So I think a theme is coming together for this collaboration. It's going to be about a televangelist over a couple of decades who experiences a Jim Bakker-type financial disgrace or a Ted Haggard-style sex scandal. No one in this collaboration will write as him. Everyone will develop separate, wildly different characters who all happen to have some connection to this televangelist. They should all have perceptions and opinions about this preacher throughout different periods of his life, both during his rise, after his fall and possibly during some type of redemptive legacy.
There will be a few rules:
1. All narratives should be in the first person.
2. All characters need some kind of connection to this preacher, even if its just someone who has seen him on TV once or twice.
3. Anything your character says/does/believes in regards to this preacher can be completely repudiated by another character/author with a different set of opinions/facts.
4. Other than that almost everything is up for grabs. If you wish to write multiple chapters with multiple characters, I encourage you. If you wish to write multiple chapters with the same character in different decades, I applaud you.
I think I may start it off as a reporter writing a story on the preacher and his family before the fall. Jessica has claimed the character of his mother. If you need ideas for characters or perspectives, you could write as his wife, as one of his kids, as all of his kids, as one of his ministers, as a federal investigator, as someone going on talk shows claiming to be his gay lover, etc.
I'm especially interested in people far from him--people in the audience at his sermons or people who see him on TV or his critics in the media--lives and stories that are only tangentially related to his. Hell, you character can just have a silly pop-culture conversation about him with a friend, with the rest of your character's story/life having nothing to do with him. The fun part will be having all these wildly different opinions and 'facts' about the man, like say if one person kills him off then another can always say it was just a Weekly World News tabloid story or something. You may think he's a saint, you may think he's a crook. There is no truth to this man, only what we can imagine for him.
I'll try to get the first chapter worked out by the end of the month, hopefully. If you have any ideas or would like to contribute, I would love to hear from you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
 |
4 comments:
Hmm, I've been wanting to push myself into the fiction realm for a while, in between horrible reflection papers at school.
I'm down if you think I can hack it!
Sure, just let me know if you have any ideas for the concept and/or your part/character of it.
Do you have any samples of your work or anything?
I'll try to get the first part done soon so it sets the tone.
I don't have much beyond what I published in RVA magazine in Feb, which if I do say so myself was vapid and weak because I wrote it in an hour - but it was apparently received with rave approval. If you want that I could email you the draft - they don't archive the issues on the site.
there's my journal, which is not writing...but I allegedly write in it: http://votre-femme.livejournal.com/
I'm thinking once you get your part fleshed out, I'll give it a go, and if it's not to your liking you can just leave it out :) So far, I'm thinking humiliated daughter with Daddy issues.
ooh, this is rachel "matadors all call your name" toro. i didn't even realize.
that sounds really good.
so far I think we've got a mother, a mainstream magazine reporter, a trashy tabloid writer, a possible gay lover and/or a possible atheist kid whose mother is a true believer.
this is gonna be really fun.
Post a Comment