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Does this story interest you? - General thread.

Discussion in 'Original Fiction Discussion' started by Andrela, Jun 14, 2014.

  1. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

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    I would read that. Reminds me of I am Legend.
     
  2. Himuradono

    Himuradono Professor

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    I'd read it as long as the 'doom and gloom' weren't overwhelming and there was hope for a better future waiting at the end.
     
  3. Download

    Download Auror ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    There will be hope for a better future but it will be difficult and slow going.

    Also, no angst - if you have time to angst then your situation isn't dire enough or you don't realise how dire it is and are thus going to die.
     
  4. Eilyfe

    Eilyfe Supreme Mugwump

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    Well, this is the map I made for my first attempt at an original novel. So far it is only a rough outline (mountains, rivers, forests), but it's a good starting point. Names, cities, borders, etc. will follow once I worked out the historical background of this world.

    Story-wise I have some ideas for the characters and how a plot could possibly unfold, but I wanted to create the world first, before diving into the actual outlining of the story. The setting will be fantasy (not too hard to guess), and technology-wise it'll lean on the middle-ages and bits and pieces from ancient rome/greek/whatever springs to mind.
     
  5. crimson sun06

    crimson sun06 Order Member

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    Sounds like a cross between The last of Us and The Hunger Games. I would definitely be interested in reading this story. Depends on how well you flesh out the characters though. Give it a go. Would like to know a little about the secondary characters.
     
  6. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

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    Something I posted recently on the AlternateHistory message board:

    Does this sound like something you folks would read?
     
  7. Vira

    Vira Third Year ~ Prestige ~

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    Depends. You have a premise, but what's the plot? Is the story exploring why the time travel event occurred or is it just a setting creator for a different plot?
     
  8. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

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    Well I'm thinking it could have several characters with various backgrounds as they try to deal with the changed world.

    I mean, think how this is going to effect things on a global scale. You'll have nearly the entire Earth population be mentally 10 years older.

    We'll know the incoming natural disasters and we'll prevent them.

    We'll be able to recreate 2015 technology and devices in 2005, therefore speeding up the technological progress by 10 years.

    People who were at the edge of death in 2015 will suddenly be able to live additional 10 years.

    We'll know where people like Osama Bin Laden are hiding.

    Imagine the Middle East having 2015-era population suddenly waking up to 2005-era regimes Pre-Arab Spring. Things are going to go ugly immediately.

    All around the world, there are going to be A LOT of divorces, broken engagements and non-started relationships. Because people will know what their future marriages bring and some will want to avoid them.

    Not to mention a hideous epidemic of grief as parents with young families have their children unborn.

    And all those 10, 11, 12 year old trapped in the bodies of 1, 2, 3 year olds. We're basically going to be growing a generation of emotionally damaged children who have the intellects of tweenagers, and are entirely incapable of expressing themselves adequately for the next 1-3 years of their lives.

    This just begs to be written, or turned into a TV show.
     
  9. Republic

    Republic The Snow Queen –§ Prestigious §– DLP Supporter

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    I would have thought from your premise that it was a loop kind of thing. People in 2015 knew that they were about to be transported because it had already happened, 10 years ago. So all the natural disasters of these ten years had already been prevented, all actions that could be taken from foreknowledge have already been taken by all interested parties, so essentially history repeats itself, and the people simply get to live 10 years more.

    It is how I imagined your premise when I first read it.

    Edit: Hell, take it a step further and make so that humanity is now forever 10 years old or younger, stuck in an endless time loop that they are learning to live with/around.
     
  10. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

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    Wouldn't that be just rehashing Groundhog Day, except with all of humanity?

    I was thinking a singular event as a starting point, with it being the only sci-fi aspect, the rest would be normal.
     
  11. Republic

    Republic The Snow Queen –§ Prestigious §– DLP Supporter

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    And that is bad ... why?

    In any case, I dislike the idea of using 'time travel' when you're using a flawed version of time travel. There is no 'singular event' when it comes to time travel. If humanity time traveled to the past, they would know what happened when they reached that time of the original jump.

