Nice Guy Gone Rogue

So I have my Main Character who is generally a Nice Guy and a Broken Hero, go rogue and become an Anti-Villain, sort of, to try and save the world from destruction. Thing is he's the only informed that the world might end, people think he's crazy, and his friends believe he might need help with his mind. They are kind of justified for believing so, manily because of trauma, psychosis, and the fact that he doesn't know that he has a Superpowered Evil Side, (his friends don't know either). They live in a world where legitimately everyone is a mage, and he had prophetic dreams of the apocalypse. So how do I write well enough to avoid a Wallbanger?

edited 22nd May '15 8:55:55 AM by SkyHavenPath13

I'm reading that you have a general concept and a very general idea of what you want to do with it, but you're wrestling with execution, as everyone does.

I'm not seeing a specific issue that we could help with.

So do you actually have a question to ask that we could actually help with, or are you just spouting off in the hopes that someone else will write your story for you?

I've been working on something similar, with a protagonist who would otherwise be a Good Shepherd defying his church and all the established rules to put a permanent end to villains who before then were only ever sealed away.

I think part of any answer to your question will depend on whose POV you'll be writing from. If from the lead with the dreams scenes of the dreams may help. Especially if they're bad enough to make him desperate to act as he does. Of someone else the should be sure to note d changes in behavior and try to work out the why

It will be third person limited if that helps.

How do you want the story to end? Does no-one listen to him, and the world falls apart? Does he manage to convince his friends to help him? Does it turn out that he really is as delusional as everyone thinks he is? Does he get the help he needs to save the world, only for the world to end anyway?

Once you know how a story begins and ends, writing everything in-between becomes a lot easier.

edited 24th May '15 1:57:50 AM by Tungsten74

Pretty much this.

I see a collection of tropes in the OP (which is the wrong way to go about writing!) and a rough sketch of general intentions.

I do not see a plan of what he intends to do with that concept. How he intends the characters to develop. How he intends to play out the conflict. In short, I do not see a story.

Neither do I see the crucial point of what OP is asking our help for.

Yuri really is delusional, influenced by his inner darkness. Nobody believed him, so he goes around the world, taking artifacts that were supposedly able to save the world. Everyone who knew him tried to either stop him and the ones who hated him tried to kill him.

The world doesn't really end, instead his actions helped resurrect a dead god. The dead god in question wanting to reclaim his hold on the world, out of entitlement, and was the the main character's former "boss". You see, the main character is actually a personification of a force that rejects the supernatural that transformed into a human after waking up from a deep sleep, but not before punching out its former master, and not without losing his memories. The apocalyptic dreams were created by the main character's inner darkness and former self, to manipulate him into resurrecting his former master, and then killing the god. The god would have find a way to resurrect himself anyway, the main character just accelerated the process.

After finding out about this, he doesn't take it well to say the least. His already low-self esteem plummets to rock bottom. Everyone hates him for his actions, save for a few, he gets demoted, and he wants to make it up, no matter the consequences, even if it meant sacrificing himself. Note: he was always like this, just not so much now.

He does get to sacrifice himself... it just made matters worse. He isn't technically dead, mainly because his inner darkness is him, and since it is alive, he can't go to the afterlife just yet. So he goes back to the land of the living to hunt it down and properly die. But when he finds out what happened to his friends, he feels he has yet another thing to do before dying, and feels hesitant to go through with his decision. When he finally meets up with his inner darkness, he couldn't beat it, until he had an epiphany: Good and Evil was merely shackles that prevented him moving on. So why not abandon those notions? This was what finally allowed him to move on and save his friends.

The story then goes on to reveal that Aeternitas, the resurrected god intended Yuri to be his Dragon, taking out his threats for him. He offers Yuri his chance to be reclaim his former position, offering paradise. Yuri rejects his offer, and kills Aeternitas,stating that he is his own person, not someone to be controlled.

• At the beginning of the series, Yuri was averse to killing anybody. This helped him win friends from former enemies. However, he met a person who was not able to come back to his senses, was actually driven insane and that person accidently injured a child he was closed to. To him, the child was dead. He, in a blind rage, killed the man brutally, giving him the death he wanted and deserved. This drives some uncomfortable truths into Yuri, making him realized that he enjoyed fighting and being inflicted pain, best exemplified by his inner darkness. This was before the apocalyptic dreams.

I hope this answers most of your questions, Tungsten74.

I appreciate you answering me directly, but I wasn't really asking you to tell me what happens in your story. I was trying to prod you into thinking about your work in a more effective and productive manner.

Also, your story sounds super, super messy and confusing. At first it seemed like a straightforward apocalypse-denial plot, but then you started talking about misleading visions and dead gods and personifications and... I don't get it. What is your story actually about?

No, don't tell me, just think about it. Really dig down deep and work out what's important to your story. If you had to sum up your story in as few words as possible, what would you include, and what would you leave out? That sort of thing. Knowing what's core to your work will help you immensely in writing the kind of story you want to tell, and writing it well.

edited 25th May '15 2:49:02 PM by Tungsten74

Thanks for that link. I'm still so intimidated by loglines that I suck up every bit of advice about them like a vacuum.