David Wollover

An important write-up - book marked it. 

One question though:  "Agents getting axed by grinders is equally meaningless.". 

I Googled "what is a grinder in book industry" and from that felt amused yet uninformed. 

Thank you.

David

Perhaps something like forge your plot in the fires of your (ensemble) characters' will?

(enclosed image of key protagonist generated by David Wollover in Mid-Journey)

Mannikko Tazmanakos silently bolted to his feet at the faint sounds of Karl’s widow’s lithe frame ever so slowly brushing her way among closely spaced foliage.  Realizing her movement was not wandering at all, but directly toward him, he crouched frozen behind tall dense arbor vitae for her to finally step close enough to allow him to quickly seize her, with a hand pressed firmly but gently upon her mouth.  The feel of the exquisite contours of her thinly clothed womanly form pulled close against him brought an aching reminder that he had not held any woman for what now suddenly felt far too long for him.  He realized a second too late how it made his breath a little deeper and dryer than he wanted her to hear.  She was more than sensual enough to feel the aroused tenor of Tazmanakos’ hot breath, from where his lips slowly whispered the words two centimeters from her ear.  
“Be still now.  If I wanted you hurt it would already be over, yes?  And I declare you are confident that would be impossible since I am only here because your Karl trusted me more closely than anyone else.  I trusted him with my life.  He trusted me with his.  Will you trust me?  Can I trust you?  I’m going to release you now, OK?”
Tazmanakos saw her forehead barely reach his shoulders as she pushed away and glared fearlessly up at him with her slightly more platinum than aquamarine eyes flashing a fierce energy made surreal by the reflecting brilliant ivory moonlight, which for that moment rivaled the moon’s glow above them.  The highlights plentiful throughout her slightly past shoulder length compactly curled red hair wildly shimmered in the moonlight around her milky grey satin camisole draped as liquid closely against her pale skin, making her appear to him as a gothic faerie.  She spoke at him in a supple and resonant voice that he could feel in his chest as much as he heard her.  
“Now who are you?  Why have you invaded my home?”
Tazmanakos braced at her bold eyes penetrating his obvious effort to gather himself to find his next words.  
“You heard me say ‘Karl’”?
“Who is Karl?  I don’t know any Karl!”
“You appear too serious to make me believe you are toying with me.  So why is it then that you want to deny him?”
As if to act contrary to Tazmanakos ‘serious’ she broke into a laugh that snapped out of her chest.  
“Haa!  Deny someone who never existed?”
“He spoke of you frequently, and only to me.  Most often about when you were both younger.  Together.  Before he had to distance himself from you.  For your safety.  Never told me your real name.  Only that you were his ‘Jenya’.  I worked with him continuously, right up until the moment when he passed.”
Tazmanakos saw her freeze at the name she had heard no one say for many years, and then quickly reflected on why it had been so long since then.  
“’Passed away’; that is what you call it?  Worked with him?  Then you and he regularly shared the same blood on your hands?  He was dead long before he knew it.  He just needed someone to finally remind him of it!  Speak not another word of him and go now.  Never return, understand?”
“I am trying to be respectful, that’s all.”
“Will you please go?  Right now!  You do not want me to ask you again!”
“I was with him when he died.  I heard his last words.  Don’t you want to know what he said?”
“Absolutely not!  Long before he died I refused to hear anything out of him!”
“I can understand.  However I heard plenty out of him.  It was on more than one occasion that he asked me to never tell you he was sorry, especially if you had any lightweight glass objects with immediate reach.”
Tazmanakos saw the recognition flash out of her stunned eyes, revealing the memory’s brief grip on her, before she snapped back at him.  
“You dare to be so insulting!?  You know nothing at all of that!  You know nothing of me!”
“Jenya...”
“I am not Jenya to you!  You will address me as Alevtina.”  
“Yes, of course.  Alevtina, what I do know is that Karl wanted on many occasions to intricately describe the different curving cuts that together produced the L-shaped scar covering your left thumb, from the time you accidentally sent your hand through the glass door into your home.  Is it that door back there, behind from where we stand?”
“He said accidentally, did he?”
“It always took two stiff drinks to bring it out of him.  In nearly the same very few sad words each time, he made it clear what a terrible day it was for him.”
“You had no business talking about that with him!”
“Of course I defer to you on that.  But I’ll tell you this.  I can tell when a man is straining himself to assume blame that was not his.”
“He blamed himself?”
“I think he finally convinced himself; not me though.  I wasn’t about to argue with a man who was arguing with himself.  Nonetheless he was totally crystal about one thing.  Made me promise to occasionally check on you.”
“So your prowling here is what you call ‘checking up’ on me?”
Alevtina wondered why Tazmanakos took such a long scan up and across the completely cloudless sky, before he slowly drew a deep breath, before almost whispering to her.  
“He warned me that it would be a mistake to contact you directly.  He insisted that I wait until the stars aligned properly.  Only then would you approach me, because as strange as it is to me, he really seemed to believe, it would invoke what he said would be a celestial blessing to allow him, or was it his spirit?  I never really understood his description of that that part, though, for him to see you through my eyes.  That was his belief, strange as it sounds, to me, at least.  Does it sound as strange to you?”
Tazmanakos watched Alevtina instantly become wide eyed while she reflexively looked up to the stars brilliantly adorning the clear sky.  She appeared to be searching for a couple of seconds, when she appeared surprised at whatever she saw.  She quickly gathered herself to incredulously probe deep into Tazmanakos’ eyes for nearly a half minute to seek any deception, when she felt a sudden flash of a too uncomfortable familiarity out of his gaze that provoked an anger that, at least before tonight, she had always directed exclusively at Karl.  
“What?  Oh, so he sees me now through your barbaric eyes?  Could he not have done better than such a blunt instrument as you?”
The cooling night air stung slightly over his humiliation flushing warmly through his skin.  But then he remembered the humility that Karl warned he would need with her.
“Perhaps he could have, given enough time.  However, he did state it plainly to me that his confidence in me to watch over you was perfect.”
“Perfect?  So he still loved to overindulge himself with that foolish word?  He was always the self-aggrandizing warlock!”
He blinked hard in surprise at that recognition.
“I would never have asked you about that; however, since you raise it, yes, he did mention to me that if you ever trusted me enough, then you might acknowledge him as such a man.”
“I don’t trust you to acknowledge anything!”
“Of course; not so much about trust as it is your comprehension, yes?  I for one do understand how I see you now.  So haven’t you and I passed beyond the need to debate your acknowledgement?  Look, it’s just me asking now.  Alevtina, is this all because you are also involved in the craft?”

