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Sep. 10th, 2010 03:35 pmstory I am writing, started out as a satire but I'm having trouble finding the emotional part--I mean, I actually have it, but I'm sort of feeling confused about whether it is actually cheesy/obvious.
A 17-year-old boy Josh lives in a commuter town. He has a friend named Adam who is very clever and is always hearing about new things going on in the city. Adam discovers a new religion and their whole group of friends convert to it except Josh. Although they frequently try to convert new people, they are tolerant of the fact that Josh isn't interested, while he for his part observes them curiously, and even tags along with Adam when Adam goes door-to-door proselytizing on weekends.
The point of the religion is that it's okay to sin as long as you sin under 100 points every week. Different sins, like smoking, drinking, and having sex, have different point values. Josh's group of friends often sit together and calculate their respective points. Adam understands the more complicated rules and explains them to his friends, like sometimes you have to include a few points for things that aren't really voluntary, like wet dreams; homosexual acts cost four times as many points as heterosexual ones; smoking weed is worse than smoking cigarettes; and so on. There's an Internet database that explains the point value for every possible sin. (Things like murder would probably be over 100 points, since intercourse is about 40 or 50 points. Don't ask me questions about how a serial killer would participate in this religion; that isn't relevant to the world of the story.)
Another part of Josh's life is that he takes singing lessons from Dr. Schwartz, an accomplished musician who was fired from teaching at the middle school when Josh and his friends were in 7th grade. Dr. Schwartz would get really angry at kids who he thought didn't care about music, and ended up being fired and banned from campus because he was so verbally abusive.
Things to possibly cover/explore:
1. Josh might have a crush on Dr. Schwartz's daughter Allison Ross, who is a few years older than he is and is also a musician. Josh's lessons are at the Schwartz house, so he sees her regularly.
2. Dr. Schwartz and his wife divorced soon after Dr. Schwartz was fired from his job, and this is presumably because he abused her. The reason Allison no longer goes to conservatory (she quit after the first term) might be that she doesn't want her father to live alone. One time two or three years ago, Dr. Schwartz hit Josh when he got angry with him during a lesson. Josh was very upset and cried about it, but this was more because he understood why the Schwartz-Rosses had gotten divorced.
3. Something unsaid: Josh does not identify with an established religion or moral code, but we see his goodness. He feels for other people very deeply, listens and observes a lot, and has an almost dopily ecstatic relationship with music and nature. I mean, I wrote him to come off as dopey because I don't like to take characters too seriously, but I do think Josh is an admirable person and the story's moral compass.
4. When they were in middle school, Josh and Adam once kissed each other and, immediately after, Adam started dating a girl. Josh is not very introspective about what happened, but Adam is. Adam is pretty interested in Josh, and boys in general, and has always felt guilty and scared about it and not really talked about it to anyone, which has led to some of his more neurotic traits (for example his habit, observed only by Josh, of making terrible faces at himself in reflective surfaces). We're probably not told much, if any, of this outright, although Josh is aware of it on some level. Adam is genuinely very moved and changed by the new religion, because even though homosexual acts are worth more sin points, it's still possible to do them, and just wanting to do them is not a sin. (Some practitioners of the religion consider feelings and desires to be sins, but Adam thinks this is wrong because it's so hard to interpret exactly how many points a feeling should be worth.)
I basically think of #3 as being the point of the story--which does mean that it's a story with events, but no serious plot. Basically, Josh's morality and his experience of divinity are not about rules, or even ideas, but are very simple and almost wordless, and this is blah blah blah a contrast to how the other kids behave.
Originally I wanted the story to end with Adam telling Josh that he has feelings for him, which Josh already sort of knows, and that he saved up some of his points so that he can kiss Josh, if Josh wants to. Josh agrees, and Adam promises to save up even more points next week. I wouldn't say that Josh is super in love with Adam or anything, but he does love him a lot as a friend and has probably always been attracted to him; so accepting Adam's offer of a relationship is just kind of the culmination of how open to connection and joy Josh has been throughout the whole story.
However, even though this feels okay emotionally, I guess when I think about it it seems like this is a story about how awesome Josh is, and how silly this religion I made up is. Which isn't really a story. So I was thinking about having a whole long section of Josh and Adam after they kiss, which would kind of resemble Mad Men episodes where one storyline suddenly takes up the whole plot, in which they're just hanging out and Josh is drinking (Adam can't since he has no points left) and thinks it would be fun to break into their old middle school, and Adam gets on the Internet on his phone to look up whether that's considered a sin, and Josh keeps pressing Adam to go even though it would be a sin, and Adam gets annoyed with him for disrespecting Adam's beliefs, and Josh is very drunkenly upset about having upset Adam, and Adam says it's okay and they go home. The reason I would like to have this is to show that Josh is perfectly capable of being obnoxious like everyone else, and to show an incident where Adam is clearly the more mature person. Even though Adam's beliefs seem kind of ridiculous, he is sincere about them, and he's not just someone who should be a joke to the reader.
Actually now that I wrote out that last scene it sounds REALLY dumb and I might just end it the way I was going to before. I also think the drinking/conflict scene could take place earlier in the story before they discuss their interest in each other. And also that Adam may have previously mentioned committing sins related to homosexuality when the group of friends are counting up sin points, indicating that he is getting more confident? I DON'T KNOW.
