Working Title: Piracy Cruise Lines
Genre: Comedy/Mystery
Protagonist: Sherman, a reporter assigned to this ship and secretly a bit of a pirate fanboy. He's generally rather meek and could easily be called scrawny. At nineteen, he's of average height; wears thin, rectangular glasses; and dresses a bit in the hipster vein.
Other Main Characters: Francisco, a flamboyant twenty-eight-year-old man with frizzy, brown hair and a thick Spanish accent. He likes to gamble at card games, especially when it gives him the chance to accuse someone of cheating and have a sword duel. He's rather haughty, to the extent it could all be just an act.
Darla, a blonde twenty-year-old who typically wears a green bandanna and lots of mascara. She's not very modest, although she doesn't tend to flirt, and she's an excellent fencer (though fist-fighting, not so much).
Antagonist: Unknown. Likely a corporative something-or-other.
Setting: The PCL Scurvy, one of the newest fleet of PCL's luxury cruise ships for pirates. Being on its maiden voyage, it's not nearly as battered as other ships in the business, and it has every facility one would expect on a cruise ship: swimming pool, piano bar, sushi stand, sports bar, casino, more bars... Rank aboard the ship is determined by ticket fare; i.e., those who stay in the cheapest rooms on the boat be deck-swabbin'. Prices are high, and amenities are not well-guaranteed throughout the trip (due to contact with other PCL ships), but in a time where honest piracy isn't enough to make a living anymore, this is the only good alternative.
Plot: Sherman embarks on the ship for his story, soon befriending his neighbour Francisco and setting his sights on Darla. Amongst the normal happenings on the cruise (rowdy bar fights, carousing, huge battles with other ships in the fleet), a line of deaths a bit too orderly for a place like this starts lining up. Sherman plans to get to the bottom of this, if his newfound companions prove to be better at keeping him alive than giving him away.
Point of View: First person (Sherman).
The original idea of "piracy on a luxury cruise ship" could have been some sort of gritty story worthy of Liam Neeson in a film, but somehow it took this turn when I looked the other way.
Sounds clever! So there are actual 17th-century-esque pirates on these ships in the modern day? That's actually a really funny idea; I could see some sort of Pirates of the Caribbean reference getting thrown in (I used to be very active in that fandom after all.)
ReplyDeleteSounds like you'll need to walk a fine line between comedy and suspense in this one. Also, Francisco sounds like a very fun character.
Oh, yes. (They actually have a ship called the PCL POTC, but they insist it stands for "Pirates over the Caribbean" and as such does not infringe on any copyrights.)
DeleteOriginally, it was just going to be a comedy, but I couldn't see any actual plot buildup in that. So yeah, it'll be interesting trying to blend them.
Francisco is awesome. (His real name is Jeremy. He's from Wisconsin.)