around the rumor, secrecy, and isolation of the female characters within their small town. They teeter on the threshold of Young Adult fiction, centering around teens, but the core of their stories are heavy with mature content. 

Further, the thematic mistrust of memory and examination of female vulnerability is akin to Animal by Lisa Taddeo. Taddeo’s probing of the violence that inheres in the men who colonize femininity and the after-effects of trauma are very much in alignment with the essence of “A Bite from the Grapefruit Sun.” Animal also has a complicated narrator whose wavering reliability shows similarities to Madison.

5: CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT

After her best friend disappears, introverted Madison Delmar is thrust into a search through the tantalizing yet menacing world of boys and privilege, forcing her to confront the traumas she’s long tried to bury. 

6: OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS

Internal conflict: 

After a sexual assault that Madison cannot accept happened, nevertheless finding herself grappling with its constant visceral after effects, she hides in her friendship with Frankie and her school work. But, after one fateful night, Frankie metamorphoses into someone unrecognizable—she begins partying with older boys, having sex, and even biting back the baby blue pills she gets from her new drug-dealing boyfriend. She no longer has any interest in her friendship with Madison. Madison is left drowning alone in her anxieties, every man a spectre of her repressed fears, and the shadow of the one who forced himself where he did not belong haunts her room, unable to sleep, caught in an endless routine of paranoid insomnia. 

In her quest for answers as to why Frankie changed, and then, pressingly, where she has disappeared to, Madison must face her past and current traumas, caught in a web woven by the boys whose baby-blue button-downs overlay their violence. 

A scene that triggers the protagonist: 

She ventures to a rave, caught in the cacophonic throng of party-goers, to confront Frankie’s drug dealer. Through this encounter, she hopes to further uncover what happened to her best friend. His slippery hands roam around her body. She must wrestle with the flooding onslaught of memories that rattle inside her, on a collision course with her fears in the pursuit of the truth. He is an embodiment of her worst nightmare, an unsatiated man who grabs hold of her like her limbs belong to him. Men from her past are superimposed onto him, and, still, she stands her ground, able to fend off the trauma responses long enough to get answers. 

Second conflict: 

Madison exists within a world of inescapable masculine threat—an eerie presence that slinks beneath the pressed linen and rumble of laughter on manicured lawns. Dylan’s cruel, unrelenting tongue becomes a daily torment, and Madison discovers that the few boys she trusted harbor devastating secrets. In White Oaks, a coastal enclave polished to a mirror sheen, violence against girls is not punished but concealed. The town’s pristine veneer depends on secrecy: the pretty boys continue to smile with marble teeth, no one asking why the girls have bite marks. As Madison searches for Frankie, she begins peeling back this facade. Safety is a lie, sisterhood a fragile thing under siege. In a world designed to protect its sons, the cost of being a girl is borne in bruises, silences, and vanishing acts.

A scene that triggers the protagonist: 

A scene exemplifying such is after Frankie’s strangled body is eventually found, the town’s society still finds itself—after an appropriate mourning period, of course—at the country club. The button-down boys devour their plates clean, men wash their hands three times in the bathroom, and the women clutch their necklaces, speaking in corners with soft voices. It couldn’t have been someone from White Oaks. The men here don’t do that sort of thing. Madison shrouds herself in her ritualized silence. Is she the only one who sees behind their good-boy acts, or are all the women merely pretending their sons don’t have arms like baseball bats?

7: THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING

In this Southern California town nestled on the coast of the Pacific, wealth and ennui seemingly wrap its inhabitants in safety. Nothing bad happens in a place where the ocean endlessly reflects the pastel sunshine—or so they think. But the falacy cracks, splinters, and eventually outright shatters the further Madison ventures into the social circles of White Oaks. Still, she cannot escape its clutches, the mentality of perfectionism ingrained. As much as Madison is repelled by her town, is she a product of it. She looks the part of the beautiful, together girl, but can’t feel it. The setting reflects this; on the precipice of the renewal of summer, the idyllic landscape juxtaposes the dark realities beneath the surface. 

Sometimes the environment is a friend—the sunshine swaddling Madison in warmth. Other times, an ominous foreboding—the ocean’s current, obscured in the flat darkness, sways ambiguously. The indulgent parties, where boys’ hands linger beyond their bounds, sand stuck between toes when liquor makes limbs limp, Jeeps going too fast over hot asphalt, is teenagerdom in a nutshell, but something is wrong. And, in the pool, when the dusk blankets the splashing water, eyes looking into one another suspiciously, no one can be trusted. 

White Oaks also augments the experience of growing up as a girl. With exposed flesh and a need to be more socially advanced than the next, it is a race for adulthood. In this wealthy town where teenagers try to behave well beyond their years, it poses a direct threat to Madison’s emotional well-being and the sensitive self-preservation she futilely tries to maintain.

Suzette Francis

 

First Assignment:  

Geneva Shaw must reclaim her family’s ancestral land in rural Alabama, and in doing so, confront the buried secrets of her lineage, navigate a hostile legal battle, and reconcile her identity as both heir and outsider in a place that never fully accepted her.

 

Second Assignment:  

Davenport Stockton is a wealthy land developer and heir to one of the South’s most powerful families. Raised to value legacy, control, and appearance above all else, he sees the world as his to dominate through wealth, charm, and calculated force. His public persona is one of refinement and civic pride, but beneath the surface lies a man driven by the fear of losing power, and the fear of being exposed.

His goal is to acquire Murray Farm, absorb it into his expanding empire, and erase the last remnant of the past that threatens his spotless legacy. To him, the land is leverage. A symbol of dominance.

But Geneva Shaw’s return, and her unwavering claim to the farm, threatens to unravel everything he’s built. As old secrets begin to surface, Davenport's grip begins to slip. He reacts not with humility, but with resistance. Yet as cracks appear in his armor, so too does a creeping awareness that perhaps his empire was built on theft and silence.

Davenport is not a villain in the classic sense, but he is dangerous. Because he’s willing to destroy anyone who threatens his carefully curated myth, even if that someone is his own blood.

 

Third Assignment:

The Southerner

The Inheritance

Blood and Boundary Lines

Murray Farm

God, Guns, and Acreage

Fourth Assignment: 

1. Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe (May 13, 2025)

Set in early 20th-century South Carolina, this sweeping family saga follows Eliza Mayfield from her childhood on a Lowcountry estate through the upheavals of war, societal change, and personal loss. As Eliza matures into the family's matriarch, she grapples with preserving the Mayfield legacy amid shifting times. Monroe's evocative prose and rich character development mirror the atmospheric storytelling found in The Southerner, making this novel a compelling read for fans of multigenerational Southern epics.

 

2. Gothictown by Emily Carpenter (March 25, 2025)

In this modern Southern Gothic tale, disillusioned urbanite Billie relocates to the seemingly idyllic town of Juliana. However, as her sleep deteriorates and her marriage frays, Billie uncovers the town's unsettling secrets and the menacing nature of its elders. Carpenter's novel delves into themes of small-town decay, hidden histories, and the psychological unraveling of its protagonist, resonating with the haunting and introspective elements present in The Southerner. 

 

3. Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall (April 2025)

Hall's debut novel offers a poignant exploration of a family's fractured history in the rural South. Through lyrical prose, the story examines generational trauma, the weight of secrets, and the quest for redemption, resonating with the emotional depth and Southern Gothic elements characteristic of The Southerner.

 

4. Fortitude by M. A. Holm (February 2025)

Set against the backdrop of the Spanish-American War, this novel follows Claire O'Farrell, a young woman challenging societal norms in the Jim Crow South. Holm weaves a narrative rich in historical detail and emotional complexity, exploring themes of courage, identity, and the enduring impact of the past on the present.

 

Fifth Assignment:

The fight for Murray Farm isn’t just about land. It’s about blood, betrayal, and a Southern town’s reckoning with the ghosts it tried to forget.

 

Sixth Assignment:

The Protagonist’s inner conflict:

After her husband divorces her like a bomb suddenly dropping overhead, Geneva learns that the large farm she inherited in Rutherford County, Alabama has been seized through eminent domain by Davenport Stockton, the wealthiest man in town. Before she has time to heal from the hurt of losing the man she would spend the rest of her life with, she is forced to prepare for battle. With the weight of four generations of ancestors on her shoulders, she is determined to save her family’s farm so that her son can inherit it, a promise she made to her father before he died. Geneva struggles with leaving a thirty-year nursing career, her home in Northern Virginia, and her best friend, Jessica.

Scene that triggers the protagonist:

Exhausted from traveling, Geneva arrives at Murray Farm to find a strange lock on the door, a condemnation notice fluttering in the wind,  and a sheriff suddenly appears. Sheriff Tate forces her off the property she inherited. With bitterness boiling over from her divorce and what she views as the theft of her property, she goes to see an attorney the next day. The attorney informs her that eminent domain is a legal maneuver that towns can use to condemn property they determine could be put to better use. Geneva is stunned to learn that most of the black-owned farms that used to be in the Mount Zion section of Rutherford County were taken by this method. Even knowing that a case like this could be expensive and take years to resolve, Geneva is determined to fight.

Secondary Conflict:

After the hearing is delayed for a year, Geneva and her son, Zane, work to turn Murray Farm into a profitable enterprise that serves the community, but along the way, there are death threats against them, vandalism, and a conflict of interest—-she is falling in love with Davenport Stockton’s attorney and her son is captivated by his granddaughter. In a place and time that presents more danger than Geneva and her son are prepared for, she makes the tough decision to continue the struggle and keep her promise to her father.

 

Assignment 7: Setting

When Geneva returned to Rutherford County, it was not the weathered patchwork of red clay roads and tractor tracks she remembered. The rough-edged, slow-moving farm town of her childhood had been paved over, glossed, and reshaped into something nearly unrecognizable. Where the old grainery once stood, its silos creaking in the wind like rusted statues, there now rose Whispering Pines, a pristine subdivision with manicured lawns and streetlamps that glowed like pearls at dusk. 

At the county’s center, what used to be thousands of acres of cotton and forgotten machinery had been razed to make room for Stockton Place, the most exclusive gated community in three counties. It sprawled like a fortress of ambition, all brick and stone and wrought-iron fencing like wealth wearing a smug smile.

And Mount Zion, where blight and boarded windows had once whispered of generational poverty, a glossy new shopping mall now shimmered with fluorescent light. Beside it, the fresh-planted trees of Belle Meadow lined the sidewalks of yet another new development, each house nearly identical—bright, polished, soulless. But beneath the veneer, Geneva could still feel the bones of the past. What used to be black-owned farmland had been swallowed whole, the erasure humming beneath every welcome mat, with only a few holdouts remaining.

The condition of the house Geneva inherited on Murray Farm, built long before the Civil War ever began, stood like a relic from a museum. Two stories of weathered red brick and stubborn endurance, its Georgian bones etched into the Alabama earth.  A wide veranda stretched across the back, sagging slightly at the edges, as though weary from carrying so much memory. Below, a cellar carved into the clay still held the cool breath of generations gone. A crooked stone path, half-swallowed by weeds and time, led to what once had been a thriving garden, now a tangle of honeysuckle and neglect. Beyond that, the land opened like a breath held too long: acres of soybeans and corn pushing skyward, bordered by woods so thick they whispered secrets. In spring, the scent of magnolia blossoms rode the breeze like perfume; in summer, the trees stood like soldiers, guarding against the blistering heat. A little farther on, the peach orchard drooped with the weight of its past, its trees shedding overripe fruit that sank into the soil like offerings. And through it all wound a silver-threaded creek, cool and glistening, catching the sunlight as if to remind whoever still watched: the land remembers everything.

Geneva meets with her attorney, Lydia Thomas, at her office perched on the twenty-third floor of a sleek glass tower in downtown Birmingham, overlooking the city skyline like a queen surveying her dominion. The space was minimalist but intentional—brushed brass fixtures, abstract Black Southern art on the walls, and a curated shelf of legal texts and biographies, each spine uncreased and gleaming under soft, recessed lighting. Lydia’s desk, Italian walnut with clean lines, was cleared of all but a silver pen holder and a slim MacBook. 

While Geneva met with Alexander Walters, she couldn’t help but contrast Lydia’s office with his. A converted antebellum house just off the courthouse square, its wraparound porch shaded by dogwoods and humming with the low buzz of cicadas. Inside, the air smelled of cedar, old paper, and pipe tobacco long since retired. His office was cluttered but lived-in: case files in leaning towers, yellow legal pads half-filled and fraying at the corners, a green banker’s lamp casting a low glow over his battered oak desk. The centerpiece, however, was mounted proudly behind him: a massive largemouth bass, caught in 1986 and preserved with more love than most family heirlooms. 

After the appellate judge granted her the opportunity to live at Murray Farm until after the hearing, Geneva agreed to meet with Davenport in order to retrieve the house keys. The Stockton house sat atop a low, manicured hill like a crown half-tilted on a fading monarch. Built in 1944, the year Davenport was born, the estate was a sprawling testament to wealth that refused to whisper. Its brick façade, once a deep crimson, had faded to a softer, rosier hue, as though time had tried to humble it but failed.

 

 

Write to Pitch Conference June 2025 PreWork

Maria Miller Silvert

Assignment 1: Story Statement

Leilani Drew, a Hawaiian beauty and grand niece of famed detective Nancy Drew, upholds her family legacy by investigating the double mysteries of Turtle Cove, a violent murder and a fabled buried treasure.

Assignment 2: The Antagonist(s)

Mike Campbell: Treasurer of the HomeOwners Association at Turtle Cove and retired lawyer, Mike Campbell becomes increasingly suspicious, desperate and threatening as Leilani investigates the murder and buried treasure. A gambling addiction threatens to ruin his life, as do his ties with The Palaoa, a dangerous drug running gang on Maui.

Mr. A.: Rumored to be the ruthless leader of the Palaoa gang on the Hawaiian islands, A stands for anonymous, because no one knows his true identity and anyone who did discover it met their demise soon after. Mr. A. is introduced in this book, and his presence will continue in the planned series.

