[Clea Montville-Wood]

THE 88 (drama, story takes place during The Great Depression, 1930)

ALICE (lead protagonist)

Character Surface: Alice, a 17 year old piano prodigy controlled by her strict Catholic mother and her church. She has never questioned her fate to play the Lord’s music. She is earnest, God fearing and devoted to her family.

Character Subtext: Alice risks her faith in order to support her poor family, so when she gets a job playing piano for an underground lesbian band, she keeps it a secret. The deeper she goes into this underground world, and as her talent and passion for jazz grows, the more guilt ridden she becomes. The angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other.

BUD (Alice’s mentor)

Character Surface: Bud is the owner of the music shop, where Alice learns to play Jazz piano. He is a kind and soulful aging black man in 1930 and has managed to keep his business afloat. This is a source of pride but is tempered by his place in society. He takes Alice under his wing.

Character Subtext: Bud, an orphan, survived on the streets playing the harmonica for tips. He almost made it in the burgeoning jazz scene, but according to his mentor, Duke Ellington, he was not quite good enough. He feels like a failure and hides that he knows “The Duke”.

RENEE (Alice’s mom)

Character Surface: Renee, a strict Catholic, devoted wife to a low-life, abusive husband and fiercely protective mother of four, living in poverty.

Character Subtext: Renee overcompensates for a deep belief she is a bad and worthless person. She was abused as a child and married an abusive husband. Her religion is her lifeline. If she had to choose God or her children, she’d choose God.

What I learned during this lesson is that this is a great tool to develop all characters important to your story. Creating character subtext can also lead to finding new story layers.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by  Clea Montville-Wood.

[Clea Montville-Wood]

What I learned doing this assignment is that environmental subtext is an essential tool for adding greater depth to my story. Not only does it add deeper meaning, it adds opportunity for more story. The environment subtext inspires more opportunities for character subtext, plot subtext, and allows the story to live more fully and clearly.

“THE 88”

A. What is the deeper meaning of my story?<div>

Alice discovers her mother and her Catholic faith have been dictating the course of her young life – as a gifted pianist. They tell her it is a God given gift, so she feels she doesn’t have ownership of her talent. She is just a vehicle or vessel to do His work through music.

When Alice is exposed to the underground world of Jazz, she discovers she has an incredible talent for playing Jazz. She comes to believe, through the help of her new friends that this is her gift to the world, not God’s.

Her mother and faith have been keeping her and her artistry in shackles. It makes her question everything she’s known to be true in her young life.

B. What environment can deliver that deeper meaning? <div>

1. The surface world where Alice must attend church, help her family, play hymnal’s – is dark, cold, shadowy, gloomy – which also echo’s the era of the period the story takes place in – The Great Depression. Her house is rundown, peeling wallpaper, the ever present hole in the wall from her abusive, now dead father, symbolized the holes in their lives. We see soup kitchens in town. The daily newspapers account for the latest tragedies as poverty reigns.

2. When Alice secretly applies for a job as a pianist for an underground lesbian band, she discovers a whole new world of speakeasies and gay bands, bootlegging, The Mob. This world is exciting, bright, colorful, rich in spirit and passion, alive, even though it is shunned and illegal in the surface world. (And has some very disturbing elements.) The colors of the clothes, textiles, the tempo of the music, the energy, and laughter are all environmental elements that seduce Alice into a life she never new existed. She learns to thrive in it.

3. The Music Shop is the one inspiring and bright environment in Alice’s otherwise dark surface world. This is where she meets her mentor, Bud, a black musician and shop owner. His music shop becomes her portal to musical freedom, beyond the confines of her church and home piano. The shop is filled with great opportunity and musical inspiration. There are instruments hanging from the walls, records, posters of famous musicians.

4. Alice’s dead father’s tool shed becomes a place for Alice to confess her sins, because she is too guilty to actually confess to a priest at church for her sins in the underground world. The tool shed is the ghost of her father’s ruined life. It’s where he used to bring her mother – to abuse and rape. It is symbolic of the families torn apart and ruined by The Great Depression.

Other environmental nods to subtext…

Overtime, Alice’s presence warms and matches more fully the color and tone of her underground world. When she is in her cool surface world, we begin to see subtle changes in Alice’s skin color, there is a slight aura about her, her clothes fit her better, but nothing too obvious – until the end of the series.

I changed the name of the underground lesbian club from “The Nine O’Clock Club” to “The Wonderland”… having fun with “Alice in Wonderland” without getting into IP trouble.

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[Clea Montville-Wood]

THE 88

A talented young classically trained pianist, Alice, secretly finds a job playing for an underground lesbian band to support her struggling Catholic mother and younger siblings after their low-life father commits suicide during the Great Depression.

Alice becomes entrenched in the underground world of jazz, speakeasies, gay bands, black bands, and The Mob – but is overcome by guilt.

Alice finds it harder and harder to keep the underground world away her surface world, her family and her faith.

Alice develops a dissociative disorder from the stress of her dual worlds. She unconsciously develops a split personality.

In the underground world she falls in love with Molly. In the surface world, her mother makes her marry a factory worker who courts her. He’s just like her father a low life.

Alice is discovered by big music talent agent and must prepare for her big debut at Carnegie Hall, but her two worlds are colliding and she risks losing everything.

Molly discovers what Alice has been hiding all along and helps her. Alice and Molly conspire with The Mob to get rid of her husband.

Alice performs at Carnegie Hall to great reviews. She is able to lift her family out of poverty. She moves to Greenwich Village with Molly.

What I learned doing this assignment is working with subtext can drive the story forward on multiple levels, adding drive, tension, motivation in a more meaningful and interesting way. Working with multiple layers can also increase the life of the story.

[Clea Montville-Wood]

Thank you for the kind remarks.