My current WIP has a slightly more complex plot/background than anything else I've written before, and I need help with some of the major points.
A very quick summary: The novel is somewhat speculative fiction, but - hopefully - also somewhat literary in nature (my biggest influence is Margaret Atwood, and her blending/cross-over of several genres in Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid's Tale). My FMC is an Australian from a middle-class, typical family, and the antagonist is her male best friend who she meets in childhood, who is the child of middle-class immigrants (not sure from where just yet). The story focuses heavily on her relationship with her friend, following them both from childhood to adulthood (though always from her POV) and how he basically manipulates her their whole life - he's not a bad person, but he is a born leader with strong political beliefs and a ruthless outlook, while she is as apathetic and easily led as they come, mostly because she is infatuated with him throughout their life. So while it is character-driven, there is also a strong undercurrent of societal and political themes, which is where the plot and speculative fiction aspect come in. Sometime while they are growing up, the drought in Australia becomes critical enough that an unprecedented historical event occurs - Australia splits itself into two, basically selling half the land to another nation (details on this are fuzzy) in return for the technology/money needed to set *something* up that will produce the water (details are VERY fuzzy here). This is the first in a series of very radical policies put into action by a newly elected government, and middle Australia is very approving of everything they are doing. By the time my FMC and her friend are at university (he is high up in student politics by now, very active in protests etc., and she goes along with it but doesn't have any strong beliefs herself either way) the government has instigated more and more policies that are taking the nation towards somewhat of a dictatorship, though it is done with such clever propaganda that most of the country remains pleased with the way things are going. The male character and his left-wing friends are of course very opposed to the government and protest regularly in a variety of ways. Finally, the government makes another big move that has something to do with overhauling immigration laws. They announce the immediate deportment of all non-Australian born residents to a part of the country set aside for this purpose, and also announce that, in order to set the laws up properly, this area will actually become a nation of its own, though still under their sovereignty. They present the arrangement as temporary, make a lot of noise about compensations etc. and that most of the residents will be allowed back in once the laws are set in place and providing they pass the new regulations. I'm imagining that they might also send the Aborigines out into the desert under the guise of magnaminously giving them back their land, though in reality it is only a very small area, it is unuseable to them anyway and because the Aborigines have largely lost their old ways of living with the hostile environment, plus the overcrowding of said environment, it is essentially a death sentence. Of course, as immigrants, the male character's parents are among those deported, as are several of his friends and members of his student faction. Reports start to filter in that the new nation immigrants were sent to is actually nothing more than a big ghetto where all kinds of human rights are being violated. The male character gets news of his father's death in the nation, and this spurs him to publicly renounce his citizenship in protest and demands to be removed to the new nation in protest. The government happily obliges, though our FMC is left bereft.
Fast forward around 10 years, and the FMC has drifted away from politics without her friend around to keep her interested, and has made a fairly normal but boring life of working as an advertising copywriter. She meets a fairly normal and boring man and gets engaged to him, but still thinks about her friend all the time.
She is sent to one of the other nations - not the ghetto or the Aboriginal one, but the first one that came under the agreement of the government - for something to do with work, and there is shocked to run into her old friend, who has snuck into that nation with the eventual plan of getting himself and several of his conspirators back over the border into Australia, to carry out a plan that he doesn't elaborate to her at that time. He asks her to help them by arranging for them to have somewhere to live and hide. She agrees, returns home and secretly rents a large house. A month or so later, her friend turns up and his group move into the house. She spends time with them there, lying to her fiance about where she is, and starts to hear about some of their plans, and even helps them with some of their smaller subversions. Finally she ends up leaving her fiance altogether and moves into the house with them - she is totally under her friend's spell again. He tells her about their one major plot, which involves the coordinated suicide bombing of several trains (similar to what happened in Madrid, and London). He tells her he is to be one of the bombers, and convinces her to be one too (she agrees for several reasons, partly because of a depression/loss of will to live due to some previous events in her life/her complicated relationship with her friend).
