Week 3 - Plot (JW)

A character is on a long-distance train journey, in a car without many people. It’s late at night, the car is quiet. A mysterious person enters the car and sits near the character. Plot a short story that will take place entirely in this car of the train. Plot it by giving a brief description of what happens in the following segments:

Beginning - 

• Setting the scene - the character is on a long-distance train journey, in a car without many people, and it’s quiet and late at night. 
• The train is traveling up the east coast, through mostly rural areas, but hitting the major cities along the way (sort of inspired by The Vermonter - although that train doesn’t run at night). Because it’s late at night, the character doesn’t see much through the window aside from blackness, punctuated irregularly by distant porch lights, and the occasional city scene when they pass through a more populated area. It is late fall/early winter (early November) - cold, but very little snow yet.
• The main character is a woman, traveling from her current home in Philadelphia to New England and ultimately Maine, near the ocean, for an extended vacation/artistic retreat, during which she plans to explore the possibility of uprooting and moving to an island or shore town. She is struggling to feel connected to a sense of purpose or drive in her life, and is hoping that a major change will help direct and energize her. She thinks of herself as creative, but has not felt inspired lately.
• The mysterious character boards the train when they stop at another major city (maybe New York), and at first glance personifies the main character’s ideal persona - she looks chic and artsy, her luggage is expensive so we assume she is successful, and she has an air of confidence and purpose about her. She seems not to see or notice our main character when she boards, and sits several rows away from her. The main character observes her for a while, and then moves to a seat across the aisle from her, and strikes up a conversation.

Middle - 

• The mysterious character seems aloof at first, but we soon sense that her seeming confidence and aloofness are actually products of introversion (possibly some swapping of POV to let us see inside her thoughts, or some other way to show this…)
• The two characters talk for a while, and realize that they are linked in an unexpected way - they both lived in the same childhood home, had the same room, but in different years. The mysterious woman lived there after our main character, and for longer; she had essentially grown up fantasizing about emulating the fantasy girl who had her bedroom before her (some key details about what she left behind - a small sketch book found in the corner of the closet, a folded love note from a classmate, a forgotten earring, maybe a diary? - that contributed to the girl’s picture of the character as artistic, confident, beautiful, cool and on track to being “someone”).

End - 

• The main character de-boards the train in Boston and rents a car to drive up the coast to the beach town where she is staying in a vacation rental that happens to be on the market for sale, as well. She is feeling a little shaken by her interaction with the mysterious character on the train, which she interpreted as disappointment - this woman who seemed so elusive and sophisticated, who seemed to embody her own goals and desires, had been modeling her own identity on another imagined persona - that ended up being the main character - and she also feels like she has let down that little girl, and has not lived up to the potential that this woman had clearly imagined in her.
• The woman is unpacking and settling into the small house, which faces over the beach. The story closes on her finding some discarded personal items from the woman who had owned the house before her that seem to paint a picture of a new persona - someone who lives simply, finds joy in the mundane aspects of her everyday routines, and whose most grandiose life goals seem to center on loving and nurturing her small chosen family and friends and growing gorgeous produce in her garden.