needing help with my early-mid section of my plot

Hello,

so I'm pre-planning out a visual novel I want to make (my third attempt at it, hopefully more successful this time), and one issue I fear I'm hitting is it not having a good enough hook in the early story to have reader's care/drive the plot in the early-to-mid parts of the plot when its more low-key.

basically what I have is a standard You Wake Up in a Room set up, with 6 stranger's alone on an Airship floating above the sea for reasons they do not know. they are informed by their "host", a wealthy billionaire, that they have 3 days to reroute the airship to safety before it runs out of fuel & crashes into the sea below. adding to the confusion is that its revealed soon afterwards that their "host" cannot possible be who he's claiming to be, since the man he's claiming to be has been dead for 20 years.

now, from there I have the answer's to the mysteries, why the character's are there, the characters personalities, motivations, arcs and the end part of the plot and all that entails. what I don't have is what to do right after the "Hosts" talk.

I know generally the tone and mood I want for the middle parts to have (rather low-key, mellow, almost a slice of life all things considered), and I specifically chose 3 days as the time limit to allow for those more time consuming quiet times that I want to have. what I don't really have for that time is a goal (or conflict as it where) for what the character's should be doing in that time til the end plot kicks in.

while I'm going to have the characters have down time, I know logically they'd also be up and about doing something to avert the whole "3 days til everyone dies" thing. I just don't know what!

Any suggestions?

What the- what do you mean, you don't have a goal or conflict near the end of your story? The airship is going to crash in three days if the characters don't get their shit together and stop it. That's your fucking conflict.

Look, to grab your audience's interest, and then keep them interested, your story needs to be propulsive. What I mean by that is, you need to set up your characters' goals, and then immediately make them pursue them. In this case, you have 6 people who would very much like not to die, who have just been informed that they will die in 3 days if certain action is not taken.

So why in the fuck would they ever settle down into a "low-key, mellow, almost a slice of life" mood when their lives are still in peril? These poor bastards should be spending the next 72 hours pulling the airship apart for some clue as to how they can avoid their impending deaths. And then, if/when they actually manage to re-route the ship, they should do everything in their power to make sure the ship stays on its safe course (making sure their host doesn't sabotage their efforts, for example).

Maybe once the ship's re-routed and they're headed for safety, they could relax a bit. But they still can't relax too much - any number of unexpected mechanical faults could still jeopardise their survival. Plus, they don't know why they're on the ship in the first place, or who their host is (who I hope they've lashed to a chair and locked in a closet somewhere, because why the fuck would they let a man who just promised them their deaths wander free about the ship?). They should spend the rest of the story either A. tearing apart the airship for clues to the mystery, or B. pumping their host for information.

If all of that sounds a bit extreme, then it should, because people who think they are about to fucking die tend to take some pretty extreme measures to forestall that fate. If you don't want your characters acting that way, don't give their actions such enormous stakes.

I know what my conflict is at the end of the story. I have the end of the story finished basically. what I don't have, and what I'm asking for help on figuring out is the beginning of my story, just after everything's been established.

and the reason I'm doing a "mellow, low-key" tone for the middle bits, is because that propulsive fast acting dread of "oh god we're gonna die, we gotta hurry!" is just not interesting to me. I'm far more interested in character analysis, and how they interact within and around each other. hence having them in a locked environment.

I have a 3 day clock, because I want the plot to take place over a reasonable amount of time to still be short, have these character's meet for the first time, form bonds, etc etc, for the end plot to occur, which is directly relevant to why they are all there in the first place.

I only through the "ship will crash" as a reason for a 3 day time, because I feel there needs to be a reason they only have 3 days stranded on this Airship.

and that hits me with figuring out a goal at the beginning. because I don't want the plot to be "we have to stop this ship from crashing", mostly because in the end it'd just be revealed to be a big fat lie (the ship is never in danger of crashing), as that is not the point of the story.

the point of the story is the characters. and I'm having issues in the beginning, trying to find something I know will hook the reader long enough for them to care about the characters, thus care about their plot.

The ship doesn't have to crash... can't it just, you know, land?

The main conflict at the end of your story should be the same one you started with. You introduce it at the start of the story, and the characters spend the whole length of the narrative struggling to resolve it. That's how (good) stories work.

So is your story's main conflict about preventing the airship from crashing? Or is it about solving the mystery of why the characters are on the ship in the first place? Because if it's the latter, you either need to remove the impending airship crash, or push back the time it happens by a few day more in-universe days. Because right now, it sounds far too high-stakes and urgent a situation for the characters to relax while it remains unresolved.

But don't think that the latter conflict would give the characters room to relax, either. They'd just be trading one set of goals to pursue for another: instead of "stop the ship from crashing", their goal would be "find out why we're here", and they should still be taking action all the while to pursue that goal. They should be interrogating their host, searching the ship for clues, and sharing what they know with each other.

This setup has room for quiet conversations, but they won't be idle chit-chat - they will be serious, considered debates about what the characters know, what they think is true, what they think is false, who they can trust, and so on. Gradually, the clues they gather should start to form a cohesive whole, with the climax of the story revolving around the truth finally being revealed.

