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Post by Pen Against Sword on Jun 6, 2008 20:03:11 GMT
I didn't see any threads dedicated to this specifically, so I figured since the writer's corner has been looking kind of lifeless for the past few days, I'd start a new thread, whee!
Anywho, as far as writing goes, there are, of course, many fanfiction authors on this site. And I know for a fact that some of us write original fiction. Here is the place to discuss your ideas for original fiction (under the clear understanding and respect that these ideas belong to the authors who created them). Offer feedback, con-crit, ideas, etc. Sound good?
I'll go first, to get the ball rolling.
So I've had this idea for a short story bouncing around in my brain since probably last summer. It's still very shaky and not fully formed in my mind, so go easy on me. I forget exactly how it came to me, but it's supposed to be a sort of sci-fi thing, set in a generic futuristic society.
The main character's name is Riley, and he has had his fingers surgically removed by government officials. The reason? He is talented with the violin, a prodigy player almost.
So far, the plot goes something like this:
Riley and his singer best friend, Stella, are a musical duet, famous on a small scale. In their society, there are people who perform and are renowned by the public, aptly named Celebrities (with a capital C). People achieve the status of Celebrity by being talented and getting noticed by the government because the government determines if you have what it takes to be famous. At some point, Riley and Stella are approached by government officials and asked to play in a recording room so that their work can be judged.
Stella achieves Celebrity status and Riley does not, and soon after, he is taken to a hospital where his fingers are removed so that he can no longer play the violin. That's when he starts to remember things from his childhood--other people like himself, surgically debilitated in some way, shape, or form, and he figures out that the price of failing to achieve Celebrity status is having your gift taken away.
The basic gist of it is that this futuristic government is using the possibility of being a Celebrity and the adoration of the ones who are as a way to keep people in line. If you want to be important, you have to be a Celebrity. If you audition and aren't selected to become one, you aren't allowed to be talented anymore because you could use your talents to stir up trouble or unrest. The story is basically how Riley arrives at this conclusion.
The only problem is, I don't know how to conclude it in a satisfactory manner, and the plot is still unstable and full of holes. I have about four or five pages of it written, but it's just not measuring up to the idea I have in my head.
Anyone else want to discuss? I'd love to hear y'all's ideas for original fiction.
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Post by Sylla on Jun 6, 2008 23:35:17 GMT
So, allow me to get something straight: the fact that Riley arrives at the conclusion that the price of failing to achieve Celebrity status is having your gifts taken away automatically means that everyone else doesn't know this (or at the least, only govt officials do and they're not telling). So my problem is this: I'd think the people that got their 'gifts' taken away would be really, really furious at the government, so what's to stop them from going and saying to eveyone they meet: "Look at me; this is what the inhuman government has done to me just because they didn't think I could be a celebrity!" Perhaps the government intimidates them into not mentioning it, or - more sinister; I like this option - they give them some sort of drug to make them forget. In that case, Riley would forget too, so you could have him being a special case - for example, he could see his own hands, then other people's hands, and end up remembering all the people in his past with similar deformities - and as he remembers more and more, he draws closer to coming to the aforementioned conclusion. In this case, he might conclude that it's possible to make other people remember, then try to tell other people about what the government's really doing. Whether he succeeds or not, and to what degree (revolution, anyone?)... I guess that depends on what type of ending you want. Of course, that's just me letting my mind wander down crooked paths at 1:30 am, so I have no idea how coherent this is.
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Post by Pen Against Sword on Jun 7, 2008 0:17:13 GMT
Nope, perfectly logical issues with the plotline.
See, the reason that Riley has never noticed before is that it's sort of hush-hush, and the government really has the people under its thumb. After it happens to him, he starts to remember people he's met that have certain limitations, but he's never thought deeply of it before. When he tried to ask questions when he was younger, he always got really scolding reactions.
This is all under the assumption, of course, that not a lot of people even get to attempt to be Celebrities in the first place.
The whole plot, I know, is a little out there.
However! I like the idea of the drug or the intimidation because the government is supposed to have a sort of oppressive, sinister feel about it.
I think this was just what I needed in order to actually finish the thing and make it sound coherent. Thanks, Sylla! *glee*
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Post by T. Costa on Jun 7, 2008 4:02:24 GMT
I really like that idea. A lot, actually. I'd read that book.
Would you have him try to overthrow the government? Maybe lead a revolution?
(Total aside, I had a flash of a conclusion to a story like this that almost mimicked the ending to the Animorphs series - where you see the main character leading a battle that can decide the outcome of EVERYTHING, and then it cuts off and you don't know HOW it ends. Then again, I'm weird and like endings like that.)
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Post by Pen Against Sword on Jun 7, 2008 15:04:51 GMT
Since it's just a short story, I'll probably end it with him trying to get into contact with a rebel group of some sort and just leave it at that, sort of hanging.
