Last month I wrote a gender swap story called Wild Night that was supposed to be like The Hangover in that a guy wakes up with no memory of what happened the night before. All he knows is somehow he turned into a woman and woke up in a seedy suburban Vegas motel. Then he had to start following clues and trying to remember what happened.
I realized when I was thinking of the project that what I really needed to do was to write my notes in chronological order and then write the story backwards. In that I mean we start the story the morning after and then he kind of works backwards to figure out what happened.
As I brainstormed the Children of Eternity thing, I realized I had to do something similar: plan it it out forwards and then write it starting more at the middle than the end. It's sort of like how some mystery authors will come up with a solution and then figure out the clues.
So here's the idea in more or less chronological order. The stuff in italics is background we'll use at some point (or just for my own reference) and the rest would be the actual story.
Many years ago Samantha Young lived with her parents in a fishing town in Oregon. Her best friend was a girl named Patience. One night, there was a "meteor shower" that devastated the town and killed Samantha's parents. Samantha leaves the town to go with her aunt in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. She studies criminology and then goes to Quantico to become an FBI agent.
Meanwhile, Patience stays in town with her parents and meets the son of a fisherman. Patience becomes a deputy and the son inherits his father's boat and they get married. Eventually they have a daughter named Prudence.
Patience's husband and some of the fishermen start to notice strange lights and activity on a nearby island. One night Patience goes over there and finds some strangers on the island along with alien machines! Patience tries to radio for help but she's discovered. She's dragged over to an alien machine that comes to life. When it stops, she's a teenager with no memory of what happened for the last 15 years or so. One of the guys wants to kill her but the one in charge instead has her taken away to study her.
The boat Patience took is sunk and so Prudence and her dad think Patience died at sea. Prudence is devastated and becomes lonely and sad and turning to food for comfort while her dad spends most of his time at sea.
Meanwhile the bad guys see the potential of the device and start using it for various money-making schemes--and keeping themselves young and vibrant. They soon have enough money to buy the island and fortify it to keep out any other unwanted visitors.
Some years later, Samantha has been assigned to some shit duty after doing something to piss off the wrong people. She gets a phone call from a woman who claims she was taken to an island in Oregon and signed over a bunch of assets but she doesn't remember anything. Samantha figures she can go out there and visit Patience's family, whom she hasn't seen since the wedding.
She meets with the woman, but after the meeting she's knocked unconscious. She and the woman are taken to the island, where she meets the bad guy. The woman who called Samantha is put into the machine again, this time erasing a couple of months. She no longer remembers Samantha or why she's on the island. She's taken away and the bad guys are going to use the machine on Sam.
But somehow she gets loose and does something to the machine. She ends up getting pulled into it and comes out about 16 with her brain Swiss-cheesed. There's an explosion and smoke or something that allows Sam to stagger out to the shore. She starts swimming but gets shot and blacks out.
Here is where we'd begin the actual story. Or maybe it'd start with Sam swimming and almost drowning.
When she wakes up, she's in Prudence's house. Her dad found Sam floating in the water and brought her in. The gunshot was just a flesh wound that the dad was able to bandage. Prudence thinks the girl looks kinda like her mom's friend Samantha so that's what they decide to call her when she can't remember her name.
Sam recovers physically over a few days but doesn't remember anything about who she is or how she got there. Prudence volunteers to show Sam around town in case something will spark her memory. They run into the local mean girl and her crew, who make fun of Prudence for being fat. After they leave, Sam asks Pru why she let those kids make fun of her and Pru doesn't really have an answer except it's always been that way.
Prudence's dad and Sam talk to the local cops who can't find anyone matching Sam's description missing. Since Sam's presence seems to be making Prudence come out of her shell a little, her father agrees to let Sam keep staying with them instead of putting her in a group home. The caveat is that she has to see a shrink and a social worker will check up on her periodically.
After a little while, Sam goes to school with Pru. Sam knows some things but she isn't so good at math or science. She's really good at gym class. A coach recruits her to play on the soccer team or something. Sam doesn't remember playing soccer but she takes to it pretty easily and gets really competitive with some of the other girls. The mean girl is also on the team and considers herself the star and is threatened by Sam's talents.
Soon enough Sam plays her first game. She's going to go for a goal when the mean girl trips her up so she can take the shot instead. Sam confronts her, but no one else saw it, so no one believes her except Pru. They go out for pizza after the game and the mean girl is gloating with her friends when a cute boy comes over to congratulate Sam. She's tongue-tied and kind of embarrasses herself. Pru is happy for her but when Sam asks if Pru likes any boys, Pru confesses she doesn't really like boys, but she doesn't know how to tell her father and she's afraid what the kids at school will say. Sam promises to be there to support Pru when she's ready to talk to her dad about it.
Sam meets with the school shrink, who doesn't unlock any memories. When Sam gets out, the mean girl is there to make fun of her and they get into a scuffle that winds up with them in the principal's office. Prudence's father picks Sam up and expresses his disappointment with her.
At some point Sam and Pru's father go out on his fishing boat. Pru usually gets seasick so she doesn't go on the boat. Seeing the island, Sam gets a bad feeling, but nothing really comes back to her. She's glad to get away from there and back to what she considers home now.
