Testing Plot Points ["Te Busque"]

Strange ideas can come around at the most random times. I had a couple of strange dreams this morning. Then I was playing around with a few other ideas.

It might be because of the additional hormones coming with PMS... and over the past two days, I'd been pretty exhausted. But I tell ya, I prefer this much better than those extra bits of emotion last month... but it wasn't entirely my fault.
I still attest that my reality shows screwed me over when the right person didn't win any of them.

Well, "American Idol" is debatable... technically, the right person or rather people, got voted off a couple weeks before that.

But yeah, embracing exhaustion is so much easier than the addtional emotionality... cryin' all the time over not getting your way doesn't feel all that great in the long run. I just got so sick of exploding over almost everything.

If I wanna be technical, the past couple months haven't been that kind to me :-?
not to mention March being a double-whammy, in that I dealt with that and my first day of truly feeling sick in quite a while

So anyway... much much TMI later...

I got a strange idea for a possible plot point for Talia and started to run with it a bit in my mind.

One of the first questions that came to mind, considering what she's doing with her life, how she came to be in the business she's in. I decided a good cause would be a family situation. Her mom remarried (not sure what happened to her dad, whether he died or left) and it was a slightly younger guy...

I'll put it this way... her stepfather started forging this relationship with her when she was 15-16 and he was in his early to mid 30's... of course she was naive so she had no idea that there was something wrong with the situation. The way he "taught" her, this is a commonplace thing.
On top of that, I started considering other scenarios... like whether she'd been home-schooled her whole life or he suggested home-schooling her when she was coming of age... not that I'm writing the whole backstory of her younger days because that'd be a whole other story... or at least a novella's worth of material. I could drop all kinds of hints without overly suggesting that he didn't want other guys looking at her or seeing her. Wanted her all to himself... also a means of isolation.

The thing is is that this guy is a snake. I doubt he's even supporting the family because her mom still works two jobs. He leaches all the money for himself and uses it for a couple things. I was thinking maybe gambling because he owes a couple of the wrong kind of people money... and they end up taking him out execution style...
He gets killed when she's just turned 18. She doesn't find out until after he's gone what he's done. Her family's almost broke because he was stealing of the money to use on his own spending sprees. Which may or may not include indulging in a bit of irony...

As if it's bad enough she's restricted to do what she does because it's all she knows how to do... and that's how she literally & figuratively got screwed over by him.

Today the wheels started turning and got... well, knowing me, I'm pretty sadistic at times in my work, which is pretty dramatic to begin with.
A little while after he gets killed and she finds out the truth about him, she also kinda finds out that... well, he knocked her up...
which may or may not have been his intention to trap her and trap him in that particular family. Heck, he was embezzling the only income coming into the household for himself, that wouldn't be too far off base.

I'd been thinking over the idea for her motivation. What's she doing this for aside from the restrictions... is it because the pay in tips is GREAT and the money's going to support someone... I'd considered the idea of her paying for her mom's passage to America. Where she could very well open up her own dance studio... being originally a dancer or aspiring dancer herself...
yeah, taking that into account, it'd be cruel for Talia's father to have left the family. He had to have died. Then steploser broke into the money he left behind to feed whatever habits he has (which could be anything not related to drugs... this may be in South America, but I don't think I want to bring drugs into another story I'm writing)

There's one lyric in the title song I keep going back to... and I'm thinking, yes, it would be ironic, but thinking nonetheless that she's the kind of girl who goes to church or at least goes to confession every now and then.

"I ached for the earth
I stopped going to church.
The sound in the trees
makes me fall on my knees."

To further on the one idea, because she's in such great shape and has such a great figure, nobody has any idea until maybe she's into 6-7 months of it.
eh, the church thing kinda supports the idea because of the whole pro-life thing... sure, her morals aren't so perfect where she isn't above selling her body for money, but she still believes in pro-life.

After all is said and done, she works to save enough money to send her mom and baby Maria to America... or maybe Maria gets sent to live with an American family, but she contributes money as much as she can to support her.
That's a helluva motivation.

Adding insult to injury would be if there was a connection between J.P. and Maria and that's part of the reason he's there...

I considered the idea earlier that her mom and/or some of the guys who own the joint are connected to J.P. and asked him to go there to talk Talia into finding a better life for herself.

The one thing that I'm sure about with him is that a little while after she lets her guard down and decides she can be with him, she finds out that his intentions might not be pure. That he's trying to talk her out of what she's doing... something she can't seem to face up to.

