Pitiful plea for brainstorming ideas....

[cl0ckw0rkf0x]

I need something exciting/suspenseful to happen in the opening of The Eyelet Dove, and I have a good idea of what it needs to accomplish, but not what it would be. I think I want to open with Michel catching them at the radio listening to ye ole forbidden broadcast, but rather than walking away and doing nothing, he needs to punish them. Ideally by giving Maddie a task, preferably something that would benefit only Michel - to make him sound selfish, that is as unpleasant as possible, and even more ideally, that task would really be something related to the resistance/helps the resistance in some not-obvious way, that could be explained in one sentence, if it needs to be explained at all, at the close of the story.

Any thoughts from anyone who's already read the story would be helpful.

Comments

[lookintomyeyes.livejournal.com]

I dont know the story unfortunatley, but...

- can you make him do something that makes the forbidden act look truly evil/undesirable (like hitting a puppy), but then at the end of the task something else occur that shows the thing they had to witness was the real evil.
Its late, so sorry if that makes no sense, but as an example:

- Kids caught listening to the americans during hitlers reign. Authority figures berates them for listening to crazy americans and sends the kids over to a hospital to visit with an old man who was injured by them and only has one leg. Authority figure has left while they are telling the story, and so the kids feel upset and disappointed with themselves for sneaking otu to listen to the american stuff. BUT, then on the way out, another man bumps into them and shares his story, abotu he made friends with them and that they shouldnt listen to the old idiots of society. He doesnt say more, but it piques the kids brain cells such that the memory stays with him for the rest of life, and he keeps waiting to "hear the other side of th story".

Probably not any help, but if i do, then yay! :P

[lindenfoxcub.livejournal.com]

if you want, I can send you the most recent version on the story.

[lookintomyeyes.livejournal.com]

Um sure! But I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to read it, but I'll definitely try to find time. (I still like turtles idea of a reader-writer club.)

[lindenfoxcub.livejournal.com]

Well, so far we've been doing mostly writing at our writing nights, but we've had as many as four people show up. I find I get a lot done, and we encourage each other and keep each other focussed. (I think I must have got like 8000 words written the one night when I finished the first draft of The Eyelet Dove - Daria wouldn't let me go to bed.) But we hope to get some kind of critiqueing thing going on too.

I'll send Dove to the email address you have listed in your LJ userinfo.

[lookintomyeyes.livejournal.com]

Ok, sounds good :)
Yeah, she got me to write alot during nano as well. I learned this nano that if i have a workable outline of what i want to happen next, I can fly through my writing!