More plot(bunnies)
by V.E. on October 8th, 2005
filed under ladyamedeus, writing
One hundred years from now. The Middle East has been remapped by the military might of President Condi Rice sometime in the 2030s and now the hub of the world is International City, a 20-year-old metropolis in what used to be Kazhakstan (spelling?). The divide between the haves and have-nots is more glaring than ever and the marginalization of the Muslim locals is brewing serious discontent…
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Aliens contact the US government and offer this agreement: They take all of the US’s homosexuals, and in return, the entire world gets a renewed, perfect environment, poverty is history, and the economy is booming. If the US accepts, 10% of the population is history. If we decline, the aliens may attack, they may destroy us, they may leave us alone. No one is sure what the outcome will be. And no one is sure what will become of those they’ve abducted.
You could take it two ways. One, if the US did accept. What would life be like without a certain group of people (not necessarily homosexuals)? What would life be like without poverty and a perfect economy/environment?
Or, we decline. What do the aliens do? Lots of creative things could happen (ones that I’m too tired right now to think of).
Other things to consider…
-Is the government hiding this from us? Coming up with a conspiracy to cover it up? What would happen if they told us straight out?
-First person vs. world view
-Through the eyes of the person abducted
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http://www.aar-online.org/mc/page.do
http://www.publication.com/aylad/aaragent.htm
http://fmwriters.com/
http://www.lazette.net/Vision/
Time of Glowing
by V.E. on October 8th, 2005
filed under beauty, spirituality
The goal of ecstasy ceremonies is to awaken the divine energy that lies within your soul. She is fully awake only during ecstasy. Thus our techniques are designed to maximize the intensity and duration of this ecstasy. If you do the techniques properly, this should last a few minutes. With years of practice, it is possible for it to last as long as 20-30 minutes.
The effect of this is to break down completely the barriers between your conscious self and the divine goddess energy within. This leads to what we call the “Time of Glowing.” This is the period of time immediately after the ecstasy, while the barriers are still dissolved and have not yet reformed.
This time of glowing is just as important as the ecstasy. This we consider sacred. The Goddess herself is speaking through you. It is the job of anyone else participating in the ceremony to let you speak and do whatever you want during this time, and to help this period last as long as possible. You are being completely open at this time, letting your innermost spiritual feelings that are normally suppressed come rushing to the surface.
This may not always be pleasant. I have seen women cry profusely at this time. If the spirit within is troubled, whatever is troubling her will come to the surface. But it is essential that you let your spirit do this, express herself, and equally essential that you listen. Your spirit is telling you what she needs.
Taken from: Divinely Female
Plotbunnies attack
by V.E. on October 8th, 2005
filed under ladyamedeus, nanowrimo, writing
“i write ‘SHITTY ROUGH DRAFT’ at the top of my nano novel, thus giving myself permission to write the crappiest crap ever. it helps.”
It starts off with this family adopting a 17 year old girl, a senior in high school, and are told she’s been on the streets for a year. But they’re goody-two-shoes and despite knowing they’re probably getting this terror, settle down to raise her, ignoring their own 17-year-old’s protests. Imagine their surprise when the ‘terror’ moves in and is perfect. Her room is always spotless to the point of being “military” perfect. Her grades–perfect. She doesn’t fight, even though they put her in a rich kid’s school where they try to make fun of her. All in all, she’s perfect. But very professional and cold.
It turns out the government took in 20 infants whose mothers died in childbirth, and divided them in two groups, ten each. They’re trying to create weapons, men and women trained from birth to be perfect soldiers. They never have any concept with anyone except trainers, so it’s easy to moniter the concepts they come in contact with. Then, when the group is 16, the project is cut. They tell the “soldiers” that they’re being sent on a mission, and they’ll be contacted with information. And then they’re just dropped off in ten different cities. They have no reason to believe anything else, since they’ve never heard of it.