I also considered an idea similar to the movie "Spanglish" where the narration is told from Fleur's daughter as part of a college-application essay... but an essay to convince a dance company to take her on because of what she went through to give her a good life... all that crap.

I'm not sure if escorting and prostituting would qualify as good points for that sort of thing... so I kinda dismissed that idea after a while.

Technically there's no end to how big a loser this stepfather figure is... but if anything, I should try to cap that off and expand more on the R-rated content of this work... how much am I really willing to go into about her and what does behind closed doors.

Either earlier today or yesterday, I thought of ideas for the relationship between her and Alejandro.
Was he pursuing her for years? Did they ever hook up?
Or maybe he's asked her to marry him several times and they're engaged?
Or is he just considering the idea of proposing... again...

I wrote another story where my heroine was in a relationship with a boyfriend, she relocated to Alaska to live with her mom cuz her dad died... then after a month or so there, she meets a new guy she connects with and decides to cut all content with her boyfriend...
that's one thing

but it's another to have someone being engaged... no matter if its a short or long time... either way, it seems like a jackass-ish thing to do to bring another guy into the mix just to mess with that kind of relationship

So Talia and Alejandro can't be super close... if anything, whatever relationship they have is based in sex and it's not always a frequent occurrence...
I doubt he even spends the night. They could get into it after hours and that's basically it, they go their separate ways and such

I need to figure out the logistics of this karaoke night... if it's a regular occurrence and just how often it happens...
with J.P.'s entrance, he has to be completely oblivious to the kind of joint this is. It's not a VIP night, obviously, so it's good old fun. He shows up with a couple of his friends that he's come to vacation with or whatever it is that they're doing. He gets picked out of a crowd to duet with her on this song. She's very flirtatious and he thinks it's real, naturally.

Then after the song's over, she disappears and he doesn't see her again.
There'll be a couple times throughout the story where he'll be looking for her, but the other dancers try to deter him from that idea... as if they're her wall of defense and such.

ooo... wow...

I'd been listening to a lot of songs I'd been considering for this project a lot...
one of them is "Sex Shooter"... which was a Razzie winner for worst song in a motion picture... from Prince's girl group Apollonia 6... I'm starting to think that that could work either way. It doesn't necessarily have to be a VIP number...

especially because there's another song he did, unreleased, that could... where "Sex Shooter" is a group number all the way, this other song could be a solo...

Hell, it could be a private number with Talia and whatever client she's with at the time...
"G-Spot" was a song that Prince eventually gave to one of his many girlfriends, Jill Jones... but I heard one version where its kind of a duet between the two of them... but anyway, I can just picture this song playing and Talia getting freaky to it... like she's ready to give someone a lap dance or something...

yep, my dirty mind's showing all right...
and probably a bunch of people reading will say I need to get out more :shrug:

I'm not gonna argue.
It's kind of strange for this kind of material to come from the mind of a virgin :roll:
but also one that was a complete prude 1-2 years ago... I certainly didn't think I'd be anywhere near this area in my writing... maybe EVER...

Yep, I'm still going to be bouncing a bunch of ideas off the walls to see if anything sticks. But the brainstorming is still very much afoot.

"Te Busque"- Say[ing] it Right

Some 6 years ago when I heard that Nelly Furtado song the first time, I tell you it blew my mind. It was so sensual, absolutely nothing like her previous single. Although "I'm like a bird" annoyed me for another reasons aside from my finding it boring.

At the time, "Say it right" only reminded me of this one guy because we were together with a group of people when I heard it the first time. So much that I had to hear it a couple more times online. Even then, when I thought about it, I could picture the most beautiful belly-dancer grooving to this song completely in-synch with the beat.

Over the years, of course, he's become less associated with the song and now I just associate it with the incomplete choreography that springs to mind whenever I listen to it.

Nelly Furtado, I felt, started out as a very homely girl-next-door type. But when I finally found her album for this one song, it became so much more than I imagined it would. I had no idea that it'd be somewhat of a hip-hop influenced record. Then again, her duet with producer Timbaland "Promiscuous" should have been somewhat of a give-away, not that the entire album was like that either.

As a whole, "Loose" is a very urban sounding album that has some Latin roots. She's of Portuguese descent and likely, a couple of the songs were in that language

Once I wrapped my head around it, I always thought of it as a bit of a dance record. Choreography sprung up left and right, but not a whole lot of it stuck every time. If anything, there was a lot of repetition. This coming from someone with two left feet who hasn't danced a day in their life, not professionally by any means.
I didn't make the connection until a few months ago that a whole musical experience could transend in my writing. In addition to the fact it's been getting more risque all the time, it seemed like the perfect fit. I'm also sure that I'll be able to handle it so that things won't be taken the wrong way. My family won't look at the risque content and think I need to be committed because there'll be a great story and message that results out of all this.

