Pride & Persistence Plotting

Please tell me if this is absolutely in bad taste or if it is too close to home. I just have been brainstorming Ian and Anjya’s first act, when they are in high school. I was thinking that we should block it out almost like Harry Potter, so by years we should have a main storyline? These are the acts I was thinking:

Act 1 – High School Years (Ages 14-18)

• Year 1 (Anjya Freshman, Ian Sophomore) – We can establish personalities, show Anjya’s loyalty to Ian. Maybe vise versa? I could imagine that Ian is protective of her almost like a brother in this time of his life? Don’t have a hook yet.
  

• Year 2 (A Soph, Ian Junior) – Don’t have a hook yet, but I imagine that now that Ian is driving, Becca forces him to drive Anjya to and from school. A ‘if you are going to have a car, you are driving Anjya’. Maybe he doesn’t drive his sisters because they go to a different school.
  

• Year 3 (A Junior, Ian Senior) – Here is the controversy that I don’t know how you would feel about. I was thinking that there could be a school shooting, in which Ian and Anjya end up in the same area. Maybe we show them right before it, Anjya is taking photos for yearbook for the baseball team perhaps (I mean, it could be any sport, but I feel Becca would have pushed Ian to be in baseball because that was her sport), Anjya leaves, but is obviously wandering the halls when the lockdown is announced. Ian realizes she might still be in the halls, goes after her, finds her and yanks her into safety right in time, they end up hiding in a custodial closet for the entire shooting. ((Actually, maybe Anjya purposefully left safety to capture photos. I could see her feeling that it needs to be documented, already having a journalist’s thought space. Could also help spur her to one day want to be a journalist. Ian realizes she is not in safety somehow, and practically dragging her to it. I do think she would be scared, but determined))
  

• End of this year could be Anjya confessing to him her feelings when he is about to leave for college. I feel the shooting, being with him, and now him leaving can prompt her to confess something she has TRIED to keep a secret this whole time. Ian could gently reject her or maybe intend on gentle but be clumsy about it. Something like, she is just a kid- she is in high school, she is like family. Something that will sting- but will help Anjya focus elsewhere in college.
  

Act 2 – College Years, bigger skip? (Ages 20-23)

• Anjya’s Junior year, Ian’s senior? Their first big reunion in like 2 years? Ian realizes his feelings for Anjya, we can show Anjya has slightly moved on after Ian’s rejection.
  

• Anjya’s Senior year, Ian a year out of college – Ian realizes feelings, he tries to confess, she tells him about a guy she is dating before he can, Ian knows the guy and knows him to be a creep. Ian tells Salu. Salu interrupts the date to scare the guy off. Anjya gets furious with them both. Last time she really spends time with Ian one on one until Act 3.
  

Act 3 – Early Career- Start of true Romance (Ages 24+)
Ian overseas, Anjya sent on her first reporter gig on the front lines. Bullet points:

• Ian runs into Anjya and it is bittersweet. Upside, she is here for him to see after they were apart for probably 2ish years. Downside, it is a very unsafe area. I could see it being in a place that is unfriendly to women, an active battle area, and perhaps a journalist has recently been killed there.
  

• Not sure what the big hook here is, I have one idea. Anjya and her camera person get stuck behind enemy lines, Ian and his team have to rescue her. They end up kissing when reunited. Bam, dating.
  

I'm not sure that I can say yes to the shooting part. Can we maybe make it a threat got called in or posted online or something (but isn't actually a school threat) and she is investigating? Maybe she gets close and the would-be perpetrator attacks her and Ian comes to rescue her?

I totally get it. I knew it would be walking a fine line. What if it isn’t at a school, but maybe a mall? Or, no one is killed, just injuries? But if you aren’t comfortable with either (which I totally understand, it is close to home), maybe we can think of an entirely different situation that puts them in a confined area.

Hmm. Maybe the mall? Maybe? I'm not sure. We can start with the first part and maybe gage how I'm feeling when we get there?

I feel like that is totally fair. I also feel like Salu would instantly unretire if he knew what was happening and that would be interesting , lol.

But again, it really is how you feel about it.

Oh, Salu will go into full body-guard mode on his daughter's behalf, then convince Becca that the two of them are coming out of retirement for this. XD

I'm not 100% either way yet. I just don't know if I will be able to go for it or not when it comes to writing it.

Which is understandable. We can always brainstorm in the meantime to find something else.

What if it is a bombing? We can show Anjya talking to Ian, and maybe he brushes her off a bit- because he is hanging with friends that have teased him about her before? I know in the original he was very aloof and very focused on his studies and such before he realized he had feelings.


So maybe he is outside the mall, either there for chess or with friends. Anita comes up before going inside the mall with the intention of capturing specific photos for a project. A little while later a bomb inside it goes off, and then another. People pour out, she doesn’t. He goes to find her.

Hmmm... that might be something that works.

Ooh! Wait! What if he is outside the mall and he overhears someone as they're going in and they're saying something that other people would think sounds like nothing, but, thanks to Becca and Salu, he picks it up as sounding sketchy? I imagine the first thing he would do is tell a friend to call the cops while he calls Becca as he is running in to go find Anjya.

Becca will kill him. But what would someone say? I feel like a bomber wouldn’t be in the building when a bomb goes off, they would be leaving.

Okay, so they're on their way out when he hates them say something.

Maybe they're treating it like a joke with another of their friends and laughing about it (if a teen). Or maybe they're confirming over the phone with someone "left it where it won't be seen... just like we discussed..." Something that doesn't really raise red flags, but just gives him that gut feeling he inherited from his mother. I could see him calling her and saying something like "I know you're going to think I'm crazy. But I think there's a bomb in the mall."

I like that. It shows he has the instincts. I can see Becca believing him instantly- but also telling him to get out of the mall.

And he's going to tell her to call his Uncle Salu, tell her he loves her, and hang up. Which will tell her everything she needs to know about what he's doing next. XD

Love it.