Today's TWO LUMPS

[filkertom]

... seems to have nailed Young Adult fiction.

What's your prospective YA blockbuster about? I'm thinking of something written from the point of view of the 15-year-old friend of the almost-16-year-old Dalai Lama, who has been reincarnated as a youth from mid-Ohio and has been keeping the secret his entire life because he doesn't want to be involved in the politics of the whole thing until he feels he's ready, i.e., after maybe a college education and perhaps enjoying his youth for once. There might be a girlfriend. Or maybe the DL should be the girl...?

I've also got my teenaged-minion-of-Nyarlothotep (who was going to be a minion of Cthulhu, but found out that Cthulhu would just eat him/her, and at least Nyarlothotep has a human form).* Eventually he/she starts realizing exactly what this would mean as a career move.

And there's the fantasy epic about the noble infant born with prophecy saying that he/she will defeat the bad guy, so the bad guy invades and has the entire castle burned down. He then sends in a minion, who has been abused by the bad guy for years, to make sure everyone's dead. Minion finds the baby still alive, hesitates in killing him because the baby's too cute, and then gets nearly killed as the bad guy launches another attack on the burning ruin ("It would be a pity about Minion, if I hadn't been looking for a good way to get rid of him for months now"). Minion manages to escape -- everyone thinks he's dead -- and he plots his revenge by raising the baby to be the slayer of the bad guy. Thing is, he's got a very twisted and one-sided view of what a "hero" should be. Does he try to raise the kid as a hero, or as a villain, or as a Grey in-between? Does the kid discover his own heroism? Does the gorgeous warrior princess/ruggedly handsome young warrior prince the kid meets when they're both in their late teens/early twenties see past the darkness in his heart, or does s/he get off on it?

(Implied question: Do any of these sound good? Do they suck? Do they sound like something you've already read?)

* Firefox spellchecker for Nyarlothotep gives me "Charlottetown". That's the minion's name, Charlotte Towne.

Comments

[wednes]

Ha! I love Two Lumps.
The guy who draws it actually designed two of my book covers when I was still with Stonegarden Publishing.

Did you happen to see last night's Simpsons with Neil Gaiman?
Also on the subject of YA lit.

[filkertom]

That's what everyone's telling me. I've downloaded it, and I'll watch it tonight or tomorrow.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

You really, really need to see last night's episode of The Simpsons, which was about YA fantasy, and featured a guest appearance by Neal Gaiman. I hope it's available online somewhere.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Damn, beat me to it.

The ep will be on Hulu next week.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

:) Okay, I'll take a look!

[alverant.livejournal.com]

The first idea sounds interesting. But to do it right would require a lot of research into Buddhism. It could be way to teach people about the religion since right now the public perception seems to be that Buddhist monks are major ass-kicking warriors who refrain from violence (thanks video games!).

I like the second idea since it would deal with teens who realized they made a bad decision and are trying to fix it. Maybe switch the POV to a friend of the minion as he/she tries to convince their friend to leave then help them leave.

The third feels like it's been done before. The twist on what a hero could be can be played for laughs or turn him into an angst filled anti-hero who does bad to do good. Maybe instead you can flip the story around and have the child be fated to kill the good guy and bring 1000 years of darkness. The king raided the castle because the child's family belongs to an evil cult. The family sacrifices themselves rather than be taken prisoner leaving only the baby. Naturally the king wouldn't slaughter an infant so he offers to raise the child as his own in hopes of thwarting his destiny. So now the teen is faced with fighting the forces of darkness trying to convince him to kill the man he has called "Father" all his life.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Why not combine all three?

Evil bad guy conquers fantasy world but ex-minion escapes to our world where she accidentally mixes up destiny baby with Dalai Lama baby. Minion tries to raise Dalai Lama to be bag guy killer while Dalai Lama tries to enlighten minion. Meanwhile destiny baby grows up with this nagging suspicion that she's destined to do something great, so she falls into the clutches of a Nyarlothotep cult, organizes a kick-ass band and travels around trying to recruit new cult members from the masses of disenfranchised youth while engineering a coup to remove the current cult leadership and take over. Evil bad guy finds out Minion had escaped all those years ago and leads a party of enchanted fairy-type people into our world to hunt them down, thinking that if it's a different world the prophecy won't apply. Everything comes to a conclusion when Minion and Lama, fleeing the bad guy, try to hide in the crowd attending destiny's concert where the cult leaders are planning on resurrecting an elder god using the frenzy and deaths of the crowd attendees but unaware of destiny's plans to sabotage their ritual and use the eldritch power to seize control of the cult but instead of summoning an elder god gains control over the fairy/mythical creatures the bad guy brought over to eliminate Minion and Lama.

