Working on getting Subtxt ready to go in the new platform, and I found this rather compelling and interesting - a rather unique take on the Four Throughlines that I thought I would share.
With Subtxt, I simply added a logline:
A burned-out city lawyer inherits a small farm where the scarecrows hold court at night, judging the moral weight of human sins and demanding she defend the living before the harvest comes due.
and a Genre:
Weird Pastoral Fantasy
and the Blended Throughlines it came back with were not what I expected:
Burned-out city defense attorney Erin Caldwell inherits a remote, overgrown farm and discovers that, each night, its scarecrows convene a spectral court to judge the souls of the nearby town before a looming Harvest. Pressed into serving as defense counsel, she spends her days probing the townsfolk’s quiet cruelties and buried kindnesses, and her nights arguing before Jonas Webb, the scarecrow judge who speaks for an older, merciless justice rooted in the land itself. Their clashes over guilt, debt, and mercy force Erin to confront her own history of hollow courtroom victories and the instincts she no longer trusts. Meanwhile, hidden letters and recordings from the grandmother who left her the farm reveal a lifetime of secret bargains with the same court, drawing Erin into an unexpected, intimate conversation with an absent relative as the Harvest draws near.
Typically, earlier attempts at this would always try and make the Relationship Story Throughline always between the Main Character and Influence Character, and would usually make that their relationship in the Objective Story–more Protagonist/Antagonist rather than Main Character/Influence Character.
Here was the Relationship Story it came up with:
At the heart of the story is the slowly unfolding bond between the new landowner and the grandmother who left her the farm, a woman she barely knew in life. Through weathered letters, margin notes in old almanacs, and hidden recordings tucked into kitchen drawers, the granddaughter begins to piece together the emotional history of the one who came before her. The grandmother’s voice reveals a life spent in quiet negotiation with the same scarecrow court—years of bargaining, small rebellions, and painful compromises to protect the town and her own family. As the granddaughter reads and listens, what begins as resentment toward an elderly relative who abandoned the city branch of the family for a lonely rural existence slowly shifts into understanding. She discovers that the farm was not an escape but a chosen burden, and that the inheritance is less about property than about passing on a role no one else could carry. The relationship deepens as the granddaughter argues with and confides in this absent figure, treating the messages as a kind of ongoing conversation. She feels betrayed by the secrets kept, comforted by the grandmother’s fierce, flawed attempts to shield others, and ultimately moved by the realization that she was always imagined as part of this place’s future. By the time the Harvest comes due, the emotional bond between granddaughter and absent grandmother has grown from distant blood-tie into an intimate, guiding presence—one that helps the younger woman forgive the past, accept her own capacity to care, and choose what kind of legacy she will leave in turn.
It’s still a little too heavy on the “relationship” as something FOR the Main Character, but still was an interesting take on things that I thought I would share.
Looking forward to sharing more as I get this all ready for release this week.