A Girl and Her Dinosaur par deux

Idea

The original idea for this story was born from a sentence I used as a story fragment of a parent reading to their child. It basically was "and [he] picked up his pail and shovel and went off to find a dinosaur." It felt like a pretty strong line to me and resonated for months, ideas formulating as I did other things.

The original story was a fanfic of Harry Potter where his dad survived and he has a twin sister. The twins would be obsessed with dinosaurs because grandma Evans would tell them about how Lily wanted to be a paleontologist as a little girl.

Finally, the idea had germinated enough over a couple months and I settled down to write the first draft the night that Star Wars VII premiered over about an eight hour period while occasionally seeing what was happening on twitter.

The original story in my mind was a goal of 32 pages where a young boy makes a new friend and it was very Calvin and Hobbes in my mind. But the story twisted as I added Dino's Point of View then decided a happy ending was boring and it became a tale of persecution, destruction, segregation, murder, corporate greed, and prison camps/reservations.

Right now it's about 93 pages and it'll likely hit 130+ as I do the rewrites.

Localization

If you read the script{1}, you see there are many wildcards like $celeb, $city, and so on.

As I was writing, I realized that I didn't need a Boy protagonist. And then i realized how cool it would be to have a celeb be the face of the character with a vid of the celeb reading the story and perhaps a motion comic version of the story she narrates.

As I wrote, a name came to mind which was strange for me. Normally, I have the title of the story first—such as Outbound Rumble Corps, a story of soldiers battling the Outbound, an alien species that invades earth in a specific style of weakly allocated forces due to our minor tech base[that name came first and I built the story around it. It's rather hackneyed because of cliches but I thought the Aliens helping humanity turning out to be an advance force for the Outbound to better prepare us for enslavement was pretty interesting]—and a few sentences of background for a character that I tweak as I write. Instead, with this I had just that sentence and the storyline.

Bella was the name. I imagined Bella Thorne was the protagonist, an adorable little six year old redhead dressed in a pretty green and white dress carrying a pail, bucket, and wearing a backpack and imagining herself digging in Mongolia, Utah, Africa, and so on while in fact she's just in the woods behind her home digging in the dirt with a trowel.

As I realized how awesome that could be, I realized that it could in fact be Localized. A different celeb could be the face for different markets.

Celebs

When I realized that, names came to mind instantly.

Rachel Riley for England/UK.

Emma Watson for England/UK.

Katherine Ryan for Canada/UK.

Angelababy for China/Asia.

Ai Kago for Japan/Asia.

Lupita Nyong’o for Africa.

Aisling Bea for Ireland/UK.

Dawn Steele for Scotland/UK.

Nicky Whelan for Australia.

A bunch of other names came to mind for America as well:

Zendaya,

Katy Perry,

Olivia Munn,

Sammi Hanratty (who came to mind third because I remembered her in Pushing Daisies),

Taylor Swift,

Jennifer Custodio, and

Nathan Fillion for a boy version.

Then i thought of the actress Laverne Cox and thought of a trans version which would require a significant rewrite but it would be worth it.

And my absolute favorite character basis, Jane Douglas for Gamer oriented.

Title

As I said before, normally I have titles first or within a chapter. This one though was completed without one and has had A Girl and her Dinosaur as a temporary title but that felt too webcomiccy.

Then $celeb and the Saurian Persecution came to mind which I quite like. It plays off the progenitor of the story, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. But really, it's still untitled.

Variants

When I was brainstorming titles during the first rewrite, I had an idea due to the temporary title and thought of two variants of the story: a YA novel where $celeb becomes a co-leader of a saurian/human resistance against the government that wants to turn the Saurians into weapons and a webcomic using the temp title where Dino isn't found out and is like Hobbes: perceived as a stuffed animal by anyone not $celeb and therefore it's just like Calvin and Hobbes only with tea parties discussing the latest in paleontology instead of meetings discussing how icky girls are.

So there're two ideas I really like. A Twice-Weekly webcomic and a novel.

Foundation

I want to use the proceeds of this book to do a few things. Pay off debt and get my teeth fixed but more importantly, after reading about the lack of and my grandmother needing it herself eventually, I'd love to build Foster Homes for adults like her or Special Needs in a Benefits Corporation that cares more about people than profit.

Crowdfunding

This is another shot at crowdfunding a story for me I think. But before I try again I need the celeb face to do a video for it(if any are interested), money to pay an artist for a couple stills for the campaign, and actual ideas for donation levels.

{1}: http://colesint.blogspot.com/2015/12/girldinosaur.html