Well that actually turned out to be a very long summary, but as I say, it's complicated compared to what I usually write! Here are my questions/concerns.
1. About the splitting of the nation/selling off the land - how plausible is this? As far as I know, most new nations are formed by wars and such, but I don't think it's too hard a stretch to imagine an economical transaction instead. But who would they be selling/exchanging with - which country has either the money or superior technology that is needed to save Australia from its drought? It's not actually important to the story which nation it is, but I want it to be fairly believable.
2. What technology could actually work to resolve a drought? The novel is set in the present, more or less, albeit an alternative present, so it can't be anything too 'futuristic'.
3. What possible reasons could the government give, in the form of propaganda, for deporting all immigrants? What would be beneficial enough for middle class Australians that they largely approve of the policy? Mind you, the current climate of racism in Australia is probably reason enough for most - white, middle class Australians do like blaming a lot of the country's problems on 'immigrants'.
4. What sort of things can the government start doing that shows that they are getting more and more repressive/dictatorial - but still be able to spin it to the general public as being for the good of the nation?
5. The part I am having most trouble with - why are they blowing up trains? What are they hoping to achieve? They are not terrorists in the way that their main aim is to kill people, but they are willing to accept the fact that people will die for the greater good of hurting the government and hopefully overthrowing it. I'm wondering if the role of the bombings might be to act as a distraction from a much larger plan that will strike at the government directly - not sure.
I think I do have a bit of a safety net in the fact that I am trying to make this literary, which allows for somewhat less detail in the plot than if it was a thriller or something. Hopefully the reader will be so engrossed in the themes, symbolism and characters that they won't think to question the plausibility of some aspects of the plot - hmm, that probably sounds weak and lazy, but there are several novels out there that kind of illustrate what I mean (back to Margaret Atwood once again, I know I've never questioned what happens in The Handmaid's Tale and how likely it is for that kind of society to actually form the way it did). Also, because it is told from my FMCs POV, there are things that she won't actually know or understand herself (though she does get preached to alot, by her friend!)
If you've read this far, my infinite gratitude!
A very quick summary: The novel is somewhat speculative fiction, but - hopefully - also somewhat literary in nature (my biggest influence is Margaret Atwood, and her blending/cross-over of several genres in Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid's Tale). My FMC is an Australian from a middle-class, typical family, and the antagonist is her male best friend who she meets in childhood, who is the child of middle-class immigrants (not sure from where just yet). The story focuses heavily on her relationship with her friend, following them both from childhood to adulthood (though always from her POV) and how he basically manipulates her their whole life - he's not a bad person, but he is a born leader with strong political beliefs and a ruthless outlook, while she is as apathetic and easily led as they come, mostly because she is infatuated with him throughout their life. So while it is character-driven, there is also a strong undercurrent of societal and political themes, which is where the plot and speculative fiction aspect come in. Sometime while they are growing up, the drought in Australia becomes critical enough that an unprecedented historical event occurs - Australia splits itself into two, basically selling half the land to another nation (details on this are fuzzy) in return for the technology/money needed to set *something* up that will produce the water (details are VERY fuzzy here). This is the first in a series of very radical policies put into action by a newly elected government, and middle Australia is very approving of everything they are doing. By the time my FMC and her friend are at university (he is high up in student politics by now, very active in protests etc., and she goes along with it but doesn't have any strong beliefs herself either way) the government has instigated more and more policies that are taking the nation towards somewhat of a dictatorship, though it is done with such clever propaganda that most of the country remains pleased with the way things are going. The male character and his left-wing friends are of course very opposed to the government and protest regularly in a variety of ways. Finally, the government makes another big move that has something to do with overhauling immigration laws. They announce the immediate deportment of all non-Australian born residents to a part of the country set aside for this purpose, and also announce that, in order to set the laws up properly, this area will actually become a nation of its own, though still under their sovereignty. They present the arrangement as temporary, make a lot of noise about compensations etc. and that most of the residents will be allowed back in once the laws are set in place and providing they pass the new regulations. I'm imagining that they might also send the Aborigines out into the desert under the guise of magnaminously giving them back their land, though in reality it is only a very small area, it is unuseable to them anyway and because the Aborigines have largely lost their old ways of living with the hostile environment, plus the overcrowding of said environment, it is essentially a death sentence. Of course, as immigrants, the male character's parents are among those deported, as are several of his friends and members of his student faction. Reports start to filter in that the new nation immigrants were sent to is actually nothing more than a big ghetto where all kinds of human rights are being violated. The male character gets news of his father's death in the nation, and this spurs him to publicly renounce his citizenship in protest and demands to be removed to the new nation in protest. The government happily obliges, though our FMC is left bereft.
