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Post by skyfire on Jul 30, 2009 20:04:22 GMT -5
This is for a novella (or two) that I'm looking at doing; I can't seem to focus on my other stuff, so I figure if I get on another project that might help.
**
The plot centers on a pair of 20-somethings, Roland and Mao.
Roland is a 20-something MBA student. Owing to his having several metal bits in him due to a childhood accident, he found his career options somewhat restricted. He took his chances with an insurance firm, and now his career's taking off. A natural pitchman, he's making more just on commission than the senior agent for the office is making total package.
However, while selling insurance has given him a comfortable life, it's not exactly what he sees himself doing as a career. Instead, he wants to draw manga. He's a good enough writer and brilliant artist, but unfortunately for him the market is so saturated that he can't get anything published beyond one-shots and "how to draw" books; he can't find a publishing house willing to take a chance on a full-fledged series.
His life changes when he makes a chance encounter. A bunch of local anime / manga enthusiasts manage to scrape up enough money to do a small-time convention, and he ends up getting invited as the guest of honor. In the process, he ends up meeting a fangirl named Mao.
It turns out that Mao - who has both Chinese and Japanese in her - loves his work and has been collecting every little bit of his that gets published. In a twist of fate, they've actually been attending the same college this entire time; they've simply never run into each other as she's an undergrad in a different program (teaching). On top of that, Mao can also share his pain: she's been trying to pitch some childrens' books that she's written, only to find that the market is even more over-saturated than the manga market.
The two ultimately end up in a relationship, and as part of it they try to help each other find a publisher. His parents are fine with it as long as it doesn't prove a distraction to his day job / school, and her parents - a Japanese father and Chinese mother - are thrilled that she's finally found someone she can be happy with.
The glitch, however, comes with Mao's rather traditional grandparents; they weren't too keen on Mao's parents getting married, and are absolutely beside themselves at the thought of her dating a white guy. To make matters worse, the senior agent at Roland's office is an asshole who feels threatened by the kid and one of the female agents is a gold-digger who clings to whichever male agent happens to be the most successful.
Thoughts?
Thanks.
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Post by Angel Kaida on Jul 30, 2009 20:18:58 GMT -5
Hi Sky! Generally sounds okay, though I'd advise you to be very careful with the relationship between Mao and Roland. The natural power dynamic stemming from the fangirl/artist beginning of the relationship could be dangerous in terms of plotting and believability - not that the relationship is inherently unbelievable, but it would be very easy to hit a wrong note with it. Could you elaborate further on why his options are limited by his metal bits, and why those are necessary to the plot? (Maybe just explaining what the metal bits are would be sufficient.) Is there any reason that the gold-digging agent couldn't be a male sycophant? That might help with the already mentioned problem of gender dynamics, which are always something to kind of look out for in the plotting stage.
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Post by dantesvirgil on Jul 30, 2009 22:55:50 GMT -5
Well, I'd get rid of the metal bits all together and just make him frustrated in his career. Because it makes no sense that he was forced into insurance because of what sounds sort of like a mild disability, but he can draw and write with no problem. I mean, from a believability standpoint, regardless of where the metal is, if it affects him for certain careers, it should affect him with the artistic stuff, too, which is arguably just as physical or perhaps even more challenging than desk work. So I'd just get rid of that part. If you make part of the narrative interactions they have through the kinds of writing they do, I can see that being the really interesting part.
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Post by skyfire on Jul 31, 2009 12:44:02 GMT -5
He's got enough metal in him to where he counts as disabled under the written guidelines, never mind the fact that he can run circles around most folks his age.
However, he does have a bit of a tendency to walk around off-duty with refrigerator magnets stuck to his forehead simply because he enjoys watching how people react. It's all part-and-parcel of his "doesn't quite fit in" character.
**
For the character traits and such, about a year ago I did up a random trait chart using characterization tropes from the TV Tropes Wiki.
If I have characters in mind, but don't have clear images as to what I want to do with them, then I roll up a batch of tropes by gender (some tropes are gender-specific) and piece things together as they seem to flow. Primary or main secondary characters get 3 - 5 tropes, while other secondary and background characters get 1 - 3.
For the gold-digger, the tropes I got were:
1. kawaiiko (an adult woman who tries to still be a child)
2. fauxreigner (a person who pretends to be of another nationality)
3. bunny-ears lawyer (someone who is highly successful in a specific area but also highly unorthodox)
4. technical pacifist (they'll do anything and everything to a person but kill them)
5. shallow female love interest.
