Young Writers Society

◈◆◈ The NovMo Thread ◈◆◈

◈◆◈ Elevator Pitch ◈◆◈

A star trucker disgruntled with life protects a human who was supposed to be a shipment. Together, they run from the government across the stars on an adventure that gives both of them their humanity back.

◈◆◈ Character & Location List ◈◆◈

◈ Jyden Marada / Good Times
◈ The Experiment / London
◈ Side Grease /
◈ Fire Roasted /
◈ Wide Node /
◈ Dock Job /
◈ Lucky Ray /
◈ Sandy Say /
◈ Admiral Furia
◈ Captain Adrenka
◈ The News Reporter / Sadie
◈ The Secretary / Aldin
◈ The Pleasure / Adrianna

◈ The Truck Cab
◈ New London Docking Station
◈ SPACE
◈ MORE SPACE
◈ EVEN MORE SPACE
◈ Nuova
◈ Celestine Station
◈ Hard Rock Casino
◈ Buoy Belt
◈ The Late Night House

◈◆◈ Main Characters ◈◆◈

◈ Jyden Marada

A disgruntled interstellar trucker who took this job to leave his haunted past behind and divulge in a life where he needs no connections and has nothing weighing him down. During his shifts, he lugs around whatever jobs and orders he can get his hands on and drowns his thoughts in the mundane. After his shifts, he'll find the closest illegal shithole and drown his sorrows away in drugs, booze, and sex. After passing out in these places, he either wakes up or gets thrown out, ready to start another shift.

Jyden works at Venture Freights, a smaller trucking company based out of Earth. While it's not the most reputable trucking company, it makes up for that by having deep connections with the Void Market, a less-than-legal interconnected crime network throughout the system. He's been working at Venture Freights for almost a decade now, after his ex Leigh recommended the job to him. While it's not at all what he's trained in or was looking forward to when he was younger, it's something that he can do to keep a figurative roof over his head and do what he wants. And what he wants is to run away from the problems of his past. He doesn't really have friends. No, no, the closest thing to any relationship now are his co-workers that he sees on the very rare occasion their trucks find each other in radio distance and maybe the repeat pleasure workers he sees on round trips. But, he's kept it that way for a reason.

Jyden is in his thirties and he's not exactly the most fit. After all, much of his day is spent sitting in the cabin of his truck. He does have a treadmill built into his cabin, which he uses when he's feeling particularly disgusted with himself, but it's not exactly like he's ripped. For the past few years, he's ravaged his body with drugs and when he's not dousing himself in drugs, he's not exactly healthy with the other stuff he puts himself through. He's had to spend several cycles in emergency recovery centers after binging too much. Thankfully, he makes enough money through trucking to make sure the telltale signs of drug abuse don't show on his skin. The several operations he's been through in his thirties has made it so he's naturally mostly in shape.

Jyden doesn't talk about his past with anyone, and the few who know him well enough to have either been there or know about it don't ask. He didn't really have a past that was extremely traumatic or horrible or anything extreme. He's seen so many horror stories of people going through way worse. But, every time he thinks about it, his heart races and the darkness closes in on him. So, he has learned only to avoid it, and he's fine with it.

As far as looks go... well, he doesn't particularly care about his figure or his looks. He pays enough to make himself not look horribly disfigured by his self-abuse and then continues to do it. But, he's been told he's not bad too look at since he was young. At first, it used to give him an inflated sense of ego that he carried around with him with an undeserved swagger. Then it gave him so many image issues that he stopped looking in the mirror for a good couple of years, and intentionally stopped showering or taking care of himself. Still, he got the compliments, and sometimes he felt like people were intimidated b his looks and didn't want him to ruin their own reputation if they said anything about the smell. Then he left his old life behind and well, now he still doesn't really care about his image, especially now that it reminds him of his old life. But the pleasure workers like to tell him he's by far not their worst customer, and he indulges them and their rants about the particularly nasty people. He knows they need an outlet, and it doesn't really hurt him anymore (nothing really hurts him anymore).

When he was in school, he learned about his past and his parents informed him of his ancestry. It was so surreal to realize that people who looked like him used to be so oppressed and worse than oppressed, when he was basically idolized growing up to the point where he had to turn down being a model. How odd it felt to read about atrocities that he was supposed to feel empathy for when his everyday life shoved in his face the aspect of beauty and perfection, and how he personified these ideals apparently.