The adopted girl is one of the children/teenagers. But her new family is very involved with politics and she finds out the project’s old general, their father figure, is running for politics. Along with some other stuff, it causes her to figure out what happened. She disappears. Then six months later, the general is giving a speech at the school, and all ten “soldiers” march in. The whole story comes out, the general and the others involved are reprimanded and removed from office. But what happens to the “soldiers”? Will the government dispose of them, since they pose a potential threat to the country? What do they do?
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It’s sci-fi…ish. The year is 2052. Technology has been beefed up. The world’s forgotten about their past. There are no history books left, as they have discontinued to write them and the old ones have been burned. The only thing left is the English language and technology.
There are nasty people out there. The people can’t tell because they’re pretty, comforting, friendly, and have this ‘you can trust me’ kind of sweetness surrounding them. Doesn’t sound too nasty, does it? At least they don’t go about killing people or anything, right? At least they don’t affect your brain, right?
Actually, these nasty people are genetically modified humans. Lab experiments, if you will. There are certain chemicals in these people that disrupt the brain and cause you to be controlled or some such. The chemicals are what make them so sweet.
Nobody, besides an organization of kids, who are nothing more than simply street rats, know about these people. Your MC, a guy about the age of fifteen, comes in here. He’s oblivious about these ‘nasties’ until he makes friends with one of the street rats after being saved by one. MC is almost nothing more than a street rat himself, living with a mother who he takes care of for the most part.
The kid teaches him all he knows and about the nasty people and what they do to the mind and all that stuff. He lets him into the ‘club’ of kids that know after he swears to never interact with one of the nasty ‘things’.
Then, MC falls in love with one of these nasty people and his friend finds out. Friend is furious and tells him how ignorant he is. MC doesn’t believe his new girlfriend is a nasty. MC gets mad at friend and continues dating said girl… and said girl sends him back to club to annihlate people who know about nasties.
He figures out she really is nasty and goes to the club anyway, with a different plan. To kill his girlfriend and obviously, to apologize.
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Your MC falls happily in love and gets married to their One True Sweetheart, and much smoochy-sunshiny-happiness ensues. The couple move into their fab, rent-controlled NY loft, and go about their high-powered, plenty-of-leisurely-time careers, blinded by their contentment with each other.
Your MC wakes up early one morning. It’s storming like mad. The One True Sweetheart isn’t in bed, isn’t home, is nowhere to be found. After an hour, your MC doesn’t think anything of it; after a day, your MC is really freaking worried; after two days, your MC is frantic. It won’t stop storming, either. And what’s worse, nothing is like she left it on the other, sunshiny, sweetheart day – the car keys aren’t in the drawer, there’s only one toothbrush in the bathroom, the dog is now a cat, the neighbors don’t answer their doors, all the in-laws telephones answer to things like bakeries and “we’re sorry, but the number you have called has been disconnected.”
So things get stranger and harder from there. After another day, MC starts to doubt her sanity. Nobody will listen to her. No missing persons report can be filed b/c her sweetheart apparently doesn’t exist. Nobody knows her at her work. She has no money in the bank, contrary to how she left it last week. And she can’t get over this damned weather – when will it ever stop raining?!?
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A girl – it doesn’t have to be a girl, though, I suppose – has an interesting condition: nobody remembers her for more than a minute or two. She talks to somebody, and they begin to forget how the conversation began. She walks away, and it was as if she was never there. She mostly survives by obtaining whatever she needs through theft, because nobody ever catches her and it’s not like she can get a job or anything. Also, the condition seems to affect her, as well – she can’t remember her past at all. She’s clear for about the past few months, then it gets fuzzier and fuzzier, and as time goes on, she forgets more and more. (I.e, she can only remember the latest 2 or 3 months.) To compensate for this, she carries a journal in which she writes EVERYTHING down, but they only go back so far. She’s got kind of a collection of them. (The story could even be written in journal format, maybe.) Anyhow, one day, this boy – 12 or 13 years old – comes up to her and starts talking to her for no good reason. She enjoys talking to him. And then he says something that changes everything: “I’ve seen you here before.” She has no idea why he remembers her when nobody else can…
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Aliens arrive and begin to move in. They colonize/take over the planet/start killing/whatever you want. Follow a specific character or a group of them through the occupation and resistance.