1. Write your story statement.

A young man matures throughout his struggles for personal freedom from the tyrannical grasp of multiple oppressors amid events driven by deadly power players.

2. Less than 200 words, sketch antagonist as their background, ways they react to world about them, their goals.

Asaker al-Baqadin, possessing a disturbed mentality forged in the fires of macabre family tragedy, embodies a sinister drive for revenge.  He leaves behind destruction through his relentless struggle to weaponize a synthetic nanobot that terrifyingly disrupts genetics controlling the human mind.  
A younger Asaker became passionate and competent with weapons and martial skills.  He reacts to obstacles as existential threats provoking aggressive response.  He knows his greatest challenge among many that he must overcome is Konen Windstone holding in his memory Asaker’s secret plans to build a genetic assault weapon.  He must hunt down the elusive Konen before he realizes the consequences of his knowledge.
Asaker’s character arc includes after he realizes his weapon’s effect he concludes it his duty to cleanse the world of many bad people, and why shouldn’t he be paid to do so?
Anecdote (optional?): “Asaker mused there was the matter of the man who had driven his father's reckless greed and his family’s murder.  Andross Gastos, of the most evil Napoleron Banque Nationale, living lavishly on Allée Lecouvreur Reclus, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.  Asaker knew he would look down that shadow as he made it far darker than Gastos could dream possible.”  

3. Create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).

MetaMentum Series:

Book One – Origins:  Konen Windstone's Betrayal Within Shadows of Power
Book Two – Forging Will:  Konen Windstone’s Broken Path into New Warrior Culture
Book Three – Diffusion:  A Fragile Freedom Amid the Hunt for Konen
Book Four – Convergence:  Konen’s Clashes with Asaker

MetaMentum as a multi book series title reflects a philosophical depth to a sustained narrative story drive.  The ‘Meta’ element suggests a higher perspective, exploring larger forces and themes shaping character arcs as well as shared destinies.  ‘Mentum’ reflects driving forces propelling intertwined journeys of the ensemble cast — wherever each character’s personal arc influences or impacts others, often in life altering ways.  MetaMentum embodies the interconnectedness of their struggles and where their individual momentum collides with the broader, uncontrollable forces shaping their world.

Alternative Titles (completed manuscripts):

Book One:  Konen Windstone: Betrayal and Exploitation
Book Two: Konen Windstone: The Broken Path

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?

