The Other Side drabble

Inside, it’s like a tunnel. Dark, just as musty and grimy as the Lincoln. A tunnel is not someplace you want to stay. It’s supposed to be a through-point, a way to cut through the water, the mountain, the immoveable obstacle.

Until you get stuck. Until idling in the dark begins to feel like the only possible thing to do. Until breathing in the damp and feeling the skin of soot on your clothes is almost comforting.

There’s supposed to be light on the other side. Knowing that isn’t the same as believing it. Sometimes the tunnel is the obstacle.

Anyone want to help brainstorm?

I have a character who, at seventeen, is studying ballet. Seriously enough that she's studying in NYC, planning to audition for the corps, etc.

I need some kind of a knee-destroying accident that's interesting and believable. Something that would allow her to walk again, but not to dance. Right knee, since she's a right-handed person, and possibly requiring surgery, etc.

Any thoughts? I don't want to do a car accident, but I could. And it doesn't have to be terribly involved, in the telling of it, since this is background information -- when the story opens, she's already trying to picture what she's going to do now that she can't dance anymore.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is that she could slip onstage and land funny, blowing out the cartilege. I think I've read of dancers ending their careers that way.

A fall during ice skating?

she could slip onstage and land funny, blowing out the cartilege

Good idea!

A fall during ice skating?

Also good, because then she could have a bit of guilt, rational or not -- an "I shouldn't have been doing that, duh," kind of thing.

I got notes back on my market analysis. My agent says I need to be a liitle bit (lot) more clear on the Buffy/Angel/Firefly market, and how many people would be wanting to buy it from those fandoms.

I'm not sure if that's really true, so it's hard for me to sell it. In my head, I just figured it to be more of a Sarah Vowell-esque slice o' life thing, since it's not particularly about those television shows.

I think maybe I am having a mental roadblock. It's hard to wrap my head around who would buy it, who *my* demographic is.

I think almost all the stories can be applied to any net community/fandom.

I need some kind of a knee-destroying accident that's interesting and believable. Something that would allow her to walk again, but not to dance.

There are lots and lots and lots of these. (I mean, in all sports, and as demanding physical sports go, I imagine ballet is more demanding of the knees than most.)

It's probably a bit hard to have someone graceful rip a tendon or cartilage doing ordinary things, but slipping on ice, or falling down a flight of three stairs, or being knocked off one's feet (especially if someone else falls on top) on an abrupt stop of a subway car would do it. Any situation where the top half of the leg goes one way, and the bottom half of it goes another, is potentially a serious injury.

What you probably want to spend more time looking into is the therapy/surgery/recovery options for knee injuries. There are still injuries that will absolutely kill a career (and when all else fails, pull a Barry Bonds and say that the knee got infected, filled up with fluid, and remains balky), but the past few years have seen great leaps in medical improvements. I think you can recover from practically anything except arthritis/deterioration or a shattered kneecap.

Even torn/lost cartilage may soon be replaceable, with silicon gel injections! (Randy Johnson, the New York pitcher, has no cartilage at all in one knee.)

I just figured it to be more of a Sarah Vowell-esque slice o' life thing, since it's not particularly about those television shows. I think almost all the stories can be applied to any net community/fandom.

Basically, this is part of the pitch, right? Figuring out the marketing angle, and how big a market your angle covers.

I agree, it's important to say "This is not a book for fans of X, this is a window into the lives of those people." Although plenty of fans and Allyson-supporters will surely buy the book, the much-larger demographic is hip, high-low brow, media-literate Young Turks. Comparing your book to Sarah Vowell, or to, say, the hijinks of the McSweeney's crowd, is probably more enlightening to a book editor than saying "There are 100,000 people who watch this show, and 60% of them will buy my book."

Actually the book will probably do better among the general Young Turk crowd than among hard-core fans. The book isn't for hard-core fans, right? It's for people interested in the workings of people. Hard-core fans are the ones who will be griping about how it wasn't really like that and you took me out of context.

Randy Johnson, the New York pitcher, has no cartilage at all in one knee.

Really? Ew. That sounds...painful.

I think you can recover from practically anything except arthritis/deterioration or a shattered kneecap.

But if she shattered her kneecap, she could walk again, yes?

It's hard to wrap my head around who would buy it, who *my* demographic is.

Would it help to try and find out some of the other Buffy/Angel books did, in terms of numbers of potential buyers? Such as Slayer Slang and Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, etc.? If you know they did fairly well, then you can put them in a query/proposal.

God, I don't know how you figure out even what the rough estimate is -- start with how many people watched the shows at their peak, what kind of ratings the reruns pull in (do they track those? they must, I guess), and approximate from there?

Nutty's probably right -- the book really isn't about the shows, but I'm not sure how to give a comparison, which I know is useful in an editorial meeting. I can't find any other books about fandom out there in a quick glance, but what about the audience for that movie about Trekkies?

What about giving a rough estimate of how many Buffy/Angel/Firefly boards/communities are out there?