Young Writers Society

Hey,
I have this one idea. I want to write it as a television show, meaning I would have room to developed more characters and the main character.

The story centers around this character named Anthony, and he moves to a small town or a new town. He moves there mainly because he bullied a classmate to suicide and he is the one held most culpable. After this event happens, the entire school blames him, and he is outcasted.

I wanted it to be a story about him dealing with his guilt and growing from his regrets.

The biggest problem I have so far is that I am unsure on a specific goal for this character.

Backstory

To give some background, he isn’t a malicious psychopath. He bullied his victim by using his sharp humor and wit to make fun of him because Antony is insecure about being skinny and nerdy looking, and he finds that he can obtain popularity and status through his humor rather than his size.

He makes fun of this guy or maybe his friends too because he wanted to avoid the possibility of being made fun of from the group or popular kids (they don’t have to be popular kids, but they should have status) that he befriends.


The television show would center his new life around these knew kids with the burden that he drove someone to death. Any plot ideas from here? I think the biggest issue is that I don’t really have a goal for him.

I don’t know what to do with the plot from here. Maybe he meets someone who reminds him of the guy he bullied. Give him a love interest? Have a moment in the story where his history comes back to haunt him? Also I was thinking that maybe this is only an aspect of his story and not revealed until the halfway point and make it about a guy who wants to do good but only reveal that it is to make up for what he did wrong later on in the narrative?

This is something I wanted to write for such a long time but gave up because I thought no one cares about bullies [maybe I was afraid of judgements]-- as in everyone wants to stop the act of bullying, but the psychological behaviour of the individual who bullies is never discussed in a manner where they are never viewed as individual with mental problems. They need the same help and care the bullied needs. The argument has always been that the individual who bullies had a choice; they could have chosen to be good and not bully, but since they didn't choose that they are bad. I definitely don't want to write a backstory that probably will justify the act of bullying at any cost. Though, we can reason it out by calling it 'done for spite' or 'for revenge' it still is a conscious mistake/decision that the individual has made. But to stop something I think we need to understand the core of the problem. So what I'm thinking is, be careful about what you represent and how you represent it; as I've mentioned it earlier, no matter what, do not justify the act of bullying. You can make your readers pity the individual but not what they did. It's a thin line but I think you'll know what I mean when you write your scenes.

And, the saviour doesn't always have to be another person. We can be our own saviours. The whole, you saved me and I'll save you right back is so overdone that it's not even relevant anymore. This could be a lesson to those who watch the series [touchwood] that you don't have to wait for a saviour and that you can save yourself. Self-realisation is important, and I think that using 'self-realisation will be effective for this series.

That being said, you can have a love interest. It's always cool to have a love interest. You can either make them accepting or not of this person's past, whatever way you want.

And as for the story: you have a plot, you now have to draw an outline of that plot i.e the beginning, the middle and the end. When you say you don't have a goal for your character, I think what you really mean is that you don't know how to end it. And that's fine, I suppose, since it's a series. But an honest suggestion would be this: work on your finale because you do want your audience to remember this, right?

I also think that you have to work on your character, I can see that you have an idea of what he looks like. Now, you have to have an outline of his personality i.e the way he interacts with his friends-- does he hold that conviction of a bully even when he is around the people he loves. Or does he have a completely different armour that people were actually surprised to see him be held responsible?

Once you have figured out the personality of your Main character and the kind of people he would keep with him I think you'll be good to go.

Hope this was helpful.

Hi Red! I love this idea sooo much.

Personally, I'm not a fan of redemption stories that provide some kind of mirror image, they tend to be a bit to predictable, and it's hard to create a fully developed character in that circumstance. Simply humanising a bully is really cool though and I think there is so much you can do with that both literarily (totally a word) and philosophically.

As far as developing the plot goes I think you probably need to develop your MC more to find out what really drives him. Degrading someone else so you don't become the victim seems like a simple motive but it is actually pretty extreme- most people don't bully others to avoid getting bullied. For one thing, bullying someone in itself is scary because adults, parents, authority, or even the victim, could retaliate. Usually the driving force is something scarier than the idea of being punished. Whatever that fear is, it will most likely still be there when he changes location, and that will give you something for him to fight against as well as his guilt.

I'm not sure if leaving the big reveal until later in the narrative would work in this case. If you wanted to try and pull it off you'd have to be sure that your character comes across as very clearly broken, in order to keep the interest.

My biggest recommendation is to check out Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy. It's a story about a child killer who was released from juvenile prison and given a new identity. It's not quite the same, but she goes through the struggle of trying to build a new life and the fear of what might follow her. It's structured in a way that has the reveal later in the narrative. Also, it's a really, really good book!

Let me know if you post anything, I'm curious to see what you do with the narrative and voice of the character.

You want it to be a story about "dealing with his guilt and growing from his regrets", so it seems pretty clear that the main arc for this character is one of redemption - it's the journey from "bullying people" to "not bullying people".

The events at the previous town could serve as a kind of trigger point or inciting event for Anthony's redemption arc, but people don't tend to change their habits and behaviour overnight just like that. You want to be putting Anthony in positions where he has a choice - (a) to act like he always has, being cruel and careless of others for the sake of his own image, or (b) to change how he acts, and think about the effect things he say will have on the people he says them to/about. Early on in the story, he might be tempted to go with (a), but you want him to grow towards always choosing (b) as the story goes on.

For example - if he acted like he did in the old place so that the cool kids would like him, how does he act when interacting with the cool kids in the new town? Does he perhaps befriend a less-cool/nerdy person at first, and then have to decide whether to ditch them/be mean about them in order to have the cool kids like him? If old Anthony would absolutely have been mean to the nerdy kid to make the cool kids like him, perhaps new Anthony stops and thinks, and decides to be nice, even if the cool kids think he's daft. He's not going to get it right first time - does he slip up, and upset his new nerdy friend? How does he react to that?

You're right that this arc is just a bit of the story - it's the overarching theme of the character, but it's not the everyday "what's going on". For the everyday events, you can think about what might happen to someone who's just moved school. Does he have to make new friends? Get used to new teachers? Are there exams? School social events? If you're writing in a TV show format, you want to think episodically - what are some small plot arcs you can throw at the character? And how can you use those plot arcs to put Anthony in situations where he can show his growth along the main character arc?

For example, perhaps there's a school disco one episode. Maybe Anthony has to organise something for it. The small plot arc here revolves around the challenges of organising the disco. You can weave in the big character arc by putting him in those scenes where he has a choice, like I mentioned earlier - perhaps one of the cool kids really wants him to do x for the disco, but doing x will hurt someone less cool. If you want to introduce his history as a big reveal, then introducing a character from the old town would absolutely be an interesting idea - now think about a small-plot reason for that old-town character to have turned up.

One thing I will say is: you can introduce a love interest, but I recommend not making the love interest the "thing which magically makes Anthony not a bully/not guilty/all okay". There are a lot of stories out there where love is the thing which cures all ills, but it's much more interesting if the character learns to deal with problems through their own trial and error. (That said: what does the love interest think when Anthony is mean to people? What do they think when they find out about his past victim? Do they believe him when he claims to have changed? There is definitely drama to be found here!)