Hell’s Light, Heaven’s Fire: Premise: Questions
This is the question set that came along with the Premise assignment. Enjoy.
1) Who is your protagonist?
Hanalia — The Guardian over Llevaeh. She was raised by her parents until she was thirteen, which is the pre-determined age for each person to become mature enough to take over as Guardian of Llevaeh. After she becomes the Guardian, she must personally process the souls of her parents to grant them reincarnation abilities. She spends ten years ruling over Llevaeh when war breaks out on Earth, and suddenly a vast number of souls arrive in Llevaeh for processing. Most of this goes smoothly, but right at the beginning of the processing of this mass number, one slips through the cracks while adjustments are being made to the system to accomodate such a large number. Hanalia takes on responsibility for this one soul, Damerian. Through tending to him, she develops an ability to love and care for him. After a realization that she cannot give him the ability to reincarnate– which he wants– she realizes that the only way to give him this ability is to give her own self to be killed and then processed with him, and leave Llevaeh. First, she must have a child to raise until the age of maturity, so she must convince Damerian to have sex with her. Right now, I'm uncertain as to how this will play out, but either way, she will have to learn to cope with emotions she has not dealt with before.
2) What is his/her main conflict or goal?
Hanalia's main struggle is learning how to handle emotions and feelings she wasn't even aware of and has never learned how to deal with, and most importantly, deciding what sacrifices she is willing to make for her child and/or Damerian.
3) What does she/he most want? Why?
She wants to be able to give Damerian what makes him the happiest, the ability to be reincarnated and go back to life on Earth and have a "second chance".
4) What subplots or plot layers come immediately to mind?
Hanalia learning what love is.
Hanalia learning how to handle emotions she knows nothing about.
Hanalia choosing between her child and Damerian.
5) Who are important secondary/supporting characters? What are their main problems, conflicts, and/or goals? What do they want?
Hanalia's daughter (Celestia) will come into play in a major way later on in the book; and Hanalia will be raising her as she was raised, but will also not be able to raise her without giving her the ability to love. This will bring up complications with Celestia, who, being raised with love and compassion, may not be able to fully handle the processing of the souls that will occur. Hanalia's parents will be mentioned periodically throughout the book, not only in explaining some of the reason for Hanalia's development emotionally, but also in explaining some of the culture of Llevaeh. Mardienk is Halania's "right-hand man" who delivers the orders from her and keeps a closer eye on things than she has the ability to. He is a processed soul, but waived his right to reincarnation to be able to assist each human in his or her Guardianship. He is a bit power-hungry, and will attempt to influence Hanalia into making a decision that benefits himself the most.
6) Who is your antagonist? What are his/her conflicts and goals? What does she/he most want? How do they conflict with your protagonist's?
Damerian is a soul whose processing went…wrong. He is still, technically, dead, but unlike the other souls, he hasn't been stripped of any mental functions or emotions. As a result, he is traumatized by what he sees in Llevaeh, and wants nothing more than to be reincarnated so he can go to Earth, completely having his mind erased of anything he witnessed in Llevaeh, and starting anew.
Hell’s Light, Heaven’s Fire: Premise
Note: This is the second homework assignment for the Above and Beyond class; a premise of 500 words. Enjoy!
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Hanalia is a human born into Llevaeh, which is, for most humans, purgatory. It is where the soul travels AFTER death. Not someplace they are born. Obviously, Hanalia is an exception.Like her family before her, Hanalia grew up learning and presiding over Llevaeh. She became acquainted with the various souls that worked for her and her family, learned how to guide and train those that worked on the assembly line, processing souls, and adapted to the ever-changing environment and population of Llevaeh. For all its change, really, it wasn't such a hard task to handle. Everything was the same, after all.
Including the souls. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if just one change could be made to the processing, to make the souls more alive, more enjoyable. Right now, the things are dull. Boring. In her heart, she knew she could never make an alteration to the assembly line. The results were too unpredictable, and that wasn't a chance she was willing to take.