In the end, reveal that your characters are actually an alien race and the “aliens” that are invading are humans.
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When Nietzsche said “God is dead”, despite later wrapping it in metaphor and philosophy, the first time he said it it was because he accidentally stumbled upon God’s funeral. Depending on how gritty or funny you’d like to make it, the cause of death can be an accident or more sinister.
Freed from any real obligations to be on one side or the other, and the black and white world, the angels and demons are free to live a more “grey” existance and do so among us.
Some try to keep the ideals that existed before and police things and others cause mischief. I would have picked a previously-low-ranking guardian angel who still tries to do his job and take care of his charges and their decendants without the resources he used to have.
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On December 21st, 1684, a plea was made to the Heavens, who replied by opening its gates, releasing Angels into our world. The Angels saved the world from disaster and the Heavens, when they recalled the Angels, were surprised to find they wanted to stay, and he let them be reborn unto the earth upon the death of a person of their choosing, as long as the person dying agreed to the mergeing of their souls with those of the angels. The Angels gave up their souls to become other people. And their powers and immortality are their gifts to the humans they reside in, merging with that person. December 21st, 2006, is the time they will choose their new identities. Yep, politics in Heaven take a LooooonnnnG time to work out, they’ve only recently agreed to do this and they chose this date.
Some Angels released could have been
> > An Angel of Wisdom
> > An Angel of Grace
> > An Angel of Beauty
> > An Angel of Science
> > An Angel of Destruction
> > An Angel of Chaos
> > An Angel of Fire
> > An Angel of Water
> > An Angel of Earth
> > An Angel of Air
> > An Angel of Music
Angels didn’t have names, just their status and job…Angel of Music, etc…
Working title: ‘Angels, Inc’
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The Legend of Alcobaça
The Prince of Alcobaça, Dom Pedro, had an arranged marriage to Constanza, the Infanta of Castile. She, however, was not his true love. His true love was Inês, a servant girl. When King Alfonso IV learned of the affair, he warned Pedro that it was a dangerous political situation, and Inês would have to leave Alcobaça. As far as Pedro knew, his father provided Inês and her family with land and a place to live safely. In truth, shortly after she was moved into her new home, the King had her and her family murdered.
When Pedro discovered this, he was made to believe that an enemy kingdom had committed the assassination, and he led a war against them. Upon discovering the truth, he turned traitor, came back and laid seige instead to the Kingdom of Alcobaça. Taking over his father’s throne, he announced his marriage to Inês, and declared that she was their new Queen. After dealing with her murderers in most brutal fashion, he held a coronation ceremony for the dead Queen, forcing all his courtiers to kneel before her and individually kiss her rotting hand.
It’s unclear how long Pedro lived after that — perhaps, in his madness, he took his own life shortly after — but their tombs now face each other, so that the first thing Pedro sees when he awakens on Judgement Day will be his beloved Inês.
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Basically, the MC is a perfectly normal, everyday guy, with a steady job, married to a woman he loves, and he’s pretty much content with his life. Until his past catches up to him. (Go figure…)
Turns out, when he was a child, he developed MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder). The thing is-he’s not the original personality, he’s one of the alters. Through some freak turn of events, all of the alter-personalities were split from the original and have their own bodies. These ‘alters’ prefer to just lay low and stay out of events, and interact with people as little as possible for fear of being discovered, except for the MC, who is just trying to live his own life and ignore his past. Meanwhile, the ‘original’ personality has become a serial killer/mass murderer.etc. and the MC wants to stop him. (Though this could very likely lead to his own death, as well as that of all the other alters.)
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The Dunhill Code.
Ms. Elizabeth Dunhill has spent her life trying to write successfully. After spending much of her twenties and thirties turning out slushy romances or paperback crime stories, Ms Dunhill finally gets her big idea. While staring at an empty notebook, an idea for a plot comes to her so clearly that it could have been divine intervention. She sits writing solidly for months and ships it out to her agent.