Maud and John Finkley: Flamboyant Maud, president of the HomeOwners Association, and mild mannered husband John, are a senior couple living at Turtle Cove resort. But appearances aren’t all they seem and these tragic antagonists create life threatening problems for Leilani. 

Assignment 3: Breakout Title

Mystery of Turtle Cove, a Leilani Drew Mystery

Murder at Turtle Cove, a Leilani Drew Mystery

Secrets of Turtle Cove, a Leilani Drew Mystery

Assignment 4: Comparables

Enola Holmes Mysteries, by Nancy Springer

Because the series is a spin off of Sherlock Holmes, set in historical London, and the appealing younger sister, Enola, solves the mysteries, it has some characteristics similar to Mystery of Turtle Cove. 

Leilani Drew is an appealing and complex young woman, grand niece to Nancy Drew, and the first murder is set on contemporary Maui. Leilani relies on her two siblings for help in making her investigations. A parallel setting related to the buried treasure takes place on Maui in the mid 1800s to early 1900s. 

The Lei Crime Series, by Toby Neal

Like the Mystery of Turtle Cove, the Lei Crime series portrays a female multi racial protagonist compelled to solve crimes amidst stunning island settings, showcasing the contrast between paradise and a seamy criminal underbelly that infests the islands, framed by a strong Hawaiian cultural context.

Assignment 5: Core Wound and the Primary Conflict 

A chilling murder and an ancient buried treasure draw Polynesian beauty Leilani Drew, grand niece of famed detective Nancy Drew, into the dual mysteries of Turtle Cove, an oceanfront resort on the island paradise of Maui. Despite tragic personal losses, an inner ear imbalance that hampers her dreams, and the disapproval of her older brother, Leilani follows her family legacy, compelled to prove her own worth as a detective even as a dangerous investigation threatens her life.

Assignment 6: Other Conflicts

Inner Conflict:

She sat for a moment, thinking about her conversation with Keke. She had lied to her about falling off the cliff. And she was hiding information from Kai. A denseness squeezed her chest, and razor-like wires of guilt wrapped themselves around her gut. 

Even as she acknowledged her deceitfulness, she knew she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, stop her investigations. 

At eleven, after her mother’s death, Leilani realized she couldn’t control anything, so she lost herself in Aunt Nancy’s books. Reading about Aunt Nancy’s adventures, she felt she too could solve mysteries, and that maybe, it was something she could be good at. Perhaps even be a hero like her Aunt Nancy, and have something of value to offer others. As time went on, she discovered solving mysteries took her out of herself and helped her feel in control. The rest of her life was so messy. Her depresssion, fueled by grief, fear, and loneliness, she numbed by drinking. Then her father died and she was driven to discover what happened, even though it remained a desolate mystery. She was afraid to get too close to anyone because she didn’t want to go through the hurt of losing them, like her parents. Solving mysteries gave her a purpose, and when she felt shy and awkward, it helped her talk with people. 

 

Secondary conflict:

(Leilani has broken into the house of the murdered man at night to search for evidence.)

 

She took out her phone and snapped photos of the back and front of the painting. Then she gently pressed the frame closed and carefully hung the painting back in its place on the wall. The sound of a motor alerted her.  It was a car, creeping up the street. An urgent necessity to leave exploded in her gut. Turning off the flashlight, she walked out of the house, locking the door behind her. She jumped down to the ground and ran to the side yard. From her vantage point behind a bush, she saw the radiating blue light of a patrol car.  It stopped in front of the house. She hoped the officer wouldn’t do a physical check of the grounds. Holding her breath, she moved into the shadow of a Japanese silk tree. The officer slowly got out of the car. Suddenly, the police radio cackled and the dispatcher’s voice came through. The officer got back into the car and answered. The cruiser's blue lights flashed and the car took off. Leilani breathed a sigh of relief. That was too close. Imaging Kai’s reaction if she had been caught took her breath away and she forced herself to not think. 

Assignment 7: Setting

Maui, an iconic paradise that conjures images of sun filled days spent lazing on butter colored sand beaches, swimming glittering turquoise waters, and snorkeling with sea turtles and kaleidoscopic fish. Drinking pina coladas from a beach side lanai while watching humpback whales breaching next to toned surfers catching waves, muscles glistening in the sun. It’s a massive sandbox and playground for sports lovers and hedonists alike offering an array of water sports, whale watching, volcano climbing, MaiTai drinking, world class golfing, ukulele playing, karaoke singing, hula dancing, horseback riding, polo playing panoply of delights. 

 

And yet, beneath the stunning natural beauty of the island, its tranquil aquamarine waters, plumeria scented breezes, melodic bird song, and lush emerald colored valleys and peaks of neighboring islands, for all its outward celebration of life and living, lies a seductive lull from deep beneath the earth, a pulsing from the heart of the island, a sepulchral whisper that says “one day soon you will be mine too.” For evidence of Death’s mark is everywhere for the awakened eye to see. 

 

On the islands, shark attacks are more common than being shot, hit by a drunk driver, drowning in the ocean, goring by wild boar, or dying from a falling coconut. But these dangers, and more, lurk everywhere - from razor sharp black lava rocks that line the coastline, to sea mangos (the suicide fruit) that look similar to the delicious sweet and tangy lilikoi to fiery red monster centipedes. And then there are the human dangers - gun violence, gangs, meth labs, pot fields, drunk drivers, pissed off islanders, steep pali trails covered in vines that grab at the ankles of naive tourists, throwing them headlong down a thousand foot drop, and the jungle itself, breathing, heaving, sweating, devouring all that enter, well, the list does go on.

Assignment 1: 

Amidst violence, rebellion, and the awakening of long-dormant powers, Tristan and Ellasmer must work together to overthrow the Torrolc King and his immortal mystic, Galrwin, traveling to the Ebysand Isles in hopes of securing allies and a prophecy that might just help them succeed. 

Assignment 2: 

Ellasmer Isona is the rightful heir to the throne of Starn and one of the last surviving members of the Royals after the bloody sacking by the Torrolc tribe twelve years ago. But her plans must change when a boy named Tristan, the same boy prophesied to her by the waters of the Ebysand Isles when she was six to help her retake said throne, lands half-dead on her doorstep. 

Glarwin Elden was not always this empty, rotting, immortal mystic. Four hundred years ago, he had been a mortal, cursed to this existence by the Ultesca Stone when the one he had loved, Sira, was taken from him by her possessive mate. Now Galrwin has struck a dangerous deal with the new rebel King and the same ancient being in The Stones that took his mortality to win it back. His first task: kill a boy named Tristan. 

Assignment 3: 

1. Voice in the Stones

2. Stonebound

3. The Prophecy of Water and Stone 

Assignment 4: 

The hero's-journey reminiscent of 'A Darker Shade of Magic' by V.E. Schwab, with alternating POV narratives like 'Six of Crows' by Leigh Bardugo. 

'A Darker Shade of Magic' follows the journey of a man who becomes the target of a dark conspiracy, pairing with a fierce and reckless adventurer. Readers of this story will like the high-stakes, adventure, witty conversations, and magic of my novel. 

'Six of Crows' narrates different POVs, capturing the internal conflict and struggle of each character. My story follows the POV of three main characters, including the antagonist, allowing readers to know what motivates and troubles each character. 

 Assignment 5:  

Primary Conflict: Tristan must confront the truth of his bloodline and unravel a prophecy in order to survive. 

Secondary Conflict: Galwrin is trying to kill Tristan to win back his immortality and rescue Sira from her prison. 

Ellasmer wanted to use Tristan for her own ends to gain the Starn crown. 

Despite his efforts to stay focused on revenge, Tristan falls in love with Niressa. 

Inner Conflicts: Tristan doesn't believe he is worthy of any of it. It all feels too big for someone with such simple beginnings. 

Assignment 7: 

Tristan’s story takes place in a country called Starn, a larger part of the continent Matria. Starn is famous for its mountains and weapons, with a ragged history of conflict and stories of long-buried magic within the Earth. The kingdom is now poor and broken, torn apart by the mountain barbarians, the Torrolc, who razed the kingdom to the ground twelve years ago. Life is a brutal existence for most who live there, facing down poverty, famine, and the cruel whims of the Torrolc King. Because of this, most of people turn to stories to sate their thirst for life and what it used to be. Stories of old about magical beings who used to love humans and bestow them with gifts of power and elongated life. Of dragons who flew high and proud against the bluest of skies and men who lived within the mountains, carving tunnels deep into their depths and stashing away the treasure of a hundred kingdoms. Stories that most everyone, especially Tristan, sees as nothing but childish tales…until they start coming true.

Tristan, isolated in his small farming town in Yú Valley, knows very little of the world beyond his sight and the stories their town weavers tell. But after his family's slaughter, Tristan is forced to flee, encountering places he never dreamed of—a beautiful cottage next to the sea, ports bustling with people from distant lands, taverns packed to the gills with delicious food and exotic music.

It is within these new places that he meets people equally incomprehensible. The soft kindness of a girl named Juniper and her fiery sister, Ellasmer. The stoic and constant of Rose, their caretaker, and the quick smile of their friend Niressa. One bad decision leads to another, and soon Tristan finds himself aboard an ice ship, headed far beyond the borders of Starn across the seas to the ice-covered Ebysand Isles in search of an ancient prophecy, rumored to exist deep within their cold waters.  

New York Write to Pitch – First Seven Assignments

1.      The Act of Story Statement –

a.       Find a lost and legendary magic to save his people

2.      The Antagonist–

Captain Culpepper, a disgraced former League officer turned pirate, is the story’s most direct and dangerous antagonist—ambitious, calculating, and obsessed with reclaiming the power he believes was stolen from him. He sees the discovery of Terre Magic not as a cultural artifact, but as a weapon to restore his influence and reshape the world on his terms. Ruthless and resourceful, Culpepper operates from the shadows, sending operatives like Raul to manipulate, threaten, and sabotage Teague’s progress. His personal history with the League mirrors Teague’s own inner conflict about where his loyalties lie, but where Teague seeks meaning and redemption, Culpepper pursues control and revenge.

Culpepper’s presence drives the chase, but the story’s deeper antagonistic force is ideological: the battle between those who would exploit Molloy’s magic for political gain, and those who wish to protect it. That tension is embodied in both Culpepper and Cattaneo, the Anbessan military leader who distrusts Chesher’s alliance with outsiders and seeks to preserve the island’s secrecy at all costs. Together, they represent the opposing extremes of domination and isolation—forces Teague and Chesher must navigate if they hope to do more than simply survive.

3.      Title Options –

a.       The Island of Molloy: Part 1—Marked for Travel

b.      The Edge of Magic

c.       Echoes of Magic

4.      Genre and Comps –

Fantasy/Action/Adventure/Romance. The Island of Molloy fits seamlessly into the market alongside recent breakout titles that blend atmospheric fantasy, moral complexity, and emotionally resonant character arcs. With its immersive worldbuilding, slow-burn romance, and magic tied toa dark history, culture, and control, it will appeal to readers who crave depth alongside adventure.

Comparable to Fable by Adrienne Young and To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo, The Island of Molloy offers a seafaring edge, an emotionally guarded protagonist, and a hidden world with political stakes. Like The Atlas Six and A Darker Shade of Magic, it balances high-concept magical systems with themes of loyalty, identity, and the ethical cost of power. Readers drawn to The Starless Sea will recognize the layered mystery and the way the story and setting fold into one another, while fans of Sorcery of Thorns will connect with the reluctant alliance at the heart of the narrative.

With strong crossover appeal between Young Adult and Adult audiences, The Island of Molloy stands out for its introspective tone, and lyrical style. It’s ideal for readers who want fantasy that lingers—rich in tension, secrets, and slow-burning emotional stakes.

5.      Core Wound and Primary Conflict – Logline

a.       When an ex-navigator turned undercover archivist uncovers a missing girl’s journal from a forbidden island, he’s thrust into a dangerous chase for ancient magic that could save his crew, rife with tangled loyalties, and buried truths—haunted by his past and hunted by pirates, Teague must decide who he is, and who he’s willing to become, before the island consumes everything left of him.

6.      Inner/Interpersonal Conflict Summary –

The Island of Molloy is built on a tightly layered web of conflict—external, interpersonal, and internal—that drives both the plot and character development. At the story’s core is the primary conflict: Teague Dubois, a disgraced League navigator working undercover, joins a diplomatic mission to the mysterious island of Molloy in pursuit of a legendary travel magic known as Terre Magic. His goal, complicated by secrets and shifting loyalties, places him in direct opposition to multiple forces—his own government, a ruthless pirate from his past, and the islanders themselves, who seek to protect their power and sovereignty. The rediscovery of magic becomes a political flashpoint, one that threatens to upend fragile diplomatic relations and reignite old wounds.

These high stakes are intensified by interpersonal conflicts that ripple through the narrative. Teague’s growing bond with Chesher Tello, the explorer long thought lost and now embedded with the Anbessans, begins in suspicion and slowly deepens into emotional tension. Both are forced to navigate their conflicted loyalties and unspoken truths as they are drawn closer by mutual purpose and personal history. Meanwhile, Teague’s duplicity strains his relationship with his Havalan companions, Bakshi and Valverde, as trust fractures within the diplomatic party. On the island, Chesher faces opposition from Cattaneo, her Anbessan superior, who fears her alliance with outsiders may jeopardize their people’s survival. The reemergence of Captain Culpepper, a former League officer turned notorious criminal, adds external pressure, forcing Teague to reckon with a past he thought he had outrun—and an enemy willing to weaponize the island’s magic.

Beneath these political and interpersonal layers lies Teague’s most personal conflict: the battle between the man he once was, loyal to the League and the man who raised him, and the man he might still become. Longing for his old life, but forced to remain on his path of subterfuge, Teague clings to a fabricated identity and fight his own uncertainty as he is driven to reclaim purpose and worth. As his connection to Chesher and the island deepens, Teague must confront his core wound—his fear of being permanently lost, directionless, and unworthy of redemption. Choosing between duty and desire, control and trust, becomes the emotional fulcrum of his arc. In this way, The Island of Molloy builds tension not just through external danger, but through the intimate choices that shape identity, power, and belonging.

