- Joined
- May 8, 2010
- Messages
- 6
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- northern ireland
- Website
- www.crazycolours.wordpress.com
I started writing a novel a little while ago, but rubbished it. Now I've just outlined a new plot - be warned - it is a very very rough outline. Can I have your immediate reaction or opinion? I know I've left loads of gaps but I am having a bit of a crisis with my writing and I need to know I'm headed on a straight path. I don't even care if I'm on the right path, as long as I'm not fucking about in a field, lost and wondering where the bloody hell the path is.
Thanks
[FONT="]Andie is 27 years old. She works as a legal secretary. She is engaged to be married to Chris, who works in politics for a conservative aligned political party. She does not agree with a lot of his political ideologies, in fact, she doesn’t know very much about politics at all. He is charming, respected (amongst his own circles at least) and middle class. He is security, familiarity and eye candy. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie studied Media at university, and left with a 2:2 qualification. Not enough to get her a job for a local newspaper, never mind a national. She doesn’t have the drive or gumption to try writing freelance. She’s happy in her little cocoon of working 9 – 5, drinks after work on a Friday evening, a take away with Chris on Friday night, before he drives her home because it would not look good to his religious and political “team mates” if her car was parked outside his house all night. They are not married after all. Sometimes Andie gets a taxi to Chris’s house under the guise that she’s had too much to drink so she can stay over, but Chris tends to discourage this. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie doesn’t have much in common with most of the people in the law firm she works in. They are mostly older, middle class and boring to her. They have conservatories, dogs and the younger ones have children, so talk about PTA meetings and school transfer exams and other such similar dull things. She does have a close (ish) relationship with Ben, a trainee solicitor. He rarely irons his suit, his shoes often have muck on the bottom, unkempt hair and he doesn’t have much in common with the other solicitors either, slagging them off and laughing about their high and mighty middle class attitudes behind their back. Andie and Ben often have longer than allowed tea breaks where they’ll discuss things they want to cross off their bucket list, she moans about the things that annoy her about Chris and they indulge in a little light flirtation when they’re having drinks on a Friday night. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Ben and Chris went to the same school and are the same age, but, on the occasions where their social paths have crossed, have snubbed each other. Chris looks down on Ben’s unkempt and alternative ways, and Ben obviously hears Andie whinging about Chris and feels the same about him as he does the other middle class people in her law firm; writing him off as a snob. Or so Andie thinks. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie and Chris have been together for 3 years. Chris’s longest relationship. They don’t argue. They often don’t find very much in common to talk about, but their relationship is a comfortable and peaceful one. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Out of the blue, Chris sits Andie down and tells her that he thinks their relationship has run its course. Andie is floored. She has often thought “is this all there is” but now Chris has done something definite and broken up with her, she is floored. Distraught. She finds a comforting ear in Ben at work. She thinks her and Ben are growing closer, and as everyone who suddenly finds themselves single after a long term relationship, wonders if every single male might be her next suitor, she wonders if Ben might be her next. She makes more of an effort with her appearance and is purposely happier at work – as you do – in order to put herself in a favourable light. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Chris is gay. He has been having an affair with Ben. Both unlikely, but their indifference or seemed dislike of each other in public is practiced and because they don’t want anyone else to catch on. Ben is being nicer to Andie after the split because he feels guilty, he does genuinely like her. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie only finds out about their affair/relationship when Chris sends her an accidental text, meant for Ben. She is horrified. She is in work when she receives the text, throws her phone at Ben and leaves there and then. She can’t believe it. Although nothing had really happened with Ben, she’s still sore after her relationship ending with Chris, who she is still in love with and not over. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie doesn’t quite know how to handle this. She doesn’t have very many friends, as over the past few years, her social circle has been replaced by Chris’s. She goes to Brighton on a whim, to stay with a friend of hers – someone she met on the internet. She only plans to stay for a few days, calling in sick to work. But Ben and Chris’s relationship hits the local press at home as Chris’s father is a local MP, therefore it’s shit flinging tabloid fodder. Andie can’t face going back. She checks into a hostel, totally at a loss with what to do. Her life, as she knows it has been ruined. She’s been humiliated. She ends up getting drunk in the hostel with a couple of the other residents, spills her story and they convince her to stay there for a while. [/FONT]