The book becomes a hit. It instantly tops record sales, becoming popular among children and adults alike. Ms Dunhill becomes extremely popular and very rich. Cue happiness.
Then, one dark and stormy night (it has to be, doesn’t it?), there comes a knock at the door of Ms Dunhill’s comfortable home. She answers it to a heavily armed police force who arrest a very confused Ms Dunhill.
It turns out that the book that Ms Dunhill has written includes a code which subconciously brainwashes the reader into violent crimes/treasonous acts/some other random happening. No-one believes that Ms. Dunhill did not write the code intentionally… and soon… she starts to wonder where the idea came from herself…
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Aliens arrive. They build a base somewhere on Earth, let’s say, Hawaii. They simply move all the people there elsewhere, and build their base. They have no interaction with humans, other than to drive away – or shoot down if necessary – any attempts by humans to visit. A few years later, they leave, abandoning their base. Maybe after a battle with another group of aliens, who, perhaps, build their own base, or take over the other one, for a few years before abandoning it.
Aliens arrive, they build a base somewhere on Earth, in the middle of farmland. Again, no serious interaction with humans, but they don’t bother trying to keep them away. Maybe they even hire a few humans for menial labor (paying them in some kind of raw material – perhaps gold). Again, they eventually leave, perhaps after a battle.
Aliens arrive, buildign a base on the Moon or Mars or somewhere else in the Solar System. No interaction at all with humans, and they leave shortly after, with or without combat with hostile aliens.
In any event, the plot would center around humans’ responses. The aliens themselves are more of a plot device than anything else.
Alternately, you might tell the story from both sides.
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Human colonists leave from Earth to settle our closest neighbor star system and setup the other end of a jump-gate system that will allow instant travel between the two systems. After 25 years they arrive, setup the gate and travel back to Earth only to arrive at Earth… in the years right before Jesus. A colonist goes missing and assumes the role of the Jesus– or was Jesus actually a space traveller? Is this space traveller a fraud or actual birth of a religion? Do the other colonists help, stop the rogue traveller or try to recreate biblical events with tweaks? How do the characters handle the idea that they might be what Earth has always perceived as God?
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The White House is sent a picture of a briefcase nuclear bomb with a countdown timer set to 12 days with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The next day another picture of the bomb is recieved — this time 11 days on the counter and with Big Ben in the background. Will Europe and the US be able to track down this globe-trotting time bomb before the counter runs out?
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Our characters father passes away leaving the character to clean up and sell the fathers apartment. The character had a poor relationship with his father and as such they barely talked for 15 years. In cleaning the apartment the character finds that the father was working on a novel– it is left unfinished. The character reads the unfinished work only to discover that it’s not a novel but an autobiography. In an attempt to finish the autobiography the character must research his father’s past and learn about him for the first time.
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A super secretive research firm privately develops a time travel machine and markets it as a travel vacation for the super elite. The CIA finds out and captures the technology, but a small group of billionaires (and an ex-President?) are marooned in ancient Rome. How will the inventors destroy the time machine before it is used for devious purposes while at the same time planning a rescue for the marooned time travellers? How do the marooned travellers deal with their longer than anticipated stay?
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In the early 1980′s FEMA was focused not on natural disasters but on exercises in rounding up American dissedants into concentration camps and trying to sneak in bills that would give itself the ability to control the military and declare martial law in a national crisis.
What if they succeeded?
(You’ll have to do a little research…or you could go to my blog and find some of the details yourself.)
http://nmallory.exit-23.net/
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Has anyone yet done the one about the writer who is taking part in the NaNoWriMo challenge and writing it in real time so a day = a chapter = a day? You could call it Thirty. That way you can spend an entire chapter talking about your writer’s block or all the ways you procrastinate.
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The people in (a little rural town) discover two young children wandering in the fog one morning. The children can’t explain who they are or how they appeared. Nor can they explain the little idiosyncracies in their behavior, like their terrible fear of cars and their aversion to meat, egg, and dairy.