7.      Setting –

The setting of The Island of Molloy is central to the novel’s atmosphere, conflict, and narrative momentum. Officially abandoned, Molloy is a place the outside world has written off as uninhabitable—once used as a dumping ground for dangerous fauna and now dismissed as a ghost island. But this surface-level mythology conceals a thriving, secretive civilization and a layered geography shaped by misinformation, history, and magic. The terrain itself is a character: dense jungle, hidden valleys, treacherous coastlines, and overgrown ruins create an environment that is as disorienting as it is beautiful. Much of Molloy’s power lies in what it withholds—its camouflaged communities, false maps, and its manipulation of distance and perception through Terre Magic, a transport-based magic controlled by the Anbessan people. The magic is not only a tool but a cultural safeguard—used to protect Molloy from discovery, and to resist the colonizing forces that would exploit its secrets.

The island’s political structure reinforces this tension: a shadow government keeps its own people in line through magic-bound oaths and power plays, complicating the protagonist’s efforts to determine who can be trusted. Molloy is more than a hidden world—it’s a contested one, with its own stakes, loyalties, and history of suppression. As Teague and his companions move through this landscape, they are forced to confront the blurred lines between exploration and intrusion, diplomacy and exploitation.

While Molloy serves as the novel’s emotional and narrative core—a hidden island cloaked in mystery, forgotten history, and tightly guarded magic—other settings expand the political and cultural scope.. The story deliberately introduces readers to the wider world of Vemados, using the journey itself to expand scope and tension. Teague’s diplomatic mission departs from Havalivala’s capital, Kasoji—a city desperately trying to modernize, seat to the government, and a burgeoning military force—and passes through Brahma, a bustling coastal city shaped by trade, culture, and political rumor. Their travels continue into the border nation of Tiebout, the inland metropolis of Sabazan, and the small maritime power of Baldassare, all members of the Kysh Alliance. Each of these locations offers distinct political climates and social dynamics, anchoring the novel’s themes of secrecy, erasure, and contested history in tangible environments.

These settings aren’t simply worldbuilding—they’re plot-driving forces. Each place introduces new cultural rules, unseen threats, and interpersonal challenges that shape Teague’s mission and personal arc. The novel uses movement across these landscapes not just to add texture, but to build tension and purpose. Together, they form a living world that reflects the novel’s core questions: Who gets to write history? Who controls the truth? And what does it cost to uncover what was meant to stay buried?

1.      Act of story statement

Sylvie March is a food writer who often neglects her feelings and relationships. When her best friend actress Sugar Mark drowns in front of her, Sylvie must face her complicity in allowing her friend to die. When she is accused of Sugar’s death—is it murder?—an old flame reappears to defend her. Did he love her or only Sugar?

 

2.      Antagonist

Sugar Mark has been Sylvie March’s best friend for decades, but she always gets more attention. Is Sylvie finally tired of being second?  

 

3.      Title

Mostly True

                Recipe for Murder

Watching Her Drown

 

4.      Genre: Women’s Fiction/Chick Lit/Beach Read

Paging Aphrodite by Kim Green

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl

 

5.      Hook line

As she watches her famous best friend drown in her swimming pool and hesitates to act, a food writer must discover her true feelings for the friend she thought she loved.

 

6.      Inner conflict/Secondary conflict

Sylvie March always hesitates, putting others first and stepping away from the spotlight. She hides behind her writing, letting others—especially her best friend, an actress—get the attention. Is she finally tired of coming in second?

Accused of murder, Sylvie March faces a long lost love and questions her true feelings.

7.      Setting

“East Coast girls are hip…” sang the Beach Boys and Sylvie and Sugar have lived from Boston to Cape Cod, Virginia to D.C., and enjoyed the best of their East Coast experiences—from beach to city and the mountains of the Blue Ridge to the cobbled streets of Boston. Oh, and time in London, too.

Algonquin Novel Development.docx

Michael Chorost - HOW TO TALK TO ALIENS (Science Fiction)

1. Story Statement

Short version:

Jonah Loeb, a deaf and underestimated grad student in entomology, must learn an alien language in order to negotiate peace with a sapient, and angry, ant colony menacing Washington DC.

Longer version:

Jonah Loeb, a deaf and underestimated grad student in entomology, has to negotiate peace with a sapient, and angry, ant colony that is menacing Washington DC. Its primary weapon is an electromagnetic field that makes humans go psychotic. Jonah’s deafness somehow protects him—so it is he and his small team (a linguist, a neuroscientist, and a physicist) who must go to the planet Formicaris to learn the ant colony’s language. When the neuroscientist begins sabotaging their efforts, Jonah must figure out how to lead his divided team to master, together, an extraordinarily alien way of thinking and speaking. 

2. The Antagonist

Calvin Armitage is a brilliant grad student in neuroscience, but he is also a ruthless user who believes that he can directly perceive the existence of God. His encounter with the psychosis field makes him believe that the hives of Formcaris are evil, and cannot be trusted to negotiate peaceful coexistence. He secretly begins sabotaging the data that the team’s linguist is using to crack the language, in order to derail even the possibility of negotiation. At the same time, he wants to use the data to advance his own career. Thus he publicly helps the team while privately sabotaging it. Jonah cannot simply replace Calvin; without his formidable intelligence, the team will certainly fail. Jonah is intimidated by Calvin’s arrogance and prowess, but with encouragement from the team’s linguist and from an alien robot, he grows into a confident leader. In the final confrontation with Calvin, Jonah must draw on skills honed by a lifetime of deafness.

3.  Title

Genre: Science fiction

Potential titles: HOW TO TALK TO ALIENS; THE HIVE THAT SHOOK HER HAND; and INTENTIONALITY FIELD. I am not satisfied with any of these.

4. Comps

Ted Chiang's novella STORY OF YOUR LIFE; China Miéville's EMBASSYTOWN; R.F. Kuang’s BABEL. All of these novels focus on problems of translation and communication.

5. Core Wound and Primary Conflict

A deaf graduate student in entomology struggling for respect and inclusion finds himself, and his small team, thrust into learning an alien language so that they can persuade a sapient, and angry, insect colony to coexist peacefully with humanity. Jonah must overcome his lifelong marginalization in order to successfully lead fellow scientists who are more accomplished than he is.

6. Protagonist’s inner conflict

Jonah is attracted to, but ambivalent about, Daphne, the team’s linguist, because she—like him—has a prosthetic body part. (He has a cochlear implant, she has a prosthetic arm.) He cannot make up his mind whether he is attracted to her. This stems from his own doubts about himself: is he worthy of respect and inclusion—that is, is he whole? He unwittingly projects this insecurity onto her. This dynamic is important to the story because he will only be able to defeat the hives’ primary weapon, the psychosis field, when he is able to see both Daphne and himself as whole. 

Protagonist’s secondary conflict involving social environment: scenario

When Jonah and Daphne are in the psychosis field, they can only see each other as machines. Jonah perceives Daphne as ugly because of her prosthetic arm, and scornfully tells her so. She reacts with fury, and later—when the threat is past—treats him with cool remoteness because she is deeply hurt. When Jonah tries, awkwardly, to apologize by saying that she is attractive despite her arm, she sets him straight by telling him that he is attractive because of his deafness. The reason is that he has intelligence and insight despite having struggled to hear early in life—he’s had to learn to be tenacious and resourceful. This sets the stage for Jonah’s later realization that Daphne, too, is beautiful because of, not despite, her prosthetics.

7. The Setting

The novel is set in present-day Washington, D.C. and on the hives’ planet, Formicaris.

On Earth, key scenes happen in graduate student lounges and scientific labs. The lounges’ grubbiness underscores the low social position of graduate students. On the other hand, they showcase intellectual ambition, with stacks of professional journals and conference posters on the walls. These posters play a crucial role in Jonah’s first encounter with Daphne. When he asks her to explain one of her posters, he realizes that she would be a good fit for the mission to Formicaris.

The labs are filled with astoundingly sophisticated equipment, but they show the human side of science as well: they are workplaces, with post-it notes of tech support phone numbers and magnetic poetry on the refrigerators griping about failed experiments.

On Formicaris, the team encounters a civilization totally unlike Earth’s. They are shocked by the planet’s high gravity and cacophonous sounds. Initially, they completely fail to understand what they see: enormous polyhedra stacked like toy blocks, hollow spheres zipping about, and dog-sized “elephants” plodding the ground while carrying tools. Vast networks of pipes and plants run through the spaces between the polyhedra. Only gradually do the team members realize that the polyhedra are hives contained in metal shells; the spheres are groups of flying insects that function as their “ears” and “eyes”; and the “little elephants” are their hands. They gradually discover how the hives communicate, and one of the hives—a relatively small one in a misshapen shell—reaches out to the team and eagerly begins teaching them the civilization’s language. It has a disability in that it thinks too fast to communicate easily with its fellow hives, but this makes it uniquely suited for communicating with humans.  

1: THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT
PAUL MCCONNELL must learn to love and embrace his authentic self, even at the cost of outward approval, acclamation, and success. Even at the cost of the thing he fears most: social death.

2: THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT
The primary antagonistic force in the novel is the homophobia and societal disapproval towards gays (especially in the novel's historical context of the 1970s–1990s) which PAUL observes, thereby creating self-loathing within himself.

This force is represented by a number of specific characters within the novel, in ways both big and small:

• SUSAN, WARREN, and TONY, friends of PAUL's from childhood whose displays of homophobia are absorbed by PAUL and briefly mentioned through backstory. Similarly, through explicit gay slurs and hostility uttered and exhibited by ZANDER and TRIP, secondary characters whom PAUL interacts with at several key points throughout the novel. These examples stem less from animus than from an absorption of the mores of the world around them.
   
• More critically, as displayed by the significant ambivalence and disapproval by ELIZABETH, PAUL's eventual mother-in-law, towards her son (and PAUL's lover), JAMES FIELD, in light of his own homosexuality. This disapproval is a combination of genuine (albeit misguided) concern for her son's wellbeing, as well as her own preoccupation with societal approval and the implications for her social standing should the world learn she has a gay son.

3: CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE

• ACTS OF CONTRITION (strong preference; narratively significant)
• BAD BODY LANGUAGE
• THIS AMERICAN LIE

4: DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES

IN MEMORIAM by Alice Winn

• Like IN MEMORIAM, a gay love story set against the backdrop of war and English boarding schools, and with a tone that moves between the lyrical and the brutal, my novel shares a concern with the way in which same-sex desire can be both clarified and distorted under pressure. Instead of early 20th-century boarding schools and trench war, though, it’s the late-20th-century Ivy League, the culture wars, and American political life that form the crucible. Both novels explore how young men carry private truths through public cataclysms.
   

THE GREAT BELIEVERS by Rebecca Makkai

• Much like THE GREAT BELIEVERS, my novel partially utilizes a dual-timeline structure to explore the long emotional and social fallout of the 1970s and 1980s, including the AIDS crisis. Both books center gay characters reckoning with memory, loss, and the compromises of survival; both also scrutinize the ways in which history gets remembered—or rewritten. Where THE GREAT BELIEVERS foregrounds community grief and artistic legacy, my novel is simultaneously more narrowly focused on a single man’s reckoning with personal guilt, ambition, and complicity, yet also broader in its political lens and commentary about the state of the nation in the present told via a story set in the past.

 

5: CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT
After a night at Studio 54 awakens a repressed desire that dare not speak its name, an ambitious outsider becomes entangled with a family of American aristocrats, a connection that will span decades and generations and ultimately force him to question: How much of himself is he willing to sacrifice on the altar of success?

6: OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVELS

Internal conflict: 

Several months after arriving in the strange, rarefied world of the elite, as epitomized by Princeton campus, PAUL continues to feel himself inexorably pulled towards JAMES. The sight alone of him brings joy to PAUL's heart; his absence turmoil. The sound of his voice turns PAUL's skin to gooseflesh.

Surely JAMES's social standing, his money and his power and his understanding of the codes of high society, have something to do with it. But deep inside, PAUL knows his attraction to JAMES is spurred by something more than his desire simply to advance. Does he have the courage to open the door that will reveal why? To finally confront what lies behind?

A scene that triggers the protagonist: 

Fresh off an emotional phone call with his father in distant Ohio, alone on Princeton campus on Thanksgiving of 1978 and too broke to travel, PAUL receives an unexpected phone call from JAMES, up in New York City. “Thanksgiving's my favorite weekend in the city,” JAMES tells him. “All the squares leave town, no one left but miscreants and deviants.” JAMES issues an invitation: Would PAUL like to join him? After all, he does have a rather large suite at the Plaza. “You could sleep on the couch,” JAMES adds tentatively.

What to do? To leave the safe cocoon of his dorm at Princeton feels like a gigantic error. Except that to stay would be an even bigger mistake.

Secondary conflict: 

Decades after his love affair with JAMES, PAUL is married to JAMES's twin sister, KATHERINE, enjoying a life characterized by all the extrinsic trapping of success: a connection to a prominent family solidified through marriage; a massive estate. The only question that remains is that of his career—specifically, his chosen profession of architect, a lower-paid, lower-status occupation as compared to, say, high finance. A choice is offered: How would he feel about a job at KATHERINE's family's brokerage firm? Never mind his utter lack of genuine passion for it.

It turns out to be no choice at all. PAUL takes the job.

7: THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING
The Field family estate on the Philadelphia Main Line unfurls like the kind of place PAUL would have only dreamt of. Except it would’ve never occurred to him to dream on such a scale.