Now, enough about me! I made this thread to hear you people's original ideas. Come on, you knoooow you want to tell Penny what you're writing about.
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Post by Sai on Jun 7, 2008 18:50:20 GMT
The idea of Penny wanting to know scares the crap out of me.
But... just don't laugh.
My story is called 'On the Other Side', and revolves around a character named Vincent Beltryn. His life is pretty sucky considering the fact that his step mother is a raging alcoholic and his father is a defense attorney. They're rich, but that doesn't matter to Vincent. He hates their ways of life, their flaunting of money, their hate towards others.
Then his father gets drafted into taking two kids from an old school buddy. He doesn't even remember the man well, but takes the two anyway. These are Aidan and Acelin, twin brother and sister. Acelin hasn't spoken sinse she was young, six or so, and Aidan is her translator. She's a mean girl, even at seventeen.
So, Vincent tries to befriend them, but Acelin really hates him. Aidan is somewhat likable, but Vincent knows that there is something more going on when, late at night, he hears whispering from the room next to him. It's Acelin's room, and there's a voice that doesn't belong to her in there.
The story grows as everyone begins to distrust each other, with Acelin growing closer to Vincent's father as people are dying. The step-mother goes last, and before her was Vincent's close friend Hallie, who died during a botched childbirth, kids at school, all those who seemed to be suspicious of Acelin being not exactly who she was.
At the end of the first book, Vincent's closest friend Michael is on the lawn, talking to Acelin, and then *Bam* Aidan and Vincent are driving out of the driveway and into a very big truck.
My god, I hate summarizing things. That must have sounded so flipping corny that I can't even do anything about it.
Anyway, the truth about Acelin and Aidan is complex. If you want me to explain what they are, I'll do it. Granted, I don't want to bore you out of your minds.
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Aardy
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Post by Aardy on Jun 7, 2008 20:22:43 GMT
Mack is a chef struggling to make a living. Moving to a new town is never easy for anyone, especially those who are branded as 'social retards'.
The town of Jacksville is rather rural and follows old traditions kept for hundreds of years. The annual 'Chili Festival' draws in hundreds of spectators and even a few camera crews to join the festivities. The chef who can cook the tastiest chili is often awarded with a short lived celebrity status - but, as Mack knows, publicity is publicity and he will do anything to make it.
Making his way over to the strange new town he unpacks his bags and is warmly welcomed by the regulars. After a week or so, he soon realises that life won't bite you in the ass if you don't turn your back on it, and adopts a fresh positive outlook. He puts his social ineptitude aside, meets a new girl and even gets a new job. But things start to go south, as they tend to do, and life's sharp teeth soon leave a new indentation on his posterior.
Not only does his girlfriend's father hate out-of-towner's - but he is also his new boss and head judge at the Chili Festival. His desire is to make Mack's life a living hell and to run him out of town the only way he knows how... by sabotage.
The old man asks Mack to stay back in the kitchen after hours to work on his chili recipe and in the meantime travels to the nearby swamp. Finding the droppings of the native Orange Spackled Sponge Toad, he returns to the kitchen and drops them in Mack's dish. His plan is for Mack to be the local laughing stock of the town's Judge's who will personally taste the mixture early the next morning for the qualifying try-outs.
As they leave for the night, Mack sneaks back in to the kitchen to add the paprika he forgot to use earlier and takes a quick bite of the cold chili.
What happens next is somewhat of a twisted miracle. The world melts around him, his blood boils and he passes out.
In the days that follow, he soon discovers that he can control spice with his mind. He begins to debate whether a new superhero identity should be created and about which would look better - spandex or leather. The entire confusion leads him to wonder; should he use his rather unextraordinary powers for good or for evil...? After all, variety is the spice of life and, hopefully, he might get to bite it back.
OK, so this is an incredibly strange idea for an alternative comedy thing I might start working on... I might take it that step further and turn it into a black comedy when he uses his rather dorky powers for evil. Hilarity, in some form or other, should ensue.
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Post by T. Costa on Jun 8, 2008 21:35:03 GMT
I don't like to talk about my original fiction. It's not nearly as good as my fanfiction. My ideas suck. But Pen, if you ever do get around to writing that, I'd love to read it, seriously. It sounds intriguing, and easily something someone could make into a novel if they wanted to.
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Post by Pen Against Sword on Jun 9, 2008 1:16:15 GMT
Actually, Costa, that's just supposed to be a short story. I'll get around to finishing it one day, I'm sure, because I feel it's too good to just leave unfinished.
As far as novels go, I am eleven thousand words, three chapters (plus a prologue), and twenty pages into a novel. I spent two-and-a-half hours last night researching demons and writing up a chapter-by-chapter synopsis just for the purposes of this project. I told Mengde the other night that I can't keep telling people I plan to be a novelist for a career if I've never even completed an idea. Once I have, I'll be able to feel better about my prospects at succeeding in the writing business.