Three weeks later, two young children from one of the town’s poorest families disappear…
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Serious Roleplay – [editor’s note: I play RPGs from time to time, including Dungeons and Dragons, but I’ve never become so invested as to interrupt other aspects of my life. However, I’ve heard stories about people becoming entrapped or involved in such a way that their behavior changed, or they even committed suicide. Even though the people (often religious or political activists) never give us any proof regarding any of the provided cases, I found it to be a fascinating concept… fruitful enough for a whole novel, in fact.]
A boy in ninth grade begins playing a popular role playing game with some friends after school. As his character grows more powerful, he begins experiencing increased strength and speed in real life. Eventually, he finds that he can work real magic and uses it to exact revenge on bullies. As he role plays more and more crucial missions in game, he finds his real life becoming more chaotic and dangerous and resolves to use his powers responsibly. After discovering an evil force in real life which only he can combat, his friends and family become concerned at his declining grades and sour demeanor, though he continues to play the game. After defeating the great evil, his mood improves, but when his character dies in the game, he goes home and commits suicide, empty of any thought or feeling, as though already dead. (Is he insane, or is the game actually a gateway? Unclear.)
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I wrote my first NaNo in real time (30 days) about a woman who is going to commit suicide. She gives herself 30 days to consider all the options, all the repercussions, etc. And the book ended with her not saying whether she decided to go through with it or not.
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Now, you know how there’s usually the whole good-guy fighting against an evil supervillian murdering thousands? Well, what if the evil supervillian is actually “weeding” out people with a certain …disease, whatever, that on some date (January 1, 2000 is always convenient) would “activate” and spread around the world, killing everyone on the planet. What if the “good guy” is actually the supervillian, travelled back in time? He has to kill everyone with the disease thing or else the entire human race would die. This would be most easily done by going the evil-psycho villian route, killing whoever carried the disease.
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A woman is living a normal life, but is haunted by something in her past. (you pick) She is in a car accident and is told by God/St. Peter/whoever that her time is not up, but the person in an alternative timeline (who made a different decision than the one that haunts her) is going to die no matter what. The woman is given the choice of dying or going to this alternate timeline and seeing how it would have turned out had she made her other choice.
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There’s a mad-man. He sees things on the walls, is scared of marshmellows, etc… The only thing is, he’s not mad, he’s a psychic, and he’s seeing two realities at once, which makes him a little loopy. Suddenly, this guy and girl come into his life, and they need to get into this other reality to take back what was stolen from them. I imagined a giant jewel with magical powers, but whatever. The thief was a dark prince, trying to take over all the realities there are.
One price. There are 87 realities
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A bunch of teens are on their way home from a movie theater. Somehow they get drugged and kidnapped. They wake up in a strange, and dark place. They later learn that they are trapped beneath the old prison of Alkatraz. They are the toys of this rich madman who tortures them almost every day. Basically the whole novel is about what he does to them, how they survive, and how they get out.
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Due to genetic manipulation, the future has run into a horrible problem. For generations, the number of males born has increased, while females have decreased. They originally believed this to be due to problems with the males, ie, less production of sperm with the X chromosone. They only realized too late that it was a resistance from the female egg to accept the X chromosone. By the time they figured it out, males outnumbered females 20 to 1 and the existing females had the mutation, causing them to give birth almost exclusively to male children. The world will die if something isn’t done.
A brilliant scientist discovers a way to bring females from the past, before the mutation, to the present (ie, the future from our perspective), but the process was deemed immoral and therefore illegal. Against the law, he began secretly snatching women from the 21st century at the time of their death. This had to be done in great moderation or he’d be found out, and he carefully chose women who were dying of things that could be cured in his time.
The heroine of the story is a woman from our time who was dying of a degenerative, long-term disease. Although she’s only in her 20′s, she has spent her life ill. Suddenly, she finds herself in the future and perfectly fit. She has a new lease on life. Even more intriguing to her is the easy pickings of a world in which men are clammering to be with her simply because females are rare.
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