[FONT="]It’s getting close to the new year and Andie decides that she will not go back to NI. She decides that living her safe little life without going for many of the opportunities she could have gone for, and essentially living a life without passion – mundane, predictable and boring, has done fuck all for her. She decides she’s going to go against convention and make all her decisions, gut decisions, and to hell with the consequences. Her life is fucked anyway, as she sees it, she’s got nothing to lose. She’s not on a self destruct mission, she’s fairly positive about the whole thing. She decides to blog about it, under a fake name. [/FONT]
[FONT="]It starts off fairly small, gut decisions about what to do that day, what to eat, what to buy, but as her life and social circle develops in Brighton, the decisions she comes up against involve other people, relationships, indiscretions. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Basically making gut decisions and not giving a damn about the consequences gets her in trouble quite a bit. Which leads to more difficult and poignant decisions, which leads to bigger fuck ups. Her life spirals out of control exponentially.[/FONT]
[FONT="][I’ll work out the details as I write and get a feel for it, I have a few ideas already][/FONT]
[FONT="]Towards the end, her way of living leads to her having a kind of melt down and she’s forced into rapidly putting the brakes on her hedonistic lifestyle. She comes to the conclusion that she didn’t do it right either way, but at least the first time, all her troubles were not her own doing, although she did beat herself up about it. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Unbeknown to her, someone in particular is reading her blog, and following her life. He is in a rut himself, and he takes inspiration from her blog and her story and breaks out of his “rut”. He’s on his way to meet Andie when she has her meltdown and it takes him a couple of days to find her. When he does, she’s afraid that this is yet another crazy consequence of gut decisions – her decision to meet up with a stranger who has been reading about her on the internet. She back pedals and tries to put him off. But they get talking and she is spurred on by her friends in Brighton who have already met him (while he was looking for her) and tell her that it will be something nice for her, and will take her mind off all the troubles she’s had. [/FONT]
[FONT="]She realises that they get on just as well in real life as they did online, and tentatively get into a relationship. He moves back to where he lives, Andie decides to stay in Brighton and they agree to visit each other. The future looks hopeful for them, and Andie’s story gets picked up by a magazine editor who wants to feature her writing regularly in a popular magazine (or something else positive or whatever - as long as it leaves an open road for her. The ending might change).
[/FONT]
The majority of the story will be based around the gut decisions she makes.
Comments welcome. Cheers
[FONT="][/FONT]
Thanks
[FONT="]Andie is 27 years old. She works as a legal secretary. She is engaged to be married to Chris, who works in politics for a conservative aligned political party. She does not agree with a lot of his political ideologies, in fact, she doesn’t know very much about politics at all. He is charming, respected (amongst his own circles at least) and middle class. He is security, familiarity and eye candy. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie studied Media at university, and left with a 2:2 qualification. Not enough to get her a job for a local newspaper, never mind a national. She doesn’t have the drive or gumption to try writing freelance. She’s happy in her little cocoon of working 9 – 5, drinks after work on a Friday evening, a take away with Chris on Friday night, before he drives her home because it would not look good to his religious and political “team mates” if her car was parked outside his house all night. They are not married after all. Sometimes Andie gets a taxi to Chris’s house under the guise that she’s had too much to drink so she can stay over, but Chris tends to discourage this. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie doesn’t have much in common with most of the people in the law firm she works in. They are mostly older, middle class and boring to her. They have conservatories, dogs and the younger ones have children, so talk about PTA meetings and school transfer exams and other such similar dull things. She does have a close (ish) relationship with Ben, a trainee solicitor. He rarely irons his suit, his shoes often have muck on the bottom, unkempt hair and he doesn’t have much in common with the other solicitors either, slagging them off and laughing about their high and mighty middle class attitudes behind their back. Andie and Ben often have longer than allowed tea breaks where they’ll discuss things they want to cross off their bucket list, she moans about the things that annoy her about Chris and they indulge in a little light flirtation when they’re having drinks on a Friday night. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Ben and Chris went to the same school and are the same age, but, on the occasions where their social paths have crossed, have snubbed each other. Chris looks down on Ben’s unkempt and alternative ways, and Ben obviously hears Andie whinging about Chris and feels the same about him as he does the other middle class people in her law firm; writing him off as a snob. Or so Andie thinks. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie and Chris have been together for 3 years. Chris’s longest relationship. They don’t argue. They often don’t find very much in common to talk about, but their relationship is a comfortable and peaceful one. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Out of the blue, Chris sits Andie down and tells her that he thinks their relationship has run its course. Andie is floored. She has often thought “is this all there is” but now Chris has done something definite and broken up with her, she is floored. Distraught. She finds a comforting ear in Ben at work. She thinks her and Ben are growing closer, and as everyone who suddenly finds themselves single after a long term relationship, wonders if every single male might be her next suitor, she wonders if Ben might be her next. She makes more of an effort with her appearance and is purposely happier at work – as you do – in order to put herself in a favourable light. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Chris is gay. He has been having an affair with Ben. Both unlikely, but their indifference or seemed dislike of each other in public is practiced and because they don’t want anyone else to catch on. Ben is being nicer to Andie after the split because he feels guilty, he does genuinely like her. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie only finds out about their affair/relationship when Chris sends her an accidental text, meant for Ben. She is horrified. She is in work when she receives the text, throws her phone at Ben and leaves there and then. She can’t believe it. Although nothing had really happened with Ben, she’s still sore after her relationship ending with Chris, who she is still in love with and not over. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Andie doesn’t quite know how to handle this. She doesn’t have very many friends, as over the past few years, her social circle has been replaced by Chris’s. She goes to Brighton on a whim, to stay with a friend of hers – someone she met on the internet. She only plans to stay for a few days, calling in sick to work. But Ben and Chris’s relationship hits the local press at home as Chris’s father is a local MP, therefore it’s shit flinging tabloid fodder. Andie can’t face going back. She checks into a hostel, totally at a loss with what to do. Her life, as she knows it has been ruined. She’s been humiliated. She ends up getting drunk in the hostel with a couple of the other residents, spills her story and they convince her to stay there for a while. [/FONT]
[FONT="]It’s getting close to the new year and Andie decides that she will not go back to NI. She decides that living her safe little life without going for many of the opportunities she could have gone for, and essentially living a life without passion – mundane, predictable and boring, has done fuck all for her. She decides she’s going to go against convention and make all her decisions, gut decisions, and to hell with the consequences. Her life is fucked anyway, as she sees it, she’s got nothing to lose. She’s not on a self destruct mission, she’s fairly positive about the whole thing. She decides to blog about it, under a fake name. [/FONT]
[FONT="]It starts off fairly small, gut decisions about what to do that day, what to eat, what to buy, but as her life and social circle develops in Brighton, the decisions she comes up against involve other people, relationships, indiscretions. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Basically making gut decisions and not giving a damn about the consequences gets her in trouble quite a bit. Which leads to more difficult and poignant decisions, which leads to bigger fuck ups. Her life spirals out of control exponentially.[/FONT]
[FONT="][I’ll work out the details as I write and get a feel for it, I have a few ideas already][/FONT]
[FONT="]Towards the end, her way of living leads to her having a kind of melt down and she’s forced into rapidly putting the brakes on her hedonistic lifestyle. She comes to the conclusion that she didn’t do it right either way, but at least the first time, all her troubles were not her own doing, although she did beat herself up about it. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Unbeknown to her, someone in particular is reading her blog, and following her life. He is in a rut himself, and he takes inspiration from her blog and her story and breaks out of his “rut”. He’s on his way to meet Andie when she has her meltdown and it takes him a couple of days to find her. When he does, she’s afraid that this is yet another crazy consequence of gut decisions – her decision to meet up with a stranger who has been reading about her on the internet. She back pedals and tries to put him off. But they get talking and she is spurred on by her friends in Brighton who have already met him (while he was looking for her) and tell her that it will be something nice for her, and will take her mind off all the troubles she’s had. [/FONT]
[FONT="]She realises that they get on just as well in real life as they did online, and tentatively get into a relationship. He moves back to where he lives, Andie decides to stay in Brighton and they agree to visit each other. The future looks hopeful for them, and Andie’s story gets picked up by a magazine editor who wants to feature her writing regularly in a popular magazine (or something else positive or whatever - as long as it leaves an open road for her. The ending might change).
[/FONT]
The majority of the story will be based around the gut decisions she makes.
Comments welcome. Cheers
[FONT="][/FONT]