Y'know, a good friend's dad once said to me, when we were discussing what I want to do for a living, "[Pen], just like you, I've always had it in my heart to write. The only problem with achieving this is, well, I have to write."
Vark! Your idea sounds so freaking great! That is the kind of light-hearted, fresh take on superheroes (or villains as the case may be) and the average every-man that I find delightful. If you wrote that, I would read it in a heartbeat.
And Sai, you really can't leave me with just that (Curiosity killed the PAS). You have to tell me what they are and what's going on, please. Now I'm interested!
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Post by Sai on Jun 9, 2008 1:31:27 GMT
Weeeelllllll, you asked for it, Pen.
Acelin and Aidan come from a clan of coveted pagans, ones with actual powers. Their mother was supposed to carry a girl to continue the family and to be married off to the clan's 'master's child, which just so happens to be Vincent. (Poor Vincent). But anyway, a little after Vincent's mother ran off to live a better life (who would want to be born just to marry someone?) with little Vin, the twin's mother finds out that she's going to have two children... both boys. This can't happen, because if it is true she'd be killed about both of her kids with her, so when Acelin and Aidan were born, she had Acelin forced into a sex operation, one that no one could trace. So, her hide was safe.
About six years later, the mother is killed in a car wreck with Acelin in the back seat (caused by the clan to get rid of the overprotective mother) and that's about the time when Acelin finds oout that she's not a she, but in fact a he. It drives her slowly insane.
Anyway, so Acelin wants to kill everything that kept her fro being who she was, and that means she has to hit the very foundation-- she wants to call up her pagan gods to destroy Vincent and the whole of the clan. But to do it, she needs a soul... a baby. That's where that botched pregnancy comes in.
*Cough*
Okay, I think that's at least a summary. I won't even get into what Michael, Vincent's firiend is. That would probably confuse you even more. Heck, it drives me insane and I'm the one who came up with it.
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Aardy
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Post by Aardy on Jun 10, 2008 19:13:59 GMT
A simple idea I just came up with just now.
Jonah's life is normal. He has a girlfriend, a trench coat signed by Miles Davis and a nineteen inch television in his bedroom. In the light of things he deems it pretty sweet.
His quaint little village is nestled upon an isolated hill and it seems to kill the eighteen-year-old's social life; although it does allow his satellite dish to pick up a strange frequency from Germany that is roughly described as pornography and more accurately defined as low budget horror. And sure, the drinking water tastes a little funny, but as the local motto goes 'You'll get used to it... we think.'
Life is quiet; life is friendly; life on this particular hill does not know what congestion charges are. But life for Jonah also is able to turn itself upside down.
Yes, he can drive. Yes, he can see the road signs from the regulatory distances. No, he can't read things less than a meter from his eyes; allowing him to mistake his allergy tablets for his father's condoms on an embarrassing daily basis. Some tell him to wear his glasses more often, but they make him look like a dork. Others tell him to stay indoors to prevent his allergy attacks, but he hates confined spaces. Most tell his father to move the box of condoms from the living room cupboard to his bedroom, but no sex ever occurs there anyway.
When an impulse decision lands him twenty miles down the bottom of his hill to the town below, into the seat of a Laser Eye Clinic, things go from bad to worse.
The surgery is botched as the laser beam goes haywire, splicing through the back of his eyeballs to the association cortex of his brain. To prevent themselves getting sued, the surgeons all hijack a Vaxhaul Astra and flee for Romania where the legal system is still to hit puberty, never to be seen again.
As Jonah wakes, his senses seemed to have crossed modality. He can see smells, he can hear taste and he can smell images.
Traveling back to his quaint little village, the locals are curious - so curious that Jonah become sick of the question; So, what does my face smell like? When city slickers and reporters overcrowd the small village to see the resulting freakshow, Jonah simply cannot handle it. After all, he's just an eighteen-year-old guy that wants to chill with his friends and smell hardcore German pornography.
One thing he doesn't know about life, aside from the fact it is not normal, quiet or friendly, is that it is very, very unfair...
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Post by fearandloathing on Jun 10, 2008 19:30:30 GMT
That sounds absolutely hilarious/wicked/awesome Alpha! Win!
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Aardy
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Post by Aardy on Jun 10, 2008 19:36:27 GMT
Thanks!! ;D The thing is, about five weeks ago, I was reading a human physiology book for one of my exams about sensory crossed modality. A week into my summer holiday and the thought crept back into my mind from nowhere, enabling me to think of a cute comedy storyline.
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Post by fearandloathing on Jun 10, 2008 20:08:39 GMT
How much of it have you planned/thought of, then?
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Aardy
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Post by Aardy on Jun 10, 2008 20:18:54 GMT
...zero. That summary came off the top of my head - as does all of my work.
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