Sunday, October 12, 2008

Finally, a breakthrough!

Thanks to Wrimogirl, I feel much more secure with my plot for this year.

The basic gist of the story:

Evelyn lives in a world where a conservative group (maybe a town council?) has been banning books. It started out as censorship of books with excessive violence or sexuality, and became the founding principles of the town, restricting anything that is not "pre-approved" as safe, factual, and, ultimately, simple. Anyone working against the council's decisions may be jailed or, in severe cases, put to death. Evelyn's parents went underground years ago to protect her, placing her with a foster family when she was only a baby, and now that Evelyn is older, she finds that she is different from the other kids at school and in the town. She finds a note from her parents as she's cleaning and sets out to find them, in the process learning more about who she is and what her family has been working toward. Her foster parents are severely punished when she is lost or maybe because the council finds banned books in the house, and Evelyn can no longer go home. She meets a boy named Nayeem who also escaped when his parents were taken.

There are two major ideas that I want to examine with the book (or books--I haven't figured out if it will lend itself to a short series or if I will only have one...):

1. The dangers of censorship
2. Can personality be inherited? I'd like Evelyn to show qualities of her family, even having grown up away from them. Her creativity and quest for knowledge should come more from her family than any other figures in her life. That way, as she meets members of her family, she can see aspects of herself in everyone, thus feeling more and more like she has found where she belongs. That sounds really schlocky, but...yeah.

Please forgive the poor grammer, misspellings, or otherwise poor writing skills found in this entry. It is intended for brainstorming purposes only.

1 comment:

Jamila said...

Ooo...good progress.
I'm sort of getting stumped now and need some serious character development.

Sigh...I can't get stumped this year too!!!

I really like the examination of personality traits...a lot of psychology argues both ways, should look at a little developmental psychology for ideas/hints.
Also, this makes me think of a slight spin you could take on your story.

What if this society took these kids away from their parents in hopes of removing these horrible characteristics...so it's less her parents gave her up and more that she was forcefully taken.

As for the extra character in the Labyrinth story--I found one: Ariadne [the king's daughter] who helped Theseus kill the Minotaur. They ran away together, but then he ditched her because he was just using her. Not so sure I like her character type though...but we'll see.

Sorry that was so long. Woot!