Genre: is an Action-Thriller shaped by regularly appearing advanced technology that helps characters drive story in varying fashions.  The comparables aspect of the utilized technology is drawn from the author’s  knowledge of story-friendly advanced technology.
• Comparables:  A loose high concept comparison may be made as ‘The struggles and capabilities of Jason Bourne meet the ensemble and cross-cutting episodic elements of a modern day Game of Thrones (GOT).  
• Konen Windstone’s personal journey from slavery to gladiator to finally attaining a new and unfamiliar freedom loosely parallels Jason Bourne's character arc.  Both individuals struggle to discover who they really are while they rely on their advanced skills that have been partially attained through externally-effected physical alteration.
• Metamentum utilizes plot elements of GOT for both protagonist and antagonist arc progression in how John Truby defines his cross-cutting story structure element.  Similar to GOT, MetaMentum’s geopolitical intrigue involving powerful and driven characters such as  Konen's father Tecumseh and his close ally Marctane Bodine; Asaker al-Baqadin and his tech wizard Sami Shah; Colonel Gerisimov, his son Petor, nephew Mannikko Tazmanakos, and accomplice Nastya Dubrushkinova; Roman and Katarana Titanov, As well as the strong alpha female Markresha van Reethrum, harbor strong motivations and are not adverse to whatever level of conflict they deem necessary.
• MetaMentum is a further comparables' hybrid that deliberately draws upon story elements, albeit only where they can find an authentically-organic home, from other stories such as 24 (where Sami crosses Asaker in a manner similar to where in 24 (Season 3) Michael Amador deliberately crosses Stephen Saunders); and Traffic (where Katarana Titanov undergoes a Helena Ayala (Catherine Zeta-Jones) type renaissance to replace her husband in leading their respective dangerous enterprises).  Like it's comparables, Metamentum has multiple (at least three firmly established) potent female characters who have no need for men to perform as alpha story engines with rising intensity as story persists.

I did an experiment to ask ChatGPT to compare the  uploaded MetaMentum manuscript with GOT.  Following is its 100% unedited reply: "The multi-threaded, cross-cutting nature of MetaMentum, similar to Game of Thrones, features multiple powerful factions vying for influence, with shifting alliances and a large ensemble cast of characters. However, MetaMentum is more action-driven and takes place in a modern-day or near-future setting, where technology plays a significant role in shaping the characters' abilities and the story’s progression.  Like Game of Thrones, MetaMentum presents morally complex characters with intricate motivations, but it diverges by focusing more on technological advances and the personal journey for freedom, as seen in Konen's transformation. While GOT is steeped in medieval politics and family dynamics, MetaMentum is rooted in the modern era, where geopolitics intersect with cutting-edge tech and advanced warfare."

5 . Write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above.

Konen Windstone, a long captive slave commando, must overcome the traumas from his past and escape to freedom from the tyrannical martial circumstances that Asaker imposed upon him throughout his formative teen years.  When Konen accidently learns Asaker’s dangerous secrets, he becomes a serious threat for as long as a desperate Asaker is unable to end his life.  Konen’s boy-to-man journey for freedom begins when he unexpectedly transitions from Asaker’s slave commando to Colonel Gerisimov’s ‘strategic’ prisoner in a Russian mining camp North of the Arctic Circle.  Konen’s transition is set in motion where he becomes the unwitting linchpin to a power play between Asaker versus a powerful Imam, as well as simultaneously between Colonel Gerisimov in violent opposition to his military and mafia competitors for greater trans-national crime power.  Konen’s bloodied face appears in a viral YouTube video that directly triggers both Asaker and Gerisimov to gain significant material rewards while it also enables Konen’s father, Tecumseh, to discover his long lost son is still alive.  Konen’s quest for freedom and vanquishing inner demons remains unfulfilled until he becomes forced to confront Asaker, the man who had for too long held him captive both physically and psychologically.

6-A:  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.

INNER CONFLICT: The trigger for Konen Windstone’s major inner conflict was when slave traders kidnapped him at age six from his parents in Morocco, during the infamous ‘Agadir Tornado of Souls’ terrorist attacks.  Asaker acquired Konen and relentlessly worked to brainwash him throughout his continuous training as one of many slave commandos who together executed mercenary operations for Asaker’s profit.  Konen maintained a convincing fallacious pretense of devout fealty as his conflicted life of impersonating submission to the persistent religious indoctrination in order to stay alive.

6-B: 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?

