Peril On Your Street

We have our basic setting from my last post. This neighborhood is strange in its need for individuals to remain separate, with little or no interaction. We won't ask why for now, but such a place would be like putting billiard balls into a confined space and keeping them apart forever. Something or someone must change the scenario. Introducing our protagonist, the human cue ball. He or she doesn't need to be an over-the-top figure, especially within my parameters of this place being somewhat like the street on which you live. I want to portray this cue ball beginning to interact very logically within this world of insular souls. What prompts him or her? The irresistible force. Maybe it's a teen female who has a need to compete with another teen female who lives just down the block. Such an interaction is logical because teen group dynamics have their own set of rules. Maybe it's an older protagonist who sees something from his or her past, and that enforced separati...

I want to make the familiar feel dangerous. Join in the deconstruction of my fictional neighborhood and savor the menace hiding just below the surface. How do I propose to do that? The first obvious target is setting. In each of my novels, my protagonist lives on a street almost like every other street. Okay, one of them has a house with a commanding view of beautiful country, and such territory costs a pretty penny. That still doesn't take it out of my preferred realm of the common grouping of houses many of us know on a daily basis. How do I change the expected charm of normal surroundings? I make them a little less than normal. Yes, my Connecticut town has colonials and Cape Cod homes, but I must make it different. (I won't get into details of my novels because I don't want to give too much away, but a little fact about my quiet little town won't ruin the need for secrecy.) I populate this neighborhood with people who prefer to be separate from those around them....