    I guess not everyone agrees.
     
  12. LittleChicago

    LittleChicago Headmaster DLP Supporter

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  13. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

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    It doesn't matter if its not scientifically accurate. Back to the Future wasn't.

    Besides, this is basically a global Peggy Sue scenario, what's wrong with that?
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2014
  14. Lion

    Lion Denarii Host DLP Supporter

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    Just a quick idea I had after reading the comic Birthright.

    Basically a boy goes into the woods and he disappears. There's a rather large manhunt and nothing is found. The day after the manhunt is officially called off the boy walks out of the woods, his clothes are a little roughed up but other than that nothing seems wrong.

    He's quickly grabbed up and is interviewed by the local Police and his parents. They want to know where he has been for all of the months that he has been missing. He begins to tell them how he fell into an alternate world where magic was real and he was a king. Of course no one believes him, but no one can explain how a boy from the city managed to survive for several months in the woods with no injuries.

    The first part of the story would continue on with the boy living with his family again, but they notice something is different about him. He's quiet and spends alot more time by himself. He also starts to see people who are similar to those who lived in his alternate world. This worries his parents and he has to see a therapist to talk about what happened. The boy opens up to the the therapist and starts to tell her fantastic stories about his adventures, up to and including during his reign. She goes along with it but comments on how some of the tales seem a little far fetched. As this goes on he starts to see more and more people who were in his kingdom and strange things start happening, things that could be described as magic in his old kingdom. At the half point of the book the boy would run away back to the woods and the therapist would be part of the people who go looking for him. Based off what she knows from their sessions she manages to find him in a small grove that is easily over looked. he sees her and runs into a cave and she follows him. Inside she finds blood on the ground and the beginnings of what looks like some type of ritual, with the boy in the center.

    He reveals to her that his stories are very much true and that he needs his magic back because the people he keeps seeing are rebels trying to kill him. He kills the therapist and as she dies she sees things she can't explain and the boy is different.

    That would be the end of the first part and when things really start to pick up magic and action wise. I was thinking that throughout the first part nothing is told from the perspective of the boy, instead it would be the interviewer, then his parents, his friends, and the therapist. Some people would have more than one chapter, while others would only get a small piece of a chapter or snippet.

    The second part would start with the view point of his best friend from the alternate world as he gets ready to crossover to earth. From his viewpoint you see that the kingdom is in shambles. The city has been invaded recently and people are in bad shape. From his internal thoughts and interactions with people you find out that the boy was a dictator. He violently rose in power from the use of magic and charisma and then spent several decades terrorizing the people. The citizens who have already crossed over where sent to try and find him so they could finally kill him and lift the final curse that the boy put over their world. He set the spell off right before he left as a final fuck you to the rebels who were finally able to depose him.

    I haven't put as much thought into the second part and I'm still iffy on some details of the first part. I really wanted to focus on painting a picture of the boy as he was on earth. He was about 14 when he left and it was around halfway through his first year of highschool. He wasn't really popular and had kind of a hard time. His journals, which his family read to find hints on where he might be, mostly talked about how he felt he didn't fit in on earth. He always felt that he was destined for something greater and he was beginning to see things that might point towards what it was. Of course they think he's crazy but when you look at it from the context of the second part and the few chapters that would be told from his point of view you would see he was lured there. A wizard called him there to try and experiment with the boy because there was something about him that was different than other humans. Whatever that difference was overpowered the wizard and the boy was left with his memories and all of the magical tools that he had amassed. This is what begins his rise to power in the alternate world as he uses magic and the wizards people skills to begin taking over what was actually a kind and peaceful kingdom, albeit with their own problems.

    So that's what I have so far on the story. I came up with it last night when I was drunk and and it came back to me this morning while I was eating lunch. There's alot that I want to change and alot that I'm not sure on but I wanted to see what other people thought of the idea first. Would something like this interest people? I mostly wanted to show a villains story, but from the perspective that he was a hero at first. Then to flip it around and show how bad that he was, because the boy still sees himself as a good ruler and from the stories he tells people it would be obvious he's kinda delusional.
     