Then in the second chapter...

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

Sounds like at least a six-book trilogy to me.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's just the first half of the first book. Something to lay the groundwork for the rest of the series.

[tarsa.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a Discworld novel to me...

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

the 15-year-old friend of the almost-16-year-old Dalai Lama, who has been reincarnated as a youth from mid-Ohio

Who, of course, is white. Don't do it, Tom, please - there's enough "white dude discovers he's inherited a mystical Indian/Tibetan/African superpower" stuff out there. It's extremely problematic and appropriative - rather like the casting in The Last Airbender.

You're better off with the "son of Cthulhu" or Minion Jr. stories.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Who says he's white?

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Dalai Lama's brother used to run a Tibetan restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana...maybe he still does.

I've never written teen-age fiction. My Violet stories run from about third to sixth-grade levels. I would love, however, to read the third story you've outlined above. Hell, if I was working right now, I'd love to *write* it.

As far as the plot being done before goes, damn near everything has been done before--elements of this one are found in the New Testament. The trick is doing it with an original voice, cleverly created characters, and a new twist or two.

Look at Jim Butcher's Codex Alera, for example. It could have been a typical farm boy saves the realm book. Instead, in Furies of Calderon, we're introduced to our hero--the only kid in the land who *can't* do any magic and over the course of the books, he uses his intelligence to triumph over all odds. A counselor I know, who works with disturbed kids, uses the book as a treat for the brighter ones.

kitten told me about the Gaiman appearance on The Simpsons. It was definitely worth watching and gave all of us lots of laughs.

Tom Trumpinski

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[ldyerzsie.livejournal.com]

It's in Bloomington, Indiana at 113 S Grant St. It's called the Snow Lion. The brother still runs it and it's really, really, really, really good.

I've eaten there.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Who says he has to be a "he"? Forget skin color, I'd rather see the reincarnated Dalai Lama, the product of a centuries-old male-only system, be a girl for a change.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

*that* would be cool :-)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

So cities, towns and communities could compete for becoming the next global buddhist center, like they did for Googles mega-bandwidth internet experiment? How would they attract the attention of the Dalai Lama when he's between states, by making their community all peaceful, serene and one with municipal services? Or by being a terrible place that really needs some enlightenment?

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Ah, you were planning to have your character be Tibetan-American - a grandson of the Nepalese who fled the China massacre, perhaps? My mistake - and my apologies.

Because "white" and "male" tends to be the default in friggin' *everything* in this culture (99% of kid films = Only A White Boy Can Save Everybody; 80% of TV shows - White Dudes Shoot Stuff/Figure Stuff Out/Get Laid), since you hadn't specified the protagonist's race at the outset it was a fair assumption to make. And I am honestly tired of the "White Male Inherits Mystical-Brown-People Shit" trope.

[kengr]

Well, I know *I* would be really hesitant to write about a non-white character because I know just enough to know that I don't really understand some of what they'd go thru in their lives.

I mean, I've been on the wrong end of discrimination for various things, but it's still *different*.

So I guess the problem is getting more non-white, non-male writers out there.

Of course, it still doesn't help when publishers and movie execs think that non-white won't sell (consider the cover of the first edition of Steve Barnes's "Streetlethal". Black author, black main character, cover shows main character as *white*)

[alverant.livejournal.com]

"So I guess the problem is getting more non-white, non-male writers out there."
This.

Some people say that if you write outside your race/gender then you can't get it right. As for the question of non-white selling I would have to agree there are problems. Readers want to identify with the main character and since AFAIK the main consumers of sci-fi are white males that's who the publishers cater to. It's not right or correct, but that is what it is.

Now that I think about it, the problem isn't so much as getting more non-white, non-male writers out there. It's getting more non-white, non-male sci-fi fans out there. You do that and some of those fans will become writers.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

So I guess the problem is getting more non-white, non-male writers out there.