Six hundred acres of rolling hills, ancient trees, and stone outbuildings that predate the Revolutionary War. The house itself—“the big house,” as JAMES calls it—is a colossal Georgian Revival pile of red brick at least one hundred and fifty feet across, with everything in splendid symmetry, especially the windows. Four, five, six, eight, twelve, twenty … on his first of many visits across the decades, PAUL loses count of the number.

Beauty is laced with tension, the estate's splendor masking decay—emotional, moral, even structural—and it functions as a kind of gilded cage. In summertime, when it’s theirs alone, the estate becomes a private planet for PAUL and JAMES. A place of sensual awakening, disco music, and skinny-dipping in secluded ponds. In winter, under the family’s watchful eye, it’s the site of elaborate rituals of control and appearance: Christmas Eve services, formal dinners with genteel neighbors. In these settings, the price of admission is silence, assimilation, and self-abnegation.

Scene by scene, year by year, the estate is not just a backdrop but a stage for class performance and the repression of same-sex desire, its beauty inseparable from its menace. A place PAUL can never fully stand to be but, even more, can’t bear to leave.

First Assignment: story statement

Seek redemption and recover a lost painting.

 

Second Assignment: antagonist or antagonistic force

Gwendolyn’s brother, Michael, is the main antagonist. His criminal behaviour leads Gwendolyn to try and stop him burgling a house, but she is caught and charged by the police instead. Michael, meanwhile, gets away with stealing a valuable set of ancient coins. Gwendolyn’s full scholarship to university is withdrawn, and Michael’s attempt to profit from the coins catches the attention of the police, and he faces serious charges and an expensive defence. When Gwendolyn is contacted by Benjamin, the owner of the house from where she had been arrested and Michael stole the coins, he offers her a job to work at the International Agency for the Regulation of Time Travel. Although she feels guilty accepting his offer when he seems unaware of what her brother did, she needs the job to help fund Michael’s defence. The anxiety of Benjamin finding out about her brother, and what might happen when he does, overshadows her training.

 

Jack, Gwendolyn’s partner for their mission in 1945, serves as a secondary antagonist. He resents having to babysit a new trainee on such a dangerous mission, and his behaviour leads to tension and conflict between them as they each have different ideas on how best to execute the assignment. 

 

Third Assignment: breakout title list

Agents of Time

In Search of Time: The Lost Masterpiece

 

Fourth Assignment: comparables

Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

 

Fifth Assignment: logline

Anxious to fund the expensive defence needed for her criminally minded brother, an eighteen-year-old girl joins a time travel agency and must survive Nazi Germany to find a valuable piece of missing art.

 

Sixth Assignment: inner conflict and secondary conflict

Inner conflict:

Gwendolyn’s overarching inner conflict is a fear of making mistakes. She has spent her entire life being the good, responsible child in the family—she always worked hard at school, looked after her younger brother—but the one time she makes an error in judgement (getting caught and charged by the police when trying to prevent her brother from committing a crime), she has her scholarship to university revoked and all her plans for the future are destroyed. Then, on her mission in 1945, she makes a series of mistakes that leads to one of her partners being caught by the Nazis and her other partner shot. She is sure that she will be kicked out of the time travel agency, and she needs the job to pay for her brother’s defence attorneys. 

Scenario:

Benjamin, the man who owns the house she robbed, has learned that Gwendolyn’s scholarship was revoked, and he comes to offer her a chance to work at the time travel agency. Gwendolyn is initially excited by this turn of events, but what Benjamin doesn’t seem to realize is that Michael had stolen a valuable set of ancient coins from Benjamin’s house and is trying to sell them. She doesn’t have it in her to take the job without Benjamin knowing the truth, but she also doesn’t want to turn her brother in. So she decides that she can’t accept his offer.

When she returns home, she discovers that Michael has been reported to the police and charged under the Prohibiting the Illicit Transfer of Goods Through Time Act. Despite being only 15 years old, the seriousness of his crime and previous transgressions mean he will be tried as an adult. The family is advised that specialized defence attorneys will be required but they do not have the funds to be able to afford that. Gwendolyn will have no choice but to accept Benjamin’s job offer in the hopes of being able to cover the cost of Michael’s defence.

 

Secondary conflict:

Jack is the primary source of secondary conflict—he is the lead agent Gwendolyn is paired with to run the mission in 1945 and he is not happy that she has been assigned as his partner, given that she is still a trainee and the mission will be dangerous. As they progress with their planning, Gwendolyn and Jack have different ideas of how best to approach it, and there’s tension over who has the right idea as to what happened to the painting.

Moreover, Jack harbour’s resentment of all the new agents hired in Gwendolyn’s cohort, since one of his close friends who was supposed to begin training as an agent was removed from the roster at the last minute to make room for someone else. He eventually learns that this was Gwendolyn. 

Scenario:

Back in 1945, Jack is posing as a German soldier and Gwendolyn as a Swiss national who was in a neighbouring village visiting family when the evacuation started. They arrive at the Palace of Muhrau, where the painting was last seen, but Gwendolyn always doubted that the painting was sent there. She is eager to prove her theory so she steals an art inventory from Palézieux, the Nazi’s art advisor, and brings it to Jack to translate, as he is fluent in German. But he is furious because if the Nazis find out the inventory is missing, the first people they will suspect will be Jack and Gwendolyn, who have just arrived out of nowhere. They have a fight where Gwendolyn’s frustrations at being sidelined come out and she accuses Jack of being arrogant and stubborn and not listening to anything she has to say. Jack is equally frustrated that Gwendolyn keeps second guessing his decisions, and now he must try and return the inventory before anyone notices. This leads to Jack’s capture by the Nazis, and Gwendolyn becomes consumed with guilt that she has put him in this situation.

 

Seventh Assignment: setting

The novel is set in the near future where time travel has been invented. The technology is tightly controlled by the International Agency for the Regulation of Time Travel, run by a consortium of governments that ensure time travel is only used for the betterment of humanity and not for personal gain. Governments, academic institutions, tourists, and anyone else with enough money, are able to hire the Agency to go back in time to conduct research, or answer a pressing historical question, or escort tourists who wish to take a vacation to a particular period in time. The Agency is therefore a large bureaucracy that not only trains agents to go back in time, but also has various departments that support the work of the agents (research and archives, a technology centre, a wardrobe department, etc). 

The first third of the novel takes place in an impoverished borough of London called Haringey, which is situated close to a wealthier neighbourhood where Gwendolyn goes to school and where the house that she burgles is located. It then transitions to the edge of North London, where the Agency is located on a university-like campus. The campus itself is large, with various administrative buildings centred around a long rectangular green space that is affectionately known as “Centre Court”—both because it is in the shape of a tennis court, and also because the Agency’s first time travel commission was undertaken by a pair of tourists to witness the inaugural Wimbledon championship in 1877. The time machine is housed in a large dome structure, located at the far end of Centre Court. Also on campus is a small museum, housing some of the artefacts that agents brought back with them during the early days of time travel (before it became illegal to do so), as well as a pub called Morlocks, where many employees stop in for a drink after a long day of work.

The final third of the novel takes place in the heart of Germany in 1945, in a small town in Lower Silesia called Striegau. Gwendolyn and Jack arrive in January, in the midst of a bitterly cold winter, and in the chaos of a German retreat in the face of an advancing Soviet Army. They head to a large estate known as the Palace of Muhrau, which is the last known location of the painting that they’ve been tasked to find (Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man).

Assignment 1: Story Statement
In the shadow of a waking volcano, Thea must trust her own wisdom and embrace her found family—or risk vanishing into the inherited grief of silence, shame, and regret.

Assignment 2: Antagonistic Forces
The primary antagonist is Thea’s mother. Imogene does not want a child, and her detachment keeps Thea longing for connection. Thea believes that uncovering the truth about her father will heal Imogene and win her love, so she silences her intuition and defends her mother’s erratic behavior while rejecting the unconditional love offered by her stepfather. Imogene’s secrecy, shame, and eventual suicide leave Thea burdened. Even after death, Imogene lingers as a haunting antagonistic force and a mirror of what Thea fears becoming. Through this complex, charged dynamic, Imogene catalyzes Thea’s arc: the need to break free of generational wounds and claim her own path.

A secondary antagonist is the volcano itself, a constant physical presence and a psychic weight. Imogene constructs a mythology around it, withdrawing from Thea and turning to the mountain for meaning, eventually giving herself over to it by triggering an avalanche. Thea’s stepfather pours himself into scientific monitoring, convinced the volcano will erupt. Thea is caught in the space between faith and science, mysticism and logic, silence and alarm. Thea is also under pressure to heal her fractured family. She represses her unease, dismisses her instincts, and absorbs blame. As tremors rise beneath the earth, so does the turmoil within Thea, who must navigate not only the literal threat of eruption, but the inherited instability, denial, and dread that have defined her life.

Thea’s biological father, Elan, casts his own shadow, an absent parent consumed by grief and silence, whose choices echo through Thea’s search for truth and belonging.

Assignment 3: Working Titles

On a Wink from the Sun

The Fault She Carried

Lady of Fire, Daughter of Ash

Assignment 4: Comparables
The lyrical prose and landscape-rooted storytelling of ON A WINK FROM THE SUN echoes the work of Richard Powers, and like Bewilderment, it explores the emotional resilience of a young protagonist shaped by alienation and a mythic landscape that mirrors inner life. This coming-of-age novel blends the emotional interiority and found-family arc of Allison Larkin’s The People We Keep with the generational trauma, haunting silence, and cycle-breaking choices of The Mountains Sing (Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai)—a novel that also traces the lingering impact of the Vietnam War on a fractured family. ON A WINK FROM THE SUN follows a narrator wise beyond her years who must learn to trust her own voice and decide whether to inherit the grief that made her—or become the one who ends it.

Assignment 5: Hook line/Logline
Caught between a mythic mountain that threatens to erupt and a mother who already broke, a girl whose story begins in the womb struggles to trust her own wisdom and build a life defined not by inherited grief—but by the love and family she chooses.

Assignment 6: Conflicts

Protagonist Inner Conflict:
Thea feels torn between her intuition and what she believes she must do to earn her mother’s fragile love. Her internal conflict is rooted in the core wound that she’s a burden and therefore must earn love through self-erasure, loyalty, and silence. She wants to survive, be loved, and know the truth, but she’s deeply afraid that expressing her inner knowing will rupture the conditional connection she has with Imogene. 

Scenario:
When Imogene reads a book on herbal abortion, Thea’s internal world fractures. She pleads for her existence but also internalizes that her existence is unwanted. This moment creates a deep psychological split: she desperately wants to survive and be lovable, while absorbing the shame of being a burden.

Secondary Conflict:
Thea is caught between Imogene’s mystical, impulsive spirituality and John’s rational, scientific worldview. As Imogene spirals into myth, John focuses on data, risk, and monitoring. Both parents look outward—to gods or graphs—while neither fully sees Thea nor do they agree on how to raise her. Thea becomes the bridge, trying to maintain the family’s emotional balance, even as doing so erodes her sense of self.

Scenario:
Against John’s wishes, Thea attends a protest with Imogene to preserve her mother’s fragile affection. The destruction of the forest she witnesses echoes her fear of being inherently unlovable and irreparably broken. When they return, John’s quiet disappointment devastates her. She is caught between loyalty and discomfort, between pleasing and belonging. In trying to hold her family together, Thea feels increasingly alienated, and no one truly sees what it costs her.

Assignment 7: Setting
In the Pacific Northwest, the natural world doesn’t just surround Thea; it seeps into her. Before birth, she senses the pulse of birdsong and shifting plates. The forest beyond her cabin feels both enchanted and indifferent. Old-growth trees tower like elders who’ve seen too much, their roots snaking through soft moss and hidden grief. This is where Thea first feels herself vanish into something older and quieter than language. It’s where she and her mother protest with signs and fury, where the sound of a chainsaw feels like betrayal. Even the birds feel charged: sentinels, messengers, omens. Their calls pierce moments of quiet with longing, or dread, or strange comfort. When Imogene disappears, it is the birds who return first, circling the silence, bearing witness.

Thea grows up on the edge of something sacred and unstable. Lawetlat’la (Mount St. Helens) is a looming, mythic presence that’s as much a character as any human in the book. Thea’s emotional world is mirrored in this landscape: dormant, restrained, poised to blow. Lawetlat’la is not just scenery. To Imogene, she is sacred, a divine force that stores grief beneath the crust and speaks in signs only Imogene can interpret. To John, she’s a threat to be measured, plotted, contained. To Thea, she is unknowable yet intimately felt. Thea’s own emotional world mirrors the volcano’s quiet tension: contained, pressurized, waiting. When she finally erupts, the volcano doesn’t destroy Thea—it clarifies her.
 

1.     Act of Story Statement

A journalist obsessed with chronicling others’ struggles as a personal distraction must publicly grapple with a shocking secret that upends his identity and family relationships.

2.     Antagonist (200 words or less)

Dr. Lane Huff (60s), Jules’s biological mother, is an MIT political science professor and celebrated public intellectual who writes about the need for “autonomy of mind”. She thinks that depression caused by societal authoritarianism can be treated by committing what she calls “non-interpersonal law-skirting acts” (including use of supplements, placing banned kids’ books in public spaces).

She has turned her (not very effective/groundbreaking) performative demonstrations into MacArthur Genius winning academic treatises against the “prison-industrial- American-Puritan-complex”. She cultivates a dynamic, charismatic public persona that is communal/maternal, open-minded, and erudite while privately, she spends her days shutting down critics/other female academics and curating an exclusionary, tightknit group of socially connected “friends”, hired staff, and heavyweight legal/financial advisors. She has no interest in learning about or having a relationship with the biological children her donated eggs created. 

 

3.     List three title options

a.     Conditions for Affinity (current working title)

b.     Island of Incompetence

c.     Filial Imitatio

 

4.     Comps

Main Comp: American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

-I hope to offer a more introspective take on a similarly acerbic twist/skewering of a familiar 30-something yuppie breakdown narrative.

