RE: Vox Mentis Discussion
05-31-2017, 03:54 PM
According to my notes, the basic beats that I knew from the start I wanted to hit were:
-Nick and Eliot make their way to Broken Hill while fighting off rogue poets in a variety of scenarios. Use this to introduce the "mechanics" of the words, with Nick as the outsider audience surrogate. Nick and Eliot are the framing device for the meat of the story. Obscure the motivations of all parties until revealed in "flashbacks".
-Introduce Elise as a crafty street magician with a history of being used/controlled by other people and wanting agency, but having none. Have her recruited by the organization but portray her as underpowered.
-Have Elise scheme her way through the Academy. Explain more about word theory when possible.
-Have her screw up irredeemably, then exiled to Broken Hill. Introduce Thoreau as a catalyst to this.
-Have her meet Danny/Nick and fall in love. Make them really different to avoid tipping off the twist.
-Have Elise put down roots in Broken Hill.
-Bareword is discovered. Pull Elise out and put her in an office job. Confirm she is Woolf.
-Have Elise discover clues about the bareword's existence (planted by Thoreau, but don't make this obvious)
-Have Elise gain poet skills through this period
-Have Elise infiltrate the Organization with a fake identity and steal the bareword
-Have Elise return to Broken Hill/Danny. Danny does not respond to the bareword. Audience should realize for sure that Danny is Nick now.
-Elise leaves, then Thoreau's programming kicks in and Broken Hill is destroyed. Drive home that Elise has never acted of her own free will this whole time. Her whole life has been controlled by others.
-Danny saves Elise from the carnage, but is badly injured. Elise makes him forget and become Nick. Hint at the underlying language of the bareword being the mechanics here.
-Reveal more information about Thoreau in flashbacks as we catch up to Nick and Eliot. Timelines converge when Nick retrieves bareword from Broken Hill.
-Reveal that Elise returned to kill Thoreau with the bareword, but he defeated her and enslaved her.
-End with Elise finally breaking free of Thoreau's control as she reunites with Nick, and as her final act, one that she truly chooses of her own free will at last, have her use the underlying language to order Nick to kill her.
So yeah most of the main beats were already there - but a lot of the in between stuff was developed as we went along. Eliot wasn't originally planned to be as deep as he was, but I really liked writing him for some reason and wanted to make him a tragic character. His backstory was fairly fleshed out in my mind by the time we got to the ranch fight, but I didn't settle on the "surrogate daughter" angle with Elise until a bit later.
Most of the stuff in the academy was made up as we went along. My one rule was that I wanted to seed later plot points as much as I could the whole way through to make the whole thing cohere as much as I could by the end.
By the time Elise met Thoreau, I had a very clear understanding of what I wanted to happen from then on out.
-Nick and Eliot make their way to Broken Hill while fighting off rogue poets in a variety of scenarios. Use this to introduce the "mechanics" of the words, with Nick as the outsider audience surrogate. Nick and Eliot are the framing device for the meat of the story. Obscure the motivations of all parties until revealed in "flashbacks".
-Introduce Elise as a crafty street magician with a history of being used/controlled by other people and wanting agency, but having none. Have her recruited by the organization but portray her as underpowered.
-Have Elise scheme her way through the Academy. Explain more about word theory when possible.
-Have her screw up irredeemably, then exiled to Broken Hill. Introduce Thoreau as a catalyst to this.
-Have her meet Danny/Nick and fall in love. Make them really different to avoid tipping off the twist.
-Have Elise put down roots in Broken Hill.
-Bareword is discovered. Pull Elise out and put her in an office job. Confirm she is Woolf.
-Have Elise discover clues about the bareword's existence (planted by Thoreau, but don't make this obvious)
-Have Elise gain poet skills through this period
-Have Elise infiltrate the Organization with a fake identity and steal the bareword
-Have Elise return to Broken Hill/Danny. Danny does not respond to the bareword. Audience should realize for sure that Danny is Nick now.
-Elise leaves, then Thoreau's programming kicks in and Broken Hill is destroyed. Drive home that Elise has never acted of her own free will this whole time. Her whole life has been controlled by others.
-Danny saves Elise from the carnage, but is badly injured. Elise makes him forget and become Nick. Hint at the underlying language of the bareword being the mechanics here.
-Reveal more information about Thoreau in flashbacks as we catch up to Nick and Eliot. Timelines converge when Nick retrieves bareword from Broken Hill.
-Reveal that Elise returned to kill Thoreau with the bareword, but he defeated her and enslaved her.
-End with Elise finally breaking free of Thoreau's control as she reunites with Nick, and as her final act, one that she truly chooses of her own free will at last, have her use the underlying language to order Nick to kill her.
So yeah most of the main beats were already there - but a lot of the in between stuff was developed as we went along. Eliot wasn't originally planned to be as deep as he was, but I really liked writing him for some reason and wanted to make him a tragic character. His backstory was fairly fleshed out in my mind by the time we got to the ranch fight, but I didn't settle on the "surrogate daughter" angle with Elise until a bit later.
Most of the stuff in the academy was made up as we went along. My one rule was that I wanted to seed later plot points as much as I could the whole way through to make the whole thing cohere as much as I could by the end.
By the time Elise met Thoreau, I had a very clear understanding of what I wanted to happen from then on out.