Judah David

OPENING SCENE - Introduces MC's primary problem, supporting characters, and basic rules of magic system Nand chanced upon a few other children from a neighboring village playing a game, their Zzards either coiled around their arms or riding on their shoulders as they ran back and forth along the shoreline. They seemed to be playing some sort of catching game, one child throwing a ball high into the air with the other children jockeying for position underneath to be the one to catch the falling toy. The boy who was launching the ball noticed Nand watching their game and smiled at him. “Hey! Hey, you wanna play?” The boy was talking in Nand’s direction, but Nand was so taken aback, he actually looked round to see who the boy could be talking to. “Yeah, you! Come on, see if you can catch my falling star shot!” “Um… okay!” Nand’s face split into a grin as he ran over to where the other kids were gathered to receive the catch. A red-haired girl with freckles, blue eyes, and a blue Zzard on her shoulder smiled at him as he came over. “Hi. What’s your name?” she asked him. “Nand,” he replied. “That’s a neat name! I’m Felice. Where’s your Zzard?” She looked at him quizzically for a second. “Alright, this one is worth a diamond!” the first boy called out loudly. Felice turned away from Nand before he could answer, and the other kids began spreading their arms and shifting each other out of the way. Nand looked up in time to see the boy launch the ball into the air about a good thirty feet. Felice moved away from him towards the front, jostling with a couple of the other kids to try and position herself to score the point. She and another, taller boy were right on the cusp of grabbing it when her blue Zzard darted out from her outstretched hand and snagged the ball from the remaining inches between her and the other boy. “Hey, no fair!” the tall boy complained. Felice plucked the ball from her Zzard’s mouth and tossed it back to the first boy, smiling. “Be quicker next time, Syver!” “Alright, this one is worth gold!” The first boy was winding up to chuck the ball again. “Get ready, Nand!” Felice called back to him, a fierce grin on her face. Nand got right in the middle of the group and started jockeying for position right along with the other kids. The boy with the ball threw a spiraling shot that came speeding directly towards the center of the group. Nand’s hands shot up reflexively and caught the little ball before it smashed him in the face. “Nice one!” Felice said appreciatively. Smiling, Nand tossed to ball back to the first boy and got in position right next to Felice for the next catch. “Alright, you lot. Time for the falling star!” the boy said with a wicked grin. Everyone exclaimed in eager anticipation and began shoving each other out of the way. The boy drew back his arm, and suddenly a green and blue Zzard crawled off his shoulder onto his back and grew seven feet tall, binding himself to the boy’s arms and legs. At the last instant, the boy and his Zzard launched the ball high, high into the air. It arced over their heads, and everyone started backpedaling madly to try and catch it. The ball started to disappear into the gathering dark of the skies and fell with a soft thud some six hundred feet behind where they all were, amongst the stones at the foot of the western mountain. “Torsten, what’d you pitch it into the mountains for?” Felice shouted at the first boy, clearly annoyed. Torsten’s Zzard was shrinking back down to its normal size, and Torsten stepped lightly back onto the ground as the dwindling reptile released its grip on his legs. “Sorry – bit too much pepper on that one, eh?” Torsten smiled amiably while the other kids grumbled. “Well, come on, let’s go get it before it gets dark!” He led the charge towards the foot of the mountain as Felice, Syver, and the other kids followed, scrambling to keep up with Torsten as he began to climb. Nand sprinted along behind the rest of the children, reaching the mountain’s roots last and searching for purchase with his feet. “It’s got to be around here somewhere,” Felice groused. “Syver, give us a light, will ya?” Syver stretched out his arm, and his black and yellow Zzard scurried from his shoulder onto his back and began to stretch his limbs to connect to the boy’s. Nand reached the level where the other children were just in time to see the transformation. Once Syver’s Zzard was fully grown, Nand saw that there was a bulbous appendage on the top of the Zzard’s head, hanging down in front of its face. The next instant, the hanging limb lit up like a lantern, bathing the rocks at their feet with a warm, yellow light. Night was falling fast. The first stars were already winking into view overhead, and the harvest moon hung huge and pregnant, low in the sky. Nand was searching nearby where Felice was when a horn blast from the village sounded off the rocky mountain. “Oi, it’s the harvest horn!” Felice shouted at the others. “Back to the village!” Torsten cried. “Last one there’s a n’atch!” Immediately, the other kids’ Zzards scrambled onto their partners’ backs, grew, and merged. Felice, smiling from a face-sized hole within her own blue Zzard’s chest, said, “Come on, Nand, you don’t want to be late!” Nand watched as Felice, Torsten, Syver and the rest all bounded down the mountain and took off towards the village lights, their Zzards’ powerful legs carrying them far away in a few heartbeats. She doesn’t know I don’t have a Zzard, Nand thought to himself. But everyone knew. The whole valley knew that there was one boy in one village that didn’t have a Zzard, one out of the entire population. She doesn’t necessarily know it’s me, though. It was important to him, somehow, to make sure he convinced himself of this. His happiness evaporating like a burst soap bubble, Nand began the slow descent down the mountainside.