-Patrick Bateman, to me, is a quintessential anti-hero (hero being a charitable misnomer) who nonetheless captivates and transcends his novel thanks to his iconoclastic, identifiable pov on everything from his wardrobe choices to the morality of murder. 

My novel is also centered around a divisive, antiheroic personality (who, while not a serial killer, doesn’t necessarily elicit sympathy). Jules is reactionary, opinionated, and overtly solipsistic in his narration when dissecting nuances of social interaction and relationships. I want him to veer into polarizing territory that elicits a spectrum of emotions in readers, from secondhand discomfort to contempt to appealing relatability. 

Comp: Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerny

Comp: Night Film by Marisha Pessl 

5.     Core Wound and Primary Conflict

When an emotionally-stunted foreign correspondent is tasked with drawing new readers to his highbrow periodical, he reluctantly pens an intimate, personal op-ed detailing how he accidentally discovered his biological mother and, against her wishes, connected with his three siblings scattered across ideological and state lines.

 

6.     What is the protagonist’s inner/secondary conflict

a.     Inner conflict

Jules’s primary struggle stems from his inability to self-validate and his lack of firm grasp on his inherent worth (irrespective of his strengths and flaws). He can’t seem to reconcile his competing paradoxical mental states that leave him constantly self-flagellating. On the one hand, he displays an outer persona that is self-abnegating and insecure regarding his estimation of his success/intellect relative to his peers while on the other hand, he’s privately extremely opinionated/critical, self-assured, and confident in his moral convictions.

 

He constantly seeks out life-threatening external escapades that ideally would allow him to divert his attention to other’s needs/struggles (i.e. the war between Russia and Ukraine). However, he still goes about his physically/emotionally intensive fieldwork while existing almost exclusively inside his own head. He’s more focused on interpreting and making peace with his own reactions to witnessing tragedy than he is on engaging with the world around him. 

Hypothetical scenario: Jules watches an intensive military campaign but can’t stop obsessing over the cognitive dissonance that he experiences when he realizes that a) he’s not in danger and b) the natural landscape is visually arresting. He’s a self-described “consumer” of tragic scenes that play in his field of vision like movie vignettes.

 

b.    Secondary Conflict

Jules finds himself facing an identity crisis as he routinely fails to find common ground or acceptance within the social group that he once considered his “crowd” (or family). 

A major recurring secondary conflict arises as Jules grows less and less willing to quietly overlook certain moral and ideological failures among his peers. Jules passionately values writing about humanitarian crisis and using his platform for activism; writing is his means of connecting to the wider world, thereby fulfilling himself. He fears losing his well-intended, idealist streak as he notices that the people he once tolerated (as acquaintances, colleagues, etc.) a) do not share his values, b) are solely focused on their own social status, virtue signaling, power, and base personal needs, and c) cannot provide him with a gratifying source of friendship or social interaction.

Hypothetical scenario: He runs into his former college roommate, Frankie, who at first appears to be a superficially successful/inspiring neurosurgeon. Frankie and his wife Cheryl initially leverage their “expertise” (i.e. education) and faux-generosity to manipulate Jules into beta testing their products. Jules later learns that Frankie is facing lawsuits related to illegal patient data distribution, has filed for bankruptcy, and-from prison- is helping market Cheryl’s untested, unregulated stem-cell collection startup.

7.     Setting (s)

I think of my project as a fish out of water story. Jules is a largely a product of his environment on the east coast. He’s from upper middle-class NJ, went to a fussy Connecticut boarding school and Princeton (undergrad, PHD), and lived briefly off-Broadway. His perspective is generally rooted in the social mores of the NJ-NYC-east coast region. In the novel’s opening, he relocates from his beloved temp studio in Georgetown, D.C. back to an apartment in Jersey City but he immediately stops in the Upper West Side, NYC where his periodical’s managing editor lives.

Jules’s first step (after discovering his family secret) is to meet his biological mother, Lane, who owns a penthouse (a kind of modern intellectual salon) on exclusive, tawny Newbury Street in Boston. Jules is initially taken in by her seemingly charmed New England world full of liberal intellectuals, famous artists/politicians, and NYC defectors. However, he quickly realizes that Lane’s carefully engineered community is even more perniciously vacuous and power-hungry (i.e. scientists fudging results, rising political stars taking bribes/paid sponsorships) than the hypercompetitive NYC crowd.

*A recurring image of various cities (i.e. NYC, Boston) as a postmodern, overly consumerist, insecurity-inducing hellscapes (where survival of the coolest/most ambitious is the prevailing ethos) is a backdrop against which I want to develop a sense of tension in Jules.

After being rejected by Lane, Jules travels cross country to connect with his scattered half-siblings by living with their families for a week. Each family (plus their wider neighborhood) that Jules attempts to join offers a visual/cultural contrast that pushes Jules to question the blind spots his background/upbringing instilled in him. The following are the hometowns of his three half-siblings:

a.     Freehold, NJ…a middle-class slightly conservative south Jersey suburb (think clapboard homes, stone churches, a colonial “historic” feel, somewhat cliquish community of multigenerational families). Its famous attraction, the horse raceway track, recently closed due to financial competition from sports-betting/casinos leaving behind grim economic repercussions that are especially noticeable in the town’s shrinking shopping district (comprised of small business, mom and pop shops). 

 

b.     Arlington, VA…an “almost but not quite D.C.” city that’s just a hair away from being southern-lite. My novel focuses mainly on the new tech/defense/government contracting professional community. 

 

c.     Santa Monica, CA…an uber wealthy community near Hollywood with a Stepford meets Real Housewives undercurrent. Everyone’s a secret Libertarian who may or may not be interested in vaccines for their dogs, works in “the industry” (entertainment), has their plastic surgeon for an emergency contact, and wears overpriced workout gear to shop at exclusive supermarkets (whether they’ve filed for Chapter VII or not).

STORY STATEMENT:

Thomas Mather must discover the identities of the two men whose autopsies he has witnessed and then find their killer in order to clear his brother’s name and restore his family’s reputation.

 

ANTAGONISTIC FORCES: 

The first and most obvious antagonist is Dr. William Shippen, chief lecturer at the Pennsylvania School Medicine. He does not accept Mather’s insistence that the deaths of the two autopsy subjects are related. He vehemently discourages Mather from pursuing any action that will distract him from his studies. Ultimately, he expels Mather from school and causes him to be evicted from the guest house where he lodges. Shippen takes his profession seriously and is extremely protective of the medical school he has helped found. He at first believes Mather might be a potentially great physician, but he cannot tolerate what he perceives to be Mather’s frivolity and lack of mental discipline.

 

BREAKOUT TITLE(S):

Still got nothing better than: Assassination of Titans

 

COMPARABLES:

Strongest comp is still the AMC 2014-2017 television series Turn: Washington’s Spies, based on Alexander Rose's 2007 Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring (2007). Dramatizes actual historical events but takes some liberties by collapsing events, altering timelines, and combining characters for narrative purpose. Values authenticity more than  accuracy (Credit to Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club, etc., for that phrase).

 

Laurie Halse Anderson’s Rebellion 1776 (2025) might also compare nicely. Focuses on fictional people caught up in early-United States historical events with a nod to contemporary issues.

 

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: 

Philadelphia, May 1787: When the subjects of two autopsies resemble a murder for which his brother was hanged, young medical student Thomas Mather’s investigation stumbles upon a plot that threatens his standing in the school, the life of General George Washington, and the very future of the United States.

 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: 

Mather’s primary inner conflict stems from his family background. He is the only one of his parents’ seven sons to live to adulthood. Four years earlier – in March of 1783 – his older brother, Andrew, was accused of shooting a young man of their community. He was tried, convicted, and hanged for that murder. He and his parents became pariahs in their community. Mather, as the parents’ one surviving child, assumed the responsibility of somehow restoring his family’s reputation. This is one of his motivations for choosing medicine as a career and a significant reason it is so devastating when he is expelled from school.

 

When he recognizes the circumstances of the deaths of his two autopsy subjects, he becomes fully convinced of his brother’s innocence and his need to exonerate him.

 

There are a few “triggering events” in the novel that reveal Mather’s inner conflict as well as providing clues to the ultimate solution:

 

1. he experiences severe physical illness as the body of each of the autopsy subjects is revealed;

2. he experiences a similar reaction when the body of Obedience Dyer is found to have been killed in much the same way as the others;

3. he reacts violently when he recognizes Jeremiah Whittier/Gideon Jones as the mysterious man on the horse present at the scene of the first murder in 1783.

 

Finally, Mather’s goal is complicated by the simple fact that no one else even knows that there has been a series of related murders, especially recent murders that might be related to a years-old case that is believed to have been solved. Thus, it is understandable that Dr. Shippen and Mrs. Hoames are so impatient with him. As the stakes increase and broaden, Mather’s sense of helpless isolation intensifies. Only his friends Caleb Freeborn and Riona accept his claims and offer him any help.

 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT:

In the early spring of 1787, the city of Philadelphia sat, poised like an orphan, her tattered clothes scrubbed, mended, and pressed into a poor semblance of presentability to impress her prospective parents. The war years had not been kind to the once-thriving commerce town: the British blockade had choked the city’s finances, and the British occupation had choked its soul.

 

And the years after the Revolution had not been much kinder.

 

Trade was still stifled. The states that Philadelphia merchants would trade with found it more profitable to deal directly with European powers. Even the western counties of Pennsylvania found it easier to ship via the Susquehanna River and trade through Baltimore than to transport their goods over the mountains to the Delaware River port. To add insult to injury, Congress had abandoned its home city like a prodigal son. The provenance of the Declaration of Independence, the site of the nation’s first library and first hospital, was no longer the seat of the United States in Congress Assembled. That distinct honor had been transferred to New York, and the slight cut the wounded dignity of the city’s leaders – and their purses as well.

 

And the Bell – the city’s treasured Bell – had been removed from its home and sent into hiding during the British occupation. When the occupation ended, and the Bell was brought home, its perch atop the State House was deemed decrepit. The entire steeple was torn down, replaced by a simple spire. Now, the humiliated Bell huddled in a corner of the yard, brought out on special occasions like an eccentric aunt.

 

Granted, there had been signs of recovery, and the hammers of industry were gradually being heard in more and more sections. Slowly, block by block, streets were being re-cobbled, public buildings were being washed and painted, boarded windows repaned, and roofs mended so that their tiles shone in the morning sun. But recovery was slow, and hope was dim. The promise of the Revolution seemed about to die in its cradle, and there were those who had to admit that their city – which had proudly served as midwife to that new American nation – was tired and shabby and about to unravel, just as the new nation it had birthed was. 

 

Even Caleb Freeborn had heard of the revolts in Massachusetts the year before. Shay’s rebellion they called it – something to do with banks and farmers. Caleb did not understand it, but he knew that such rebellions so soon after the Revolution were bad signs for the new nation.

 

He’d listened to the Reverend Allen’s sermons condemning the slave trade and the exportation of distilled spirits to Africa where the slaves came from. He’d heard “the Missus” complain about the cost of sugar and flour and the unavailability of cloth goods. He’d heard the guests who passed him at the door as they entered and exited the Indian Queen Tavern, talking as if he weren’t there. They talked of Spain threatening the South and West, England still threatening the North, and France always wanting to expand her American Empire.

 

He himself had witnessed, four years earlier, the revolt that had sent Congress fleeing to Princeton and then to New York. Unhappy soldiers from the War surrounded the State House and held Congress essentially hostage inside. Fortunately, violence had been averted then, but one way or another, it seemed, the thirteen states were going to have to fight another war.

 

Some people expressed a vague optimism about the Federal Convention that was set to begin – in Philadelphia, where such an important event should occur. While most of the city accepted the official account – that the convention had been called with the sole purpose of mending the flaws in the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union – Caleb had heard it whispered that really they were planning another Revolution. The anxiety in the city was high, and merchant and statesman alike debated the advisability of simply maintaining the status quo rather than possibly yielding up any of their state’s and their city’s hard-won rights.

 

During the course of the story, there are two public demonstrations that threaten to break out into dangerous violence. The first protests the Congress of the Confederation’s unwillingness to make good on their promise to veterans of the Revolution (especially disgruntled former officers) to pay money owed and provide at least some portion of their agreed-upon pensions. The other protests the Federal Convention itself, which they view as an attempt by the higher echelons of society to consolidate their power and establish an American aristocracy, possibly even a monarchy with George Washington as the king.

Assignment 1: Story Statement

Losing identity to toxic masculinity and then finding the authentic self.

 

Assignment 2: Antagonistic Forces

The main antagonistic force is the concept of toxic masculinity, and the lack of humanity.

The main antagonist is the covert narcissist father who is not only emotionally absent from his son’s life but also burdens the son with the role of “man of the house.”  The father, indirectly, exposes the boy to extreme violence growing up in Medellin (machete fights, stabbings, shootings), then expects the immigrant boy to excel in school in New Jersey; the father shames the pre-teen son (sexuality); and ultimately gives the eighteen-year-old son a machine gun to smuggle cocaine from Colombia.

The second antagonist is himself: He doesn’t accept his vulnerabilities nor his true nature. To survive and to maintain the false, toxic-masculine persona, the protagonist must suppress his authentic self.

The third minor antagonist (blessing in disguise) is the overt narcissist wife who demolishes the protagonist’s toxic-masculine façade and leaves him completely lost without the little bit of remaining identity (if he hadn’t lost himself completely, he’d never sought recovery).

Other antagonistic forces are discrimination, racism (growing up an immigrant), the drug trade (ill-prepared), maximum security penitentiaries (must survive), and systemic blunders (after completing sentence, gets deported back to Colombia despite being an America citizen).

Assignment 3: Working Titles

 

The Priest, The Soldier, and The Smuggler: My Choices, My Life

From Soldier to Smuggler to Teacher: Evolution on the Edge of Toxic Masculinity

A Priest or a Soldier: A Memoir of Toxic Masculinity

From Hotwheels to soldier to Smuggling: My choices, My life

Into the Jaws of Toxic Masculinity

 

Assignment 4: Comparable Titles

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls because it covers a lifetime of dysfunction and challenges.

A Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff because it shows the lengths the protagonist goes through to create the false image.

Educated by Tara Westover because it shows the power of education (A college degree from Leavenworth Penitentiary allowed the protagonist to become an English teacher and turn his life around).

 

Assignment 5: Core wound and…

Fears of all shapes and sizes, many, jagged and sharp: abandonment, isolation, and stuffed feelings that are kept bubble-wrapped inside a dungeon in the mind and locked with a key of denial.

… Hook line/Logline

After getting discharged from the United States Air Force, a teenager gets lured by his father into the easy pickings of the early Colombian drug trade where he gets lost not knowing if he’s the villain, the anti-hero, the victim or the joker—until he finds himself, the Inner Hero, and redemption.

 

Assignment 6: Conflicts

 

INTERNAL CONFLICT

The protagonist is born with a congenital deformity which makes him feel different and ashamed. He’s also a sickly child who only wears long pants to cover his skinny legs that look like broomsticks. To empower him, the mother calls the boy, “the man of the house.” He doesn’t know if he wants to be a priest (like his father who spent two years in the seminary before he married his mother) or a soldier (like his grandfather). At age six (or seven), guilt is added to the shame and to the feelings of inferiority.

 

SCENE THAT TRIGGERS THE PROTAGONIST

When he is six (or seven), the boy wants to do one of them “ambushing things” to scare some kids who are making a ruckus outside his house. He had seen his father shoot at a trucker, so he goes into the closet, takes down the rifle and loads it. He then goes out to confront the kids (The catalyst). His sister comes over and, in the melee, the shot goes off. The bullet takes out a kid’s eye. The older sister gets blamed. The protagonist watches his sister cry as she gets punished. He stays quiet as a mouse. He knows he did something wrong but doesn’t know exactly what. His mother didn’t want to traumatize the boy and thought he’d forget, so the incident was swept under the rug and never mentioned again. The boy decides he’s going to be a priest and constantly prays. He is quiet and timid both in school, at home and in the neighborhood.

 

SECONDARY CONFLICT

When both parents leave the children in Colombia to seek opportunities in the United States, Lele, the protagonist feels the abandonment. He feels at fault for his parents leaving but doesn’t know why. He prays and prays but nothing happens. He befriends the barefoot kids (poor) from the neighborhood and gets out of his isolation.

When he and his siblings are reunited with their parents in New Jersey, the protagonist, then nine years old, gets bullied in class for not being white enough. He’s the only Latino in an all-white classroom. In the neighborhood, he gets jumped by the black kids because he’s too white. He gets tired of the name calling, of the bloody noses, and the spits in the face; but he’s afraid to fight. He thinks he’s a coward, thinks he’s worthless, no good. He decides he’s going to be a soldier instead of a priest. Both priests and soldiers share the values of loyalty, duty, sacrifice and service, concepts he understands. He slowly embarks on a “fake” persona that is tough on the surface but hides the weaknesses on the inside.

The priest and the soldier will fight for dominance of the psyche from beneath the shadows of consciousness. In charge of the rational, logical brain is the walking self, often confused, insecure, and doing his best to keep the mind sane from the battles inside and doing his best to keep the body safe from the wars on the surface.

And thus begins his journey into toxic masculinity. He loses his authenticity and must reinvent himself every time the settings change.

Assignment seven: Settings

·       Medellin Colombia 1960’s, the city of Eternal Spring, lush mountains, the Alps of the Americas, picturesque landscapes (ages 1 to 8).

·       Jersey City, New Jersey. Rough neighborhood (ages 9 to 16).

·       Lackland Air Force Base, boot camp (age 17).

·       Miami, Los Angeles, NY and anywhere in between in the late 70’s and 80’s during the early drug trade (ages 18 to 20).

·       Drug deals in houses with dangerous gangsters.

·       Clandestine air strips in Colombia and in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.  Paramilitary men armed with machine guns.

·       Small planes stuffed to the gills with cocaine and volatile fuel.

·       Back to Medellin when it becomes the most dangerous and violent city in the world.

·       Leavenworth Penitentiary where for a time the protagonist is the youngest and only first-time, non-violent offender (age 21 to 33).

·       Third world prisons in Colombia and Panama.

·       Back in Medellin Colombia when Pablo got killed and the city was at war as key players were jockeying for the void left by the dead kingpin (age 34).

·       Panama where the protagonist becomes a teacher (in his 40’s).

·       Madrid, Spain (in his 50’s).

·       Back in prison in the United States after he finds out he’s been deported despite being a citizen.

·       On the road driving a truck in the lower 48 states and writing a book (at present and in his 60’s).

Question - what if your story has multiple antagonists?

 

Assignment 1: Story Statement

Defy the authoritarian regime but be forced to choose between love and revolution.

Logline: The scapegoated and disaffected granddaughter of America's authoritarian presidential family falls in love with a rebel spy and must choose between her own desires and revolution.

Assignment 2: Antagonistic Forces

The primary antagonist is Mathias Whitehall, the eldest son of the president and next in line for the presidency. He is also the uncle of the protagonist. Mathias Whitehall is 40 years old, militaristic, misogynistic, contemptuous, cruel, impatient, and angry. Lacking in charisma and unpopular with the public, he is not the man his father wanted him to be. Mathias schemes to assassinate his father, assume the presidency in his prime years, and fast track America to monarchy, which it practically is already but with factions for and against. He wants the protagonist to marry his friend and produce heirs on his behalf because he hates women and children and all things weak and dependent. 

More broadly, the antagonist is the Whitehall regime and the entire system that supports an authoritarian dictatorship. The title of president typically passes from father to eldest son. A Council of Lords could technically elect another candidate, but the formalized caste system and control of information via propaganda ensures loyalty to the regime. The caste system is maintained by technology. All citizens are chipped at birth and have profiles on the Reader Network, which controls information, education, opportunity, travel, and access according to caste. People can move up or down castes based on calibrations from Administrators, which surveil activity on the Reader Network using AI agents.

Secondary antagonists include Sanna's mother, the rebel spy agency director, and the assassin.

Assignment 3: Working Titles

Dissident

Assignment 4: Comparables

My market is primarily 18–30-year-old women seeking a mix of fast-paced action, romance, and SF/F elements in a dystopian setting that is more mature and grounded in reality than the YA dystopias of the mid-2010s. The girls who loved these books when they were 12-15 are grown up now and dystopias feel a lot more real.  

Comparables are my weak spot. I don’t have two that scream “this” plus “this” (selling loads of copies right now) equals a huge market for my book. Contenders:

A Thousand Heartbeats, published in 2022, is the newest book by Kiera Cass who also wrote The Selection. This book is a YA fantasy that features a princess protagonist who is forced into marriage for political gains and instead falls in love with the man who should be her enemy.

Mercenary Librarians by Kit Rocha is a three-book science fiction series published between 2020 and 2022. It is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian America ruled by the Techno Corp. It features action and sexual tension between an information broker and an ex-militant whose bionic enhancements are so dangerous to him he is compelled to betray the woman he’s falling for. 

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, a series of five books published between 2015 and 2019. It has a caste system, a love triangle, and spies, but it is a fantasy, a bit old now, and YA in tone and theme.

Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry was released in May 2025 and is already being made into a movie with glowing reviews. It is described as a slow-burn, high-stakes romantasy in which a princess is forcibly engaged to a prince but rejects the crown and falls in love with a monster hunter. I haven’t read it yet. I may wish this to be a comp more than it might actually be one.

Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, published in 2020, is a hot selling nonfiction book about authoritarian dictatorships, which did inform aspects of the authoritarian regime in my novel.

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, a prequel in the Hunger Games series published in 2025, is about propaganda and false choices, particularly choosing between love and rebellion. This is thematically a good fit, but I have been told not to use a series that is too popular. Also, when people hear “Hunger Games” they think about the arena and my book doesn’t have an arena.  

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 2019. I fear this may be too old, too popular, and too upmarket to be a good comp, but it might work combined with something else.

The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills published in 2024 is about a woman with mechanized wings in a theologically based fascist government who has a crisis of conscience and rebels. The author gained some notoriety with the short story Rabbit Test, which is a futuristic story about controlling women with period and abortion tracking. I don’t know how her debut book is selling.

Where the Axe is Buried, published in 2025 by up-and-coming science fiction writer Ray Nayler is about near-future Russia/Europe where an authoritarian Federation oppresses the people and there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. It is reputedly a messy, idea-centric novel.

Assignment 5: Core Wound and Primary Conflict

The protagonist is Sanna Whitehall, the niece of Mathias Whitehall and the scapegoat of the Whitehall family due to being its only sensitive and empathetic member. She suffered a psychotic break when her father was murdered three years ago and was forced into psychiatric evaluation, which revealed the extent of her mistreatment by her family. Now an adult, she seeks to escape her family's control. Marriage is her only ticket out, but she is kept isolated inside the Presidential Palace, where she is incredibly lonely with only her handmaid for a friend, who is conspiratorial and gives Sanna banned books to read.

In the opening scene, Sanna is informed by her controlling mother that her uncle’s friend has been chosen as a suitor for her. If she can’t meet someone else at the New Year’s Eve Ball and claim an existing romantic attachment under the Victorian-inspired social rules, she will be forced into a miserable marriage and subjugated for the rest of her life. When the current president is assassinated at the ball, Mathias is strongly implicated. Evidence also implicates him in the murder of his brother (the protagonist’s father), who died by poison three years ago, which was blamed on insurgent rebels. With Mathias to become president, all windows to freedom close for the protagonist except one—become a dissident.

Assignment 6: Conflicts

The protagonist’s inner conflict:

Sanna’s primary inner conflict is to figure out how to establish herself as an independent person when she has always been under the control of others. She has to learn how not to obey, what she likes, who she loves, how to love herself, and how to defy those who want to control her.

Scene that triggers protagonist:

The New Year's Eve Ball, which takes place over four chapters. Two rebel spies infiltrate the Presidential Palace to attend the ball, which is also when Sanna learns her uncle’s friend has been chosen as a suitor for her (chapter one). Sanna is introduced to the spies at the party and is instantly infatuated with one of them, but he refuses her when she asks him to dance (chapter two). Sanna dances with her uncle's friend, the chosen suitor, but can't stand him so she retires early. Meanwhile, the spies sneak upstairs to the Residence to complete a mission, but insurgents interrupt them before they can leave (chapter three). The spies try to prevent the assassination of the president but fail. Sanna witnesses everything. She surprises them by declaring herself a dissident and asks to join the rebels (chapter four).

Secondary conflict:

Sanna falls in love with the spy who rejected her, but he is controlled by the spy agency which devalues him as a human being due to a bionic brain implant that enhances his lethality but mutes his emotions, meaning he can’t tell her how he feels; he doesn’t know himself.

The spy agency pressures her to get engaged to the other spy, who is upper caste and socially and politically positioned to challenge Mathias for the presidency. Together, they are to manufacture a fake love story to be used as counterpropaganda to make Mathias unpopular with the people.

Sanna's conflict is to decide whether she belongs with the avoidant spy she loves or if the political match is actually better for her in the long run. It doesn’t help when she finds out the spy she loves is ordered to assassinate Mathias, a suicide mission that will bring about revolution at the cost of his life. Even if she believes she belongs with the person she has the biggest feelings for, are her personal desires worth it if it costs America the chance at revolution?

Note: There is also a subplot with Sanna’s handmaid which ties into the climax.

Assignment 7: Setting

The first half of the story takes place primarily in the Presidential Palace, which is Sanna’s home. The building is no longer the White House as it has been entirely rebuilt. Washington DC has been renamed New Columbia. The palace layout is reminiscent of the Residence just enough to be eerie. The New Year’s Even Ball takes place at the palace on the entry-level floor.

Other locations include a short stint on the road and a motel, where Sanna experiences a taste of freedom and finds herself falling in love. There are also scenes at a rebel base in the country outside New Columbia, which is an underground facility with an oppressive, corporate feeling.

There are also a few scenes in a New York City shelter for victims of domestic violence, which is where Sanna’s handmaid flees. The penultimate scene also takes place in New York City, at the Met fashion gala, where Sanna is taken hostage. The final scenes are back at the Presidential Palace. The climax takes place in the Rose Garden, which is adjacent to the West Wing.

WRITE TO PITCH 2025 ASSIGNMENT I

1.      Story Statement

After a DWI arrest shatters her carefully constructed life, Sophia- a Bangladeshi-American and newly minted law school graduate- must confront the shame of her actions and the weight of cultural expectations that have long dictated her path. As she navigates court-mandated rehab, bar prep, and the stirrings of a new, unexpected romance, Sophia must reckon with who she really is, let go of who she was supposed to be, and find the courage to live her truth.

2.      The Antagonist

The central antagonistic force in my novel is South Asian culture, specifically the weight of its expectations and how it shapes Sophia’s choices, identity, and internal conflicts.

 This force is embodied in Ammu, Sophia’s mother- a devout, old-fashioned Bangladeshi woman who immigrated to the U.S. as an adult. She is modest, religious, and rooted in tradition. Her worldview is shaped by a conservative upbringing and a deep desire for stability, which she believes can only be achieved through compliance. She expects Sophia to conform: to uphold cultural values, to marry within the community, to put family above all else.  She responds to life’s challenges with fear, superstition, and simplistic advice- “Pani kao, namaj poro,” (“Drink water and pray”).

Sophia, an American-born Desi, straddles two worlds- torn between a desire to please her family and an unwillingness to surrender to the life mapped out for her. Though they speak Bengali, Sophia and her mother rarely speaking the same language. Their miscommunication is more than linguistic- its cultural, generational, and emotional.

Ammu represents not just a mother, but the full weight of a society’s expectations- a force Sophia must confront in order to define herself on her own terms.

