Lori Carol Maloy

1.       THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT-- develop a simple "story statement." In other words, what's the mission of your protagonist? The goal? What must be done?

Triggered by threats of losing her granddaughter and being dumped into a senior living facility, unpublished writer Shelby Garrett sinks farther into the fantasy world of her fictional characters who help her keep the past at bay. When intruders arrive to rob her and threaten her life, she is convinced the armed aggressors are her very own fictional characters, ones she can control. Unaware of the true dangers, she challenges the intruders and demands a rewrite. As the early trauma awakens, she spirals out of control. One by one her delusions collapse and force her into the fight of her life.

2.     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.

Drystan Hewitt is a sociopath, abused and abandoned as a child. Raised on the streets, he has fought to survive by stealing, selling drugs, and terrorizing the weak. If life doesn’t go his way, he has no problem abusing or killing. He arrives on scene with intentions to harm and retrieve his girlfriend, Trudy. Although amused by the protagonist’s confusion with reality, killing her will be an enjoyable task for him and an opportunity to train Trudy.

The secondary antagonist is Shelby’s own inner conflict and denial of the past. She has pushed her early trauma, grief, fear, and guilt so deep inside herself that she no longer acknowledges the truth or the uncomfortable realities of the present, despite the evidence, and buries herself deeper into her fictional world with every stressor and is unable to leave her property. Living through her characters, she understands their need to grow and change but is unable to face her own need. When the intruders enter her home, her fantasy world begins to unravel. Unless she is able to face the truth, deal with the past and live in the present, she will further destroy herself and lose her family, her life, and her sanity.

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

1^st choice for title is FICTIONAL CHARACTERS because this is the world the protagonist lives in and she believes the characters in her novel have invaded her home.

Other possible titles are:

Hiding in the Knotweed

Wall of Stories

Watchmen in the Windows

4.     Fourth Assignment (read article) then— 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?

The Woman in the Window—this psychological thriller is about a woman who cannot face the reality of the past and so she has altered it until a present trauma forces her to face and accept the past and complete the grieving process in a healthy way.

My protagonist has erased the past and lives through her characters by forcing them to face their fears, to change and grow, though she is unable to do the same until a present trauma forces her to fight or die.

Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King—In this psychological metafiction thriller, a writer has a psychotic break, disassociating and splitting into two different personalities which allows him to deny truth and obtain revenge without responsibility.

My protagonist is an unpublished writer who cannot cope with the past, early trauma of her brother’s death, and the death of her husband. Instead, she buries herself in her fictional characters and lives through them, thereby avoiding the responsibility of living. At times, she cannot distinguish her characters from living breathing people and has no awareness of the real danger she is in when the home invaders arrive and threaten her.

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

When the separation from her granddaughter and the threat of being placed in a nursing home threaten to disrupt writer Shelby Garrett’s obsession with her fictional characters, her psyche begins to wobble, then when an intruder arrives to rob and threaten her life, she is forced to face the lies she’s constructed that help her forget a past she cannot face.

6.     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.

Unpublished writer, Shelby Garrett, has created the perfect world where she controls her characters’ emotions, trauma, past and present so she can continue to evade her own reality of detachment from the world and her traumatic past. She will stop at nothing to keep the lies alive and the past buried. When confronted and threatened by intruders, Shelby denies the reality of what is happening and believes these killers are her characters. In a desperate attempt to maintain her current novel in progress, she rewrites by murdering one of the intruders nonchalantly. But when the surviving intruder panics and demands they bury the body and ditch the car, Shelby reacts with absolute fear at leaving the property, which is beyond her comfort level and could increase the threat of exposing the entire past. She refuses to acknowledge the dangers of leaving the car and dead body in plain sight and how this could put her at risk of being caught and prosecuted for murder. At all costs, Shelby cannot allow herself to see any of the events as real or to remember the past because that could finish her, causing her to lose herself forever. That is, unless her enemy can help her safely uncover the past without destroying her in the process.

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?

Due to grief and loss and an inability to face the past, Shelby is unable to leave her property and buries herself in the fictional world of her characters, disappearing from everyday life and interaction with family and friends. This alienation causes the protagonist to seem uncaring and aloof as well as detached from reality. Angered by Shelby’s refusal to attend off property functions and events and her inability to face the reality of her husband’s death, conflict arises. Because of Shelby’s delusions and emersion with her fictional characters, not to mention the clutter and chaos of the home and property, Shelby’s daughter is left with no choice but to keep the granddaughter, Amy, from private visitations. Her hand is forced to begin the process of putting Shelby in a nursing home and getting her counseling.

As the home invasion escalates and Shelby is forced to face the truth, the past surfaces and Shelby spirals downward, losing control of her fantasy world and maladaptive ability to cope. She sinks into the past she has worked so hard to forget. Traumas converge and the lies begin to crumble. Shelby will not emotionally survive the blows unless the remaining intruder helps her. Can two enemies help each other break free of the emotional chains of early trauma and erase a murder, thereby, bonding them together forever?

7.     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.

The setting of Fictional Characters takes place in an unnamed central Florida town in the country where the protagonist lives alone on an isolated property. The broken-down home is on the outskirts of town off a rarely used dirt road. The property is in disarray, inside and out, with the sheds and barns falling apart, the grass grown up around cluttered yard tools, and an overgrown and weed infested, neglected, and dying rose garden that the dead husband used to care for. As Shelby’s psyche and social life have deteriorated, so has this property. When outside, Shelby believes there are watchmen at the corners, hiding. She sees shadows and images (the past is always begging to be exposed).

Unable to leave the property due to phobia’s and severe anxiety, she rarely ventures outside and when she does, she might walk the perimeter but never leaves the property. Everything outside is a trigger which she avoids, due to uncomfortable body sensations and a flood of sensory discomfort which trigger the rhyming and repetitive words she uses to cope and calm her. Benson, one of her past characters, will shadow and present himself when she becomes triggered and he will talk her down.

On the isolated country property is an abandoned well that the protagonist refuses to go near. It is in the center of the back rose garden, which she refuses to tend to. When forced to help bury the body of one of the intruders’ in the abandoned well, Shelby’s early trauma begins to surface. She is faced with ‘in your face’ memories of her brother who drowned in the grandparents’ old well when she was young as the daily train approached. She blames herself because she was frozen with fear and could not get help fast enough. As the burial of the dead body in the well plunge her into the past, her psyche trembles and begins to deteriorate and the sound of that past and distant train returns to haunt her, the train whistle louder and louder in her head as she disintegrates. She recalls the train, the hideaway, the well, and her brother and husband’s death.

Forced to accept that they are dead and not still alive she falls completely apart. But not before the intruder forces her to help ditch the vehicle. As they drive, Shelby recalls businesses she used to frequent years ago with her husband. These dark roads, stores, gas stations, and train tracks they must cross to ditch the car. All reminders of the past and the truth she has denied for so long.

The setting also includes a sickly fox (a representation of the brother) who watches her from across the road or in the hedges as they bury the body, and she believes the fox is there to bring her a message or to warn her. She has seen this fox before and it is as he sits beside the knotted weedy edge of the woods that she begins to recall the knotweed fort of her childhood that always kept her safe. In the end, the fox was sickly and dies, as her brother did. But neither deaths were her fault and she will eventually accept this.

During the resolution, Trudy and Shelby pour concrete in the well to hide the body forever, swearing an oath to keep it secret. They clean and restore the rose gardens, creating beauty from the weeded mess, and clean up the property, inside and out.

Trudy leaves to live her life and Shelby is able to leave the property and resume a normal life, but Benson remains beside her, and an integral part of her life and psyche.