Literary genre of the Plot: Drama | Turin, 2022
Main characters
Chicco is seventeen years old and in spite of himself is a nighttime drug delivery boy for the Egyptian. The Egyptian is a hard man, an immigrant who owns a small take-out pizzeria that is a front for his activities. Leila is 16 years old and lives with her alcoholic mother in the city's worst neighborhood. She has misguided friendships and a baby on her lap. Her adolescence is one long sequence of failures and the future is a meaningless word.
The call to adventure
It is late at night and Chicco must make a delivery. The apartment building where the buyer is located is located in the heart of the blighted suburbs, the same area he comes from. Chicco walks through the city meeting those who inhabit the night. When he makes the delivery, a moment after the exchange, something goes wrong and the buyer wants the money back. The man's reaction is violent and frightened Chicco runs away. During the escape he literally slams into Leila. The girl is stained with blood and terror is visible in her eyes. The two understand each other with a glance: they shake hands and flee together.
The conflict
The two teenagers are united by despair and disillusionment. The darkness of Turin's ugliest suburb leaves no room for dreams. Yet, a closeness, a primal instinct drives the two teens to support each other. She is afraid to return home: she had a fight with her mother and hurt her with the shards of a bottle. He has no home to return to and neither does his mother. Sheltered from the incessant rain, the two confide in each other as they have never confided in anyone else.
The Key
Chicco has the stolen money; Leila has hope. The moped becomes the steed to cross the suburban slums and try to go further. In the hours that follow, the city and its characters are predator or prey, trap or shelter. But the two boys share the same decision: wait until the sun rises, reach the train station and board the first one that will take them to the sea, a place neither of them has ever seen.
But the Egyptian wants his money back and revenge for being disrespected. He runs over the boys with an SUV, takes the money back, leaving it on the tarmac under an airline billboard advertising exotic places.
The alternatives
The plot belongs to those stories that take place in a very narrow time frame: in this case, one night. This is the first possible modification, which is to build a variant over a longer period, days, weeks or even months. As usual, it is possible to intervene on locations and epochs. One element I suggest keeping is the suburbs.
In the plot it represents the real protagonist, and Chicco and Leila are its children moving between despair and hope. So think about how you can translate the story into an equally controversial setting.
