Michelle Yang: Short Story Proposal

Exposition: An island off the coast of Greece hosted a good sized community ruled by a monarch whose family had been in rule for thousands of years in peace. The society lived in order to serve the government, and after a while, its citizens simply became emotionless. Overtime, feelings such as happiness and love ceased to exist, and were in fact shunned upon. However, things ran as smoothly as ever. Mysteriously, every inhabitant had been found gruesomely killed one day on that rather harmonious island, leading everyone to believe the island had been in a political war.

Inciting Incident: An unknown American reporter, Angie Taylor, assigned to this case unwillingly, came to the island to determine the cause of the atrocity. As she arrives on the island, she begins noticing a strange pattern of events. In fact, she found that this wasn't the first time these mysterious and brutal killings had happened on the island. This eventually leads her to believe that the killing wasn't what everyone believed it was.

Rising Action: While searching for clues on the island, Angie discovers a diary of an inhabitant named Mina. Although many pages are torn, this was the first real clue Angie found containing concrete evidence to what had happened. As Angie uncovers more about the island, her suspicions of an island curse grew.

Climax: After spending some time on the island following the story of Mina, she then realizes that those torn pages contained something unspeakable--a love story. The curse made it impossible for love to exist on the island. And behind this curse was the island's government who, in order to get riches, worked with the Russian government. They agreed to test out a new biological weapon, a love virus, on their island. The virus utilized a human's susceptance to love in order to bring out the worst of human traits, thus bring out the killer within. The results were found to be too dangerous, so the trial was never done again. However, the disease was incurable, and it stayed in the bloods of the island inhabitants for years to come.

Falling Action: Knowing what had truly happened, Angie quickly started to write what she had discovered. The night before she was set to return home, she saw a black figure approaching her. (It was Mina's love, Brent, who was a part of the royal family who had actually not died.)
Resolution: Angie Taylor, a few days later, was found dangling from a tree.