I put this together as "she plays on her clients by acting like either a cute & innocent young girl or a sophisticated Frenchwoman as the case may be, tricking them into buying bigger policies than what they need and thus making bigger commissions for herself. However, her own personal commissions aren't enough for her, and so she makes it a point to cling to whatever rich guy she happens to keep company with at the time."
Of note is the fact that her big sister works as the office secretary. While the bitch agent is indeed a bitch, the older sister is 100% professional; while she does play mother hen and is willing to call out those agents she does catch fucking up, she's simply so busy with her own personal matters (including a deployed boyfriend) that she is honestly unaware of the crap her sister is pulling above and beyond the little bit that she personally witnesses.
Tropes:
1. yamato nadeshiko (Japanese-style housewife persona)
2. creepy monotone
3. class representative
4. the ruri (a seemingly young person who is world-weary and cynical beyond their years)
5. tall, dark, and bishojo (a typically attractive taller woman with dark hair; may look tomboyish)
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Post by dantesvirgil on Jul 31, 2009 16:16:52 GMT -5
It's not believable, Skyfire, the metal stuff, I mean. As far as written guidelines, that only applies if you claim it, meaning he would be the one holding himself back on purpose. Companies don't know unless you tell them or it's extremely obvious because it does affect your work. I know part of what you work with is fantasy, but you have to help your audience suspend their disbelief. But it's your novella, you just asked for thoughts. Also, I'm in agreement with AK about the golddigger. It's just been done so many times, it's so predictable and boring. You don't want people anticipating what you write before you write it, which is what's going to happen if you go down that path. But again, it's your concept, so do what you want with it.
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Post by skyfire on Jul 31, 2009 21:04:38 GMT -5
It's not believable, Skyfire, the metal stuff, I mean. As far as written guidelines, that only applies if you claim it, meaning he would be the one holding himself back on purpose. Companies don't know unless you tell them or it's extremely obvious because it does affect your work. I know part of what you work with is fantasy, but you have to help your audience suspend their disbelief. But it's your novella, you just asked for thoughts. Also, I'm in agreement with AK about the golddigger. It's just been done so many times, it's so predictable and boring. You don't want people anticipating what you write before you write it, which is what's going to happen if you go down that path. But again, it's your concept, so do what you want with it. About 50% of this is random ideas that have been sitting around in my head for a while (in some cases, years). The other 50% is me trying to make it halfway cohesive.
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Post by skyfire on Jul 31, 2009 21:25:27 GMT -5
One idea that I did have is that with Roland, the incident that caused him to have all the metal also left a shock of permanent white hair on his head; unless he actively dyes it, it's painfully obvious that something is up.
This could justify how it is that people know something's off about him.
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Nightboomfer
New Member
The Modern Science of Awesome
Posts: 28
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Post by Nightboomfer on Aug 1, 2009 4:56:40 GMT -5
Not really buying the shock of white hair thing. it'd be a nice visual shorthand to identify him if this were illustrated, but in a novel, it doesn't really jive with me. Why not have something more related to his disability like he uses a cane or walks with a limp? I don't really know where you're going with the "metal bits" but this is just an example.
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Post by skyfire on Aug 7, 2009 13:42:35 GMT -5
Different plot; different book. Well into the future, humanity has developed a limited means of going back in time. To keep people from abusing the shit out of this, those nations who actually have access to time travel make it a point to have some sort of trained security operatives who are tasked with not only guarding the travel devices but also pulling people back out who happen to be causing problems. One of the operatives guarding a US-based time travel device is a 20-something who feels that her life is going nowhere. She was orphaned when her parents died in a freak accident, and spent her formulative years reading "retro" escapist fantasy - sci-fi and fantasy written in past decades - and the like in order to take her mind off of how crappy the orphanage was. She figured that if she could make it into the Time Patrol, it would be proof that there was actually something for her in life. Instead, all she found was long, boring guard duties. Tired out of her skull, she began to use her status as a guard to access the plethora of historical files. In the process, she ended up making a number of shocking discoveries: *The person credited with starting the Time Patrol is none other than her favorite "retro" escapist author, who has long since passed away. It turns out that before he became famous, he supplemented his then-meager royalties via odd jobs and occasional bounty hunting. *His mad scientist father was the one who invented the early working prototypes for their laser pistols, advanced communicators, and several other bits of gear that they now take for granted. *The author's wife had her same first name. The discoveries cause her to become so obsessed with the guy that she eventually opts to do what the heroine of his most famous sci-fi novel does: engineer an excuse to go back in time and meet him. While she is attempting to engineer one, however, an actual excuse appears: a group of hitmen who break into the time travel facility for the purpose of going back in time and killing the guy. While none of her fellow officers can stop them from traveling back into the past, she succeeds in making it through at the last moment. She does indeed end up finding the guy, but since the travel machine was damaged in the incident no aid will be forthcoming; she'll have to do this all by herself. The question, however, is: Who's protecting who? And will her own struggle to adapt to the past kill her before the bad guys ever get another chance to? ** As you can probably guess, the whole thing is mostly a stable time loop. His wife? Her. The inventions? He and his mad scientist father reverse-engineer the crap she brought with her using existing bits and pieces. For example, they fabricate her laser pistol by stripping parts from a variety of tazers & stun guns and working from there. They do, however, change time slightly when they reinforce her security armor. The standard-issue armor is only meant to protect against lasers and concussion effects since that's what most officers have to deal with in the future; they add a layer of kevlar to the underlying jumpsuit and reinforce the actual armor with a little bit of chain mail. This has the effect of causing several officers who should have died in the line of duty to actually survive. His most famous sci-fi novel? It's loosely based on everything that takes place. His founding the Time Patrol? He's spurred on to do it by the very same hitmen who were sent back in time to kill him.