◈ London / The Experiment

The Experiment is a man who has been kept in captivity by the USTF, the United Stellar Task Force. Originally born in Cuosto, a fringe colony, The Experiment was taken as a child when the USTF seized control of Cuosto. The government had deemed there was something interesting and unique to the people naturally born on that colony, with The Experiment being one of them. As soon as he was born, he was shipped to a holding facility in orbit of Cuosto. At first, his life was fairly normal and even someone enjoyable, from what he could remember. At least, it felt normal to him. He was never given a name and never really was able to hang out with people his peers, but he was allowed to do mostly what he wanted... until he disobeyed.

At first, it was metaphorical slaps on the wrist for The Experiment. His overseers would offer gentle course correction. But, as he got older and into his teenage years, the guidance became punishment and the enjoyment lessened. By the time The Experiment turned 20, naive actions resulted in dire consequences, and he found himself locked up in solitary for much of his time.

In his mid-20s, The Experiment was due to be transferred to a facility closer to Earth because the installation in orbit around Cuosto was due to be decommissioned. The contractor for the station had been bought out, and they had subcontracted out to a certain freight company to transport the resources to Nakune Station, orbited around Titan in the Sol System. And the rest, well, that's a tale for another time...

The Experiment, or London as he will be called, is a man who must learn and re-learn much about himself and the world around him. He is in essence at the very beginning of his journey. He has been harmed so much from the world around him by simply existing. He is a battered kind soul who remembers little of his time in imprisonment. He is very much a person who believes that things are inherently good, even with so much that has happened to him simply because of who he is. Unfortunately, he doesn't really know who he is, and thus h doesn't really know what he wants, or what he desires, or what he even likes or dislikes. He must learn who he is and what he wants, and that may not be the easiest task.

◈◆◈ Side Characters ◈◆◈

Many of the side characters are co-workers of Jyden and thus are pretty good buddies of his. Their motivations within this story are to help out a fellow trucker. Side Grease wants to support Jyden any way they realistically can. There are several side characters who want to stop Jyden and London because they want to go back to the way it was before the inciting incident and want London back for more experimentation. There are further side characters who want a stable relationship with Jyden but can't due to the past, and others who want to just get to the answer of it all. Later in th story, there may be side characters who have much less to do with Jyden or London directly, but those won't be revealed until later.

Many of the characters who have relations with Jyden really don't know or care about what Jyden is doing. As such, their motivations can be fickle. They can either help out a fellow trucker because there's a pretty tight-knit community in the stellar trucking community. None of them besides Side Grease know Jyden well enough to even know his name. They won't go out of their way to help Jyden and some may even hinder him if it benefited the truckers enough.

◈◆◈ Most Challenging Character ◈◆◈

The most challenging character to write will definitely be The Experiment, aka London. He's called The Experiment at the beginning because he has no name, and he gets the name London later in the story. He will most definitely be the most challenging character to write because he's sort of a blank slate in the beginning. He has really no life experience besides trauma that he has mostly forgotten or shoved to the back of his brain. How does one write a blank slate well and keep it compelling? London will be a reflection of those around him and a pretty naive character. There are certainly many struggles around this type of character and writing them.

I'm going to deal with this by having London be a heavy counterpart to Jyden, the other main character. The story will be through Jyden's perspective, so London will act as more of a way to push the plot forward and push Jyden out of his comfort zone. While he will certainly be naive, London will also be willing to experience new things with the same kind of innocence that a child might. Now, that isn't to say London is a child. No, he is very much not a child, but he hasn't had the type of development that other people his age has, and he still has that spark that ignites on new things, even after everything. So, to combat the issue of London potentially being a boring blank slate, he is going to not be afraid to try new things. On the flipside, he won't be willing to tackle who exactly he is until later in the story, so he is less one-dimensional.

◈◆◈ Inciting Incident ◈◆◈

The inciting incident of this story is the moment that Jyden goes from fixing the freight container as some space debris knocks against it to checking inside the container to make sure everything was stable inside and undamaged. It was his choice to look further into it and then all of the decisions after that. It was the humanity that came bubbling up to the surface after years of being repressed intentionally and unintentionally. The inciting incident is when Jyden hears the sounds of a fellow struggling human deep inside the freight container and decides to break the terms of his contract and investigate further. The inciting incident continues when Jyden makes a precious decision to protect and save this human that was chained up and a victim of who knows what.