PLOT OUTLINE
-kids discover house, start using it as hideout
A couple of scenes in school/at home to establish characters and dynamic (introduce Enna’s crush on Madison, gemma, etc), have them explore the house some more, discover the basement is boarded up. That Friday everyone has a horrible day at school. They discover the basement is boarded up the next day and there’s debate on whether to break into it or not but they ultimately decide not to.
-They break into the basement on accident the next day (Sunday) after restless dreams and discover Shade, who tells them that it’s an ancient nature spirit and says it admires their plucky spirit so it’d like to offer them some cool shit. They don’t believe it at first so it says it’ll give them a free boon to show its generosity. Then the next day everyone has some amazingly lucky shit happen at school so they’re like “well we gotta” but Lyle insists that they do some research first. They split into Library Team and Magic Store team- Ulysses is pretty insistent that Frelina and Baltic might know some shit. Library Team is Lyle/Dany/Eleri and Magic Store Team is Ulysses/Enna/Emiel/Baruun (rowdy idiot squad). They find out a little bit about nature spirits and Ulysses sees The Book and Frelina and Baltic are like “yeah that’s super not for you kiddo” (he’ll steal it later).
-They don’t find much so they reconvene a couple days later at Eleri’s hippie house to figure out what the exact terms of the bargain are. Lyle is basically running that meeting with notes and shit, his mom is a lawyer so he’s the expert as far as he’s concerned. They decide to go to shade that weekend after everyone’s had some time to think about it. More bad dreams.
-That Saturday they go out to the woods and work out the terms of the agreement with Shade. It tells them that it would love to give them more boons but its power is weak, so if they do some rituals and stuff around the town for it it’ll be able to give them more stuff.
-Act 2 is them going around the town and setting up rituals to unblock Shade’s power- it’s all pretty harmless stuff and as it happens they keep getting more and more succesful. After a while of this Shade sends them on a Big Mission and warns them that it might be overnight. They go down between its roots and do a dungeon or something?? Confront their fears? Work on this. Anyway after this ulysses starts sleeping in the abandoned house because his house sucks, which makes him more susceptible to Shade.
-Some of the kids start having doubts, especially because Ulysses is acting way weirder now and some of their success is backfiring. Dany and Lyle want to pull out of the agreement completely. Ulysses fuckin hates that. Shade tells him that his friends’ weakness is compromising the whole plan and he’s going to have to do something before they can ruin it, so Ulysses steals the book in Frelina and Baltic’s shop. Then he disappears. They all go looking for him and find him at the house right before sundown. THey warn him that shit’s fucky but he’s too committed to it now. The sun goes down and he gets Possessed, the shadow demons rise, attack the kids, etc. The kids manage to escape and hide until the sun comes up. Ulysses is still trapped at the house.
- Enna gets kicked out of her house and hides her stuff at Emiel’s while they all think of a plan. Some of the kids (Dany, Lyle, Eleri) want to leave Ulysses there and Lyle says they should burn the place down, but that’s not happening cause we love a redemption. They recruit everyone they can and try to get prepared (setting up cool traps etc) until sundown, which is when the shadows come back again.
-Shadows come back and start destroying the town itself, with Ulysses being used as Shade’s host. He’s almost completely gone now. Baruun and co set off sick traps
THEMES WE GOTTA GET IN THERE
Wanting to hurry up and grow up vs enjoying being a kid while you can
Abuse Is Bad And Abusers Deserve Nothing
The kids have to be the ones to defeat the shadows because they’re young enough to not doubt themselves, and Shade was able to possess Ulysses because the tree was able to prey on his self-doubt.
At the end everyone writes the attacks off as a huge storm and also gang violence
SCENE CONCEPTS
Weapon getting montage- hardware, pranks, Enna wraps her baseball bat in barbed wire, etc
Fighting shadow monsters with traps and scrappy kid stuff Home Alone style
Emiel steals money from their parents for supplies, Andromeda catches them red-handed and emiel is like oh shit but andromeda is like “just so you know all the good cash is in the top of the liquor cabinet”
The actual physicality of the weapons doesn’t matter as much as the belief they have in their effectiveness- Eleri gets a gun from her parents’ house and is fuckin sniping monsters and they don’t realize until the end that it was unloaded the whole time.
“I’ll get my parents’ gun!” “Your parents’ WHAT”
In the final fight Enna gets through to Ulysses by reminding him of how they used to fight as kids “something like “halt, master deathstaff” etc) and it doesn’t snap him out of it completely but it does help him fight it. He wanted to leave behind kid stuff but in the end it’s what saves him!
Frelina being like “Hey mr beijild i found your son he was living in the woods for several days i just wanted you to know that you don’t need to be worried cause he’s back!” “Oh i wasn’t worried that kid can fuck of and die for all i care” “This Is My Son Now” Frelina starts screaming at mr beijild about how he should appreciate his wonderful and intelligent son while baltic gently pats ulysses on the shoulder and tells him they have an extra room above the shop if he’d like to get his things. she and baltic would be awful at raising a baby but they’re perfect for a traumatized 12 year old!
