Best Sellers 1: April 2012

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

The best way to expand the audience would be bringing a common love story between a human and werewolf to life. I believe this story is best illustrated by making this book into a movie. Before the movie is made though there will be four contests. Each with an unimaginable reward.

The first contest would be held on Facebook under the Shiver page. The goal will be for a fan to come up with a place that would be the best place to film the movie. They will have to put up a picture of that place on the page. Then they would need to explain how it relates to the book and why the movie should be filmed there. The winner of this contest will get to go on a vacation with their family to the place they choose. The trip would be free to the winner and up to five family members.

The second contest would be to write a scene. The director would choose one scene from the book and start it. He would put out the started scene and let the fans finish it. The scene that the director chooses will be the winner. The winner will get the chance to meet all the actors from the movie and their whole family will receive free admission into the movie with free drinks and popcorn.

The third contest would be for a fan to rewrite the ending of one of the three books. Then the author, Maggie, would choose her favorite ending for each book. The three winners will get to spend the day with her and get writing tips from her.

The fourth contest would be based in high schools across the country. For any student that completes reading the first book, they will get a plastic mug that shows a wolf howling when it’s cold and will show the human character when its warm. Any student that completes the second book will get a t-shirt with their choice of design. When they complete the third book, they will get their book signed by the author and also get a 50% discount on their tickets for each of the three movies.

Now, for the movie here are two major ideas the audience needs to know. One that the werewolves stay human all summer and wolves all winter. It’s also said that sooner or later they will be only wolves, no more and no less. The second idea is that Grace was attacked by wolves but didn’t change into a wolf. Within the movie, there should be these four main scenes.

One – Sam saving Grace.

Is how the book starts out and would be a great way to grab the viewers’ attention. In this scene Grace is a little kid who gets attacked by the wolves, who live in the woods behind her house. Sam, being one of the wolves, he watched them attack her until he couldn’t take it anymore and stopped them. “The pack fell back from me, wary. They growled at me, no longer one of them, and they snarled over their prey. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, a tiny, bloody angel in the snow, and they were going to destroy her. I saw it, I saw her, in a way I’d never seen anything before. And I stopped it.” (Sam-5)

Two – Sam getting shot and really meeting Grace.

Sam had been watching Grace ever since he saved her. Years later, the pack did it again to a boy named Jack. This attack triggered fear in the town which caused them to gather a hunting party and go after the wolves. During the hunt, Grace makes up a story about her friend being in the woods hoping to stop them from hitting “her” wolf. This lie, however, didn’t work. She knew the instant he was shot and went looking for him. He was on her back porch as a human lying against the door bleeding from the shoulder. But she knew it was “her” wolf from his eyes. Those yellow eyes. “My breath caught painfully in my throat as I moved still closer, hesitant. His beautiful ruff was gone and he was naked, but I knew it was my wolf even before he opened his eyes. His pale yellow eyes, so familiar, flicked open at the sound of my approach, but he didn’t move. Red was smeared from his ear to his desperately human shoulders – deadly war paint.” (Grace-60)

Three – Sam and Grace going to the candy shop and running into Olivia.

Ever since the second attack, Sam has been human and Jack is a newly born werewolf, who is looking for a cure. As the summer is beginning to end, Sam is running out of time with Grace and wishes to take her out on a real date. So, they leave town on an hour drive to Sam’s favorite candy shop. Here, Sam gets Grace to really open up and use her wolf nose to smell the food. In this scene, it’s an escape from their reality and puts them into their own world together. “Peppermint swirled into my nostrils, sharp as glass, then raspberry, almost too sweet, like too-ripe fruit. Apple, crisp and pure. Nuts, buttery, warm, earthy, like Sam. The subtle, mild scent of white chocolate. Oh, God, some sort of mocha, rich and dark and sinful.” (Grace-280)

Four – Sam coming back in the dead of winter, after the “cure.”

Grace thought a cure would be to overheat the wolf by having an extremely high fever. For this cure, they decided to try injecting bacterial meningitis, while he was a human, the only problem was he had already shifted. They had to come up with a way to get Sam to shift back even though it was supposed to be his last year as a human. “I settled on the floor and whispered to Sam, ‘I want you to listen to me, if you can.’ I leaned the side of my face against his ruff and remembered the way the yellow leaves, the color of Sam’s eyes, flutter and twisted, crashed butterflies, on their way to the ground…I remembered Sam.” (Grace-369) When they do get him to shift; they were only able to inject half of the ‘cure’ into blood stream. Once Jack died from the cure, Grace feared the same had happened to Sam, since he was back in the woods with no help.

By making this book into a movie and holding these contests, fans will have an opportunity to interact with the storyline more directly. For the people who didn’t know about the book, they would get wind of the contest and read the books to compete. The movie would help the fans of the book to get to know the characters better and they would get a chance to help affect how the story will play out.