ANALOG Tag Line:
Serena Lane is an eighth grader who has to do a "family project" for her social studies teacher, but when her grandmother dies
unexpectedly in the middle of it, Serena is forced to discover if the people
left behind are really the family they thought they were and documents it in THE BIZARRO FAMILY PROJECT.
Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)
Are people with
the same last name a family? Are people living under one roof a family? Are people who are
related by blood always family? What if you’re sure of the answers one day and
the next day, someone changed the questions?
Opening Line:
“Serena Lane sighed
as she read what she’d just typed on her laptop.”
Onward:
Serena Lane sighed
as she read what she’d just typed on her laptop. The first paragraph of the
introduction of the Bizarro family was for Mr. Ledo, her eighth grade social
studies teacher.
“How do I explain me and Grandma and
William and Matt and Canon Jane Owens to anyone?” she asked. The lime green
sheet of tag board lying on her unmade bed said nothing. She sighed. Looking at
it made her head hurt, but last night it was the only color The Grocery
Warehouse had left.
“This,” she said, turning her
attention to the silk wall hanging of Samurai Deeper Kyo, “is a decent start to
a bad project. I’d actually rather pull toenails out of my feet with a tweezers
than do it but if I don’t, I’ll fail eighth grade.” Everyone at Carter Middle
School said that failing the Family Project was a permanent daily trip to the
counselor’s office and possible placement in the Secondary Academy for Lifetime
Occupations. Teachers called it The Academy. Students called it the Special
Academy for LOsers.
For Serena, they’d probably drop her
back a grade level, where she belonged despite the fact that her parents had
petitioned to have her move up in third grade before they were both killed in a
car accident. As far as that went, she had “adjusted well” according to Mr.
Capan, her fourth and fifth grade teacher. Sixth grade had been a breeze.
Serena picked up her seventh grade picture. “Ugh,” she grunted. Not a good
year.
What Was I Trying
To Say?
Today, for good or
evil, “family” is whatever we say it is.
The Rest of the
Story:
“No one who lives in
the Forbusch Mansion Bed & Breakfast has the same last name. If the cops
ever find out, we’ll all go to prison. My grandmother’s a former terrorist, her
boyfriend is related to Jesse James, my cousin is a drunk driver and our
live-in mystery writer was an FBI agent who only writes about bugs and how they
are used to kill people. Me? I’m a juvenile delinquent. Ask anybody. We (drum
roll please) are the Bizarro Family and this is our Project.
Grandma Esther, her
boyfriend William Faulkner DeVries (though I never put the words ‘boyfriend’
and ‘grandma’ together until I moved in with them), me, Serena Lane, my
frequently drunk cousin, Matt Jones, and the famous mystery writer, Canon Jane
Owens are a weirdly mutated version of a regular family. I confess I like it
this way, but it has its down side, too: none of us have to stay around. We’re
all free to go or to be taken away at any time. It was the taking away part
that freaked me out and made a mess of this poster. See, while I was doing the
Project, Grandma Esther died. She was the one who held the rest of us together
so I’m not sure, as of the writing of this paper, whether the Bizarro Family is
still a real family…”
End Analysis:
In the end, they
stay together, though not exactly as you’d expect…in fact, unless I go down and
dig up the actual, paper novel downstairs, I’m not sure exactly how they all
stayed together – just that they did.
Can This Story Be
Saved?
I wrote the original
story around the idea that one person could hold multiple people together into
a cohesive unit and that once removed, the unit typically falls apart. It’s a “sort
of” law of physics illustrated by what would happen to our Solar System if the Sun
suddenly vanished. They planets would all fly off into space to eke out the
rest of their meager lives.
Earth, of course
would freeze solid and all life on it vanish (though there might be some simple
forms that would exist near volcanic vents for a while. But complex life as we
know it? Nope.
At any rate, my Wife
and I have been binge-watching various TV shows and movie series. We currently
started CHUCK; we’ll finish THE HOBBIT and the LORD OF THE RINGS movies tonight;
we’re eagerly awaiting the premier of OCEANS EIGHT (an offshoot of OCEANS 11,
12, and 13); I have read Lois McMasters Bujold’s VORKOSIGAN books dozens of
times; I’ve always been a fan of the M*A*S*H TV series (who wasn’t?); we’ve
fallen for THE ORVILLE…I could go on, but the purpose of this brief review is
to point to the importance of the “ensemble cast”.
I can vaguely
remember hundreds of television series that started off with a cool premise and
then flopped because the actors playing the characters didn’t gel. I can name
at least one television series that started with an absurd premise, but because
there was “something” about the ensemble cast, it worked – SCORPION.
There are plenty of
YA books that worked only because the ENSEMBLE did – HUNGER GAMES springs to
mind, as do the HARRY POTTER books. The idea for both series is neither new nor
particularly amazing. It’s the people that pulled off the series. In HP, both
the written characters AND the acting ensemble melded to form unforgettable
adventures to which people have returned countless times.
So, my question for
BIZARRO FAMILY PROJECT is “Why didn’t the characters as I wrote them ten years
ago gel?”
Among the answers to
that question is the one most important: I wasn’t a good enough writer to pull
it off. Am I now? I don’t know, but I MIGHT try. I’ve got lots of irons in the
fire; I’ve got lots of ideas to try and put together for a story. Do I want to
go back in time and see what I can do with the series. I can tell you ONE thing
I won’t do – pander to whatever social wind is wafting through the country at
this point. Social winds typically lose their power unless the writer makes a
current issue timeless. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is one such book. Wikipedia says
of it, “The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with
the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father,
Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of
integrity for lawyers.”
Positives – the novel
emphasized POSITIVES despite its horrific theme. Morals…I’m pretty sure we don’t
talk about THOSE in 21st Century Western Society any more...are
another theme. Despite the fact that race relations have changed since the
novel was written (btw – “No, they haven’t gotten better. Different.”) yet the
novel persists, despite the hit it took upon the publication of GO SET A
WATCHMAN which was (as far as I can tell) widely panned as a first draft of
MOCKINGBIRD.
How could I make
something important out of BIZARRO FAMILY PROJECT? Do authors set out to make
hit TV series, create fabulous ensemble casts, or write profound novels? No
idea. Maybe they just try to do the best they can to tell the story that
strikes them deeply – and if that’s the case, maybe I CAN rewrite this.
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