1. The Act of Story Statement a. After mysterious dark clouds blot out the sun and threaten to destroy Eternal Valley, twelve-year-old Nand must leave the only home he’s ever known and, with his new Zzard partner, Jormun, bring back the sun and save the power of the Zzards. 2. The Antagonist Plots the Point a. Edmee is a thirteen-year-old warrior/scientist from the opposing Zzard settlement underground. Her people have been trapped underground as their way of life because their Zzards cannot survive in sunlight. Edmee is a genius and is determined to find a way to lead her people out of the caves and into the surface world for the first time in hundreds of years. She develops a compound that, when burned, produces thick black impenetrable clouds that spread to the horizon, blocking out all sunlight and throwing Eternal Valley out of balance, catalyzing Nand’s journey. Her Zzard, Lind, is the only known Zzard to breathe fire and assists her with her experiments. Edmee is fierce and determined, willing to do whatever it takes for her people, with extreme tunnel vision as her flaw. Her own people do not know that she has devastated the balance of the world. Nand and Jormun are attracted to Edmee and Lind, respectively, and there is potential for the feelings to be reciprocated, which makes the choice to oppose Edmee more challenging. Jormun is also the same kind of shadow-dwelling Zzard as Lind, so Edmee appeals to Nand’s desire for Jormun to be happy and healthy as further conflict for the protagonist. 3. Breakout Titles a. Zzards: Battle of the Shadows b. Zzards: The War for The Sun c. Zzards: The Brightest Darkness 4. Comparables a. Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle i. These are books of high fantasy aimed at young adults ii. Extensive worldbuilding complete with cultures, magic systems, and mythological creatures living alongside humans draw parallels to my own work iii. The plotline follows the traditional “hero’s journey”, where a person is thrown out of their ordinary world into an extraordinary world in order to accomplish a difficult task and become more than what they were b. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series i. High fantasy aimed at young adults/middle schoolers ii. Plenty of humor and levity to balance out the darker tones and high stakes iii. Doesn’t take itself too seriously to allow less advanced readers a chance to enjoy a fantasy series without needing to translate Elvish every two paragraphs c. Zzards will be different because the main character is the only ordinary one in a world of the extraordinary. It’ll be like Digimon meets Encanto… until it’s not. 5. Logline a. After spending his entire life as a misfit, 12-year-old Nand is now the only one that can withstand the mysterious darkness over Eternal Valley, so now he must leave home in order to save it. 6. Two Levels of Conflict a. The first thing that Nand will be forced to choose is taking away the chance for an entire culture of people to change their lives for the better. In “defeating” Edmee and stopping her plan from coming to fruition, he may be saving Eternal Valley (and whomever else there is living in the world), but he will be dooming Edmee’s clan to eternity underground since their Zzards can’t live in sunlight. That’s a tough decision for a 12-year-old to make, especially when he feels something more for Edmee. b. The second thing, which is probably the more difficult (to a degree), is letting Jormun go and live with Edmee and her people. Since Jormun is the same species of Zzard that gets sick in sunlight, the best thing to do is to let him go. Jormun is who made Nand feel like he finally fit in, and he was actually special amongst the special, since Jormun could fly. The best thing for his new friend, though, is to let him live his life apart from Nand, so he goes back to Eternal Valley alone, and once again, is the only one in the community without a Zzard. Sacrificing your own social standing for the greater good is not typical pre-teen behavior and will take a huge amount of maturity on Nand’s part. Edmee will definitely use this logic against him during the climactic conflict (“You’re going to give up everything you want for the good of everyone else back in your perfect little valley village? Go back to being ordinary while condemning my entire family to a life underground? Telling your best friend he’s not important enough to change the world for? Are you crazy?!”). 7. Setting a. Eternal Valley is a lush, green paradise nestled between two enormous mountains. It is inspired by the landscape beneath the Panorama Trail in the Swiss Alps with Lake Oeschinensee at the bottom, which is Eternity Lake in the story. There are lots of green pastures that roll right up to the roots of the mountains. It is a perfectly balanced ecosystem with plenty of flora and fauna, wooden and stone houses and buildings, and living communities dotted around the edge of the lake, which is a mile or so in diameter. It is always spring/summer, and never winter. The culture is Norse/Germanic and is reflected in the architecture and clothing of the Valley. b. Outside of Eternal Valley, the “real world” is happening. Normally, there are regular seasons endemic to the northern hemisphere of a planet like Earth. During the time of the story, however, after the black clouds roll over the sky, everything becomes gray and dead-looking. The route between Eternal Valley and the caves where Edmee and her people live is riddled with rocky crags, desolate wastelands, magma pools, and sickly forests – very Mordor-like. c. The cave dwellings of Edmee and her people are dark and gloomy, yet beautifully excavated since they, too, have Zzards. There are grand underground halls and elaborate tunnel systems for human and parcel transportation (maybe a bit like Omashu from Avatar: The Last Airbender). There is little to no color, though. Everything is gray and black, and the shadows are heavy and inky. There’s a huge spike pit in the middle of the settlement, almost like a cruel negative image of Eternity Lake back in the Valley.