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In the age of TikTok and social media algorithms, it’s become common to see a wide range of videos as you scroll. For me, it’s very common to scroll from something quite macabre or a very dark joke, right to a video of puppies, and then back to true crime. I find, too, that a lot of youth humour and media deals with the fusion of very disparate ideas. Irony is king. For that reason, my serial story aspires to be a show that is quite dark and takes itself completely seriously, but in actuality is a quirky, cozy, and silly premise.

Frog Nocturne is an animated mini-series of eight 10-minute episodes. As it unfolds, a micro-community of frogs and gnomes must grapple with the first crime ever committed in their town. Villages are built on lily pads, tipped-over tree stumps display welcome mats, a flower could be an umbrella and a carrot could be carved-out into a boat. Think Over the Garden Wall meets the film noir of the 50s and 60s, Wind in the Willows or Frog & Toad meets true crime - the aesthetic is always melancholic, and the atmosphere is always gloopy. Again, this is a show that takes itself DEEPLY serious, and because of this, the whimsy only grows stronger.

Frog Bob is a young-but-experienced detective, complete with trench-coat and fedora, who has been dispatched to a small town after learning that the mayor has gone missing. All she’s left behind is a cryptic note written on a leaf. Everyone in town has a theory, but most of them fear the worst: that she has croaked. My screenplay will cover the first two episodes of this show, and will deal with Frog Bob’s arrival and the beginnings of his investigation. As it proceeds, he begins to unravel a curious conspiracy that implicates both frogs and gnomes alike, and may even force him to confront some of his own deepest traumas.

This is a family show. Despite the tone, there is enough charm in its story, and exaggeration in its animation, to still appeal to children. But as an audience member myself, Frog Nocturn feels best suited for the ‘Studio Ghibli/Etsy’ generation, the ‘LoFi beats to study/relax to’ generation. It plays with genre and expectation, and over the course of the eight episodes, will fully invest us both in this tiny pastoral world, and its seedy, bulbous underbelly. Who will have the last word in the lyrical Frog Nocturne?

Word Count: 413

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Series title: Above the Tower

First episode title: The Burning Bride

Format: TV series (6 episodes per season)

Genre: drama, crime

Similar media: Agatha Christie’s Marple, All Creatures Great and Small

Plot:

In 80s China, a spoiled young man (Jun Wang, also known as ‘Junior’) with gambling problems is forced by his father to travel with a TV antenna engineering construction team across the vast inland of the country to find his place in life and learn to take on life’s responsibilities. The construction team faces and overcomes extremely difficult scenarios with local communities in every town. Their tasks go beyond establishing access to TV signals and sometimes even include solving crimes.

When the team is trying to negotiate the perfect place to build a signal tower in a small town in southwest China, an explosion happens in a house near the intended construction site and kills a young couple. The mother (Ling Yang) of the dead girl blames the construction team for bringing bad luck. Under her influence, residents believe that the team is cursed and they protest around the construction site. Then the negotiation with town officials becomes impossible and the team leader is thinking about aborting the project. In the meantime, Junior receives a letter from his aunt telling him about his father’s decision to arrange his marriage for him. Feeling suffocated by his father, Junior decides to never go home and stick to the team and their projects. He then tries to help the team by visiting and talking to the dead couple’s family. By doing so, he discovers that the dead girl grew up without a father and her mother was against her decision to marry the dead boy.

In a riot caused by the protestors, a team member (Feng Li) gets hurt when trying to protect Ling and is sent to the local hospital. In the meantime, Junior is investigating the house that burnt down and talking to firemen about the incident. He discovers that the house was built for the dead couple as their wedding gift but had been used by the boy’s family as a temporary factory/warehouse for their illegal firecrackers business. Due to the chaotic production process, any misconduct could have caused the explosion but the dead girl was not supposed to be there at the time.

When Junior visits the hospital to talk to Ling, he stops her attempt to kill Feng. It turns out that during the government’s Down to the Countryside Movement years ago, Feng was sent from big cities to work in this town. He fell in love with Ling and abandoned her when she was pregnant because his family objected to their union. He then went back to his family and cut off connections to this town. He expresses his regrets and begs for Ling’s forgiveness but Ling refuses and confesses that she was the one who set fire to the house and she intended to kill only the boy because she was obsessed with the idea of using her daughter’s marriage to move to big cities.

After sending Ling to the police, Junior sits down to write his response to his aunt. In his letter, he owns his mistakes but refuses to follow his father’s orders. He now knows his actions have consequences and he will try to refrain from overreaching ‘a better life’, but he can’t accept a life being controlled by other people. Then he is called away by the team leader to start the construction.