Clear goals, clear action, clear obstacles, clear stakes. These are the things that hook readers.

the problem being I don't feel reader's would care at the beginning about the plot without some striking hook at the beginning. it feels like something is missing just say "6 people wake up on an airship, are confronted by a host who tells them he's collected them all for reasons he won't say, and that the Airship will be arriving at an undisclosed destination in 3 days time".

namely, there it feels like there is no drive after that point that I can use to steer the narrative where I want it to go. I know I need some sort of forward momentum, but I'm stuck on what that should be, given what I want out of the story. that's what I'm asking for input about. not anything else.

also, by no means is there a single formula of how good stories should work. I've read plenty of stories where their plots go all over the place and there were still good.

edited 11th Dec '15 5:01:26 PM by Jetyl

Everything in my last post was aimed specifically at highlighting the ways one could turn a bare-bones starting point like yours into a good hook. Did you not read any of that?

Okay, let's try a different tack. Can you tell me why, immediately after your 6 main characters wake up, they don't immediately start interrogating their host for answers? Or talking amongst themselves, learning who they all are and what they do, to see if there's any pattern to their kidnappings? Or wandering around the ship to look for clues to their predicament?

Because unless your characters happen to be completely comfortable with being ripped from their normal lives and held captive on an airship by a total stranger, that's what they should be doing.

And you know what? That's fine. Really. It's a perfectly fine hook. Readers will be fine going along with that, because it mirrors what they would do in the same circumstances. Anyone can relate to a character wanting to investigate unfamiliar (and potentially dangerous) surroundings. And because it's so easy to relate to, it's easy for readers to get invested in it, and keep reading to find out what happens next.

Any premise can work. You just have to find the drama in it.

edited 12th Dec '15 1:29:55 PM by Tungsten74

Tungsten is absolutely right. If the characters are placed in a situation (ANY situation) and their reaction is just like: "Oh well, whatever, lah-di-dah..." then of course the readers aren't going to care, any more than the characters do.

If anyone presented me with a book wherein the characters mysteriously find themselves somewhere and then learn that their lives will be in extreme peril in three days unless they do something about it and their response is "oh, let's sit down and talk about ourselves and find out about one another", I'd throw it in the bin.

I wouldn't even take it down to the second-hand bookshop as I'd feel bad subjecting some other unsuspecting soul to it.

A character who really really really wants an icecream but has to brave the sweltering heat of the walk to the shop in order to get it would interest me more than any number of characters whose response to peril is to sit down and talk about themselves in a "low key" manner.

As it happens, the characters in my book all come 'round in a mysterious place under mysterious circumstances and their first impulse is to start doing something about getting out of the situation.

Due to the nature of the setting, they've got plenty of leisure to talk whilst doing so and learn about each other (and come into conflict with one another over various things) and it lacks the deadline that your premise has, but the key thing is: they're actively doing something about it, not sitting around in a lounge yakking to one another because "hey, we've got three days, right?"

My characters quite literally have no time constraints on them at all, if it took them six years to get out of the situation, it wouldn't mean anything more than them all ending up six years older - but they immediately get on with the task of trying to get out of the situation and attempting to find out where they are and how they got there.

"What is this place, how did I get here, how do I get home?"

What would my characters do if there was some mysterious "host" who said "Hey, I'm the one who brought you here."? They would be badgering him with questions about why, how and where - and if he wasn't forthcoming, they'd probably at least entertain the idea of beating the information out of him.

If he said that he'd set things up so that they would die in three days' time unless they did something to stop it, "The Third Degree" would most likely ensue.

If they couldn't do that for some reason, then they'd be working like mad to find the solution to the problem within the first twenty-four hours.

Why is that? Because that's the first thing I (and pretty much most of the population) would do.

If I were on that airship and told it was doomed to crash within three days unless I did something to stop it, I'd be ripping up the floorboards and wall panels looking for the controls within five minutes.

"...that propulsive fast acting dread of "oh god we're gonna die, we gotta hurry!" is just not interesting to me."

Then why, oh, why did you make that the premise of the story? If you don't want to explore their response to the threat of death, don't include it.

"...trying to find something I know will hook the reader long enough for them to care about the characters, thus care about their plot."

I know nothing about your characters except that their response to "the ship will crash in three days unless you act" is to sit on their arses and talk - but that's all I need to know. Nothing you could write would make me care about them if that's their attitude. Seriously. Hearing that premise does not incline me to care about them at all.

"...mostly because in the end it'd just be revealed to be a big fat lie (the ship is never in danger of crashing)..."

So basically the only motivation for the characters to do anything at all (which somehow fails to motivate them to do more than emulate politicians} is pure bullshit anyway. As a reader, I'd feel very cheated.

It's as bad as the "it turned out to be just a dream".

"...also, by no means is there a single formula of how good stories should work. I've read plenty of stories where their plots go all over the place and there [sic] were still good."

I personally can't think of a story I've read where the characters did not react/respond to the situation (e.g. peril) and pursue their goals (e.g. self preservation).

If you want to explore characters, the mystery of waking up in a strange place alone is a hook. Delay the challenge for a bit, if you even want it at all.

Also you could always go a segmented route. They CAN do things to fix the plane, but they are unable to do things when it's not at certain set intervals (like a gameshow, survivor, or dangan ronpa blah blah blah), giving them forced down time.

You could sidestep the issue of them interrogating their host by having his message to them be delivered via a recording of some sort, depending on the technology level of your setting. If there are dirigible airships, there are probably turntable record players too.