Or "Ideas That Wicked223 Thought And Wrote Down To Foist Upon The Unsuspecting Masses."

This is where I'm going to keep all the things that I thought up and wrote down cause they're things that I thought up.

Here's the first one.

Premise The base conflict behind the story is a group of people who have something they, and who are afraid that examining it too closely will cause it to disappear and not be special anymore. These are the main characters (?). The opposing side is a person who believes the opposite, that this thing should be examined in-depth and its every mystery brought out and explained. Which of these two will be portrayed in the wrong is TBD.

Setting The central point of the series is the special places called [PLACEHOLDER]. These can be buildings, rooms, monuments, whatever they need to be, the thing they all have in common is that things happen in [PLACEHOLDER]s that do not and should not happen anywhere else. They violate every natural law in existence. They can be beautiful, terrifying, awe-inspiring, what ever. No one really knows how these places came into existence (that could be a plot point), but they are revered and worshipped by all the inhabitants of [PLACEHOLDER]. They also believe that trying to examine them will cause them to diminish in importance, and be no more. The antagonist does not care about this, and wants to take the [PLACEHOLDER]s for himself so he can figure out all of their secrets.

There are two possibilities for the actual backdrop of the story:

1. The story takes place in a fantasy world called [PLACEHOLDER]. It may or may be a stereotypical, idealized place, Ghibli Hills, Arcadia, all that sort of thing. The setting might be thoroughly homogenous, so as not to conflict with the central idea of the story. The people, who will live there, are standard honest farm working folks. The world might have to be sort of small for the story to work on the scale I want it to. The antagonist might not reasonably work in this sort of setting, as he is supposed to be some sort of scientist/inquisitive type person, which could cause a Flat Earh Atheist thing.
2. It could also feasibly take place in the real world, making this sort of an Urban Fantasy/Mundane Fantastic. The [PLACEHOLDER]s could be scattered across the world, sources of rumor and myth and the like. This could also be better for the antagonist, as he is meant to be sort of a scientist-type person, which would be better in a real world setting. The main character could also be some sort of reporter-type person. I think I’’ resort to this setting over the other one.

Genre This is very obviously a work of fantasy. Whether or not it will be high fantasy, low fantasy, round-the-corner-watch-it-go-where-it-stops-nobody-knows-fantasy, has yet TBD. It’s most likely going to be urban fantasy, with the setting change.

edited 8th Nov '09 1:09:45 PM by Wicked223

That actually makes sense and would be interesting as Urban Fantasy.

That's what I thought too.

So anymore input? Any idea what I should call the [PLACEHOLDER]s?

edited 7th Nov '09 4:27:09 PM by Wicked223

I don't know. you could call them PLACEHOLDERS. It works. OK, it doesn't really work, but it should be something that captures how cool I thought that was when I read about them.

I have cool ideas? Cool.

I guess I could use some kind of Latin word and use it for the title.

The name for the special place can be "locus" (pl. "loci").

Or! you could be edgy and add "zone" on the end.

"Loci zone" ?

Naw, not cool enough.

Go with Vector. Or something with v. Vixnest, I don't know. For some reason I just really think it should have a v in it.

Wow, my head is buzzing with ideas.

• Haruhikos (not you, Suzumiya Haruhi)
• Chaos Artifacts
• Cosmic Relics
• Lolita Crosses (my favorite) Creepy Cool Crosses
• Four Tetra(to the power of four) Four Is Death
• Baha Stones - (a The Ninety Nine reference)
• Morning Stars (yes, Louis Cypher makes it Rule Of Cool!)

I can edit this and put more later.

I'm afraid I don't quite get you? Are these for the [PLACEHOLDER]s?

Anyway, a character list and plot outline may or may not be coming next.

FWIW:

How about not casting either side as the protagonist or the antagonist? Let each faction act according to their desires and goals and let your audience decide for themselves who they identify with more. It sounds like your story revolves around a dilemma of morality (belief in god vs. not) and I think it would have more resonance with your audience if they had to decide for themselves which party was right or wrong.

That is what I was going for. And where'd you get the belief in god thing from?

Godsquad goody-goodies: <i>"...The base conflict behind the story is a group of people who have something they, and who are afraid that examining it too closely will cause it to disappear and not be special anymore...."</i>

Evil atheist scientists: <i>...The opposing side is a person who believes the opposite, that this thing should be examined in-depth and its every mystery brought out and explained.</i>

The quasi-religious macguffin here could be the cup that christ drank from at the last supper, or a cutting propagated from the buddha's bodhi tree (or from the Norse world tree yggdrasil), or what have you.

mind you i'm not trying to mock anyone's religious beliefs when I say "godsquad goody-goodies" but that's the vibe that I get since you describe them as the good guys, trying to protect some miraculous artifact that must be protected from scientific scrutiny lest the mircaulousness therein go "poof" because of the lack of faith on the part of the scientists.

That's just the direction I thought you were heading in. And that's a really good idea, too. There's a lot of material and possibility to work with.

I was afraid of that. I really intended it to be more ambiguous, no religious undertones at all, nope no sir. The [PLACEHOLDER]s are meant to be more paranormal phenomena, the ones that get covered in tabloid newspapers. Excepr, you know, better.

Don't paranormal investigators usually want to figure out why stuff happens?

No, wait, yeah you're right. But this is a different thing entirely.

You can only be ambiguous up to a point. You have to lay out some specifics or else why should the reader care (and also, you'd have no plot)? And once you do lay out specifics, people are going to start searching for religious or mythological significance. Not that there has to be any. On the upside, if people are looking for religious references, that means that they're invested in the story. That's not a bad thing.

And another FWIW... if you're stuck on this, well, write quick 500 to 1000 word backstories on some of these PLACEHOLDER places and see where your mind is taking you:

A man has a fight with his wife, leaves the house for a walk and sits down on the steps of a statue which is also a PLACEHOLDER and...

A stray cat wanders into an abandoned building which is also a one of these special places and...

Ah. I see.

My computer access is limited, so the character list may be long in coming.