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My project is a two-season TV series that will air weekly on HBO. Each season will consist of four 30-minute episodes. The show is titled To Be-At Me, a sci-fi crime drama. Its visual style is similar Mad Max: Fury Road and The Hunger Games, featuring a world divided into two distinct hierarchies: one of slavery and one of royalty, each with its own unique dress and lifestyle. My target audience includes teenagers and young adults who are interested in sci-fi concepts, sports, and the fight for justice and equality.

The protagonist is Ledia, a female athlete raised by her maternal grandmother after being orphaned. In the first episode of season one, the A plot happens in Paratown, where Ledia’s grandmother’s illness worsens and requires immediate medical treatment, or she will die soon. To save her grandmother, Ledia turns to doping to make the Olympics, as she isn’t as talented as her teammates. Her sudden improvement raises suspicion and rumors within the team, and her secret is discovered by the team captain, Elacia. However, instead of exposing Ledia, Elacia offers to help her fake the drug test. The B plot is set in the City; it introduces the unique eccentricities of the country’s President, Pinkio, and his secretary, Alev, who will later be revealed as Ledia’s estranged father.

In the following three episodes of season one, Ledia is forced to join secret rebel group of elite athletes led by Elacia. The group plans to overthrow Pinkio during the Olympics in the City, but Ledia is reluctant to participate. During their journey, Ledia meets Alev and finds out her mother is alive but locked up by him. With the gang's help, Ledia rescues her mother from Alev and secures a spot to go to the City. However, to cover up what he did to Ledia’s mom, Alev murders Ledia’s grandmother and kidnaps Ledia. She has to fight Alev in a virtual world he created. After defeating and killing him in this “duel,” Ledia, despite her grandmother’s death, Ledia decides to stay with the gang to take down Pinkio because that breaking the hierarchy is the only way to improve her life. The second season will focus on Ledia and the gang’s efforts to bring down Pinkio.

I wish to use this project to convey ideas like “Trust only yourself, as betrayal often comes from those closest to you; protect our planet before it’s too late; and create a fair and equal society to prevent rebellion and unrest.”

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Shadow Thief pitch – Shafiah “Shadow Thief” is a Young Adult (YA) fantasy novel set in an alternate world where shadows can be stolen and illegally sold. The story explores themes around trust, moral ambiguity, and identity. It follows seventeen-year-old Liora as she fights to reclaim her shadow from the darker forces at work in the city, while remaining true to herself. The novel is aimed at YA fantasy readers between the ages of 15 to 18. It will be delivered with the similar fast-paced action to “A Darker Shade of Magic” by V. E. Schwab, but with the poetic prose of “The Bear and the Nightingale” by Katherine Arden. The story follows seventeen-year-old Liora Blake, a street girl living off her skills as a street magician in the medieval city of Umbwyn. When her shadow is stolen by the Syndicate, a criminal organisation that traffics shadows, Liora knows she doesn’t have much time before shadow paralysis sets in and eventually kills her. She seeks out the help of her childhood friend, Kian, an unwilling Syndicate agent, who tells Liora about Nerith who is said to be the Syndicate’s most skilled shadow thief. Liora finds and confronts Nerith, who offers her a deal; she’ll help Liora find her shadow if Liora first helps Nerith bring down the Syndicate. Liora agrees, and she and Nerith begin their hunt for information on the Syndicate. As time passes, Liora’s moral choices become questionable as her desperation grows and the effects of shadow paralysis worsen. Liora then learns that the Sydnicate were responsible for the death of her sister five years ago, fueling Liora’s thirst for revenge even more. When Liora and Nerith confront the Syndicate at last, Liora learns that Nerith was playing her all along, trying to influence her into joining the Syndicate. Liora is taken captive by the Syndicate. Liora eventually manages to escape, incapacitating Nerith along the way and taking her captive in turn. Liora flees back to Kian’s house, where the Syndicate sends a letter with a deal; Nerith’s life for Liora’s shadow. Liora and Kian plan their attack on the Syndicate, knowing that if Liora hands over Nerith, the Syndicate will kill her. However, when the moment comes, Liora decides to spare Nerith’s life and let her escape, breaking the cycle of revenge. Liora and Kian steal Liora’s shadow back just before the city authorities arrive at the scene. Liora and Kian flee, knowing that the Syndicate will be brought to justice. The novel ends with Liora finding a new sense of purpose and deciding to ultimately put a stop to the illegal trafficking of shadows and make the world a better place. For the assignment, I will present the first part of this novel, which introduces Liora’s character, focuses on setting, and ends when Liora meets Nerith and agrees to the deal.

