Hello! I look forward to meeting you all. Please see my responses below (upmarket women's fiction).
1. STORY STATEMENT
A former journalist investigates the death of her husband, a famous baseball player caught up in a steroid scandal, because she’s determined to correct the record on what happened the night he died.
2. ANTAGONIST
Mickey Shaw enters the story as a sympathetic character who helps Maggie after her husband Pete’s death, and later becomes a love interest. Maggie falls for him easily because he reminds her of Pete, and she is desperate to put her life back together. Their relationship becomes a source of tension as she questions whether Mickey was involved in her husband’s scandal and he discourages her from investigating the accident.
When she discovers that he was driving the car that killed Pete, Mickey appears to be an evil villain who killed her husband, fled the scene, and then seduced her. As After his confession, it becomes clear that he is more of a moral antagonist who was driven by fear—he panicked and fled the scene because he was drunk, and then guilt—he checked on Maggie because he was genuinely worried about her, and eventually love—he didn’t intend to fall in love with Maggie and got out of his depth. The tension persists after the confession when Mickey turns himself in and goes to trial. The prosecution asks Maggie to make a victim impact statement, and even though she will never forgive Mickey, the decision is difficult for her.
3. BREAKOUT TITLE
My working title is Lot of Life Left. This is a phrase that appears a few times in the story: Early in the story, Mickey returns Pete’s baseball glove to Maggie and says it had a lot of life left. Later in the story, Maggie includes the line in Pete’s obituary that goes viral, and titles her memoir Lot of Life Left.
4. COMPS
Elin Hilderbrand The Five-Star Weekend: This book is also a women’s fiction drama in which a woman discovers her independence after the death of her husband. The fluid and accessible writing style is also similar.
Catherine Newman We All Want Impossible Things: The story also explores a complicated marriage and a strong female friendship. It is a sad story with a hopeful ending, and the characters have a sense of humor amidst tragedy.
5. HOOK/LOGLINE
When a former journalist investigates the death of her husband, a famous baseball player caught up in a steroid scandal, she’s pushed to the limit of how far she would go to make her family whole again.
6. INNER CONFLICT
Primary conflict: When Maggie’s baseball star husband dies in a single-car accident, the police believe it was a suicide due to his history with addiction and depression. Maggie is convinced he did not take his own life and determined to prove it. She can't move on with her life and pursue another romantic relationship until she finds out what really happened the night of the accident.
Secondary conflict: Maggie enters a relationship with the antagonist, Pete’s former trainer Mickey. She is conflicted about this relationship on a number of levels—he was her husband’s good friend, she doesn’t love him as much as she loved Pete, and she questions whether he was involved in the steroid scandal that ruined Pete’s career. Because he is scared she will find out what happened the night of the accident, he pulls away when she begins investigating it, which creates more tension. The tension continues to build until she discovers that Mickey was driving the car when Pete died. After that climax, the conflict continues when he turns himself in and she has to decide whether to make a victim impact statement on behalf of the prosecution.
7. SETTING
The story is set in Atlanta, GA and moves between several locations:
Maggie and Pete’s home, an old Victorian house in the city that Maggie and Pete renovated after they were married. During the renovation, they had the exterior of the house painted a rich dark green called “Secret Garden,” and that became their new home’s nickname. In the opening scene: “Their six bedroom Victorian house—the dream house they had purchased and renovated the year before—had turned into a war room. Their long oak dining table was peppered with laptops, and PR people wearing earbuds paced around the house shouting about ‘exclusives’ and’“impressions’ and ‘influencer strategies.’” Maggie is in this house during a number of important moments, including when she finds out Pete died. She sees blue lights flashing through the windows and falls to the floor in the entryway, while her kids are sleeping upstairs. She can hear the whir of their white noise machines and picture the glow of the nightlights.
Pete’s therapist Ethan’s office, and specifically the waiting room, where Maggie spends a lot of time. It is a small bungalow converted into an office with two therapy rooms in what used to be bedrooms. The waiting area looks like a picture from a magazine, the floor covered in vintage Turkish rugs, warm light coming from table lamps, and scented candles burning throughout the room.
Pete’s rehab center, a facility called Brighter Days. It looks to Maggie like a five-star resort, with floor-to-ceiling windows showing off a beautiful garden and lake, a juice bar, a yoga studio, and everyone who works there wearing a yellow polo shirt with a little white outline of a sun rising over the pocket. The only part of the center Maggie doesn’t like is Pete’s room, a small square room with a twin bed and an ensuite bathroom he can barely turn around in. The walls are painted light gray, and there are stretched canvas prints on the wall that look like stock photos of peaceful scenes: generic mountain range, generic waterfall, generic beach. Maggie notices that the canvas prints aren’t framed as a safety precaution.
