A Tragedy

I started taking another class from Pooks yesterday. This one is Blueprinting Your Novel. She divided us into two teams for an in-class assignment which required us to write six major plot points based on a ballad she'd played for us on a CD. In 15 minutes. My teammate said she didn't realize we'd be required to think. :) We came up with a story involving a Hells Angel, who wore leather pants without a wrinkle, and chains all a-twinkle. (The hero in the ballad wore doe-skin breeches with never a wrinkle, and his pistol butts and rapier hilt were a-twinkle, you see.)

Anyway, we decided that the damsel was a preacher's daughter. They meet at a wedding where her father presides and she plays the piano at the reception. I love the Inciting Incident scene my teammate wrote: The Hells Angel plunks a beer and a 20-dollar bill on the piano and says something like, "Jesus! Play something with a beat. How about Louie-Louie?" The deacon (who is madly in love with the damsel) snatches the bill off the piano and says, "Sir, she does not play for money!" The damsel, almost simultaneously, batts her lashes and asks, "How does it go?"

Here I must borrow a brilliant scene card from the other team in the class: Time Passes. Finally, the damsel, having been forbidden to ever see our hero again, runs off to be with him at a Hells Angel rally. The deacon calls the cops, there's a shootout, and our hero is killed. Not wanting to live without him, and vowing never to return to her old life, our damsel commits suicide-by-cop. It was way sad.