A 17-year-old boy Josh lives in a commuter town. He has a friend named Adam who is very clever and is always hearing about new things going on in the city. Adam discovers a new religion and their whole group of friends convert to it except Josh. Although they frequently try to convert new people, they are tolerant of the fact that Josh isn't interested, while he for his part observes them curiously, and even tags along with Adam when Adam goes door-to-door proselytizing on weekends.
The point of the religion is that it's okay to sin as long as you sin under 100 points every week. Different sins, like smoking, drinking, and having sex, have different point values. Josh's group of friends often sit together and calculate their respective points. Adam understands the more complicated rules and explains them to his friends, like sometimes you have to include a few points for things that aren't really voluntary, like wet dreams; homosexual acts cost four times as many points as heterosexual ones; smoking weed is worse than smoking cigarettes; and so on. There's an Internet database that explains the point value for every possible sin. (Things like murder would probably be over 100 points, since intercourse is about 40 or 50 points. Don't ask me questions about how a serial killer would participate in this religion; that isn't relevant to the world of the story.)
Another part of Josh's life is that he takes singing lessons from Dr. Schwartz, an accomplished musician who was fired from teaching at the middle school when Josh and his friends were in 7th grade. Dr. Schwartz would get really angry at kids who he thought didn't care about music, and ended up being fired and banned from campus because he was so verbally abusive.
Things to possibly cover/explore:
1. Josh might have a crush on Dr. Schwartz's daughter Allison Ross, who is a few years older than he is and is also a musician. Josh's lessons are at the Schwartz house, so he sees her regularly.
2. Dr. Schwartz and his wife divorced soon after Dr. Schwartz was fired from his job, and this is presumably because he abused her. The reason Allison no longer goes to conservatory (she quit after the first term) might be that she doesn't want her father to live alone. One time two or three years ago, Dr. Schwartz hit Josh when he got angry with him during a lesson. Josh was very upset and cried about it, but this was more because he understood why the Schwartz-Rosses had gotten divorced.
3. Something unsaid: Josh does not identify with an established religion or moral code, but we see his goodness. He feels for other people very deeply, listens and observes a lot, and has an almost dopily ecstatic relationship with music and nature. I mean, I wrote him to come off as dopey because I don't like to take characters too seriously, but I do think Josh is an admirable person and the story's moral compass.
4. When they were in middle school, Josh and Adam once kissed each other and, immediately after, Adam started dating a girl. Josh is not very introspective about what happened, but Adam is. Adam is pretty interested in Josh, and boys in general, and has always felt guilty and scared about it and not really talked about it to anyone, which has led to some of his more neurotic traits (for example his habit, observed only by Josh, of making terrible faces at himself in reflective surfaces). We're probably not told much, if any, of this outright, although Josh is aware of it on some level. Adam is genuinely very moved and changed by the new religion, because even though homosexual acts are worth more sin points, it's still possible to do them, and just wanting to do them is not a sin. (Some practitioners of the religion consider feelings and desires to be sins, but Adam thinks this is wrong because it's so hard to interpret exactly how many points a feeling should be worth.)
I basically think of #3 as being the point of the story--which does mean that it's a story with events, but no serious plot. Basically, Josh's morality and his experience of divinity are not about rules, or even ideas, but are very simple and almost wordless, and this is blah blah blah a contrast to how the other kids behave.
Originally I wanted the story to end with Adam telling Josh that he has feelings for him, which Josh already sort of knows, and that he saved up some of his points so that he can kiss Josh, if Josh wants to. Josh agrees, and Adam promises to save up even more points next week. I wouldn't say that Josh is super in love with Adam or anything, but he does love him a lot as a friend and has probably always been attracted to him; so accepting Adam's offer of a relationship is just kind of the culmination of how open to connection and joy Josh has been throughout the whole story.
However, even though this feels okay emotionally, I guess when I think about it it seems like this is a story about how awesome Josh is, and how silly this religion I made up is. Which isn't really a story. So I was thinking about having a whole long section of Josh and Adam after they kiss, which would kind of resemble Mad Men episodes where one storyline suddenly takes up the whole plot, in which they're just hanging out and Josh is drinking (Adam can't since he has no points left) and thinks it would be fun to break into their old middle school, and Adam gets on the Internet on his phone to look up whether that's considered a sin, and Josh keeps pressing Adam to go even though it would be a sin, and Adam gets annoyed with him for disrespecting Adam's beliefs, and Josh is very drunkenly upset about having upset Adam, and Adam says it's okay and they go home. The reason I would like to have this is to show that Josh is perfectly capable of being obnoxious like everyone else, and to show an incident where Adam is clearly the more mature person. Even though Adam's beliefs seem kind of ridiculous, he is sincere about them, and he's not just someone who should be a joke to the reader.
Actually now that I wrote out that last scene it sounds REALLY dumb and I might just end it the way I was going to before. I also think the drinking/conflict scene could take place earlier in the story before they discuss their interest in each other. And also that Adam may have previously mentioned committing sins related to homosexuality when the group of friends are counting up sin points, indicating that he is getting more confident? I DON'T KNOW.
