With a week and a half of the school year left, it’s only natural that I come up with a very compelling story idea which soaks up all my interest. To be honest I’ve only written 13 pages and it hasn’t been really detrimental to my paper writing/presentation making/test studying behaviors. It has, however, gotten me really invigorated.
I’m finally giving up my pursuit of lofty settings and cultures I don’t understand — for now. I want to see what kind of difference it makes when I set my scenes in streets I’ve walked and put my heroine in a life I understand. So far the only story I’ve purposely put my life into is “Farewell, Fairytale,” which is still a really satisfying story with really brilliant characters and a likable (I always want to put an E in that) world. (Funny aside — we were talking about the mere exposure theory in my psych class today, and my prof had us write down our favorite letters. Mine were E, S, T, R, and W. He then proceeded to inform us that generally people choose 5 letters from their name. S,T,E,W,R,T. It was honestly the first time I fell for one of his tricks!)
So this story, potentially, as noted, either called “In the Land of the Unfaces” (clunky) or “Unface” (more dystopian than I want to imply), takes place in the Cedar-Riverside community and is narrated by a 22-year-old psychology student doing an internship at a community mental health center. Ashlyn (last name to be decided) has always dreamed of people without faces and they haven’t ever scared her. But when her estranged best friend steps into her dreams and laughs at her, Ashlyn finds herself straddling her dream world and the real world. The longer she’s wandering through her mind’s terrain, the more like the unfaces of her dreams she becomes. In order to escape she must confront the shattered friendship of her past and learn to see the world through new eyes.
Okay, so I didn’t really mean to give an actual synopsis, but that sums it up nicely. So far I’m really driven by this. Then something made me think of Edvard Munch’s painting “Evening on Johan Street” and I realized this EUREKA! way to handle the technicalities of Ashlyn’s dream/wake worlds by making Munch someone that saw the unfaces, too. The idea of incorporating a fine artist into my story-line is AWESOME. That in conjunction with so many parts of my real life getting into this story gives it a LOT of potential. Plus, Ashlyn’s cat Pippin (PIPPIN!) is a main character because he’s a medium, able to be in Ashlyn’s world and the waking world and that’s SUPER COOL RIGHT?
Okay I’m done. I just needed to write this down so that I didn’t keep gushing about it to people that only listen to humor me, haha.
For some reason, the word “resplendent” popped into my head to take the dystopianism off the title — so UNFACE RESPLENDENT…suitably obtuse, but not near so dark; promising hope at the end of the day.
Anyway — write what you know. While I don’t know YOUR world, I think reading a novel of it would make me grow as a person because it would allow me to understand the writer (you) better therefore introducing me to a place I’ve never been before. Which is, in truth, why I read. Science fiction especially.
Go for it, dear daughter! Go for it!