TWO FIGHT SCENES
The first one Ulysses gets possessed, the shadows rise, the kids manage to survive until dawn but they don’t get Ulysses back. Enna gets kicked out of her house and hides her stuff at Emiel’s while they all think of a plan. They recruit everyone they can and try to get prepared (setting up cool traps etc) until sundown, which is when the shadows come back again.
In second fight you need to see that one of the things that gives Ulysses power is that he believes in what he’s doing and that it’s right, so Enna has to get in his head and shake that belief by reminding him of what they believed in as children. Have Shade try to shake Enna’s belief first.
SHADE’S PLAN
Get the kid’s trust by giving them boons, have them do a bunch of rituals around town to unleash its power in exchange for further boons, eventually possess a host and unleash a bunch of shadow creatures to rip the town apart because Shade’s bindings are woven into the town itself.
OUTSIDE IDEAS
Structural: go through the characters’ stories one by one from their POVs?? Go through everyone and tell their stories but don’t ever do Ulysses’ POV- have him be in the stories though. Then when turning point happens take it back to Enna. WHen Ulysses starts to isolate himself have Enna lose an important foil and so as he draws further away she slows down a little and reaches a cliff that she stops and looks down at it and starts questioning herself. Then at the big battle she realizes that he reason things are working is because people are believing in themselves so she starts running again. This sets up more stakes when Ulysses starts trying to shake her faith, because now we’ve shown she can be shaken. Move the exchange w Emiel to the beginning of the second chapter?
Big Mission: do the facing fears thing as a way for Shade to weed out the weak ones, split them up and do different POVs but dont show Ulysses and he doesn’t ever talk about it. Shade is saying he was doing that to make them stronger but it traumatized a lot of them and that’s why they start having doubts. Everyone wavers except Enna.
NOTES ON CHARACTERS
Enna: Real name is Anna Johnson, Enna is a childhood nickname that stuck. Jock, in every sport she can get her hands on. Parents are shitty and abusive. BIG fan of the baseball bat. Has known Ulysses since they were little and has known Emiel about as long. Met mostly everyone else in elementary or middle school. Big gay crush on Madison. Her two best friends are Emiel and Ulysses, who aren’t each other’s best friends and have a weird crush thing going on. She met Ulysses when Mr. Beijild moved in next door when they were both six, and she met Emiel when they were both pretty little and Emiel was lost in the woods from running away For The Drama. She helped them get home and gave them a sandwich and they showed up at her house the next weekend to bring her candy bars and thank her, which is how they became friends. Emiel ended up being a prince or princess that enna or ulysses would save from the other one a lot in playtime. Enna played Hellblood The Bloody who was half pirate half demon and half barbarian, and Ulysses played Master Deathstaff who was the wizrd of all types of magic and who has never been defeated in a magical duel.
Ulysses: Big into horror and the occult
Lyle: Stereotypical nerd, does not own a hawk. Chemistry nerd and uses explosives in final battle. Is in chess club. Would be better-regarded by school administrators if he didn’t half blow up the lab every so often. Teamed up with baruun and sap and fuse for an elaborate prank on Nikolai last year and they all got detention for two whole months, which is one of the many reasons Nikolai hates them.
Baruun: Rides a skateboard, owns a bleached jean jacket that’s too big for him that he’s DIY’d into oblivion, says swear words, spikes his hair as best he can. In his rebellious phase and is like UGH my family is so OPPRESSIVE but they’re just an average suburban family. Is babysat by Jaria, who rules, and who doesn’t have a great grasp on whether or not children should have knives. Fuse has had an ill-advised crush on him for a whole year.
Dany: Has like eighty siblings so she doesn’t have as much free time as the rest, voice of caution of the group, poofy 80s hair she ties in a scrunchie. Owns a bow and arrow set she got at Christmas years ago, Lyle eventually replaces the plastic tips w metal ones for the weaponing up montage.
Eleri: Hippie parents who still own a bunch of guns. Speaks Spanish and Portuguese. Claims to speak woodland creature and maybe she does!
Emiel: Owns a fencing foil, breaks the tip off for the weaponing up montage. They also beat a shadow monster over the head with their flute. They don’t mind fencing but they’re not great at it. They speak like 3 languages because their family is from Germany and they’re learning French in private lessons. Befriended Enna because their parents would hate it if they befriended a weird kid they met in the woods, and they were right but also they ended up being best friends with her.
Madison:
Felix and Iona: friends with Baruun and Dany and Madison
Gemma: General girls’ sports coach and PE teacher. Lives in an apartment with her “close friend” Amira (lesbiance). Knows what’s going on with Enna and tries to help her however she can. One of the few adults they recruit to help in the final battle. Adopts Enna after all of it.
Jaria: Baruun’s babysitter, lets him do most things as long as he doesn’t hurt himself. “Your parents will be back at eleven and if you’re not back before then i’ll murder you myself”
Frelina and Baltic: Own a cool curio shop/occult store/bookshop downtown. They know Ulysses and Lyle because they both come in a lot. At the end they adopt Ulysses.
Shade Immemorial: uses it pronouns exclusively, BE CONSISTENT ON THIS.
Nikolai: Shitty rich kid who’s bullying Ulysses, gets his ass handed to him by shadow monsters.
Author's Notes:
Written 11/13/18. A memorial to my ambition.