EXTERNAL CONFLICT: Konen had a difficult time accepting that only fifteen minutes before the mission commenced, Hassan warned him exactly how he would be responsible for taking direct action in the event that the sea became punishing enough to weaken any of the boys into a state of unacceptable risk.  He warned Konen that anyone in danger of either straggling too far behind, or even panic, would compromise the mission and thus Konen must shove and hold their head under the water, without remorse, for the sake of mercy and stealth.  
Konen’s eyes jerked over to the sudden seven-foot eruption in the water, but it was too late to warn Amir of the whitecap that had quickly soared beyond his peripheral vision to blindside him, collapsing onto his face, and leaving him gagging for spasmodic gulps of air.  
Konen recalled Jihadi lore that danger had an affinity for the weakest.  Had they remained in their Zodiacs longer, Amir might have had a chance.  But in this cold rough water, this long, made Konen regret Hassan had approved the skinny boy for this mission.  
His stare drifted left to Amir’s older brother, Jamal, glancing at Amir between his own laborious strokes.  Despite the scant light, Konen could see the worry deeply etched into Jamal’s young face.  
Konen now realized Jamal lied to him when he had asked if Amir was fit enough to join the mission.  Asaker forbade outside doctors into the madrassa, for fear of them witnessing the harsh methods that he had recklessly applied to ‘properly train’ some of the more stubborn boys.  Over the last few days, Jamal his his anguish as well as hid Amir from the others even though his vomiting expelled more grotesquely after each meal.  
Konen now regretted not stepping out of his hidden vantage point the day before, and intervening when he overheard Jamal arguing with Amir.  Jamal had told him to stop discarding his rations and eat them instead, but Amir argued back saying that if he stopped eating just for one more day it would stop his sickness and improve the color in his face so that he would appear to Hassan to be fit enough for the mission.  
Now Konen painfully witnessed, moment by moment, how Amir’s swimming gradually appeared weaker, until the choppy sea started pushing him backward, and nearly stopping his forward progress.  
Konen looked over to his left and saw a grimacing Jamal anxiously watching Amir obviously struggling to keep his arms moving through the water.  As Konen closed in on Amir, he was amazed to watch Jamal turn and swim further away from his brother.  
That left Konen to be the first to hear Amir’s pained breathing growing shriller.  Konen drifted himself close enough to see Amir struggling to draw air into his lungs, his quick shallow gasps signaling he was failing to get enough air.  Konen winced at Jamal to see if he realized the trouble that his brother was in, when he abruptly turned back to the sound of Amir’s asynchronous breaths slowing into a faint whisper.  Konen suppressed his gasp at Amir’s deep grimace reflecting the seizure that completely halted his breathing.  Konen became terrified at the young boy’s face expressing a horror similar to the atrocity he would recall forever on Memet, the boy who Asaker Abu al-Baqadin had burned alive last year to set a disciplinary example.
Konen jolted at how suddenly the cold fog reverberated Amir’s gagging cry that sputtered a petite froth of his combined dwindling air and acrid water out from his lungs.  Konen saw the other boys around him startled at the sudden guttural broadcast.  They all turned heads to find who risked exposing their pre-dawn attack on the Serdyukov, the Mistral-class amphibious assault ship that France had provisioned under Russian command to transport its expeditionary forces to its secretly planned point of assault.  
Seeing Amir plunge helplessly beneath the surface, Konen knew that Hassan would insist on him pushing and keeping his head under to drown him as silently and quickly as possible.  But witnessing so closely how horribly the boy was about to die spiked a surge of adrenaline in Konen.  He spun behind Amir and thrust out his arm to seize his wet suit’s rear collar, yanking his limping head out of the swirling water.  As soon as Konen saw Amir’s gagging face clear the water, he had to duck away from his angry clawing hands back over his shoulder and barely missing Konen’s eyes.  
Konen saw Hassan approaching from over Amir’s left shoulder, glaring at him, and baring his thick teeth in a ferocious anger.  
“Release him Konen, God summons him.”
Konen deliberately tightened his chest muscles to fight off the shaking sensation pressing outward from his gut, and the consequent stuttering.  
“My Hassan, we shall let Amir drown?”
Konen watched Hassan’s eyes ratchet larger into a frenzied glare.  He cringed at Hassan’s hoarsely whispered warning.  
“I declare God requires him now!  Of all my warriors, I would never expect it to be you Konen -- to set this wretched blasphemy upon our Imam's sacred mission and our path, say I, your path to Heaven!”
Feeling boxed in with intimidation, Konen broke his gaze from Hassan and faced Amir, who he still held buoyant; however, now he froze at seeing that Amir had suddenly ceased all struggling.  Konen already feeling the cold water, shuddered a lifeless chill from seeing Amir's eyes lock into his with a trans-humanly glow out of his agony from the lethal brine that had displaced nearly all the essential air from his lungs.  With such a sudden cold fright that quickly made the water around him feel disturbingly warm, Konen abandoned his grasp of the boy.  
Turning away, he swam not daring to look back, but winced at hearing Amir’s final gurgle as a vanishing echo blanketed under the low fog concealing their approach to their target.  Konen steeled his eyes amid the salt spray to fight back the tears.  
He suddenly felt his shoulder stinging from Jamal’s hard open palm strike.  
“Konen, you should have pressed his head into the water.  What if you exposed our mission?”
Rubbing the punch out of his shoulder, Konen had never in his life felt so incredulous.  
“He was your brother Jamal.  Why did you fail to take responsibility for your family?”
Konen floated face-to-face with Jamal, seeing his eyes burst wide and his mouth grimace in agony before compensating into a rage that unsheathed his rubber-handled knife.  Jamal raised his hand-length grey steel blade high over his head and lunged down at Konen.  
“You blasphemer…unworthy of Jihad…unworthy of the Imam!”
Amid a splash loud enough to turn heads, Konen whipped his hand to block and seize Jamal’s wrist, torquing it back into the arm to release the knife into the deep water.  Before the blade sank a meter, Konen swept Jamal aside with his lean powerful forearm.  
Hassan hissed at them both.
”Silence!  Another moment of your drivel and you both die here.”
Konen flashed a wide-eyed warning to Jamal, before he swam on.  
“Stop pretending your wrist hurts.  You would know it if I wanted to hit you hard.”