  15. Newcomb

    Newcomb Minister of Magic

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    That's pretty intriguing. I really like the setup. I think the first half of that book would be awesome.

    I worry that since a) we're not in his head and b) he's a villain, it would be hard to really connect with the main character. He'd have to be compelling indeed for me to want to stick with him after it was clear what was going on. It's not a bad thing, at all, to set up a story this way and gradually reveal information, but if it's all leading to the fact that this guy is a tool and a fool (that was an unfortunate rhyme), I think the payoff, the climax, would be a really tough needle to thread.

    That being said, I liked the premise enough that I'd definitely give it a shot to find out.
     
  16. Lion

    Lion Denarii Host DLP Supporter

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    Yea that was one of the issues I had with not having his point of view. I was thinking of maybe having his only view points be his rise to power. That way people would see his version of events and why he thinks he is a hero. He's not really a fool or a tool, he just literally believes with all of his heart that he is meant to be The Hero. He's grown up reading Harry Potter and Star Wars and every book or movie that deals with the chosen one being found and saving the World, Empire, or as he sees it this Kingdom. He feels like he's in the ultimate Narnia situation. He was brought into this world by an evil Wizard because he was special and the Wizard wanted to use his body, he was just so special the wizard failed at possessing him and instead jump started him into being a magical badass.

    For the boy this is a dream come true, and as you look at his flashbacks in the first part it really does seem like the people of this world do need a hero. They just didn't get the one that they needed, instead they get a kid who wants to and who tried really hard to be the story book hero, he just wasn't prepared for it. The delusion that he was perfect in every way clouded his thoughts so the way he sees things isn't quite how they happened. He would very much be an unreliable narrator. Almost to the point that he would be telling outright lies at some points.
     
  17. Vira

    Vira Third Year ~ Prestige ~

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    It seems like you have two different stories here. The first part is about a community trying to solve the mystery of this probably-delusional boy who returned after months of being missing. The second part is about this other world that's trying to bounce back after the boy ruled it as a dictator. The first part is vastly more interesting than the second.

    I agree with Newcomb that the boy being a deluded (in a different way) douchebag is an anti-climax. At the end of the first part when he kills the psychologist, I can't see the audience sympathizing anymore. Even if what the boy says has truth to it, killing an innocent person who was trying to help him reveals his true colors. Showing him to be a dictator afterwards isn't much of a reveal.
     
  18. Lion

    Lion Denarii Host DLP Supporter

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    Yea I've put alot more thought into the first part of the story than the second. And honestly I want people to sympathize more with the people around him. His parents, who would have a pretty big role, the best friend, who you would see alot of in flashbacks and part two, and up until she dies the therapist. The main character is more of a catalyst, and to call him the main character is a little much. I very much intend for him to die at the end. Mostly because the best friend and the main characters little sister, who actually is a chosen one.
     
  19. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

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    The First Bat

    A man in 2010s Europe wakes up one day to discover that something is wrong.

    When he attempts to enter sunlight, it burns his skin. Garlic makes him highly allergic and develop a nasty rash all over.

    Having a horrifying suspicion, he soon discovers the truth.

    He has somehow turned into a vampire.

    And not just a vampire. He is the world's first ever vampire.

    Is it a mutation? A curse? There are no answers available to him.

    All he knows is that he's the first and the only one.

    He craves blood, has supernatural abilities and strangely enough, a desire for power...

    The story follows this man as he attempts to utilize his vampiric abilities to gain power and influence. He creates new vampires, establishes a cult, gets access to a secret hideout, acquires money and various valuables. He also gets enemies, is investigated by the police and the church, as well as some secret agencies which wish to acquire his abilities for themselves.
     
  20. ScottPress

    ScottPress The Horny Sovereign –§ Prestigious §– DLP Supporter

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    The most interesting part of this story (origin of vampirism) is skipped, while the focus is on a rather generic "rise to power". I don't see the hook.
     
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