Sunday I had an idea that didn’t fully form. Yesterday I had the same thought in earnest so it did. I expected to even act on it, but I didn’t. What if I wrote some in the morning then picked the thread back up in the evening? Nearly 600 posts in and I’m a genius suddenly.
At least one other thing occurred to me regarding my Fake Christian Jock character. His story spreads out over many years of his life in order to see not only the desperate and touching—of course—conversion, but also the original fall from grace. There needs to be a scene where he does something publicly egregious then employs his false Christianity to beg forgiveness and gets it. The same sort of thing bookended in the scene I noted yesterday where he is outed.
He’s got to be convinced of his ability to dupe anyone so that when the coach who gets it comes as such a shock. Was he clumsy about hiding his lie? Was he just that easy to read?
I intuit this coach will be the turning point for FCJ, but I don’t see how to make that concrete yet. Perhaps exploring this Evil Coach’s agenda will help me out…
First, he doesn’t have an agenda and he’s not evil. He’s just trying to get by in the collegiate world like the rest of them. He’s hoping to get a head coaching position at the university level or maybe a side bump into the NFL as a trainer then up through the ranks. He’s young but older than FCJ; he has a small family. Even his recognition of what FCJ is up to isn’t evil. Maybe he even sees it as a nice bit of strategy. Like branding and name recognition.
The Evil Coach character will have difficultly spanning the life of the FCJ though. That specific protagonist appearing in the right places in all three acts will be difficult to pull off. Which leaves me wondering if EC should catalyze FCJ’s recognition of the problem instead. Huh? I don’t like the possibility of employing a symbolic force like ‘almost getting caught’ to crop up from time to time to plague my FCJ. Seems like a cop out.
373 words on day 578