# A story idea (General critique needed)



## Gavrill (Aug 23, 2008)

The story starts with the destruction of the River Village. My main character is a poor, young Hyendae whose parents are killed in the assult. She survives and treks to the nearby village of Bluemoon. There, she is taken in by a kind Lupine, whom proceeds to raise her as a proper young maiden. However, this doesn't sit well with our hero. She wants to know who killed her family, and why. She wants revenge.
(How she survived, how she got to Bluemoon, etc will be written in the story.)


On the way there she meets an eccentric Celestial (a human with wings, basically) whose family was also killed by what she calls "The Dark One". She also meets a rebellious Panthera (tiger-person), a spoiled Vulpe priestess (fox-person), and a carefree Drake (dragon-person). Somehow the mismatched crew manage to arrive at the Dark One's lair. But within the lair is a illusion which rends happiness and reveals your deepest fears and secrets. (Believe me, that's a lot worse than it sounds. Just brainstorming each character's personal hell gave me the jeebies.)

The plot overall consists of several heartwrenching elements (meant to be a tradgedy) involving self-sacrifice, betrayal, grief, etc. It won't all be tradgedy however. I'm planning to put in some very "Aww" moments in there. 

Does it sound like a good idea? Any sterotypes I need to change? Blargh.


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## Kender3421 (Aug 23, 2008)

It sounds intresting to me. I would like to see a brief part of this story, maybe a paragraph or two, to make sure, but I think you have a great idea. I think the major problem your going to run into is this so called "Dark One." You really have two options for this character in my mind.

The first option is someone who dosn't know that they are evil. This kind of person beleives that they are doing the things they do, which happen to be evil in total, but they do them because it leads towards a "greater good." The only problem in this type of character is that the "greater good" has to sound rational to make the other characters think. A great example of this type of character is located inside of the Dragonlance universe created by Margret Weis and Tracy Hickman. In the history of this world is a man known as the kingpriest. This man was so wholly good that he became evil. He wanted to become the greatest of gods and hunted down all those that didn't follow his views. Even follow good characters were killed or imprisoned by him. Great example of this type of character.

The other option is someone who embraces the total evil in their heart. These types of villians are hard to write in general because there has to be something motivating them other then that they are evil. If you go this route, you need to find out why he/she would want to destroy the river village, why he/she killed the celestial's family and why he/she does the things they do. I think of this type of character and there is only one true example in my mind. Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7. This character wanted to seek revenge on those that made him the way he was. His brain became twisted and dark and sought nothing but pain and suffering in the world, going so far out of his way to taunt everyone else in the universe. Later on, he sought to extend his reach beyond that of the planet and "sail the cosmos" using the current planet as his vessel. You want bad ass and in your face, this is your guy.

Like I said, it will be hard to get the antagonist right for this, but if you do it right, it will come easy.


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## Shouden (Aug 23, 2008)

Almost sounds like Inuyasha meats Wizard of Oz meets the furry universe. Interesting, intriguing and frightening. I think, if done right it could slip along side series such as TriGun or Inuyasha. But I would change to Dark One to something more creative unless you are wanting the symbolizm. (i.e. I have a red dragon in my latest project named  Darkness which is a direct reference to the book of Revelations where it discribes the Lord of Darkness (lucifer) as a red dragon. In my series, Darkness controls the corruption of the city of Earth.) but other than that. I say it sounds intriguing and you should go for it.


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## Gavrill (Aug 23, 2008)

This is kinda important.
_Where are the spoiler tags??_

_SPOILER_






The "Dark One" is my main character's brother who, through a series of misunderstandings and twisted actions, became "evil".








/SPOILER


Basically he went batshit insane and took it out on his parents first, then everyone else. POWER CAUSES MADNESS. But at the same time, he refused to hurt the one closest to him....

Ninja edit: "Dark One" refers to the fact no one has seen his true face as well as the fact that he is sensitive to light and therefore wears a mask.