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Post by Magnizeal on Aug 7, 2009 23:40:36 GMT -5
Different plot; different book. Well into the future, humanity has developed a limited means of going back in time. To keep people from abusing the shit out of this, those nations who actually have access to time travel make it a point to have some sort of trained security operatives who are tasked with not only guarding the travel devices but also pulling people back out who happen to be causing problems. One of the operatives guarding a US-based time travel device is a 20-something who feels that her life is going nowhere. She was orphaned when her parents died in a freak accident, and spent her formulative years reading "retro" escapist fantasy - sci-fi and fantasy written in past decades - and the like in order to take her mind off of how crappy the orphanage was. She figured that if she could make it into the Time Patrol, it would be proof that there was actually something for her in life. Instead, all she found was long, boring guard duties. Tired out of her skull, she began to use her status as a guard to access the plethora of historical files. In the process, she ended up making a number of shocking discoveries: *The person credited with starting the Time Patrol is none other than her favorite "retro" escapist author, who has long since passed away. It turns out that before he became famous, he supplemented his then-meager royalties via odd jobs and occasional bounty hunting. *His mad scientist father was the one who invented the early working prototypes for their laser pistols, advanced communicators, and several other bits of gear that they now take for granted. *The author's wife had her same first name. The discoveries cause her to become so obsessed with the guy that she eventually opts to do what the heroine of his most famous sci-fi novel does: engineer an excuse to go back in time and meet him. While she is attempting to engineer one, however, an actual excuse appears: a group of hitmen who break into the time travel facility for the purpose of going back in time and killing the guy. While none of her fellow officers can stop them from traveling back into the past, she succeeds in making it through at the last moment. She does indeed end up finding the guy, but since the travel machine was damaged in the incident no aid will be forthcoming; she'll have to do this all by herself. The question, however, is: Who's protecting who? And will her own struggle to adapt to the past kill her before the bad guys ever get another chance to? ** As you can probably guess, the whole thing is mostly a stable time loop. His wife? Her. The inventions? He and his mad scientist father reverse-engineer the crap she brought with her using existing bits and pieces. For example, they fabricate her laser pistol by stripping parts from a variety of tazers & stun guns and working from there. They do, however, change time slightly when they reinforce her security armor. The standard-issue armor is only meant to protect against lasers and concussion effects since that's what most officers have to deal with in the future; they add a layer of kevlar to the underlying jumpsuit and reinforce the actual armor with a little bit of chain mail. This has the effect of causing several officers who should have died in the line of duty to actually survive. His most famous sci-fi novel? It's loosely based on everything that takes place. His founding the Time Patrol? He's spurred on to do it by the very same hitmen who were sent back in time to kill him. Predictable. I had the plot from the first 'shocking discovery'... Granted, time travel stories are my favorite, but... yeah. Highly predictable. And since it's a time loop, the 'ending' is known, the status quo will be maintained.
