restructure the story
Dec. 4th, 2019 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliPoking around with an idea. A superhero story with a different metaorigin that the one complete AND the one in process.
It's ripping off an idea from the backstory of one I read. The story was great, but -- I was kinda interested in what happened to a major character whose story the main character had learned. Back stories are generally nicer to file off the serial numbers off. BUT -- it needs to be simplified for structural elegance.
Hmm -- on reflection, the problem is that the story had stopped dead. A character was merely hiding and surviving. This works fine as it was merely setup for the main character's. (Everything in a story is about the main character.) Some of it was in fact put in for the story to stop.
Probably I should work out how his story resolved, and then work backwards.
Though I'm playing around with the meta-origin. (No, for structural reasons it can't be an alternative in either of the other two.) It's about Mad Scientists. hmmm -- assuming they have a modicum of sanity left, or their insanity runs in other directions, they will probably choose as experimental victims those people least likely to be missed. And so you end up with The Drunkard, who breaks into a liquor store by whatever name and drinks himself into a stupor, thus being easily caught despite his flying brick powers. True, going to be some kids just locked out of the home by the stepparent, a college graduate doing a walking tour, anyone whose job takes him to out of touch locations -- but even such people will be random. And if the Mad Scientist IS mad enough to not care, what would probably happen is random abductions. That would affect much of the reaction to them.
Of course, the classic Mad Scientist would probably not only cause a lot of pain and suffering in the course of giving superpowers, he would also cause a lot of death and deformity in his failures. That would reasonably bring the law down on him. Hard.
Perhaps there are Gadgeteers. In which case, I suspect the divide is between those who work with the inanimate, Good, and those with the living, Bad. Minus the rogues of the first group, but then, a Gadgeteer might even be able to make normal humans able to cope with at least some supers. That will make you popular.
It's ripping off an idea from the backstory of one I read. The story was great, but -- I was kinda interested in what happened to a major character whose story the main character had learned. Back stories are generally nicer to file off the serial numbers off. BUT -- it needs to be simplified for structural elegance.
Hmm -- on reflection, the problem is that the story had stopped dead. A character was merely hiding and surviving. This works fine as it was merely setup for the main character's. (Everything in a story is about the main character.) Some of it was in fact put in for the story to stop.
Probably I should work out how his story resolved, and then work backwards.
Though I'm playing around with the meta-origin. (No, for structural reasons it can't be an alternative in either of the other two.) It's about Mad Scientists. hmmm -- assuming they have a modicum of sanity left, or their insanity runs in other directions, they will probably choose as experimental victims those people least likely to be missed. And so you end up with The Drunkard, who breaks into a liquor store by whatever name and drinks himself into a stupor, thus being easily caught despite his flying brick powers. True, going to be some kids just locked out of the home by the stepparent, a college graduate doing a walking tour, anyone whose job takes him to out of touch locations -- but even such people will be random. And if the Mad Scientist IS mad enough to not care, what would probably happen is random abductions. That would affect much of the reaction to them.
Of course, the classic Mad Scientist would probably not only cause a lot of pain and suffering in the course of giving superpowers, he would also cause a lot of death and deformity in his failures. That would reasonably bring the law down on him. Hard.
Perhaps there are Gadgeteers. In which case, I suspect the divide is between those who work with the inanimate, Good, and those with the living, Bad. Minus the rogues of the first group, but then, a Gadgeteer might even be able to make normal humans able to cope with at least some supers. That will make you popular.