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## Shouden (Aug 23, 2008)

alright. cool. Yeah, i can't think of a better name of a faceless enemy that hasn't been used a congillion times already. anyway. nice plot twist.


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## foozzzball (Aug 23, 2008)

Basically your plot is a version of Chicken Little. Foxy Loxy eats all the folk via the illusion that rends people? Interestingly you don't mention anything that implies your characters get out of it alive - fitting with Chicken Little, again. 

It's pretty weak. The mismatched crew doesn't seem to have a reason to be mismatched, or neccesarily even together, or at least your really short synopsis doesn't tell us anything about that. My verdict? Chances are, midway through you're going to get discouraged and give it up. It's easier to make plans and daydream about writing, rather than to actually write. And the way you're dressing this up, it's a lot longer than it needs to be.

If really you do want to write it, though...

Firstly you're going to have to write this because you love it, not because anyone else will love it for you.

Secondly, consider cutting your cast. A large ensemble will generally detract from your protagonist.

Thirdly, examine what your story actually _is_. You're talking about writing your protagonist's origins from day one. Is the story about the protagonist's origins, or is it about the protagonist meeting up with their peers, or is it about the ultimate conclusion? Don't muddy your work with a dozen half-finished ideas, just go for the parts that are neccesary for the story to go on. Maybe your protagonist's adoptive mother taught the protagonist about eight kinds of tea and ballroom dancing - this isn't relevant to the plot so don't mention it, even if it makes for a nice scene. If it makes for a nice scene, find a story in which it's relevant and use it there - or just write the nice scene and use that by itself, a really short work can just be a vignette, there purely for atmosphere.

Finally, your villain is passive. _Sure_ this bad guy killed off the protagonist's family, etcetera etcetera trope trope, but from the sounds of it, during the story they're essentially a static figure and the protagonist has to chase them down. Don't let this just be a chicken little thing - take the background you've put in there and make the villain an active part of the story.

Lengthy quests for vengeance don't, typically, work out very well narratively. It's basically a lengthy series of events that don't mean much until the penultimate showdown which, generally, is drained of impact because it's been the only focus to drag the reader through the other two thirds - or more - of the story. (Most of which in these sorts of things is, broadly, irrelevant to the conclusion of things.)


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## Shouden (Aug 23, 2008)

you do know Chicken Little is about a hen who thinks the sky is falling, don't you? Unless your are thinking of the Disney version, in which case, there is no way a woman can play the lead role in an movie where she would have to actually be the heroin and do some thinking, especially when it's  a children's movie.


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## foozzzball (Aug 23, 2008)

No, Chicken Little works like this.

Traumatic event occurs to protagonist -> Protagonist flees traumatic event and in the process picks up a lot of friends to help her attempt to 'solve' the traumatic event -> Protagonist and friends encounter a dark force (Foxy Loxy) and are either: Overcome by dark force; escape the dark force; or defeat the dark force.

Trust me, while it's not a perfect fit, it's pretty much Chicken Little.

And, uhm. ... Where'd the misogynic comment come from?


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## Shouden (Aug 23, 2008)

Well, that's great, you described pretty much every story ever created. Heck, even Die Hard has McCain picking up a friend or two along the way to kicking the "dark force"s ass.

And I did say it add some Inuyasha attributes. But Inuyasha is cool.

And the misogynic comment......um...yeah, sorry about that. I got a little carried away.


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## Gavrill (Aug 23, 2008)

I understand what you're getting at, foozzzball. The reason it's so vague is because I've yet to have it set in stone and it is therefore I can make major edits without sobbing over it. I'm definately considering shifting the weakness/name/general "omnipotent" villian. My true main characters are Hyendae (named Shenzi of course) and the Celestial. 
Of course, Harry Potter got as far as it did with a static villain and a group of friends, but eh. I want to be at least somewhat original. Any other major problems this story may encounter?