Fast forward around 10 years, and the FMC has drifted away from politics without her friend around to keep her interested, and has made a fairly normal but boring life of working as an advertising copywriter. She meets a fairly normal and boring man and gets engaged to him, but still thinks about her friend all the time.
She is sent to one of the other nations - not the ghetto or the Aboriginal one, but the first one that came under the agreement of the government - for something to do with work, and there is shocked to run into her old friend, who has snuck into that nation with the eventual plan of getting himself and several of his conspirators back over the border into Australia, to carry out a plan that he doesn't elaborate to her at that time. He asks her to help them by arranging for them to have somewhere to live and hide. She agrees, returns home and secretly rents a large house. A month or so later, her friend turns up and his group move into the house. She spends time with them there, lying to her fiance about where she is, and starts to hear about some of their plans, and even helps them with some of their smaller subversions. Finally she ends up leaving her fiance altogether and moves into the house with them - she is totally under her friend's spell again. He tells her about their one major plot, which involves the coordinated suicide bombing of several trains (similar to what happened in Madrid, and London). He tells her he is to be one of the bombers, and convinces her to be one too (she agrees for several reasons, partly because of a depression/loss of will to live due to some previous events in her life/her complicated relationship with her friend).
Well that actually turned out to be a very long summary, but as I say, it's complicated compared to what I usually write! Here are my questions/concerns.
1. About the splitting of the nation/selling off the land - how plausible is this? As far as I know, most new nations are formed by wars and such, but I don't think it's too hard a stretch to imagine an economical transaction instead. But who would they be selling/exchanging with - which country has either the money or superior technology that is needed to save Australia from its drought? It's not actually important to the story which nation it is, but I want it to be fairly believable.
2. What technology could actually work to resolve a drought? The novel is set in the present, more or less, albeit an alternative present, so it can't be anything too 'futuristic'.
3. What possible reasons could the government give, in the form of propaganda, for deporting all immigrants? What would be beneficial enough for middle class Australians that they largely approve of the policy? Mind you, the current climate of racism in Australia is probably reason enough for most - white, middle class Australians do like blaming a lot of the country's problems on 'immigrants'.
4. What sort of things can the government start doing that shows that they are getting more and more repressive/dictatorial - but still be able to spin it to the general public as being for the good of the nation?
5. The part I am having most trouble with - why are they blowing up trains? What are they hoping to achieve? They are not terrorists in the way that their main aim is to kill people, but they are willing to accept the fact that people will die for the greater good of hurting the government and hopefully overthrowing it. I'm wondering if the role of the bombings might be to act as a distraction from a much larger plan that will strike at the government directly - not sure.
I think I do have a bit of a safety net in the fact that I am trying to make this literary, which allows for somewhat less detail in the plot than if it was a thriller or something. Hopefully the reader will be so engrossed in the themes, symbolism and characters that they won't think to question the plausibility of some aspects of the plot - hmm, that probably sounds weak and lazy, but there are several novels out there that kind of illustrate what I mean (back to Margaret Atwood once again, I know I've never questioned what happens in The Handmaid's Tale and how likely it is for that kind of society to actually form the way it did). Also, because it is told from my FMCs POV, there are things that she won't actually know or understand herself (though she does get preached to alot, by her friend!)
If you've read this far, my infinite gratitude!
) I'm having difficulty imagining how this plan could have near-universal support.