3.      Breakout Title

-          The Struggle of the Hyphen

-          The Weight of Her Bangles

-          Drink Water and Pray

4.      Comparable Titles

a.      A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

-          Like my novel, A Place for Us is deeply introspective and rooted in the emotional complexity of South Asian Muslim families. It grapples with themes of identity, estrangement, and the emotional cost of deviating from familial and cultural expectations.

 

b.      All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

-          Though written for a YA audience, All My Rage captures the raw emotional turbulence of immigrant children burdened by generational trauma. My novel similarly portrays a young Bangladeshi-American woman wrestling with cultural duty, shame, and the fear of disappointing her community.

 

5.      Hook Line

One arrest. Two loves. A lifetime of expectations. After a DWI conviction shatters her carefully constructed world, a Bangladeshi-American law student is forced to confront the shame that haunts her, the identity she’s outgrown, and the self she’s never dared to become. Caught between duty and desire, Sophia faces a summer of reckoning- one that could either free her or undo her entirely.

 

6.       Inner Conflict/Core Wound and Secondary Conflict

 

a.      The Inner conflict/core wound:  Sophia’s core wound lies in the shame and confusion of living a double life- too American to be the ideal Desi daughter, too Desi to ever feel fully American. This duality fractures her sense of self, leaving her feeling guilty and untethered and so she sticks to a life plan because it is all she has ever known. Beneath it all is a deep yearning to live authentically- but the fear that doing so will lead to rejection, failure, and isolation keeps her trapped between who she’s expected to be and who she really is.

 

-          Triggering scene: Sophia attends an impromptu dinner at her aunt and uncle’s house- an intimate family gathering to honor her law school graduation. As she stands before a cake iced with the words Congrats, Grad in bright red, her eyes catch on the lettering, and her chest tightens. The red reminds her of another word- Conditional- stamped boldly across her newly issued driver’s license. A silent mark of her DWI. The truth is unbearable. Their pride, their love- it feels misdirected. She is a fraud. Undeserving. Shame creeps up her spine, hot and consuming. If her family knew the truth, would they still embrace her? She sees herself through imagined judgment: not a rising lawyer, not a good daughter- but a failure hiding behind a cap and gown. In that moment, Sophia doesn’t feel celebrated. She feels exposed. Small and unworthy.

 

b.      Secondary conflict: Sophia’s secondary conflict unfolds through a romantic tug-of-war: Asif, her long-time boyfriend, represents stability, cultural familiarity, and the life she’s always been expected to lead. James, a new and socially conscious presence, challenges her worldview and awakens parts of herself she’s long kept buried. Caught between comfort and discovery, duty and desire, Sophia must decide not just who she wants- but who she’s willing to become in the process.

 

-          Triggering Scene: Sophia is in Union Square Park listening to James speak at a rally for Trayvon Martin. Afterwards, as the crowd begins to thin and the golden light of dusk settles over the city, their eyes meet. In that quiet pause, something unspoken and electric passes between them- something she can’t name but deeply feels. Sophia tells herself it isn’t cheating. It’s just a moment. But as she stands beside James, moved by his conviction and presence, she can’t ignore the shift within her. Thoughts of Asif flicker- then fade. And for a heartbeat, she wonders if what she feels is desire, or the stirring of a self she’s only just beginning to recognize.

          

7.      The Setting: Long Island, NY in the Summer of 2013

The novel unfolds in the sun-scorched suburbs of Long Island during the summer of 2013- a season thick with heat, shame, and reckoning. Sophia, a Bangladeshi-American law graduate, splits her days between bar prep classes and court-mandated driver rehabilitation sessions, her life cleaved in two by a recent DWI conviction. In the tidy symmetry of suburbia, she feels her mistakes cling to her like sweat and she begins to question whether she really wants the white picket fence dream she was raised to chase.

Against this backdrop, the Trayvon Martin trial plays out on every screen, stirring tensions Sophia has long been ignorant to. As she begins to view the case through the lens of an unexpected romantic interest, the perceived safety of her surroundings and life choices begins to unravel. The suburbs become more than just a setting- they reflect Sophia’s fractured identity and force her to reckon with the life she’s built and the one she’s only just beginning to imagine.

 

Assignment 1: Story statement

A gifted teen returns to a hidden, advanced world to awaken her power and stop a coming war.

Assignment 2: Antagonistic Forces

The main antagonist in Joslyn’s story is Jonathon, a charismatic but ruthless Ambassador who uncovers the secret of her forbidden origins and mixed genetics. In a society where power and status hinge on genetic purity, Jonathon views Joslyn as a dangerous anomaly. Fearing she could expose cracks in the system he’s helped build, and ignite rebellion, he’s determined to control her at any cost, even if it means destroying her before others learn the truth. 

A secondary antagonist is Jonathon’s son, Ezra, a cunning and arrogant young man who thrives on control and domination. He masks his cruelty behind his charming, good looks, but beneath the surface is a deep hunger for power and status. Ezra sees Joslyn’s radical belief that faith and inner strength can reshape genetic destiny as a dangerous challenge to the strict geneticly-gifted hierarchy he is determined to rule.

Assignment 3:  Create a title

Inner World

Assignment 4. Genre and Comparables

The genre for my manuscript is YA romantasy.

I used The Powerless series by Lauren Roberts as a comparable title. The love trope is similar, as my protagonist falls for someone who is initially positioned as the enemy. They are also similar in that the protagonist must enter a grueling competition to gain the influence she needs to stop her enemies. However, unlike Powerless, my main character is inherently powerful but must learn to unlock her abilities over time.

A second comparable is the Delirium series by Lauren Oliver. My novel echoes its exploration of a society that has outlawed love and the moral and social consequences of removing such a fundamental human experience. However, while Delirium leans more dystopian, my manuscript is based in science fiction and takes place in a hidden world inside our own, where society is shaped by genetic engineering and controlled through selective pairings.

Assignment 5: Core Wound and Primary Conflict

Pulled into a dazzling world beneath the Earth, a teen girl must hide the power she blames for her mother’s disappearance, survive a brutal competition, and leave the boy she loves—before the world she never knew existed destroys the one she left behind.Earth’s crust—she must hide her identity, win a grueling competition, and try to abandon the boy stop Inner World from obliterating all life on

Assignment 6: Conflicts

Internal Conflict:

Joslyn has always known something is different about her. It’s why she remembers star-shaped cities and nights lit by a purple moon, memories no one else seems to share. And it’s the reason why she and her mother have lived in hiding, her mother warning her never to reveal her identity because of her blood. But Joslyn doesn’t understand how dangerous her difference is until her mother goes missing. Wracked with guilt, she begins to believe that whatever lies within her is to blame. That dormant power, however, begins to surface, slowly, and only when she sings.

Triggering Scene:

After her mother’s disappearance, Joslyn provides for herself by performing at a local concert hall. During one performance, her awakening ability begins to stir. She can feel the emotions of the crowd: their thoughts, their energy, their longing. Most notably, she senses the love and profound relief radiating from a mysterious man in a suit who clearly doesn’t belong. It’s then she realizes: this is only the beginning of the power her mother warned her about. She’s been found and now she must run again. 

Second Conflict:

When Joslyn returns to Inner World and meets Oliver, her assigned trainer, she begins to develop feelings for him. But the emotions she’s buried for so long resurface with fear. The choice to love is outlawed in Inner World, but more than that, Joslyn is convinced she doesn’t deserve it. She believes that anyone who cares about her ends up hurt because of the power inside of her. Driven by guilt and fear, she tries to push Oliver away protecting him from herself, and from a system that would punish them both for love outside of being genetically paired.

Assignment 7. Setting

The story begins in the quiet desert town of Prescott, Arizona, where Joslyn hides out, hoping her missing mom will one day return. It’s there, while singing at a local theater, that she realizes something’s off when she starts to feel the audience’s emotions and even hear their thoughts.

The setting changes when her long-lost father shows up and takes her to Inner World, a hidden, high-tech society built inside of our own. Inner World is divided into 36 provinces based on different genetic abilities, with cities shaped like star formations and powered by sustainable tech. Machines called re-atomizers create food and clothes from thin air, and everyone’s movements are tracked by biometrics. 

Portals between the two worlds are locked down and protected, and the entire society is ruled by a powerful Council comprised of the most genetically gifted. To earn a spot, you have to fight for it in a brutal competition that proves your strength.

With its glass-clear oceans, vibrant skies, castle-like buildings, and people who barely age, Inner World looks like paradise. But Joslyn begins to question how perfect it really is when your path, your partner, and your future are all chosen based on your predestined genetic blueprint—and what will happen when she discovers she holds the power to rewrite it all.

Story Statement

In the aftermath of U.S. Senator Huey Long’s 1935 shooting and death, the family of his accused assassin, Dr. Carl Weiss, finds fault in the “official” version of events and must decide if  confronting the real forces behind Long’s assassination is worth losing their lives for.

 

Antagonists

External Antagonists: 

Senator Long’s political allies (AKA the Long regime) will do anything to protect the truth around the dead senator’s power, corruption and death.

Lester Chamberlain- Yvonne and her brother-in-law, Tom who is doing his own sleuthing are followed, threatened and intimidated by a man who knows who was behind the shooting and is willing to taunt them with it.

Internal Antagonist: Yvonne epitomizes the obedient Southern woman, but she is also well-educated and well travelled. She struggles to find balance between doing what is expected of her (by her mother, her professors, the authorities, and society) and doing what is viewed as rebellious (like moving to NYC to get her PhD and going to France in 1939 to do her dissertation research).

 

Title Options

1) SHAME THE DEVIL- as Yvonne and Tom discuss how to bring Long’s real assassins to justice and finally clear Carl’s name, they bring up the old saying, “Tell the truth and Shame the Devil” which emphasizes the power of honesty and truth to defeat deceit and evil, but must decide if they know they will ever be believed.  

2) NO GOOD DEED- Carl confronted Long because he was earnestly trying to defend his sister-in-law’s honor and in return was not only gunned down, but also labeled an assassin. Years later, Yvonne and Tom must decide defending Carl’s honor would result in the same for them.

3) A FEUD IS THIS WAY - a quote from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. 

“A feud is this way - A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in -- and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time.”

In the end, Yvonne and Tom must decide if they will perpetuate the feud or instead invest in their own futures.

Comparables

SHAME THE DEVIL is a cross section of Oliver Stone’s JFK the Movie and Kristen Hannah’s THE NIGHTINGALE.

 

Hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound

The truth behind U.S. Senator Huey Long’s shooting and death are revealed by the widow of his accused assassin. Yvonne Weiss must overcome her subservient 1930’s era ways and decide if clearing her dead husband’s name is more important than protecting her child and securing her own future.  After 90 years, it’s time we hear her side of the story. 

 

Conflicts

Primary conflict- Yvonne’s younger sister, Marie unexpectedly appears at Yvonne’s house fuming about an encounter she’s had with Senator Long who insinuated Marie had “Negro blood.” Because their father, Judge B.H. Pavy, a political enemy of the senator, has recently survived heart failure, the sisters agree to keep the story between them.

Yvonne’s husband, Dr. Carl Austin Weiss overhears their plan and insists he will force the senator to apologize. Having grown up around politics, Yvonne knows this is a bad idea, but she is too subservient to insist Carl stay out of it. A few nights later, Huey Long is shot in Louisiana’s State Capitol. According to Long’s bodyguards, Carl was the assailant; they killed him on the scene. 

 

(Conflict-choose to live with her parents or get her doctorate. small life vs big life)

Yvonne feels guilty for not defending Carl, but opts to keep Marie’s secret and tries to move forward with her life hoping a formal investigation will clear Carl’s name. With death threats to her son (who bears his father’s name) Yvonne finishes her masters degree in Baton Rouge, but has been black-balled from teaching. When she is accepted to a PhD program at Columbia University, her mother forces her to choose between her lofty goal and the baby. 

 

(conflict-protect Yvonne or keep digging)

At the same time Yvonne’s brother-in-law, Tom a young med school student, finds flaws in the official version of events as reported by Long’s bodyguards, colleagues and the state police. With the help of Monsignor Gassler (a powerful Catholic priest and long time friend of the family)Tom begins his own investigation. Before long Tom and Monsignor meet one of Senator Long’s bodyguards, Ozzie Maher who was curiously called off duty on the night of the shooting. When Ozzie shows Gassler and Tom a crime scene photo from the night of the shooting, Tom recognizes a  seedy man who has been following the Weisses since the shooting. Ozzies identifies the man as a National Guardsman named Lester Chamberlain. Ozzie warns them that the more they dig, the more Yvonne will be surveilled and intimidated. 

 

(conflict- trust Valentine or put him in the category with Chamberlain)

Before Yvonne leaves for NYC, Tom has a chance encounter with a named Lewis Valentine, who introduces himself as New York’s Chief off Police and tells Tom he knows Carl did not shoot Long and that FDR knows it, too. Valentine gives Tom his calling card and offers to be available to Tom if he ever needs anything.  He also promises to keep Yvonne safe in NYC .Later that day, as Tom brings Yvonne to her train for NYC, Tom sees Valentine beating Lester Chamberlain in the rail yard.

 

(conflict-allow what others think to stop her or prove them all wrong)

At Columbia, she befriends Jeanne Varney, Columbia’s only female PhD, who questions Yvonne about Carl’s role in the shooting and chastises her family for using their political power and clout to “hide” her at Columbia. Jeanne claims people in the department doubt Yvonne is a serious student and goes on to criticize Yvonne’s master’s thesis for being sympathetic to the South during Reconstruction. Jeanne compares the South’s Negro to Hitler’s Jew. Hurt and somewhat ashamed, Yvonne chooses a different topic for her dissertation–one that requires research in France.  

