STORY IDEAS // Aims and Arcs

THEMES

"Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you"

Freedom to search for where you belong

Families of choice

Ignoring tradition

OBJECTIVE

Looking for a large metronome to replace the one broken in Codaville

ARCS

Oakley

WANTS to fit in, make parents proud, be "leading man" of the town

GETS free from town and parents, confidence/backbone, acceptance from new friends

Marco

WANTS to travel/explore, learn more about world, forget past (being kicked out)

GETS discovery of musical towns, acceptance from new friends, sense of clarity from past (?)

Ela

WANTS to leave Codaville, step out of Oak's shadow/not be an Understudy

GETS be independent of Oak, acceptance from new friends

(...)

The Story

(what I have at the moment, still want to finish/resolve some things and rename people...and create people but for now...)

TITLE
Off The Track

SUMMARY
After failing to be a great leading man that he was expected to be in his living musical, Oakley Colton ventures out of his small town to find a different beat to sing and dance to.


Or
There's a small town in the middle of the woods (in 1950's America) that's set up as a musical (it's discovered later that there are a few more around) with a large curtain at its entrance. There are also stages, lighting rigs and backgrounds are set up all around. Silent stage hands get props ready for the next musical number, and chorus members have no lives outside reacting to the dramas around them. Those dramas belonging to the leading characters.

As the son of one of these leading characters, it's expected that Oakley would effortlessly become one too. However he's always been full of nerves and awkwardness so he's regularly teased and bullied by the rest of the town.

When he and his understudy/sibling Lea discover Marco wandering outside of the curtains of the town they click instantly. Wanting to rebel for once Oakley invited Marco into their town where they disguise him as a stage hand.

As Macro is unused to the way the town is set up, along with all the singing, he gets frustrated and breaks the town metronome in anger. He's instantly kicked out of the town, while Oakley and Lea offer to make sure he stays away and find a new metronome.

This is mostly true, as the two are now able to discover the outside world with their own tour guide.

[...they do explore new towns, some musical, until they find Marco's old town...and stuff happens until i figure out a back story, basically he run away from his problems there and they confront them, and they find a life size replacement metronome...from somewhere]

They come back to their town with the metronome to replace it, and the town sees that Oakley and Lea are much more confident now and expect them to return. Instead, Oakley stands up against his old town and rejects this idea to venture off to find somewhere that suits the needs of all three of them.