Then one day in town, Sam and Pru are hanging out when Sam sees the bad guy's henchman at the grocery store or something to get supplies. Again Sam gets a really bad feeling and has to run away. Pru asks her about it, but she doesn't know why that guy creeps her out. She makes Prudence promise not to tell anyone.
In another game, Sam gets to be the hero, which makes the mean girl really jealous. The cute boy asks Sam to go to the big dance with him and she says yes. Prudence is excited for her and helps her find fabric for a dress that Pru volunteers to make. Pru isn't a great dancer but Sam is even less so, so it's kind of the blind leading the blind. No one has asked Pru out yet so Sam helps Pru ask out the girl she likes, who says yes.
Later, Pru works up the courage to tell her father she's gay and he's pretty understanding about it. Pru thanks Sam for helping her to get that weight off her shoulders. Then they have to find Pru a dress or some fabric so she can make it herself.
The night of the dance, the cute boy comes to pick Sam up and Pru's date picks her up and Prudence's dad takes some pictures. Sam goes with the boy and is having a good time. The mean girl and her friends pick on Pru until she leaves, crying. Sam confronts the mean girl and then leaves to find Pru. The cute boy follows her and they find Pru's date, who's bleeding from a cut on her head or something. The date says that the bad guy's henchman grabbed Pru and knocked her on the head.
Sam and the cute boy are wondering what to do when Pru's phone rings. Sam answers it and it's the bad guy saying if she wants to see her friend again, she needs to come to the island at midnight or whatever. And if she tells the cops, Pru will die.
They call Prudence's dad, who meets them at the docks to take Sam to the island on his boat. As Sam gets on the island she has some deja vu. The bad guy's henchman grabs her to take her to the machine, where they have Prudence. The machine definitely seems familiar to her. The bad guy taunts Sam and then lets Pru go. Sam and Pru share a hug and then Sam tells her to go and she'll be all right and so on.
Sam asks what they want with her and the bad guy says he needs someone to test the machine that she damaged. This time they'll turn her into a baby or something. But as they're about to put Sam in, Pru creates some kind of distraction and Sam is able to shove the bad guy's henchman in so he turns into a baby instead.
Sam confronts the main bad guy, who promises to tell her who she really is. But then a shot rings out and the bad guy dies in Sam's arms. Maybe he says one thing like "Patience" that she doesn't really understand at first.
Once the bad guys are gone, Sam and Pru study the machine trying to find anything about Sam's past. They search for "patience" and find out that Prudence's mom went through the machine and that she could still be alive!
So that's basically part 1.
I was thinking in part 2, Pru, thinking of her mom, finds the old wedding album her father put in the attic after his wife "died." When she and Samantha look at it, the maid of honor looks like an older Samantha! They think maybe this woman is Sam's mother. They do some Googling and manage to get through to Sam's office with the FBI. A woman answers and says that she has been missing her daughter. She'll be on the first plane out to Oregon!
The woman who shows up says all the right things and Sam thinks she's found her mom! Pru, her dad, and the cute boy dating Sam are all a little bummed and yet happy that Sam is on the road to remember who she really is. Sam packs her things, says goodbye to everyone, and then gets in the car with the woman.
Except of course it's a trap! The woman takes Sam somewhere to try to find out what she knows. But some of Sam's fighting instincts kick in and she's able to escape. She finds a phone to call Pru and tell her to get out of there. Sam finds a ride back to town only to find Pru has already been taken.
Pru wakes up in a cell and finds a woman in there with her. The woman looks like the mother she remembers from when she was little. But when she tries to hug the woman, the woman doesn't recognize her or remember having a kid. She says she's been in this place for years, since she was about Pru's age. Pru tells her about the alien portal, but of course the woman doesn't really believe her.
Meanwhile, Sam and her boyfriend have to somehow track down the bad guys and wherever they put Pru and her mom. Pru and her mom start to bond and maybe Pru's mom even starts to get some memories back.
Eventually everyone comes together to escape from the bad guys. Pru's mom comes to live with her and her dad, though it's a little weird for her to meet her husband since she doesn't remember him. At some point Sam might find out that her parents are dead and realize the woman in the picture was her!
Just as everything seems settled again, a social worker and a couple of state cops show up to take Samantha away!
End of Part 2
In Part 3 Sam would be taken to some juvenile detention facility. Pru and Sam's boyfriend try to visit her but can't. Eventually a bad guy shows up with sort of a Silence of the Lambs deal: they need her help to find some criminal the adult her caught. In exchange for her help, they'll give her some information about who she used to be that might help her recover her memories.
And then mayhem ensues! Obviously a lot would depend on how the first two books go and any changes I make to the story or things I think of along the way.
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The only thing bugging me is I think the time portal thing needs to be a bigger part of the story. It kind of drops out of the narrative after the first part. I was thinking that maybe when Sam gets put in the thing and it gets fucked up that maybe she becomes like a living key for it and that way the bad guys have a reason to want to find her besides just not knowing if she can expose them or not. I even thought maybe that accident could give her alien powers but that seems like going too far.
I don't know when I'd actually work on this, but it seems like it could work.
What do you think?
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