Sanams Short Story Proposal

Exposition: A typical Indian American girl, Nadia Hossain, living in Los Angeles, is a junior in high school. School’s boring and she gets by without giving her parents a heart attack meaning she gets A’s but she doesn’t take super challenging classes that she knows she’s not capable of getting A’s in. She lives in a predominantly Indian neighborhood so her friends are mostly Indian. In her friend group she’s pretty funny but to everyone else she seems like a nice, quiet girl. Living in an Indian neighborhood, everybody knows everything about everyone. Afraid to be herself and have people talking about her, Nadia acts like a quiet girl and also, is actually a bit shy because she’s worried about what people would think of her. However, when she’s with her friends she cracks jokes, is careless, and just is herself.  One of her friends is obsessed with some guy called Zayn Malik and won’t stop posting pictures of him on facebook and it pisses her off.

Inciting Incident: She wakes up and looks in the mirror. She’s not a 16-year-old brown girl anymore; she’s still brown but a man and an attractive one at that. She couldn’t realize who she was at first but then found out she was a British singer in a boy band named Zayn Malik. She’s extremely confused at what the hell is going on and doesn’t know if she’s dreaming or not but after slapping and pinching herself to try to wake her self up, she decides to go with it and tries to figure out how to pull off being Zayn Malik since no one would believe her if she said she was some girl named Nadia from Los Angeles.

                                                       

Rising Action: Zayn/Nadia joins the rest of the boys from the band at the recording studio to record a new song.  She’s trying as hard as she can to stall and tries to not have to sing but somehow, she opens her mouth, reads the lyrics off the sheet and sounds like a younger version of Chris Brown. In the middle of recording the new track they have breaks in which they talk to some radio or a lucky prize winner that won a call with Zayn Malik and the reactions from the girls are so strange to get. They’re either insanely obsessive and know everything about you, or they just think you’re super hot and that’s the only thing they think about you. It’s strange because Nadia’s only done that with her friends about other guys she thought were hot not had it said to her and it just made girls sound so desperate. But it felt kind of good to have people that like her want to talk to her, and care about her in a way. 

Climax: After a long day of singing and interviews, the boys announce that Liam’s friend Andy’s having a party and they’re all invited. On their way to the party they see some girls who recognize and them and stop to sign some autographs. Nadia’s amazed at how polite and graceful the boys are to the girls even after the long day of work because she just wanted to go home. At the party, Maz, another one of their friends, asks Zayn if he likes any of the girls at the party and why he’s not talking to any. Pressured into chatting up a girl, Nadia practiced her brooding face which isn’t that hard to with Zayns face, and just sort of stands around with that face until the most decent girl that comes up to him somehow ends up going home with him. At his house, he assumes they’re supposed to have sex but it’s too awkward for Nadia and she runs away. 

Falling Action: Nadia realizes there’s no point in trying to be someone you’re not because you’ll never be satisfied. You use up all this energy, for nothing. No one treated Zayn differently for not sleeping with some one at that party except for the fact that things were awkward between the girl and him/her. And you always wish you did something differently because you were pretending to be someone you’re not while when you are yourself, you know that’s the only thing you would do. She also understands that the people that really care for her will always be there for her and if they don’t care and make up rumors about, it just means they’re jealous and it doesn’t matter what they think because you know yourself better than they do.

Resolution: Nadia wakes up. She’s back in her old bed, same sheets, and same blanket. Nadia checks what she looks like in the mirror and sees that she’s herself again. She doesn’t look as pretty as she did before, but she looks like her self again. Was it all a dream? She still doesn’t know because she never managed to figure out the date their but, although it felt uncannily real it had to be dream, stuff like that just doesn’t happen in real life. Nadias glad to be back, all that pop star stuff was too much work. Nadia appreciates her life and the fact that she’s able to be herself and stops pretending to be shy and does whatever she wants. She starts always acting like how she is around her friends and being happy with herself.