Scherpa

Take one of the ideas you’re excited about, and then audition five different characters for the lead role in that story. Make sure they’re all different from each other. For he treasure hunter story. Originally, I'd envisioned this to be a dual character story, but with both characters occupying similar roles. Therefore, for the audition, I'm going to try replacing both characters at once. In this way, I hope to see how the characters enter into conflict with themselves, rather than with others. 1: Burly, machismo-focused men. Roughly middle- aged, they have a good amount of experience, and significantly more confidence than the stakes require. Neither needs to get to the treasure room, per se (no one will die, the bills will still be paid, etc), but the competition continues due to a personal history of “I win, you win, I win” encounters. Story is heavy on hijinks, laughter, bravado. It is light-hearted & fun. 2: Young girls, 12 and 14. They are sisters, who caught a ride on a friend's planet-cruiser after insurance co. denied their father's surgery claim. Being stuck between childhood and adulthood, they have a little of both, though their age difference allows a “this side, that side” dynamic. Few people believe the stories of the treasure planet, and the younger drags the older to look around in it. Story is more about the sisters reconciling their relationship to the pains of adulthood, while yet maintaining the positive outlook of childhood. It features cooperation prominently, though it is preceded by annoyances. There is only one robot, which the younger smuggled with her. Or! The younger has been playing at adulthood by wearing a bra she stuffs with socks. Everyone knows this (duh), but the younger smuggles two robots instead of socks. Extra chance for older to be annoyed by younger on planet cruiser ride. 3: Both sets of characters above, in my head at least, were white. Being white myself, this is largely what I default to. The next set is a pair of older black women. Though beauties, younger in life, both women have gray hair, wrinkled faces, clothes which signal their dissociation from society. None of this bothers them. Both have made separate pacts with infernal figures to prolong their health, and are now staring down the conclusion of this pact. In this version, the riches are not commodities, but rather a holy weapon which can maybe defeat their contractual partners. Story would have sense of fighting back against inevitability, rather than hope of escape. 4: A team of techies, with this instance being older men for whom technology's advance has been difficult. One attempts to use the new sub, while the other sticks with what he knows. A bug in the new sub's code (or perhaps some “feature” which was added to juice sales) has caused problems with it, which requires the old to repair. Likewise,the old is too clunky to access many areas, and needs the new to help. 5: Two old witches (women who direct the dolls(more acceptable in fantasy than robots) at a distance. They use a boiling pot to see the action, and the story mostly happens in their home. Neither likes cooking, but the dolls require delicacies to move, so they have to trade of food prep & cauldron duty.

Here is the first set of responses from #writingexcuses #masterclass episode 10.1 (useful, as they surely relate to the answers for the second assignment!):

1: Aliens come to Earth and become subsumed by the profit motive. Being good cooks, they end up selling hot dogs in NY, pushing all the other vendors out of business. Ends with an alien seeing a former vendor begging for food. The alien doesn't give any, as the vendor can't pay.

2: As country A gears up for war against its former, long-time ally country B, the army gins up a xenophobic fervor. A young woman who escaped violence in B by going to A as a girl is pressed to either make her stand in the country she calls home, or else flee to safety in the place she once fled.

3: In the oldest city of a great empire, earthquakes have started happening where before there were none. The city gov. does its best to keep repairing the damages, but once sink- holes begin popping up, swallowing buses and trains and a small dentist's office, it's forced to admit defeat. At night, strange noises come from people's basements and the people grow fearful of what ancient thing predates their city.

4: Two explorers battle it out for the best radio connection, piloting remote submarines through the metallic shell of a sunken treasure ship, trying to keep their connection up long enough to claim the riches.

5: In a jazz club, the instruments can speak to one another, but only while being played. Changing tastes put pressure on the club, and the instruments, fearing a life of solitude awaits them, they go on strike, preventing the musicians from being heard. The action attracts community attention, and eventually the owner relents. However, having seen they are at his whim, the instruments begin hatching a plan to remove him and run it themselves.

This is the second assignment for the #writingexcuses #masterclass episode 10.2! I'll post responses to the prior assignment (on which this is based) shortly.

1: Aliens visit Earth and become hot dog vendors in the oldest city of a great empire, as they need some form of employment to survive. Their ruthlessness pushes the other hotdog vendors out of business, and at the same time earthquakes and sinkholes start popping up. The old hotdog vendors try to get sympathy,but none is given. People are scared and just protect their own. Story ends with realization that old vendors were the monsters. They destroy city to revenge themselves upon the aliens.

2: For the pilot adventure story, change it to frenetic romance between the two submarines. Each is actively trying to evade a good signal from the treasure hunter, as the signal overrides their own agency. Both hunters find the door to the largest treasure simultaneously, but immediately lose contact with their subs. Inside the room is a small society of submarines who've all managed to escape their masters and now live peacefully.

3: Using the war story, the only character cld envisioned so far was the young woman. She has to be an old man now, I suppose (what about intersex folks, yall??).Much of the drama was going to be the threat of violence, as opposed to actual fisticuffs, so the move will prob. he to amp up the tragedy of his choice (he'll still have arrived when young). Honestly, doesn't feel like much of a change.

4: For the jazz one, the change will be that the club is sold to a very rich land developer. He leverages his power to isolate the community from the strikers (maybe he closes public transit, proposes road works to block the road, owns an electric utility and shuts off power/causes a blackout...). Without support, the instruments lose their battle and die.

So this is the third time I'm trying this. Hopefully something gets posted eventually

This is the first post after enabling federation

This is a test post, so that I can experiment with incorporating longer pieces into a Mastodon feed.