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 23, 2008)

I hesitate a little say this since it's receiving so much support (and rightly so; you can write a good story with an unoriginal plot), but I'm a fairly avid reader of epic fantasy, and I've seen this kind of thing more times than I care to think about.  It seems to me you're just mixing elements of The Lord of the Rings, Eragon, The Wheel of Time, and The Sword of Truth together to make a slightly different version of all of those.
So it's not original.
That said, I don't know if you should care about that.  Those books are all wildly successful (though I'm getting a little tired of the same plot recycled so much), and I'm sure yours could be too, if you write it well enough.  That's the key, there.  Anything can be entertaining if it's written well enough, and if there's enough in it that's new to make it more interesting (well, except in the case of Eragon, I guess, but I'm relegating that to anomaly status).
So I guess the one issue I might have with your idea is the characters.  A fellow whose parents are killed wanting to get revenge is logical, sure, but it's been done in SO many times it's become very, very boring.  Believe me when I say this particular character has been beaten to death, reanimated, and then beaten back to death in a much more gruesome manner.  I would rethink this idea.  Even if it means keeping the character, but relegating it to a side-role and focusing instead on one of the others.
And as for the others....  I sincerely hope you're going to flesh them out a lot more than you're hinting at, because any characters that can be described in one word aren't really characters; they're tools.  They're fine for books for very small children, but anyone beyond probably 5th grade level isn't going to be very excited to see what silly thing the 'carefree' drake does next, or what annoying thing the 'spoiled' priestess might say.  Don't try to give characters labels; it'll only slow you (and, in a way, them) down.
As for the Dark One... I'm not a big fan of the name (in fact, the name of the main evil force in the Wheel of Time series is 'the Dark One') or the concept, again because it's pretty over-done.  Villains who are dynamic are much more interesting, both to read and to write, so I don't think it's particularly wise to make your main baddy some totally corrupted, beyond redemption bad person who must be destroyed.  And the revelation you speak of concerning him smacks a little too much of Star Wars.
Anyway, those are just my opinions about it.  It's your work, and you can do what you want, but if you're worried about stereotypes and the like, maybe take another look at it.  If not, just be sure to add a little something really cool to make it your own (which isn't all that hard to do, if you give it some thought).
Hopefully that didn't sound too harsh.  I'm very opinionated about these kinds of things, because I'm a latte-sipping elitist.  Well, except that I'm not a huge fan of lattes.  But don't take anything I said personally.


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## Gavrill (Aug 24, 2008)

Bejeebus. I have read none of those books yet I steal elements from _all _of them? Fuck.

Back to the writing tablet.


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 24, 2008)

That'll probably happen no matter what you come up with.  Just give it some thought and maybe do a little more reading for inspiration.  You'll get something brilliant in no time.


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## Gavrill (Aug 24, 2008)

No problem! I'm still keeping my hyena and celestial combo.


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## Shouden (Aug 24, 2008)

yeah, reading is always a good way to get inspiration. I have stolen things from so many authors it's not even funny. But that's how I developed my own style, though. just pick and choose some of the flavors I like and adding my own twist and ideas to the batch. I am going to read through a Ghost in the Shell magna soon. (Good thing, 'cause I am writing a fanfic of GITS.) But, anyways. I do like the idea Shenzi. but you should ignore me, 'cause I probably never read it.


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## Gavrill (Aug 24, 2008)

At any rate, practice makes perfect.


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## Kender3421 (Aug 24, 2008)

Shenzi, write what you want to write and don't mind us. We are the guests in your world, make it how you would like to see it. You have to think long and hard, like years, to come up with a story that doesn't have something in common with a movie, book, tv show, manga or anything else. Make it how you would like to read it and someone will share your views.


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 24, 2008)

I'll add to that and say that it'll always be new to somebody.  If you put a lot of work into this concept, no sense just tossing it.


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## foozzzball (Aug 24, 2008)

Okay, uh, your main character is, like, your personal character? Oh dear. Uh. Oh dear oh dear. _Oh dear_.