I'd been toying with a number of ideas not only for my characters, but for other songs to be included in the mix. It's becoming more vast all the time. I want my female protagonist to be a strong one, so I'd been playing a lot of Lady Gaga because empowerment is one of her biggest musical themes.
The one thing I want to make sure of is that the important key points of the story are inspired by the album that got me started on the idea.

I've got a bunch of songs picked out for inclusion, but not quite the order. Maybe what I should do next to figure out if they're in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd act of the production.

There's also the matter of which songs will go to dance numbers and if so, if they're a normal night or a VIP night where bids are being placed for the girls on stage, or if it's a character's monologue or just mood music for the background of a slow scene.

The first act will be an introduction of our main characters.

Likely, the first song will be the first track on the album and it'll be a regular dance number.

"Maneater" will be a flashback through the eyes of Alejandro Gutierrez. The first time he sees Talia Montes dance on stage.
I've yet to figure out exactly what their relationship is. They work together a lot on stage because he's a singer that backs up her dancing (sometimes vice versa). He's probably the son or nephew of the owner of the place and stands to inherit it. They could be business partners in this whole thing.

It's still a matter of figuring out if there's anything romantic involved. With him, is just about lust? Does she sometimes use him for sex? Being friends with benefits, except they're not quite friends.
She has a camerarderie with the other dancers and of course the people who run the place, but she doesn't have a lot of close friends. She chooses to live her life in that way because she chooses to stand alone. Plus, after the life she's had, there's no reason to really trust people. At the end of the day, it's just business.

I'm believing that Alejandro might believe they have more than what's actually there. I'd hate to write things as if she's stringing him along and leading him to believe she feels the same way when she really doesn't. So the whole jealousy thing would seem ridiculous as it'd be because of something she did rather than something he did.

I have a feeling that the full scope of her situation won't be called into question until the last part of the triangle arrives.
The American (of Latino descent), Juan Paulo "J.P." Esposito

who I believe comes from a proper family because he spends some time trying to talk Talia out of her way of life... when he finds out initially that the first time they danced together was a fluke, that there's no future there, he's devestated that she feels she has to do this, but he continues to pursue her.

The 2nd act is all about this pursuit... something has to happen where she starts to see things as they are with him and she starts to feel the same way...
"Say it Right" closes out that act and the 3rd opens with the following track on the album.

The only thing I've completely established about Alejandro and his stake in the venue is that he sees Talia as the star of the attraction and without her, maybe they'll lose a lot of business... or she starts to believe that's the case and that's what starts her on that thought process that leads her to that epiphany.

I've got the lyrics of this one song in another tab and I still forget a lot of the lyrics.
But in a nutshell, I feel like they fit her romantic situation perfectly.

In the day, in the night
Say it right, say it all
You either got it or you don't
You either stand or you fall

When your will is broken
When it slips from your hands
When there's no time for joking
There's a hole in the plan

Oh, you don't mean nothing at all to me
No, you don't mean nothing at all to me
Oh, you've got what it takes to set me free
Oh, you could mean everything to me

I can't say that I'm not lost and found
I can't say that I don't love the light and the dark
I can't that I don't know that I am alive
And all of what I feel I could show you tonight

From my hands I can give you, something that I made
From my mouth I can sing you another brick that I laid
From my body I can show you a place, God knows
If you know this place is holy, do you really want to go?

which ends with her seducing him to the bedroom... making it the first time she's really living up to the euphenism "making love"... letting down her walls to give in to this one person

Aside from more things about Alejandro, which remain a mystery for some insane reason, the other thing I need to figure out is my perspective...

Will it be 1st person from different POV's... or will I stick with 3rd...

I think I've got to limit things so whoever I decide can read this will be about to make up their own minds about stuff... I don't want to lead them in any particular direction, except that she's a character to admired rather than pitied...
and I certainly wouldn't want someone who knows me well enough to read about her and think some of her thoughts and actions verge on autobiographical...

One person read Jonas's story and said they saw a lot of my insecurities in Jonas... and he was just a guy on Facebook who followed the link to my other site where I had my stories posted... an old Angelfire site I haven't been on in forever...
if there's one thing I hate/dread, it's people reading my writing and making assumptions about me through it...

by the way, most of them are negative assumptions... writing's all I got, so it's kinda depressing that that's something a lot of people get from my work... and they wonder why I don't like to share a whole lot of it :-?