But when a war breaks out on the Earth below and a nuclear bomb is detonated, Hanalia learns exactly what will happen when the processing must be speeded up and when a soul slips through the cracks. Because this soul has already been processed once, even unsuccessfully, further processing will destroy it forever.
As it stands now, Hanalia gains a new job in Llevaeh: guarding and watching over this one soul, who is traumatized by the world he left behind and shocked at the things he witnesses in his afterlife. Hanalia has grown up in this environment, so it is all she knows. She can’t comprehend how anyone can be horrified at what he sees, how anyone can have empathy to non-living (as she considers the souls) things. She is amazed at how the screams and the monotony brings him to tears. Similarly, he does not know how a woman can be so seemingly apathetic to what he views as people, spirits. He wonders if he is losing his mind, moreso than one normally would in simply becoming a spirit after death.
Gradually, he has to learn to adjust to this shocking lifestyle. In several attempts by Hanalia to do what she can to grant him reincarnation, as is the standard process, she finds that because he was only half-processed, he will never be able to rejoin Earth. By this point, she has come to care about him and fall in love, a feeling that is new and unusual for her.
She keeps her findings about his reincarnation to herself as she attempts to find a way through for him and also hold on to him at the same time. While she is struggling through this, he is continually questioning about when he will get to leave this “inhumane” place, completely unaware about the feelings she has for him– because she does not know how to express them. In the end, Hanalia discovers a way to be able to let him go and allow him to be reincarnated without killing him, but she will have to leave also. She has to find a way to convince him to love her, as she does him, and then give birth to a child to rule over Llevaeh when she (and he) both leave.
hell’s light, heaven’s fire pt. 2
Instead of adding on to the previous entry, I’m going to post a new entry in regards to the fact that I was so busy fleshing out the background and the world of the novel that I didn’t say shit about the actual plot. (Happily accepting notes and comments on both of these entries.)
Note: Again, this is simply a second part of the previous entry. If you have not read the previous entry, I suggest you do so before reading this one.
So! Plot:Love triangle.
The essential plot will have the overlay of the background and all, but the main aspect will be the dark angel developing feelings of some sort for one of the low-class workers. She’s got to struggle with how the hell she can have feelings for someone, when her own soul has been processed, and furthermore to how she can love what is a robot. It’ll play into the person’s life on earth and how she hears about his background and how he lived, whatever, all that…but he’s got this shelf life, so she’s got to deal.
Or, hell, maybe she can give up and be reincarnated, though then there’s the chance they’d be two different forms, on opposite sides of the world, and never come in contact with each other.
At any rate. I have to figure out to what exact degree will her soul be processed. She’s not going to be lobotomized like most of the souls. And obviously, she’ll be far more advanced than anyone else. (Unless I end up giving her a couple of minions. Which I might.) Does she feel pleasure? Pain? Regret? Sympathy? Empathy? What should she be able to feel? Is there passion to be found here? Is there a sexual nature to this? (In such a case, would the souls have to be gendered?) Do they even develop any sort of relationship? Is there a way to advance a soul once it has been processed, or are they stuck in their level forever? If they can advance, to what degree can they advance?
And now, I hunt down a program to start jotting notes in. Suggestions are wanted and welcomed!
hell’s light, heaven’s fire
Note: This entry is the assignment I’ve been working on for the creative writing class I’m enrolled in. I’ve mentioned it before, I believe. The first assignment is the Idea. I’m just going to post the idea I’m most excited about in this entry, because…frankly, the other ideas I have are rather dull compared to this one, and they’re not as interesting to me as this novel idea is. I would really appreciate detailed critical feedback given in the comment section, if you read this. Thank you in advance!
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Assignment #1: Idea
There’s one subject in particular, one idea, that I have felt very strongly about for quite some time, and am absolutely giddy to develop and start working on.
Hell’s Light, Heaven’s Fire
This story will be set in an afterlife-type setting, where Heaven and Hell are one and the same. (Not sure of what exactly I’d call this place; but for the moment, we’ll settle on Purgatory, from Dante.) In this purgatory, when a human being and/or creature dies in the mortal planet (more than likely Earth), their souls will progress to this purgatory.
