Writing Wednesday: Series Synopsis
For as much as I think about writing, I don't post about it very often. But all you writers on my friends list have inspired me, so I'm starting Writing Wednesday. Each week, expect some sort of creative writing or an entry about my process, inspiration, etc. I thought I'd start out with the basics - a synopsis for each of my series. (Please note that these are meant to be television series, not book series. I could never be a novelist. I need the whole visual/auditory package.)
The Corriander Conspiracies
[While this is my oldest, most developed, and most cherished series, I've never been able to write a summary for it that doesn't make it sound cheesy. So bear with me on this one.]
Everything that can happen to a person has happened to Sam Corriander. The son of rogue government agents, he grew up constantly on the run and had an upbringing full of danger and conspiracy. Now with thirty some odd tumultuous years behind him, he returns to his hometown of St. Louis and settles down as a detective to do the only thing he knows - investigate wrong-doings, save people in trouble, and take down mysterious and malicious forces. The city police force, seeing Corr as a crackpot conspiracy theorist, assign grumpy beat cop Henry Lawrence to keep him in check. Corr's hired team includes Frankie Matthews, go-to computer guy with a heart as warm as an overworked laptop, and his teenage niece Christie Matthews, whose high school skills of research and note-taking suit her perfectly to be a private investigator. Frankie brings in his childhood best friends, gay couple Marke Demchak and Ben Finnegan, who find crime-fighting wonderfully exciting and join Corr in his field work. Then there's Dr. Leota Avery, a pathologist at a local hospital. She first encounters Corr when he's just a patient (bad run in with a street thug - occupational hazard for a PI), but is drawn into his fascinating life. He taps her to be his medical reference on cases and she becomes both a full-fledged member of the team and Corr's nearest and dearest. The close-knit crew takes on anything that the police need help with, that citizens hire them for, or that Corr decides needs to investigated for typically personal reasons, be it murders, cover-ups, vast government conspiracies, or any number of bizarre other puzzles.
Partners
Anthony Green has been coasting along on his family's money for years, going from school to school, job to job, boyfriend to boyfriend. He begins to feel listless, and seeking a way to give his life purpose and help other people, he becomes a detective with the Boston police force. He’s partnered with Ryan Taylor, a friendly man and experienced and determined investigator. Taylor has a secretary and assistant, a young woman named Andie Lynn Lowling. She’s a hopeless romantic, and sees the attraction between Green and Taylor before they do. The partners work well together, are good friends, and grow close, and Green soon falls for Taylor. Taylor, however, is engaged to a criminal psychologist named Jennifer. He loves Green, but he’s not in love with Green, not that his partner ever confronts him about this attraction. After his fiancé is murdered, Taylor is left vulnerable and emotionally wrecked. Green comforts him, but knows that the time is not right to bring his feelings to light. Taylor, left lost and alone, latches onto Green stronger than ever before. Their connection, and attraction, deepens, and slowly the two become a couple.
The Historian
A high-concept show centered on the idea of reincarnation. The series will have one continuous modern-day plotline and every season will have a plotline set in a different historical period, and the two stories will share screen time each episode. The idea is that characters in the modern story are reincarnations of characters in the past story. The audience uses character traits, relationship parallels, story roles, and even clues like shared lines of dialogue to determine who is who. But there are multiple similarities between characters, and it's difficult to know for sure until all is revealed in the season finale. (This will probably be visual. For example, a character will be looking in a mirror and the reflection will be their past self.) The next season, the modern storyline continues and a new past storyline begins. Time periods currently being considered are the medieval era (think King Arthur), the Renaissance, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and Prohibition. The modern storyline centers around meek history student Avenly Pell as she works her way through a degree, struggles to be a stronger person, and figures out her love/hate relationship with law student Nicolas Helling.
High Eyes
There's never been a movie/TV portrayal of high school life that I could relate to, so I decided to make one that was closer to my own experience. That's where the title comes from - high school through new eyes. The show follows the daily workings of Honeywood North High School and its students and teachers. The cast is constantly growing, but I do have some stand-out characters. Nathaniel Abernathy is a socialite with his foot in every club and extracurricular activity. High-strung Hailey Keaton is a future businesswoman focused on perfect grades and the perfect college. Bobby Van Der Zanden is an athlete who wrestles with opponents as well as his relationship with the theater department's lead actress, Zelda Edwards.
Truman Park has his first teaching job out of college and still has as much growing up to do as his students. Benjamin Brink is a teacher with a million stories to tell, most of them involving his ridiculous family life and past the rides the line between tragic and badass. This is a series that's growing all the time - almost every day I think of some new character or episode or bit of dialogue.
Crooked
Working title for a cartoon show with adult sensibilities. It features all the character archetypes and plot tropes of your average kid's adventure cartoon, but with twisting story and deep motivations of an adult's serial drama. It's an ensemble cast, but primarily focuses on villains Alexander and Audra Morgan, who spent their life climbing from minor minions to feared evil royalty. After a botched attempt at making an evil copy of a super-girl nemesis, they were left raising her innocent baby clone. This opens up old wounds for the Morgans, as they once had a baby stolen right from the delivery room by a rival villain and have never been able to find her again. That baby is now a woman named Romi, who has a successful career as a mercenary but no sense of identity. On the hero side, there's Parvola, the vain goodie-two-shoes source of the baby clone, and Stanley Sometimes, a young man whose superhero identity is so secret that he doesn't even know what it is, and thinks he's losing his mind when he blacks out for days at a time. And in the middle are Michael and Jamie, two grad school scientist who are the unknowing minions for the ex-supervillain funding their university and planning for his return to power. There are a dozen more characters than this, but I'd need a flowchart to explain and connect them all. Think of Crooked as the Lost of the cartoon world.