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The Humanity Project
by Gigi Bone

Summary

The Humanity Project is a serial story in the form of a novel of eighteen chapters, delivered in a staggered, weekly release of six total parts (approximately three chapters per part). It would be of interest to adult readers who enjoy literary fiction and memoir of an intimate, psychological nature. For example, audiences who enjoyed stories such as ‘Girl, Interrupted’, ‘The Collected Schizophrenias’, ‘A Beautiful Mind’, ‘What a piece of work’ and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. [1] It is written predominately in prose form, but also includes segments of combined poetry and prose (to facilitate a fragmentary feel that assists with the psychological nature of the story, reflecting the protagonist’s frame-of-mind).

Synopsis

“Macro Plot”

The Humanity Project closely follows the protagonist, Flora, through the progression of a psychotic breakdown over a three month period. However, the duality of the story lies within the uncertainty which Flora feels, and which the reader is drawn into, regarding whether many of her experiences are real or imagined (hallucinated). For example, the story opens with Flora believing with absolute certainty in ‘The Humanity Project’, a reconnaissance mission enacted by an alien race who have come covertly to Earth. The story is framed to the readers in such a way that does not give certainty as to whether Flora’s experiences are real or not: the reader is led by Flora’s perceptions and experiences, thus casting doubt as to the reality of ‘The Humanity Project’.[2]

“Micro Plot”

Flora has just commenced her penultimate semester of study as an undergraduate student in mathematics when she begins to have strange experiences. She is hearing voices with no clear origin, speaking to her and narrating her actions, and is plagued by the sense that she is being watched and monitored.[3] As the odd experiences and delusional thoughts intensify, she is visited in the night by a being named Relk, an alien who says he has a mission for her, drawing her into what he calls ‘The Humanity Project’.

The aim of the Project is for his species, the Krya’listans, to determine whether or not humanity is worthy of, or ready for, their friendship. He tells Flora that she is one of the ‘chosen ones’ who will help the Krya’listans make their determination. Now believing herself to be on a crucial mission, Flora begins to lose her sense of focus for anything else in her life – nothing else seems quite as important. As the voices begin giving her commands which she must obey, in the name of the Project, she begins to grow incredibly paranoid about all the people around her, believing them to be part of a covert anti-Krya’listan movement seeking to negatively influence the outcome of the Project. Strangers become a threat, become agents working against her who are interfering with her thoughts; her friends, her housemates, her teachers, her classmates – everyone is a possible antagonist to her newly found cause.

Flora feels as though the world is closing in around her. Her mind is fragmenting. It is not until she begins questioning the voices, Relk and the Krya’listans – questioning their motives – that she can be reached by the people in her life again. With the intervention of those in her life, the story culminates in Flora being admitted to a psychiatric facility.

Delivery

I will be delivering the first 3,000 word “chapter” of the piece in which Flora is in a psychiatric hospital.

[1] Please note I am referring to the book forms of these works rather than the film adaptations. Authors, respectively: Susanna Kaysen, Esmé Weijun Wang, Sylvia Nasar, Dorothy Porter and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

[2] Drafting note: What I’m trying to describe here is that within the story itself it is not initially made clear to the reader that what Flora is experiencing is actually a psychotic episode. Within the story, ‘The Humanity Project’ and the alien insurgents, may actually be real (as Flora believes/experiences).

[3] Note: this is a voice Flora heard in childhood, too, but which she tried to bury and convince herself was just a normal ‘imaginary friend’.

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The Great Book: A Bird’s Eye View of the Ages

The Great Book is a written serial consisting of vignettes ranging from 500 to 2000 words in length, in various formats including poetry, prose and pseudo-nonfiction that follow the development of a fictional world and fantastical setting through various stages of its history. They will be published online biweekly in a non-linear way within the framing device of The Great Book to tie them together, giving readers the opportunity to “puzzle out” how they fit together to construct a timeline for them. These vignettes, short stories and other “micro-fiction” will be written from an “in-universe” perspective, as if they are texts from the setting of the story itself compiled into a collection, in the manner of such works of speculative fiction such as J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard or The World of Ice & Fire by George R.R. Martin, Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson, both of which have the central conceit that they are written by characters in the worlds in which they take place and serve as supplemental material to the Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire series respectively.

However, rather than being supplemental material to a series, The Great Book is conceptualised as being the series itself: the story of the world is told entirely through these in-universe documents, which would normally be relegated to “lore” considered marginal trivia to the main story. Many readers are interested in the world and setting of a story but may never consume any of the mainline entries in the series: Youtuber VaatiVidya, for example, creates content about video game worlds, and many of his fans have never played any video games at all but are interested in hearing about their history and environmental storytelling.

The entire series will chart the history of a civilisation from its legendary founding, beginning with the mythic past, all the way its distant future in which historians and archaeologists are looking back on it. The individual entries will be “snapshots” of an instant in the setting’s timeline, capturing a single experience or perspective from the time in which it is set, intended to give the reader a sense of the mood and impressionistically cultivate the feel of that particular moment in the world’s development than strictly follow a traditional plot.