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Post by skyfire on Aug 7, 2009 23:54:13 GMT -5
Different plot; different book. Well into the future, humanity has developed a limited means of going back in time. To keep people from abusing the shit out of this, those nations who actually have access to time travel make it a point to have some sort of trained security operatives who are tasked with not only guarding the travel devices but also pulling people back out who happen to be causing problems. One of the operatives guarding a US-based time travel device is a 20-something who feels that her life is going nowhere. She was orphaned when her parents died in a freak accident, and spent her formulative years reading "retro" escapist fantasy - sci-fi and fantasy written in past decades - and the like in order to take her mind off of how crappy the orphanage was. She figured that if she could make it into the Time Patrol, it would be proof that there was actually something for her in life. Instead, all she found was long, boring guard duties. Tired out of her skull, she began to use her status as a guard to access the plethora of historical files. In the process, she ended up making a number of shocking discoveries: *The person credited with starting the Time Patrol is none other than her favorite "retro" escapist author, who has long since passed away. It turns out that before he became famous, he supplemented his then-meager royalties via odd jobs and occasional bounty hunting. *His mad scientist father was the one who invented the early working prototypes for their laser pistols, advanced communicators, and several other bits of gear that they now take for granted. *The author's wife had her same first name. The discoveries cause her to become so obsessed with the guy that she eventually opts to do what the heroine of his most famous sci-fi novel does: engineer an excuse to go back in time and meet him. While she is attempting to engineer one, however, an actual excuse appears: a group of hitmen who break into the time travel facility for the purpose of going back in time and killing the guy. While none of her fellow officers can stop them from traveling back into the past, she succeeds in making it through at the last moment. She does indeed end up finding the guy, but since the travel machine was damaged in the incident no aid will be forthcoming; she'll have to do this all by herself. The question, however, is: Who's protecting who? And will her own struggle to adapt to the past kill her before the bad guys ever get another chance to? ** As you can probably guess, the whole thing is mostly a stable time loop. His wife? Her. The inventions? He and his mad scientist father reverse-engineer the crap she brought with her using existing bits and pieces. For example, they fabricate her laser pistol by stripping parts from a variety of tazers & stun guns and working from there. They do, however, change time slightly when they reinforce her security armor. The standard-issue armor is only meant to protect against lasers and concussion effects since that's what most officers have to deal with in the future; they add a layer of kevlar to the underlying jumpsuit and reinforce the actual armor with a little bit of chain mail. This has the effect of causing several officers who should have died in the line of duty to actually survive. His most famous sci-fi novel? It's loosely based on everything that takes place. His founding the Time Patrol? He's spurred on to do it by the very same hitmen who were sent back in time to kill him. Predictable. I had the plot from the first 'shocking discovery'... Granted, time travel stories are my favorite, but... yeah. Highly predictable. And since it's a time loop, the 'ending' is known, the status quo will be maintained. The twist, tho, is that she has no fucking clue that she's causing things to happen even after everyone else figures it out, meaning that some of the other characters are stuck trying to decide whether or not they should ever clue her in. For example, when the guy buys all the tazers & stun guns in order to strip the parts out of them, he has to explain to her the fact that reverse-engineering is quicker and cheaper than starting from scratch. That he and his old man were taking a really long time to fix her laser pistol doesn't register with her, even after he mentions this. Likewise, throughout the later portion of the book he's shown banging away on his keyboard. He's writing the novel based on everything that they're going through right now. She doesn't initially catch on that he's writing the novel that inspired her in the first place, instead mistaking it for one of his earlier works that didn't do quite so hot.
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Post by Caitshidhe on Aug 8, 2009 0:10:48 GMT -5
I don't mean at all to hijack this thread, and I have nothing to say that hasn't already been said, but I want to poke my head in very briefly and ask if other people are allowed to ask about plots in this thread? Since there are a lot of creative types and writers here it might be useful if we can ask and spitball to people we know and like.
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Post by Magnizeal on Aug 8, 2009 0:13:47 GMT -5
Oh... So, not only is a predicable plot, the heroine is a fucking moron? I'm sorry, Sky, reading that would get me screaming mad at the heroine the moment I figured out the plot and she kept being so dense. Which means I'd spend half the story wanting to hit her with a clue bat...
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Post by skyfire on Aug 8, 2009 10:51:35 GMT -5
Oh... So, not only is a predicable plot, the heroine is a fucking moron? I'm sorry, Sky, reading that would get me screaming mad at the heroine the moment I figured out the plot and she kept being so dense. Which means I'd spend half the story wanting to hit her with a clue bat... Think "Mihoshi" from the Tenchi franchise. Rare flashes of competence buried beneath a childlike demeanor.
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Post by skyfire on Aug 8, 2009 10:52:13 GMT -5
I don't mean at all to hijack this thread, and I have nothing to say that hasn't already been said, but I want to poke my head in very briefly and ask if other people are allowed to ask about plots in this thread? Since there are a lot of creative types and writers here it might be useful if we can ask and spitball to people we know and like. Go for it.
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