more abandoned ideas....

[preyer]

or more accurately, ideas abondonned before even started. this one isn't particularly a bad idea, i've just no interest in developing it ~

a kid hangs out with the wrong crowd. he's got a lousy mother, so she can't stop him even if she cared enough to try, which she barely does (and does so only to maintain appearances). the kid is shy and basically follows his friends, who get him into all sorts of trouble. after juvey, he really screws up and is tried as an adult and sent to prison.

he thinks that it'll be like when he got out of juvey and suddenly had a rep for his piddly jail time... that he'll return to a world of respect and some amount of awe, like when he was suddenly no longer a poseur in his classmates' eyes.

what happens is nothing like he planned. one of his old crew is dead, shot while robbing a store. another is in rehab. some joined the marines. a few do nothing but party their worthless lives away. of the girls he'd known, one overdosed, one is working on her third kid, is unmarried and worn out, just used goods, and another actually went to college.

the kid has returned to a world vastly different than high school and has to deal with the fact that the only people who respect him are losers and the rest of the world considers him an uneducated criminal better off dead in a society satiated with punks. when he attends his high school reunion, a smart ass he never got along with tells him to leave, that 'this is for people who graduated, so why don't you go back to your cell block. i'm sure bubba misses you.'

there'd be the obligatory return to the nest, finding mom no more concerned with him now than she ever was. the people who tried to help him before have turned their backs on him.

and so on and so forth....

if ever there was an after-school special in the making, here it is.

[Salem]

I've got a whole collection of those types of things--great ideas that I have no interest in working on! I'm sure you'll come back to it eventually when the time is right.

[A.C.]

He doesn't seem like the sort of character who would go to his high school reunion.

[preyer]

you don't think so, ac? maybe not. the idea of that being that while in high school, he pretended to be a punk to fit in. he'd done a bit of time in juvenile and returned somewhat popular because of it. so when he returns after prison and high school is over, life as he left it is no longer there. so, in search of people who still might be impressed with his 'bad-ass self,' he goes to the reunion and again is rejected.

you're right in that i don't think he'd go to the reunion just for fun, but i think he's got somewhat of a motivation to do so, to prove to himself that he didn't just thrown his life away. he searches for acceptance and finds those who accepted him for being a punk have outgrown his antics, i.e. it's no longer 'cool' to be associated with the criminal element once you grow up a little bit.

[The_Grand_Duchess]

It's not that its a bad idea it just needs work. It has potential but I see the fact something lacking. Like the fact that real prison would probably not exactly be a walk in the park. I think it would make more sense that he stayed in juvie and missed graduation and what not. Like he did three years in there and was let out at 18. Yeah.

[nevada]

The idea is good but it's lacking conflict. What does he want and what stands in his way? Strangely enough I don't see this as a book but as a movie. Someone write it, will ya? I don't write movies, I only watch them. But I'm really good at that. :D

[CheshireCat]

or more accurately, ideas abondonned before even started. this one isn't particularly a bad idea, i've just no interest in developing it ~



To me, that says it all. If you aren't interested, don't push it. Put the idea in your Idea File (most writers have them) and go on. You may return to the idea someday, or you may look at it years down the line and wonder what on earth possessed you. ;)

[wayndom]

if ever there was an after-school special in the making, here it is.

Have you pitched it to Disney yet? Maybe a musical version..?

[preyer]

conflict? oh, it would be one of those kinds of conflicts you'd find in an indie film.

we're too used to seeing movies and programmes where convicts do nothing but pump iron and get swastika tatooes while jamming shivs made of filed melted celophane from cigarette packs into each other's throats. not that there's not that kind of thing in maximum security prisons, but i tend to think that whole image is a bit sensationalized. i'd imagine the typical person could get through a three year stint without being repeatedly gang raped, stabbed and beaten on a daily basis. these guys you see on tv talking about life in prison, well, these are hard-core lifers, or doing so much time as it might as well be life. you'll certainly be challenged at some point, i'd think, though i'd say if you handled your challenges well enough you'd be relatively left alone. realistically, i mean. missing graduation isn't enough, that's why he'd have to go to actual prison.

nevada, what he wants is acceptance. what stands in his way is the wreck he's made of his life, prejudices people have of ex-cons, and returning to an environment vastly changed from the one he left. well, except for the part of the environment that were the reasons he went astray in the first place, an environment filled with people who use other people. there's always a kind of 'acceptance' in those places from those people. his prospects in every facet of his life are limited. or so he thinks. in that, life can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[arodriguez]

DUDE, write this book. Have him go apeshit at his reunion and kill everyone. Then put him on the run. End the book with his last desperate attempt at a normal life by having him become a preacher and settling down in some near vacant midwestern town. His neighbor sees a FBI's most wanted show and turns him in. woot! ending to a great book!

[A.C.]

Preyer, you probably should write this story down. At least a first draft, 'cause you do seem very into it!

Get it out of your system and then see if it holds anymore interest for you. ;)

[preyer]

thanks, but nah, it's not quite interesting enough for me to sit down and write. although if i made him a her, there *could* be some interesting prison scenes....