For the December Conference this week!
1. Story Statement
Achieve her dream of becoming a successful musician, despite a social media campaign threatening to destroy it, and her.
2. Antagonist
Social media itself becomes a character here, with comments and trolls threaded throughout the story, influencing Elodie’s emotions and reactions. Through social media, the antagonist, Raida, is given a platform and support. Once a friend of Elodie’s sister, Raida uses social media to attack and discredit Elodie throughout the novel, finding the mob flock to her with a desire to ‘cancel’ someone.
Raida is bitter, privileged, and feels slighted by Elodie because of her closeness with Elodie’s brushed-aside sister. She believes herself to be a vigilante of sorts, and understands enough of the digital world to know that her words can snowball. Social media itself is quick to judge and quicker to forget, and Raida uses this continuously to remind users of Elodie’s wrongdoings. Her ultimate goal is to keep the influence she garners online, while also avenging Elodie’s sister (but really, to avenge herself).
3. Breakout Title
The Thing I Can’t Talk About (current working title)
Elodie Tennison Is Cancelled
4. Comp Titles
This is a women’s fiction contemporary novel. For those who love an authentic London facilitating connection like in The People on Platform 5 by Clare Pooley, the high stakes human drama of Taylor Jenkins Reid, and the painfully deep-cutting and relatable lyricism of Noah Kahan’s album Stick Season. This story is for fans of complicated family dynamics, a modern era of technology, and of course, music.
5. Hook Line
A young girl chases her dream of becoming a successful musician without letting social media, which discovers then promotes her greatest shame and secret, destroy it and possibly her.
6. Other Matters of Conflict
The story is dual POV, from the perspective of the mother (Catherine) and the daughter (Elodie). Each character has their own inner conflicts they struggle with, while the primary conflict remains on Elodie’s rise to fame and battle with intense social media campaigns.
INNER CONFLICTS:
Catherine: A middle-aged mother trapped in a soul-crushing job who craves the freedom to chase the dreams she never did when she was young. She watches her children, in particular Elodie, succeed, and feels more and more dejected at her own life. In a rash moment, she quits her job, sending the family into financial distress and further troubles when she discovers she has aged herself out. She becomes guilt-ridden and even more wistful, finding comfort in helping her daughter pursue her dreams by becoming her official manager.
Catherine is not a desperate character, but feels a type of desperation that resides deep in regret. Her parents died just as she was on the cusp of adulthood, and left her with hundreds of questions she'll never have answered. She believes she has failed her family, thrown away the stable life they’d grown together, but also feels as though she has always failed herself, even before she quit.
Elodie: A 16 year old girl who is incredibly gifted at singing and song-writing. She also suffers from the constant need to pull out her own hairs, causing her to have no eyelashes, patches of missing hair, and scars along her legs and face. She isn’t aware this is OCD, nor that it’s a form of self-harm. Over the years, she has learned to cover up the evidence of her picking, and hide her compulsion well. But once she starts posting to boost her music career, social media notices her habits and diagnoses her with trichotillomania. Turning into the poster-child for thousands of people with the disorder, Elodie feels a mounting pressure and need to ‘fix herself’, all while trying to maintain a budding music career.
Elodie crescendos in anxiety throughout the novel, becoming short and arrogant in an attempt to preserve herself. She doesn’t want to fail the hundreds of people looking to her for guidance, or her mother - who becomes entangled with Elodie’s career as her manager -, and knows that she has been given a position of privilege most only dream about. But she feels an overwhelming weight promising to crush her, and begins to wonder if she even liked music and performing in the first place, or if she was simply drawn to the success.
SECONDARY CONFLICT:
Catherine quitting her job becomes the catalyst for rising tension in the Tennison family, for various reasons. They now have financial struggles that the kids can’t help but notice. Also, without work, Catherine turns her focus solely to her children, primarily Elodie, creating almost a monopoly within the household. Their lives become absorbed into Elodie’s career, and none of them notice when Elodie’s sister, Ashley, begins struggling. Nor do they notice when Elodie herself can’t cope anymore – the success she gains eclipses it all.
7. Setting
The story takes place primary in London, UK, with short moments in the Cotswolds (country-side). Not only is London essential to the story with the protagonist being a rising star in grassroots music – wherein London is one of the most popular cities in the world for this -, but it also reflects the narrative. I wanted a concrete jungle, something that represents the speed of a rising star, as well as the rigidity of repressed British culture that permeates the whole novel. As Elodie becomes more successful, she finds herself deeper in stadiums and concerts venues, in concrete greenrooms and hallways that reflect the world closing in on her. London is fast and gritty and loud and exciting and wet and everything wonderful and everything overwhelming.
The moments of levity are in the Cotswolds, where the Tennison family spend time with their cousins. The first time we visit, there’s lightness in the air and an ease with the characters. By the second time, we’re nearing the climax, and the characters now reflect the harshness of the city. Tension and buried anger seep into even the quaint country-side. The city can be effectively suffocating, while sprawling fields represent a kind of freedom they can only escape to.
