Thinking Out Loud

Or more accurately, thinking by typing.  This is mostly a brainstorming post.

I think I've decided to go with an idea I had months ago, of a steampunk Zorro-type story set in Peru during the colonization.  More of an Antonio-Banderras Zorro, and less the older style, though I'm not sure how much difference that will make by the time I get to writing.

Note to self: rewatch the Zorro movies for tone, and maybe to review the beats.  The movie worked well.

Right now, I'm thinking my main character will be a bit younger than I recall Zorro being; I'm thinking around 15-16.  I might have him a bit younger to begin with, so that he can grow physically as well as in skill while he is "exiled" from his regular place.

My current plot basically consists of the MC being forced to leave the city for some reason, and half-unconscious and maybe hallucinating, finding his way to a tiny jungle temple where an old native shaman resides.  Training ensues with the shaman/mentor, after which he returns to foil the bad guy's plans.

The emphasis is going to be heavy on adventure and wonder, with some budding romance.  A 15-16 year old male protagonist means boys around 12-14 will probably be the readers, which is somewhere in that transition between girls are weird and girls are wonderful.  Should the romance be nontraditional?  I'm thinking that making him mixed blood and her pure european may be enough.

Alternately, would the roles work reversed?  The woman as the MC and the zorro figure, the man as the romantic interest?  How would it affect the story?  The main readers would become girls 11-14, with similar interests but more emphasis on romance.  I would have to do some setting changes to allow it, perhaps; slight modifications to mores due to the steampunk setting.  On the other hand, it would mean even less suspicions on the woman herself during the zorro parts.

What would a girl be doing that would be so bad she'd be driven from the city, though?  I can think of a couple things, which aren't pretty; but do those things fit in a YA adventure story like this?  I may have to think through this part, but in some ways I'm liking the reversal.  I especially like that the woman is more active, and in this modification (and social class) for the time period, that would probably work out well.  She'll be pretty, of course, though think herself plain.  The boy will have to be someone we can root for, but showing it may be tough.  I think he'll have to try to act nicely to those of lower status and be put in his place by his father.

Darn, but I seem to have a thing for mean fathers.  I may need to check on that sometime.

So from this I need to extract, in the next couple of weeks, a concept, a theme, characters, and a beat sheet/outline.  It would be good to have the outline in hand a bit before the start of November, in order to give myself time to look it over and make sure it's doing what I want it to, but that may be asking too much by this point.  In fact, I think I'd probably be happy with just having a solid set of characters and some sort of action plan I can refer to.

I'll go into more details later, I hope, but for characters I need: the MC, the love interest, the shaman, and the bad guy (for sure).  Those are the main ones.  There should probably be one or two other bad guy types, though the one I referred to was the main baddie.  I wonder if there should be one or two others that the MC has a relationship with, of some sort.  Something to show that the MC isn't just living life waiting to die.

I may need to come up with a map or two, just enough to keep my areas in the city straight.  I'm wondering if I'll need a b plot, and if so what characters will be needed for that, and how I'll work them in as well.  I should skim through my writing ideas to see if any of them will trigger more ideas to work on.

Concept... concept may be difficult.  I should do a post on that also.  Right now I've got something along the lines of "what if a kid in steampunk colonial peru became Zorro?"  However, I don't think that's quite enough of a hook for the concept... although it does have a few unexpected elements to it, combining steampunk and colonial South America as it does.  I'd probably lose the "Zorro" line after some further fleshing out as well, but there's a lot that Zorro conveys that I'd rather not lose.

I need to work on broadening and deepening that, but perhaps that can wait for the dedicated post or two as well.

The theme seems easier to approach... I'm thinking something along the lines of racial prejudices and breaking caste settings, for better or worse (mostly better).  Maybe just prejudices and discrimination; not that I know much about being discriminated against, but that might work well with the MC being female as well.