Redesigning Eva: my WIP

Okay, so I've been stuck writing this really deep sci-fi book called Redesigning Eva for awhile, but I seem to be making some progress. Basically, the gist is: "What if Molly Ringwald volunteered for a combination of psychoanalysis, gene therapy and physical conditioning (think Captain America and Inception) in a Blade Runner/Gattaca style futuristic urban shithole and got caught up in a series of Hitchcockian mind games?" Also, add in a good deal of film noir.

edited 5th Sep '11 5:02:46 PM by ConnorBible

Genre Busting... just... Genre Busting.

Waiting...

edited 5th Sep '11 5:12:10 PM by ConnorBible

Be patient, young grasshopper. It only been twenty minutes.

It sounds a little hard, but if you think you can write that much of a story, go ahead.

edited 5th Sep '11 5:16:10 PM by chihuahua0

Sorry. It's just that I get excited when I talk about it.

Anyway, Eva Elliot's a girl in a blue spot of her life. One day, she gets called to the principal's office and is introduced to menagerial types from the Prometheus Corporation, a powerful "weird science" conglomerate. They offer her the chance to be redesigned through Catharsis (which I described above), but Eva is initially reluctant. It takes a well-placed Hannibal Lecture to get her to volunteer.

Problems I've been having: creating a complex plot, developing great characters, dialogue.

edited 6th Sep '11 3:40:40 AM by ConnorBible

Well, you know the golden rule of writing - "show, don't tell". Instead of telling us about your work, you'd benefit more by showing us a short excerpt. Otherwise it is rather hard to help you from barely a few lines of synopsis. I barely understand what you are trying to write about from your vague description.

It's a psychological sci-fi drama thriller with elements of dark comedy, teen films, horror, film noir and satire.

No, I mean... what have you written? We can't really help you without knowing how well you are doing, can we?

Crap.

To elaborate: I really want to make this really complex Jigsaw Puzzle of a plot, but I don't know what's going to happen. I'm having troubles with p.o.v.: Is it going to be first or third person? Dialogue is a pain in the ass, and this is a story about people, for crying out loud.

The bulk of the story shows Eva in her new life as a redesign, living for a change. Then she starts having second thoughts. The question is, should Eva have volunteered in the first place?

edited 7th Sep '11 1:31:23 PM by ConnorBible

Uhh, not to be discouraging, but this still doesn't tell as anything.

First of all, I'm still not sure what the story is even about. From what I understand, a powerful science group turns an initally reluctant woman to... something, you haven't told us what. I assume it's a "perfect human" or somethng. And the plot is that woman living her new life.

So what we have, is a premise. You say you don't even know what's the plot going to be. This isn't much resources for us to work with.

Anyway:

• About making a Jigsaw Puzzle plot, can't help you with that. If you know the plot, then you can figure out how the heroine will find clues little by little.
• 1st vis 3rd person POV: Depends. What do you find easier to write? Do you think we'd get valuable insight of the heroine's mind if you used 1st person? Is the story going to focus on any other characters?
• As for dialog... start paying attention to the real life conversations around you. Read aloud all your written dialog to see if it's natural. Make sure you have a clear picture in your head about your characters, their quirks and their personalities.

edited 7th Sep '11 1:44:46 PM by Dealan

Catharsis is a radical form of therapy. Life therapy. Basically, after volunteering, you're given the chance to become your "dream self", so to speak. So yeah, Eva becomes a perfect woman, but being flawless can get to you after awhile. Especially considering that she gets put through a series of trials that would make Scott Shelby proud.

There are plenty of other characters in this. There's Brian, Eva's ex-boyfriend and an aspiring journalist investigating strange happenings throughout Janus City. James Holden is a psychologist assigned as Eva's counselor by the Prometheus Corporation; he's an alcoholic with serious survivor's guilt, and sees Eva as a mirror for his deceased daughter. Trish is a cyborg "runner" assigned by the Corporation to keep tabs on Eva, and at the same time, she's torn between her human and machine sides. Natasha Grant is a spoiled rich redesign in an existential crisis similar to Eva's, and is sick of the emptiness. Klaus Krieger, head of the Corporation's Anthro Division and mastermind behind the Project, is up to something big, and he will stop at nothing to see it come to fruition.

