See, that's where my expensive full-service plan comes in. XD
But seriously, good thoughts, and I think your car analogy is helpful (at least in so far as I don't know about cars either so we can be wrong together), but I don't think what I'm offering here is the "engine" to the car. I figured I was offering the blueprints to a specific kind of car. I will gladly describe what the assembled car will do, but I'm not going to share how it is made. Once the blueprints have been sold and delivered to the customer, they can use them to build the car, but they have the freedom to depart from those instructions. They can use different materials, or swap out the internal combustion engine for something they think would work better, or be more in line with the customer's own knowledge- a steam engine, perhaps, or an advanced piece of tech that runs on hydrogen battery cells.
To link that analogy back to the Idea I've developed, I think it's possible to turn the main female character into a male character. Naturally, the romance can still occur, but where I specifically wanted to use the female gender on that character to exploit/subvert stereotypes and stand in contrast to the main male character, another writer might want to shift things so that the shared gender of the two main characters highlights the contrasts. In that case, the plot could still work, and most of the themes would still apply with a little tweaking in the presentation.
Thus why I talked about all the components for the story, including characters, settings, themes, and so on, so that prospective "buyers" would be able to tell if they can use or adapt my product. I would explain to the final buyer how all the elements of the story I imagined interact and come together to produce the whole, and presumably that would be enough knowledge for the buyer to know how to use the "product" for their maximum benefit.
I think this differs from the Babysitters Club example because I'm not calling for a specific style, or for pre-established characters. The voice, the mannerisms, the history, all that would be defined by the writer. If anything, I'm simply giving a detailed description of the archetypes of the characters. Even the setting is meant to be defined by the writer. I could describe it to you right now in one word and you'd know what it was (kind of like, "casino," although that's not what it is in my example), but it could be translated into all kinds of wider worlds and feels (a glitzy space casino, a tawdry Wild West casino, an ostentatious Vegas casino).
In effect, I feel like I'm selling a LEGO set more than parts of a car. I give you the bricks and the instructions, but it's a LEGO set, so the whole idea is to bring as much creativity as possible, as well as your own collection of bricks. And that's where I'd trade in a brand name; not just anyone can produce a LEGO set, and even other manufactures capable of making knock-off bricks aren't LEGO (as I can personally attest, the plastic is much cheaper and softer).
no subject
But seriously, good thoughts, and I think your car analogy is helpful (at least in so far as I don't know about cars either so we can be wrong together), but I don't think what I'm offering here is the "engine" to the car. I figured I was offering the blueprints to a specific kind of car. I will gladly describe what the assembled car will do, but I'm not going to share how it is made. Once the blueprints have been sold and delivered to the customer, they can use them to build the car, but they have the freedom to depart from those instructions. They can use different materials, or swap out the internal combustion engine for something they think would work better, or be more in line with the customer's own knowledge- a steam engine, perhaps, or an advanced piece of tech that runs on hydrogen battery cells.
To link that analogy back to the Idea I've developed, I think it's possible to turn the main female character into a male character. Naturally, the romance can still occur, but where I specifically wanted to use the female gender on that character to exploit/subvert stereotypes and stand in contrast to the main male character, another writer might want to shift things so that the shared gender of the two main characters highlights the contrasts. In that case, the plot could still work, and most of the themes would still apply with a little tweaking in the presentation.
Thus why I talked about all the components for the story, including characters, settings, themes, and so on, so that prospective "buyers" would be able to tell if they can use or adapt my product. I would explain to the final buyer how all the elements of the story I imagined interact and come together to produce the whole, and presumably that would be enough knowledge for the buyer to know how to use the "product" for their maximum benefit.
I think this differs from the Babysitters Club example because I'm not calling for a specific style, or for pre-established characters. The voice, the mannerisms, the history, all that would be defined by the writer. If anything, I'm simply giving a detailed description of the archetypes of the characters. Even the setting is meant to be defined by the writer. I could describe it to you right now in one word and you'd know what it was (kind of like, "casino," although that's not what it is in my example), but it could be translated into all kinds of wider worlds and feels (a glitzy space casino, a tawdry Wild West casino, an ostentatious Vegas casino).
In effect, I feel like I'm selling a LEGO set more than parts of a car. I give you the bricks and the instructions, but it's a LEGO set, so the whole idea is to bring as much creativity as possible, as well as your own collection of bricks. And that's where I'd trade in a brand name; not just anyone can produce a LEGO set, and even other manufactures capable of making knock-off bricks aren't LEGO (as I can personally attest, the plastic is much cheaper and softer).