Monday, February 12, 2007

A Novel Approach

I have an idea for a novel and I was wondering if it would sell, were it to be written well enough and all that important stuff. I've been kicking it around in my head for a while now and while I might never do anything with it, I'm curious.

It would be aimed at young women in the 16-21 age bracket, for clarification.

Basically the idea is to take the world of blogging and Facebook and everything and make it into a teen romance novel (so, clean). Basic premise: A young woman is a blogger who whines about how guys are so insensitive and she can't find a decent guy out there on her blog. She's not a careless blogger-- no one's going to just read her blog and be able to stalk her. She lists her hometown and school, but it's a big town and it would be next to impossible to find her in it going on the blog alone, so she figures she's safe.

Meanwhile, a guy happens to stumble on her blog when hitting the "next blog" button. He becomes a lurker on her blog, finding it interesting but not actually commenting or anything. He figures out that they go to the same school and he decides to look her up, putting in as many specifics as he can glean into the Facebook search engine and lookign through the results until he finds her profile. This is still all without her knowing, and yes, he realizes it's creepy and stalker-ish, but he figures that since he's not going to actually talk to her it's okay.

Then he breaks up with his girlfriend-- a big, messy breakup in which one thing she says sticks out in his mind: "You don't understand me, and you never understand what I need." In his post-breakup depression, he remembers Blogger Girl and, when she mentions that she's going to a certain party on a certain night, "accidentally" bumps into her there.

They start a relationship, because he always knows what to do and say-- even if she hides how she feels from him, it's always on her blog. She posts reviews of their every date. It's like he's reading her mind through the powers of the internet. Meanwhile, she just thinks he's an incredible guy, never suspecting that he's reading the blog.

But, naturally, she finds out (not sure how yet) and flips out because a) he's reading her "private" thoughts and using them to manipulate her and b) he found her by stalking her on the internet, and that's just creepy. Messy breakup, long apart time, much depression and sadness, guy does big showy apology, girl forgives him, happily ever after.

Keeping in mind that I'm not exactly writing for the intellectual set here, would that make a decent story? Or is it too creepy/unrealistic/encouraging of young adults to put too much info on the web? Let me know!

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