story idea and discussion

[jeninflorida]

okay, this story has been festering my mind for some time. the idea came to me when UK (fox daughter company) got busted for hacking into cell phones.

well I want to take this one step farther.

a man has the hots for a coworker. he over hears her talking about how she can't find a good man, but can't seem to make a connection with her. since he's in the company IT dept he gets access to her company email and greats her texts.

okay so up till this point we have a great guy story.

as he reads (illegally) her text and email he totally falls head over heals in love with her and becomes the man she dreams of.

as he starts to show up where she is, and says the right thing to her...and as she tells her gf about this guy he leans more about her and what she likes/wants.

so, this is very much a guy story. I'm sure this type of story creeps out other women, but is there a way to turn this into a female friendly story?

from her pov she has no idea that he's reading her email or text. she just thinks he's a nice guy that's totally into her. he knows the right thing to say. knows what she wants. that he has a connection with her and always picks the right restaurant....all that jazz

thoughts?

 

[LaRascasse]

Could be a nice story.

You can turn it female friendly by a simple role reversal. Make her the stalker (not a creepy, psychotic one) who reads his mail and texts. She could have a crush (maybe an obsession) on him. She reads about him having troubles in his marriage or relationship and how he wishes it could be. She could then 'just happen' to have all the solutions.

Hope it helps.

 

[KatieTay]

There's this show, from the UK, called The Peep Show, stars Mitchell and Webb (2 of my favourite UK comedians) and one of the storylines, I think, is how Mitchell's character hacks into his love interest's workplace account and finds out all about her predilections.

When he gets inevitably found out, it's quite pathetic to watch.

Would it really be female friendly to simply reverse the genders, I'm not so sure about that. I personally can't accept it in either direction.

For me I'd suggest removing the "hack" element and simply make it a "spy" element. Perhaps the guy has a private blog that she stumbles upon, or the other way around. So it's not really illicit hacking going on, more of just a happy accident that gives the "stalker" a view into the other one's life problems.

Then you can go on what previous poster said.

But if it was the hacking that inspired you in the first place feel free to discard my suggestion.

 

[SevenSquared]

This reminds me a lot of the subplot in "There's Something about Mary" if you've seen that...

I think it would work well as a story. The challenging bit would be explaining the actions of the 'spy' in a way that was believable and left room for a bit of sympathy so he didn't just come over as a creepy stalker. Also think about how you want to end the story. Will she find out he was spying on her? How will she react? Will there be a twist in the tale (maybe she know all along, maybe she was spying on him too, maybe the email trail leads him to another completely different woman).