Deanna Miles has always been a traditionalist; as an attorney, she represents a real estate magnate and avoids confrontational advocacy

Assignment 3

By Kate Kirk (ladyblue@iquest.net) word count = 641

1. Describe your original Protagonist.

Deanna Miles has always been conservative, a traditionalist. A "spinster" in her mid-thirties, honor and honesty are as important to her as the conservative cut of her clothes and her one extravagance, attending the theater. As an attorney, she works for a real estate magnate, respects property rights, and avoids confrontational advocacy. But all that changes when her beloved 18-year old nephew is arrested at an animal rights protest rally held at a shopping center which contains a furrier’s shop. Now, she must represent the beloved nephew and defeat the forces opposing the protestors, despite the fact that her real estate magnate boss owns the shopping center where the protest was held.

2. Describe your Protagonist's objective, goal, intention, desire, -- what is your protagonist trying to accomplish?

[Author’s note: There will (obviously) be two conflicts here, an internal conflict between Deanna’s traditionalist nature v. the seemingly outré (to her) values of the nephew, and the external conflict of the risk to her job. I know that internal conflicts will be discussed later in this course, but, having invented Deanna, I am not sure how to uninvent the internal conflict. ]

Deanna struggles to clear her beloved nephew of criminal trespass charges so that his life will not be marred by a criminal conviction and a jail term. In so doing, she must understand, if not embrace, the beliefs driving the protestors’ acts. Her job means less to her than her nephew’s future.

3. Describe what is PREVENTING (i.e. conflicting with) your Protagonist's achieving his/her objective.

Deanna’s actions place her own job in jeopardy, and Deanna’s own honor will not allow her to defend her nephew based upon some weaselly defense, such as, "He was only there taking pictures for the school paper, he wasn’t taking part in the rally."

4. Describe what your Protagonist is going to DO ABOUT that obstacle.

Ignoring the threat to her job, Deanna will learn about the animal rights movement, and will also discover that disreputable actions by those in authority caused the protestors’ arrests, which will force Deanna’s honorable nature to defend all the youthful protestors.

I’m definitely a beginner so I could have stopped here. I figured out, however, that the reason I couldn’t write number 4 was because I was trying to include numbers 5 and 6 in it, so here goes:
5. Describe what the obstacle is going to do to fight back.

Deanna’s continued defense of the protestors will cause her to lose her job, and own honorable nature requires her to see that her own traditional, conservative values may not comport entirely with her honorable and honest nature, at least in the animal rights area.

6. Describe what your Protagonist does about the obstacle's obstinacy.

Deanna becomes a wonderful trial lawyer through the process of defending the protestors. She wins, making her reputation thereby, so it doesn’t matter that she lost her job. Her mental dilemma continues, however, because her closed, conservative life has been disturbed by outside factors. She bravely faces the unknown future, curious about what she will discover in herself.

EXTRA CREDIT: Even though I am a total beginner, I can see that I should turn this into a romance by having an older male animal rights activist involved. He helps Deanna to understand her young nephew’s value system and assists in her representation of the protestors against criminal trespass charges. Then, she falls in love with him and etc. etc. Given the weakness of the main conflict (criminal trespass is not as dramatic as, say, murder) I think that the romantic interest would make the story strong to interest someone in it. As a lawyer novel, the legal issue of criminal trespass is pretty wimpy.

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