For this assignment, I’ll deliver three vignettes of a planned ten-part series, consisting of a fragment of epic poetry detailing the founding myth of the civilisation in question, followed by an early draft of an official history commissioned by a member of a high-ranking family, and finally a diary entry from a merchant’s wife providing a street-level view of daily life.

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Sonder

[sohn-dehrr]

(n.) The realization that each random passerby is the main character of their own story, has a life as vivid and complex as your own, and you are just an extra in the background.

This would be a continuation of something I worked on last semester, delivered as an online prose short fic. Sonder is about defamiliarization, loneliness and the human experience. The moments where you zone out and think about all the 7.9 billion people who have lives that you’ll never know. Just an existential crisis in written form, dealing with complex, human feelings, and how influential people come into your life from everywhere and anywhere – think Invisible String Theory.

It's a story with no main character, or rather, where everyone is the main character. The personification of this feeling, Sonder, that lives inside the minds of lonely people, “on the outside, looking in,” knowing what people think and do, but never fully understanding them.

Sonder bounces between the four people, our “main characters” growing weaker and weaker as the characters become more aware of Sonder and less lonely as their lives intertwine, until Sonder disappears completely. The main conflict would surround Sonder desperately trying to keep them in their lonely state where Sonder is most powerful.

I’m planning on the final project to be around 12 parts, rotating between four characters and “Sonder” until they meet at the end, and the feeling of Sonder leaves. Each part will be roughly 1,500 words of online prose, and include a prologue strictly in Sonder’s voice.

It’s contemporary fiction, slight magical realism, and leaning towards YA. My literary (and other) influences are mostly The Book Thief, Selected Poems of Emily Dickenson, The Alchemist, and Free Guy.

I’ll deliver part two for this assignment, featuring Amelia, the artist in her cramped New York City apartment. She is connected, but just barely, to the other characters in this story.

What you missed in the first part: Beck, a new and upcoming popstar gets her first gig opening for a popular rock band, Heroes of Venus. While backstage, she meets the band’s leader, a weirdly insightful being, and weirdly unknown to Sonder – who is supposedly aware of everyone.

“I like them. All so caught up in their own lives, they don’t notice anyone really. I’m thriving. The less aware they are, the more I see. They do not know I exist. They cannot know I exist.

And they’re all going to a concert this weekend.”

-          Sonder, Prologue.

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Title: Erased

Format: 6-8 episode series/mini-series Runtime: ~50 min Genre: YA Logline: An altercation between bookish teenager Leila and popular girl Melissa leads them to unwittingly embark on a project to collate the stories of people who have been erased from official history. Leila, a bookish teenager who lives with her controlling single mum, is diving into her newest rabbit hole — the OED. She became so absorbed that she forgot to help write up a report for popular girl Melissa, who bullies her into doing her assignments for her. Enraged because she needed one more A to get a scholarship to her desired uni, Melissa tears Leila’s rare copy of the OED starting a fight that ended up causing damage to a valuable school relic. The fight was broken up by the disapproving year level coordinator Ms Woods. Believing they would be expelled and their parents notified, Ms Woods surprised them by telling them of her new way to resolve conflict between students — to force them to work together and find common ground. She encourages the two girls to sign up to a research project competition and if they can prove that they can work well together then she is willing to not put the fight into the girls’ school records. The collaboration started off poorly as Leila and Melissa had little in common. They ended up giving up and pretending to work together after school hoping the teachers will be convinced if they kept up appearances. Melissa mocks Leila for having no life outside of studying and challenges her to gatecrash the popular kids’ party. Leila sneaks out from under her mum’s watchful eye, escapes her curfew, and gate crashes into the party, which appears to be in a very luxurious mansion. Not knowing anyone she gets embarrassed and hides in the library where she is amazed by the large number of books. Meanwhile Mellisa who was also at the party finally caught her boyfriend cheating on her red handed (after previous suspicions were dismissed as her being hysterical and lack of evidence). Sick of constantly being gaslighted by her toxic boyfriend, she confronts him with a recording and attempts to break up with him. The boyfriend, Jake, scared that Melissa will try to ruin his good reputation, especially so close to tryouts for getting into the national basketball team, steals Melissa’s phone when she was unaware and posts the recording, framing Melissa as the vindictive culprit. Melissa is completely humiliated when people choose to believe Jake’s version of the story over hers. She flees in rage and embarrassment and hides in the library where she runs into Leila perusing over a book. The book shows a collection of art by artists who have been falsely credited and sidelined in history. The two bond over the fact that as girls they often have their credibility challenged. They finally decide the topic of their project – unearthing people who have been ‘erased’ from history.