And getting more attention for the ones who already are out there.

[roman-mclaze.livejournal.com]

Ursula K. Le Guin had a lot of great stuff to say about whitewashing (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2004/12/a_whitewashed_earthsea.html) in a Slate article a few years back. The best quote:

"But I had endless trouble with cover art. Not on the great cover of the first edition—a strong, red-brown profile of Ged—or with Margaret Chodos Irvine's four fine paintings on the Atheneum hardcover set, but all too often. The first British Wizard was this pallid, droopy, lily-like guy—I screamed at sight of him."

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

It's just an idea. Although I said "he" for convenience -- or that was the only non-gender-neutral reference I missed -- I have no idea what gender or ethnicity the character would be at this point. It would, pardon the pun, color the entire story.

However, I would like to point out that, because I said "kid from mid-Ohio", you assumed s/he would be white. If I said "black kid from mid-Ohio", you'd likely also wonder how I would know to write a black kid. If I said "Tibetan kid from mid-Ohio", you very well might ask, "And how did a Tibetan kid get to mid-Ohio?" Etc. etc. etc.

I'm truly sorry to have to put it this way, and I understand and appreciate the need to avoid stereotypes as much as possible... but I threw the bare bones of an idea out there, and you assumed that I would take it somewhere offensive to you.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

But Tom, you're a filker, you should _know_ how to write a black norwegian buddhist tween-aged girl stuck in the milds of mid-Ohio. You've already wrote from the perspective of superman and a coyote, so this should be easy by comparison.

[ldyerzsie.livejournal.com]

I'm from mid-Ohio. In my little town there were exactly TWO non white kids while I was growing up and they were brother and sister. You will have to forgive the assumptions that are based on experience. Now, if you had specified that they were from Akron Or Columbus, the assumptions would have probably changed.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Call it the 'Minion Jones' series?

[his-spiffyness.livejournal.com]

I always had a vision of taking Penny Arcade at it's word. (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/12)

Girl has dreams of this handsome young man, and is completely surprised when he turns up in real life. He's Ptolemy XIII, the younger brother of Cleopatra and last of the Pharaohs of Egypt. His sister betrayed him to gain Caesar's favor, but a small group of loyal priests gave him a semblance of immortality as a mummy.

The girl only sees him during the day, because at sunset he turns back into dessicated corpse and his soul had to travel through the underworld each night. The girl's ability to see him in her dreams marks her as an Oracle, and would help fulfill the prophecy that he would return to the world of the living.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Heh. Now I'm thinking of some woman who's fallen in love with a guy she thinks is a vampire, but actually is Apollo. We could call it Don't Quit Your Day Job....

[madrona.livejournal.com]

Hey, Tamora Pierce is YA, and if her recent Beka Cooper series is wrong, I don't wanna be right. I don't think I've got a better idea than a medieval police drama.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Sadly, all my mind produces here is a bad joke.

Cthulhu walks - no, slithers - into a bar and orders a cheeseburger. "How would you like that?"

"Bacon, guacamole and extra minions."

(Should I apologize now? OK. So sorry.)

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be 'filet minions'? ^_^

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I think "filet minion" is Bobby Flay's butcher....

[caligogreywings.livejournal.com]

You may or may not have given me an idea for changing the direction of my book. I had no plot developed whatsoever ...

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[willibald.livejournal.com]

You forgot to mention that the Minion was a Vegan half-vampire who is un-effected by religious symbols but can be held at bay with a bratwurst.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Unless the minion is from Wisconsin....

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

Of the three ideas I think I like the first one best. While I've been a Christian for a long time I've also always been fascinated by the eastern religions and philosophies.

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

One of those sounds kinda like the outline for the inheritance series. At least, to me. Formula and derivative seem to be the words of the decade for YA in about 90% of it. Sad.

Charlotte Towne. That made me laugh.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I'm liking the villain already. Strike, then strike again when it's least expected. Just crazy enough to be dangerous.

[graysoul.livejournal.com]

Sad that you have to be a teenager in this culture to accomplish anything. Fuck Y.A. Write well and everyone can enjoy it. Let someone over 40 accomplish something for a change.