It seems a bit silly to be so quiet on a subject that I'm passionate about, and that, in my opinion, should be expressed as a means of gaining interest.
A point that I saw on a blog post for maximising creativity offered an interesting idea: write a pitch or artist statement explaining why your project is so important. The idea was to read it through every day and remind yourself why you're passionate about it, and want to meet the goal - more of a personal motivator than something professional to hand in to an editor or publisher, I expect. I already know that the story is important to me, and that I'm going to see it through to the end, but I thought writing an informal statement and posting it here would be a good way of expressing the story and message to others, too.
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| Medal from Rock n Rose, I'm planning some Maxime-related photography soon... |
“Maxime” is set in 1960’s France, and is a mixture of historical, romantic, drama, and LGBT fictional genres.
Synopsis:
Maxime de Faye is a child-star, trapped in an adult’s world. Twelve and naive, he falls into a nest of vipers when his beauty, vivacity, and natural talent captures the interest of a director, giving him the opportunity to begin his dream cinema career in Paris. First came the excitement of his impending fame and fortune, but he is soon knocked flat on his back, to the mercy of the city and all those that would surround and tower over him, when he realises that his role brings about more than just the ordinary admiration and applause that he craved in the beginning…
Despite being disgusted by and afraid of the older men that would not hesitate to prey on him in his new and unusual environment, Maxime finds himself very attracted to and curious about his co-star, Leopold Ronis, an older boy of eighteen years. In turn, his puppy love is requited by Ronis, who despite keeping the boy out of harm’s way and ensuring that the relationship between them on set is chaste, secretly lusts after him just as much as the other men in their circle.
Maxime’s films and performance may be otherworldly, but reality can be jarring in the head space of young teenage boy who is overworked, bombarded with the responsibility of an adult three times his age, and forced to smile despite feeling lonely in a world filled with countless names and faces.
Only the support and love of his younger sister, Leone, and boyfriend, Leopold, manages to drag him from deep despair and broken confidence, and Maxime realises that dreams and ambitions can be outgrown.
♕
If my character Aika was a reflection of the emotions I felt at the age of fourteen, and Carrie/Cherry (both from the "When the Summer Ends"/"Mansions of Glass" duology) was built upon the type of person I wanted to meet and become friends with, Maxime feels more like a son to me; we are not very like each other - as the Myer-Briggs test clearly illustrated, in a previous post - yet I feel very protective of him.
He starts off as around the same age as my previous protagonists, but this type of bold and passionate (yet tortured) character is different to what I've written before, and is what makes me excited to continue with his story.
Max almost writes himself in a way, as he runs from scene to scene (both literally and figuratively, as he is an actor), yelling "come on, come on!" despite his initial trepidation, and it's hard to keep up with him. As a result, I'm up at all hours scribbling down ideas, and flinging plot points at him, and in turn, he flings ideas back at me, saying "I'd like this to happen, I have to have some good times, too," or "what about this? It's very likely". As I said, he tends to write himself, and is very eager to do so.
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| Medal from Rock n Rose, I'm planning some Maxime-related photography soon... |
Due to just wanting to write, write, write in order to keep up, rather than blog, and constantly thinking of what will happen next in his adventures in minute detail, I had been rather worried about writing a pitch, or summary of sorts, just in case some things should change. See, Maxime is an impulsive kind of beast, and as I'm learning new things about him and his life story every day, when I thought I knew it all, I wanted to see how it goes before committing to certain things... As I get new ideas every day, it seems like a very big project, and is almost overwhelming at times.
I also kept things pretty secret because of shyness, too; I always worry that people will laugh at my ideas, or think that I'm too dark and sinister or controversial in my content.
Talking to my close friend, who is also a writer, really helped to solidify things that I was worried about, however, and now that things are very clear about the story, I'm trying to get over the nerves of gathering everything together and putting my ideas out there to other people.
Along with how much I enjoy creating the world of my new protagonists, this story gives me a lot of enthusiasm and the characters are quite divergent to what I've written before, so I have a lot of high hopes for it. Sometimes that can be quite intimidating, but I'm using what I learned through re-reading When the Summer Ends and advice from my friends, family and beta readers, to better myself and hopefully achieve something really meaningful.
I hope that my story will be as interesting for people to read as it is for me to write!
ℰllie