Is 'Shenzi' something that's been knocking through your mind and notebooks since some point when you were a kid? I've seen this happen a lot, and unfortunately it tends to result in something that needs to be abandoned. Preferably entirely. 

What happens is that, you come up with stuff as a kid and develop a huge emotional attachment to it and it just eats up all of your creative time and... ultimately, even after ten years of development, it is still the type of thing a kid came up with. I know some people knocking around with stuff like this in their thirties, and it can just be, uhm. ... Painful.

Never be afraid to come up with new characters and plots for new projects. The new stuff will reflect your continuing growth as a human being, in general the old stuff will hold you back some.

I am happy to be proven wrong, but this is the kind of stuff I see. (Also particularly problematic are the roleplaying characters that are put into different media. Never seen it work out well.)

The essential issue is that sometimes the characters makes the story, and sometimes the story makes the character. Very seldom can a character be wedged into a story 'to be there' becaues you're attached to them.

As for originality...

Don't feel like you need to be original. The first story that got written down was done roughly with the dawn of writing, and at that point they were generally copying down oral traditions - so even then the chances that a written story was 'original' were slim to none. So since then - what, three thousand BC? Earlier? -  humanity has been creating a larger and larger body of work which has, very recently, been exploding with the advent of stuff like 'the printing press'. (Yes, a couple of hundred years is very recent. The novel - literally 'The New Thing' - was really only formally viewed as such in the seventeen hundreds or so.)

There is no such thing as originality anymore. Not only does the weight of our ancestors rise high upon our troubled shoulders, but now our peers attempt to murder us with a deluge of trash every November in NaNoWriMo.

Do not strive towards originality. Being 'original' is not even neccesarily a marker of whether or not you've written anything worth reading. 

Other problems? Metric ton. I'm not going to get into the little ad-hoc thing about whether or not you'll be writing something new or derivative of movie X - since I believe those things are all derivative of something else, anyway. It doesn't matter how derivative it is, so long as it's _good_. Or at least, that's all that matters to other people.

See, I disagree with Kender3421 here.



> Shenzi, write what you want to write and don't mind us. We are the guests in your world, make it how you would like to see it. You have to think long and hard, like years, to come up with a story that doesn't have something in common with a movie, book, tv show, manga or anything else. Make it how you would like to read it and someone will share your views.



This implies you are a special unique snowflake. Sadly, you are not. I am not. Nobody is. Last year something like a hundred thousand people participated in Nanowrimo - those are people who wish to 'write things'. Fifteen thousand of them managed to produce fifty-thousand words in a month - not neccesarily good words, but words.

There is a lot of competition and a lot of people who have no idea about what the heck they're doing. (If I had any sense I would be telling you, and everyone else in this thread, to stop writing immediately and go and learn art. There's too much competition as it is without me offering _handy tips_!)

Readers are not the guests. They are the consumers. They are dirty, horrible consumers of the vareity who will walk into your story pick it apart for the parts they like, shred the rest, complain that the good wasn't good en ough, etcetera etcetera. They are murderous bastards. None of them will share your views and if one does, be extremely suspicious. They probably want you to write something _for_ them! Or worse, give them _advice_!

So, for God's sake, do not fall into the neat little pit of mediocrity that says 'Aww, you should just write for _you_ and it'll all be fine'. You should develop a thick, scaly carapace which no evil comment, nor snarky comment about your grammar can penetrate. Tired, aching legs that will carry you along even through the muck and mire of a truly problematic first draft. In effect it's all similar, but the mindset is different.

Otherwise?

Write short. Seriously, write short. Get into the habit of finishing things, rather than merely starting them. A crappy finished story is still better than the nigh-infinite tides of crappy unfinished stories. Furthermore, you can _edit_ a finished story to make it less crappy. Figure out what the longest piece of prose you've written to date is, and aim to write something just a little longer than that.