I feel that I need to explore their lives as well as Eva's. I'm stuck between alternating first-and-third and straight third.

edited 7th Sep '11 2:29:24 PM by ConnorBible

Another problem I'm having is with deconstructing John Hughes teen films and Molly Ringwald characters.

Wow. This is going to take a while.

edited 11th Sep '11 7:28:44 AM by ConnorBible

Still waiting...

As I said before, you are giving us too little material to work with. A core idea and a few characters do not a story make.

It is your job to create a very basic, bottom-line plot that links everything together. That's the very baseline thing you need to be able to do if you want to write a story as a writer. We really can't help you with that.

Elaboration time it is.

It's set in an unspecified future (or possibly an alternate reality). "Redesigning" has become a phenomenon that effects all walks of life; people are altering themselves on a daily basis. Suppose your eyes were souped up to enable you to cruise the Net, check backgrounds, etc. without the use of a console (a cumbersome hacker's equivalent of a computer). Genetic, cybernetic, prosthetic... the types of redesigning are endless. One field however has not been conquered: the mind.

Klaus Krieger, head of the Prometheus Corporation's Anthro Division, has developed a pet project called Catharsis, a combo of psychotherapy, genetic alteration, and physical conditioning. Ostensibly, the goal is to improve overall quality of life for people, but in all reality, Krieger plans to redesign society into a utopia from behind the scenes. The higher-ups in the Corporation don't like that. Not one bit. He's already redesigned twenty seven people (including himself), who are quite the loyal followers. The Corporation gives him an ultimatum: get a test subject that actually proves that Catharsis is commercially viable.

Eva Elliot is a girl in a funk, like I've said. [[Understatement She and Brian don't really get along]], she's at the prey of a particularly despicable Education Mama who is off on a vacation (to get away from that "fucking retard"), and she's balancing high school life with a dead end job as a "runner", performing all manner of stupid errands just to get by. Krieger and his assistant Lindsay Cope have been spying on Eva for awhile, and they pull some strings in the school district to get her to volunteer. Eva's reluctant, but Krieger doesn't take no for an answer, so she volunteers. James Holden is assigned as her "mindbuddy", and they develop kind of a father/daughter/casual relationship.

I've got to go. I'll tell you more later.

edited 13th Sep '11 3:34:44 AM by ConnorBible

Anyway, she gets redesigned... but she gets more than she bargained for.

If only I came up with a good plot.

Okay, problems: Lack of focus. Overly convoluted plot. Inconsistent characterization and tone. Klaus Krieger: well-meaning Magnificent Bastard Übermensch or Complete Monster mind rapist for the evulz?

edited 20th Sep '11 5:35:36 PM by ConnorBible

Made a page for it in Darth Wiki.

Alright, here's the deal.

In order to have something worth reading you need to...have something worth reading.

I don't know how much we can help you until we actually SEE how you write—which means giving us some of your actual writing, not just ideas.

We'll start with the two basic issues: Dialogue and POV. It seems to me that with the amount of characters you have, you'd be wise to stick with third omniscient or limited. Switching form "I to he" and back again can get aggravating quickly, and is one of the quicker ways to have a reader drop your story and move onto something easier to track.

With dialogue, until you post an excerpt, we have no idea how good or bad it is.

A lot of your other problems (villain motivation, character depth and design) all come with the territory of writing. If you keep writing, some of that will organically solve itself, other parts will get dropped as unimportant and some will change—-a lot— all of which are good things because you will be writing.

Which really, is why you're here right? You do like to write, I assume.

Here's what I've written so far.

Making good progress!