7th 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.

7-A.  Immersed in the Black Sea The opening scene finds Konen, one of our protagonists.
It became more difficult for Konen to ignore the aching sensation from the chilly sea threatening to cramp his upper legs.  The 30 kilograms of tactical assault gear awkwardly swaying across his upper back weighed on every stroke as he swam strong into the outer reaches of the coastal tide turbulence.  He cursed under his laboring breath they should have rowed longer inside their inflatable Zodiac boats before immersing themselves in this aggravating water.  Here where the very deep sea met the shallow shelf it became choppy enough for whitecaps that suddenly sprang up hissing like a cobra to spit burning salt into his eyes.  
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7-B.  Georgian Port of Batumi, Waters Edge of the Heavy Ships Pier:  
Konen shuddered from the winds swiftly swirling out from the alpine air mass cascading down the Caucasus highlands that made each minute feel colder than the last.  He watched the plummeting chill forge part of the sea mist into crystals that settled into a dull glaze all around him.  Each aching minute relentlessly grated into Kirov.  It became harder to balance himself in his cramped kneeling position on the prickly iron skin of the 100 year old pier.  He felt the rough metal drawing out his dwindling body heat.  His lips and nostrils burned from the slimy brine splashing into his face each time another gust burst over the beaten down sea wall.  Repeatedly, Kirov felt each breaker’s splash crystallize to an ice skin on his legs and feet that began to feel like it insulated him from the frigid air, until the next breaker splattered him once again before retreating to the sea.  His wrists pulsed raw from the taut plastic clasps cinching them behind his back and his ankles scraped into the chains pulled tight around them on one end with the other end clasped to an ancient iron ring welded into the dock.
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7-C.  Vorkuta - Russia, North of the Arctic Circle
The greater visibility of daybreak only intensified Konen’s dread.  He stared at the fanning dawn rays neatly painting their deep purple aura to sharpen the naked ridge masking the horizon.  Now soft lavender beams probed between the plump clouds retreating from the southward advancing pressure of crisp Arctic air.  To Konen, the distant rays felt warmer than his surrounding atmosphere.  It chilled him to watch how the reckless SPETZNAZ, shoved each other into the profuse flames crackling out from their dazzling bonfire.
The SPETZNAZ came to Shestaki for only one thing; live adversary combat training.  Once each month Shestaki guards escorted selected "puppets" to the wide shallow lake within walking distance.  The Vorkuta-garrisoned SPETZNAZ maintained their tradition of fighting their puppets while in a natural body of water; and the colder it was then the better it would deaden the staggering effects of the vodka drunk long into last night.  And they would find the water cold enough, as well as Konen, to their liking come sunrise. 

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