From here, the souls are processed in an assembly line type fashion– first, the physical form of the souls will be all transformed to an identical form depending on a certain classification. Then, also depending on their classification, the souls will have their spiritual and mental capabilities altered. The society in this purgatory is run, first and foremost, by a Dark Angel, who will be the main character of the story. There will then be a certain form of social classes: there will be the “grunt” workers, who will all be identical solely to one another and will have no mental capabilities. There will be those of a certain ‘higher’ rank to supervise these grunt workers and who will oversee the processing and the evaluation of each soul that passes through. These workers will, also, be identical solely to each other in their class, and will have the mental capabilities of seeing what each soul accomplished in their lifetime and will then make the judgements on what ‘class’ each new soul will come into. Then there is the final, upper class. This class oversees each set of workers in their division, and are the only ones to glimpse and speak to the Dark Angel herself.
However, the higher the class the soul is in, the shorter their time in this purgatory. The Dark Angel is forever, granted. Those that report to her have a set shelf life of one month, then they will evaporate and reincarnate in some unknown form on the mortal planet. Those in the middle ‘class’ will have a set shelf life of three months. Those in the lowest class have a set shelf life of six months. (This way, I can explore the training and thought that goes into the ranking of each soul as it is processed.)
I expect the vast majority of the story to encompass the background of the main character (the Dark Angel), the purgatory itself, and the social classes. However, underneath it all, I plan on incorporating a love story between the Dark Angel and…someone. I’m not sure as to what class he/she will be in, but it will be really exciting (for me) to explore the idea of sacrifice in a land where souls are processed and [shouldn't] have feelings.
Essentially, I really want to incorporate the basic principles of several religions and belief systems in this. Obviously, there is the Heaven/Hell Christianity aspect. But there is also (I hope) going to be the following elements:
* Buddhism (reincarnation)
* Witchcraft (I expect to somehow implement a curse/spell casting in here)
* Wicca (a respect of nature and the three-fold belief system)
* Santeria (the ancient Santeria ritual of human sacrifice)
* Hinduism (enlightment measured by karma; in this, it will be the classification system)
* Judaism (one creator as a universal ruler)
* Shinto (the ‘Matsuri’ practice, a festival honoring spirits)
* Paganism (everything has a supreme spirit) [Note: I'm refraining from the 'Godly' spirit in this, given the nature of the story]
* Mormonism (Humans are individually responsible for their own sins.)
* Kama Sutra (Celebration of love)
* Catholicism (anointment of the dying)
* Sikhism (cycles of births and deaths before reaching the ‘human’ form)
Note: I am aware of the fact that many of these elements that I’ve pulled from the individual religions share a common theme, but there is a reason I have pulled them from their respective religions– when I begin developing each aspect a bit deeper, it will tie into that individual religion. For example, Wicca and the respect of nature. Respecting nature ties in with may religions, but the meaning and reasoning behind the Wiccan belief of respecting nature is the reason I have pulled it from that belief system.
I do have a few other stories I could play on for a novel, mostly young adult, but I have yet to develop an idea that I feel as interested in as this. Some of you may know the short story that this is based on. (As a matter of fact, several of you are responsible for me fleshing this out in greater detail. *eyeroll* *LOL* ) This novel in and of itself, this idea…it just holds everything I am interested in: different religions of the world, an exploration of basic morality, an exploration of karma, whether or not something can live as a *real* robotic form, and the depths of love and passion and just how far someone can go in the name of love, as well as an aspect of self-sacrifice.
And…this is incredibly long-winded, so I’ll wrap it up now! I do want to say that the title of the novel itself is pretty set; but I have yet to develop names for each of the ‘classes’ in the as-of-yet-unnamed-land (I will not label it as ‘purgatory’ in the novel, but haven’t gotten a name for it yet). I also haven’t decided on the four varying forms of what the souls will look like– I need to develop one for the main character, and each of the three classes. Which I am a bit stuck on: what do you make a processed soul look like? So I have a bit of a way to go in fleshing out specifics of the idea, but I’m looking forward to it.
Jeez. Okay, NOW I’m done.