 

(conflict-how to control Marie)

Back home, Marie receives a letter suggesting someone else knew about Marie’s meeting with Long. While the content could prove Carl’s innocence, it would humiliate Marie. Her frantic efforts to control who knows what threaten to derail Yvonne’s PhD plans and Tom’s investigation. (while the novel includes Marie’s POV, she is a flat character- through the whole story, her only interest is to protect herself)

 

(conflict-break the law and endanger her friends or continue her research)

In May 1939, Yvonne and Carlchen sail to France and the further from home she is, the freer she feels.  Within months, though France declares war on Germany, Paris is evacuated, and all foreigners are asked to leave the country. She must decide if staying is worth breaking the law. On a long, precarious train trip to the town of Longué, where they will stay with friends and lie about her relationship to them, she and Carlchen are followed by a man Yvonne recognizes as  one of Long’s bodyguards.

 

(conflict- focus on his studies or continue sleuthing)

 In New Orleans, after Tom finds Lester Chamberlain’s home and begins spying on him, he receives a package in the mail with the hat Carl wore on the night of the shooting and a threatening and cryptic note from Chamberlain implicating Long’s political foe, New Orleans Mayer T. Semmes Walmsley in the Senator's shooting. 

 

(conflict- go home to safety and clear Carl or stay to finish her research)

In Longué, tensions grow. The French police are suspicious of Yvonne’s German name, a passenger ship bound for New York (potentially with Jeanne aboard) is bombed, and the weekly letters from Yvonne’s family are censored. As the fourth anniversary of Carl’s death looms, Long’s bodyguard delivers a note confessing his role in the shooting.

 

(conflict- disregard Dudley’s advice or keep pushing for the truth)

Meanwhile in Louisiana, Senator Long’s cronies are indicted for corruption. Tom sees this as an opportune time to press for the truth. Brings the crime scene photos of Chamberlain to a med school friend of Carl’s, Dr. Dudley Stewart. In turn, Dudley tells Tom he recognizes Chamberlain and urges Tom to stop his investigation.  Dudley tells Tom Chamberlain had come to his office the day after the shooting and tried to coerce Dudley into signing a statement that he had been Carl’s accomplice.  When Dudley refused, Chamberlain and his cohorts beat Dudley.  

 

(conflict- warn Yvonne not to return to NY and risk a the censoring of his letter)

Tom writes a letter to Valentine telling him about Chamberlain’s note.  Valentine writes back and tells Tom to watch the papers for some criminal indictments- this will show him who really killed Long. The letter doesn’t make sense to Tom and he decides to confront Chamberlain.  But instead is witness to Chamberlain’s murder and learns Valentine is the culprit.

 

(conflict-decide if she will clear Carl’s name or secure her future)

During a third interrogation, French police refer to Yvonne as a lying Jew. The insult allows her to finally see her own prejudices and she decides to leave France at once. She fills a trunk with her research and hides the bodyguard’s confession in the sawdust stuffed belly of Carlchen’s toy pony. After a harrowing three-day journey she and Carlchen board a ship for home. She is told her ticket will not accommodate her trunk and the pony. 

 

(conflict- expose the powerful forces behind the shooting or moving forward)

Tom visits Yvonne in New York and the two speak frankly about their respective discoveries and realize there are two forces who believe they are responsible for Long’s shooting.

 

Several years later, Yvonne’s son, Carlchen finds a copy of LIFE Magazine featuring the infamous rendering of his father’s murder. He demands to know if his father and namesake, Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, was indeed Long’s assassin. Yvonne now recognizes a painful pattern of polarization in her life — the politics she’d learned in her youth; the self-righteousness that led to Carl’s death; the prejudices of the Reconstruction era; and her experiences in pre-war France. 

She tells him what she knows for certain; his father was an honorable man who loved them dearly. 

 

Settings

Baton Rouge, LA 

--Yvonne and Carl’s house- on a street with other small cottages in a neighborhood that sits in the shadow of the brand new Louisiana Capitol Building which has been built under the direction of Senator Long in only 14 months.  

--The baby’s nursery- which has been decorated by Carl (showing his softer side) and has an antique rocker gifted to them by Carl’s cousin, Nell who will come to Yvonne’s rescue later).

--Carl’s parents’ house- filled with family (a doting mother, a father fixated on politics, a naive little brother frat boy, and a cook who has worked for the family since Carl’s childhood).  

--The family cabin- an hour’s drive from Baton Rouge, the cabin sits on the Amite River and is a retreat for the family.  Carl’s parents watch the baby in the shade, while Carl and Yvonne have an intense conversation in the sun.

--The church- Carl’s funeral is ‘standing room only’ inside an old gothic church packed with people, Carl’s steely coffin, a booming organ, strong incense and a stronger Monsignor. 

Opelousas, LA (The Country)- Yvonne’s family home is just outside of  the small town of Opelousas, LA and is affectionately called, “The Country.” Her mother insists this is the place where Yvonne will live out her life, but Yvonne feels stifled under her mother’s smothering, her father’s failing health, and Marie’s guilty conscience. There are horses here, a huge front porch, giant oak trees, Mamma’s rose garden, a tree swing and a large family including Yvonne’s brother Veazie who is a great supporter of Yvonne’s and is one of the only people who can keep Marie in check.

Return to Baton Rouge- back in the cottage Yvonne shared with Carl she is surveilled and followed by strange men who boldly sit outside of her house.  She tries to make this her home (baking biscuits, returning Carlchen to his nursery) but there is always another threat (the meant outside, the women who whisper that Carlchen is the assassin’s son, her inability to find a job).

New Orleans- Tom moves to New Orleans for medical school. Here we see the neighborhood where Lester Chamberlain lives- small shotgun houses near the river, a drunk Chamberlain manning a fire in his backyard and we see Tom’s digs; his organized dorm room and the Tulane campus. 

New York-features Columbia’s campus; a cold classroom, the French House where she lives for her first semester. Jeanne and her difficult husband’s apartment is small 

Paris- Yvonne lands in France and initially stays in hotels, in letters to her family she describes the daily rates, the living quarters and the bathrooms (usually shared and down a hallway). Spends a good amount of time exploring the city w her son; bus rides, Champs Elysées, gardens, parks, bookshops, bridges, and the toy department of Les Galleries Lafayette.

American Hospital-she visits the director of nursing at American Hospital where Carl did part of his residency..  The grounds of the hospital feature a lush shaded lawn and extravagant flower gardens.  Inside, they are treated to lunch and then  are greeted by a large group of emotional doctors and nurses who’d been friends of Carl’s.

The Sanger’s- a well-appointed apartment in Neuilly (an upscale neighborhood outside of Paris) where a young divorcée lives with her four-year-old daughter and a governess. 

Southern France- Yvonne vacations with Carlchen seeing mountain towns and coastal cities, Carlchen loves the beach and is learning French well.  When France and England declare war on Germany the hot sun burns her skin, the crowds become unbearable, and the train stations overcrowded and difficult to navigate.

Longué- located in the Loire Valley. The Sanger home is and is protected by a wall on one side and the large garden filled yard, has a creek running across it’s back boundary. Because this is a summer home and may now be their permanent residence, it has been recently scrubbed and painted and is undergoing improvements (an indoor toilet for one).  Longué is a small community surrounded by farmland and initially seems idyllic-until police and nosy neighbors become suspicious of the two Americans living with the Sangers.

Trains-the trains are filled with men who have been called to war and depressed families who have been forced from their homes or whose fathers and husbands have left to serve their country.  The cars are packed and often dirty.

New York- the final scene is in Yvonne’s small apartment in NYC. She is cooking and for Tom and while she is not a natural in the kitchen, she is a good hostess and has a stable home.  

 

Assignment One

After their mother’s death, two sisters discover clues to a long-hidden, family secret, and their search for the truth, a quest they hide from the rest of their family, leaves the whole clan teetering on the edge of calamity and shame.

 

Assignment Two

Ann Johnson kept a secret and forced the few people who knew it to keep it too. Her choice to save herself, without regard for anyone else, fractured two households. The repercussions of her choices rippled across three generations.

Ann attempted to ease her guilt by confessing to her two eldest daughters, but died before she could complete the task. Uncertain about what she intended to tell them, they decide to keep her attempted, death-bed confession a secret.

Months after Ann Johnson’s death, her eldest daughters discover a box hidden deep in Ann’s closet. They believe it holds clues to Ann’s secret. They decide to follow the clues on their own, without telling their other siblings.

The legacy of Ann’s secrets continues to haunt her children. Her children’s need to understand why their mother kept an emotional distance from all of them continues to impact the ways in which they respond to the truths they discover.

To free themselves from their past and forge a new type of family, Ann’s children must confront their personal pain. Choosing to forgive the people that hurt them, allows them to create a totally new version of their family.

 

Assignment Three

1. Family and Other Lies
2. Keeping It in the Family
3. The Comedy of Family Tragedy

 

Assignment Four

1. Family Family by Laurie Frankel. This novel similarly explores what it means to be a family. The writing is similar in tone and style to my novel.
2. If We’re Being Honest by Cat Shook. This novel centers around the death of a family patriarch, and the discovery of his secret that leaves his grieving family reeling. Like my novel, it tells the tale of various family members confronting their past, learning to forgive, and trying to heal from old wounds.

 

Assignment Five

Two sisters’ attempt to uncover a family secret throws their entire clan into chaos and threatens to break their fragile, family bond.

 

Assignment Six

Inner Conflict:  Two sisters have to overcome their feelings of inadequacy, due to their mother’s emotionally withholding parental style, in order to confront the possibility that their entire lives may be upended by the discovery of a cataclysmic family secret.

Secondary Conflict:  After deciding to keep what they discover a secret from their other siblings, the two sisters place their siblings in potentially scandalous situations that spiral far beyond their control, ultimately requiring a reckoning with the past in order to save the family’s future.

 

Assignment Seven

The story opens in a hospital in Austin, Texas where the antagonist, Ann Johnson, is contemplating her impending death. With her two eldest daughters by her side, she attempts to divulge a huge family secret, but dies before she can complete the task.

The family gathers in Austin for the funeral of their matriarch, where long-lost relatives and self-medicated family members make for a madcap funeral no one will soon forget.

The discovery of a hidden box of clues, leads the two oldest sisters on an adventure through Nashville, Tennessee and Sedona, Arizona, where they encounter “cowboys,” red rocks, spiritual vortices, and unexpected obstacles leading to unforeseen complications.

The secrets and lies come to a head in an imposing Napa Valley winery, during a surprise engagement party, that turns out to be filled with way more surprises than anyone had originally planned. When the explosive truth blows up the party, everyone retreats to their respective hotels to await word from the future bride.

Taking matters into their own hands, the future bride’s best friends conspire with the future groom’s family to reunite the lovers, in the caves of the future brides’ favorite winery, where the story concludes.

1.    Story Statement 

• Florence must defy her mother’s expectations and outshine her sister Elena to become a Broadway star

2.    Antagonist 

• The primary antagonistic force is society’s confining expectations of women; this is represented by Florence’s mother, Maria, who encourages Florence to abandon her performing arts studies to pursue something more traditional, and by Florence’s sister, Elena, who harnesses the grace and malleability Florence lacks to become her rival onstage.
• Maria’s expectations are rooted in her conservative, Italian-American parents and Catholic community. While Florence is determined to pursue her passion for music, Maria expects Florence to go to college solely to find a husband. 
• Despite being equally talented, Florence’s sister, Elena, initially adheres to her mother’s standards. However, once Florence finds success outside these confinements, Elena decides to pursue music as well, and is cast beside her sister in their first Broadway production. A direct foil to Florence, Elena lacks Florence’s drive, but Elena doesn’t push boundaries or possess Florence’s stubbornness, leading their show’s producer to favor Elena. This is further complicated by both Florence and Elena falling in love with their producer’s son, the show’s composer. To be a star, Florence will have to either suppress the fiery determination that got her onstage in the first place, or prove her talent irreplaceable, with Elena always waiting in the wings. 

3.    Breakout Title

• Adagio
• A Tough Act to Lead

4.    Comps

• HELLO BEAUTIFUL meets THE FAVORITES

5.    Log Line (Core Wound and Primary Conflict)

• In 1980s New York City, a Broadway hopeful rejected by her family competes with her sister-turned-rival for not only the spotlight, but the composer they both love.

6.    Other Conflict 

• Because her mother discounted Florence’s musical ability and passion, Florence requires applause and admiration—external proof of her talent—to fuel her self worth.
• Inner Conflict
  • As Elena attracts attention from the show’s composer and producer, Florence wonders if Elena and their mother were right, and her stubbornness will get in the way of not only her relationships, but her professional success. When the composer, Max, takes full credit for the show Florence wrote the lyrics and book for, Florence struggles to balance her feelings for Max with her desire for recognition. Elena tells Florence to be grateful she’s starring in a Broadway show and move on. Given her feelings for Max and that the betrayal isn’t a knock against her talent, Florence decides to let it go. 
• Secondary Conflict
  • When Max’s father, the show’s producer, takes Florence out of a number to feature Elena, instead, Florence realizes Max knew and didn’t spare her the public humiliation by telling her beforehand. Her ego bruised and talent questioned, Florence explodes, saying she deserved better especially because she wrote the show, and begins fighting for recognition as co-creator of the musical.

7.    Setting

• ADAGIO is set in the 1970s – 1980s New York performing arts scene to demonstrate a) a character who has come of age in a conservative, Catholic household during a time when Roe v. Wade was hotly debated, and b) the arts community at the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. 
• Florence’s home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn juxtaposes Florence’s nature versus the traditional, conservative environment where she grew up. 
• At The New York School of Theatrical Arts, Florence is unable to keep up with her professionally trained classmates, putting her dreams at risk.
• Max and Julian’s Upper East Side mansion and Hamptons house demonstrate Max’s relative societal position and the unequal power in Max and Florence’s relationship.
• Florence’s gross walk-up apartment downtown demonstrates how badly she wants to live anywhere but her parents’ home, or with Elena.
• Once she’s at the Broadway theater, Florence has achieved her dream, but is constantly competing with Elena, who didn’t work half as hard to get there.
   

Please see attached 7 assignments pre-work. Thank you. 

Ligia Forgaciu Seven Assignments.pdf

The Throne Room - Seven Assignments 

Seven Assignments.docx