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## TakeWalker (Aug 24, 2008)

Just to butt in, MLR covered all the bases.

fooozzball covered them with _hilarity_. :3


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 24, 2008)

> Readers are not the guests. They are the consumers.


Unless, of course, you don't actually want to make money or have any readers.  Then writing is a bit like any other small-time hobby.  And writing for oneself is a good way to start, because it ends up being the best way to finish (unless you want to write a best-seller; then you have to make a few million concessions for the public as well... or at least to your editor).
Just... you know; if you actually want to be really good someday, and you want other people to genuinely think so, it takes a lot of work.  Writing is one of the most time-consuming, painful activities anyone has ever invented, because there just are no shortcuts.  You have to write at least one crap-tastic novel that you spend three years on and end up throwing out completely.  Sometimes you have to write several (I've written two already).
So that's why I'm saying you don't necessarily need to abandon this current project right away.  Unless you want to, of course (now that it's been beaten on with the cliche stick).  But know that your first novel is going to suck no matter what you do.  Everyone's does.  So maybe save the really cool, original stuff for when you've got more experience.  Same reason you don't start as an artist by trying to be the next Michelangelo; you need to practice, first.
Though I don't disagree that writing short works to begin with is a good idea.  But if you want to write novels, you still need to practice those, and starting with something derivative and easy isn't necessarily a bad idea.
Up to you.



> If I had any sense I would be telling you, and everyone else in this thread, to stop writing immediately and go and learn art.


Artists already have a big enough problem with the trash heap that is the online art gallery.  I wouldn't be so cruel as to push any more hopeless newbies on them (except, of course, myself).  And besides... it'll be decades before any of this 'competition' is going to be any good, and by that time 99.98% of the rest of it will have given up the craft.  Granted, they'll be replaced by another batch of equal size, but nothing is lost in the end.


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## Kender3421 (Aug 24, 2008)

Okay, fooz, I looked at this nano thing you were talking about and it's all full of crap. We're not talking about a 50,000 word novel. What Shenzi is talking about sounds more like a series of short stories.

And once again, I'll say it. Even if you consider that a reader is a consumer, they still are inside your imagination for a brief time making them guests.

Shenzi, don't listen to us at all. Write it and then ask us how it turned out. Till then, don't bother with critique ideas on something that only one person in this world will know how it turns out. I personally want to read this as soon as you are done with it.


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## Gavrill (Aug 24, 2008)

I honestly am not writing for profit. I don't give a crap about editors and publishers and whatnot. Therefore, integrating my own personal symbols into a story is a small matter for me. Because not publishing it means I don't have to worry about if someone thinks it's unoriginal, right?

Ergo, I'll write it the way I intedned to write it all along. If it turns out to be crap, it's at least a start. I _will _write this now (thanks to the support), edit a tad, and post it on the interbutt. Prepare thineselves. 

Also, Shenzi is a recent fursona. I decided to make her to mirror my therianthropy. My original fursona was actually a cheetah named Hazy. Everyone else in the story is loosely based on close friends.


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 24, 2008)

Well then, have fun.


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## foozzzball (Aug 24, 2008)

This is where that thick skin, aka scaly carapace, comes in. Writing osmething purely because you want to write it, well. That's admirable.

However.

Strictly speaking at no time whatsoever do you have to worry about what anyone thinks, ever. Strictly it is not important to the writer at all. But it is _very_ important to the reader. So the point where you worry about all that is when you want other people to read and enjoy what you've written.

As for integrating personal symbols... Mmmm. Generally I don't reccomend that. But, if you wanna try it... I'd say you're going to have to let the characters define the story, ultimately. Don't push the story too hard to get it into the shape you want it to be. Generally one of two things ends up having to cave, when you're writing - either the story in favour of the characters, or the characters in favour of the story. When you're writing new characters specifically for the story, generally they don't need to cave - since they're purpose built for the tale.

Aside from a thick skin? Also be willing to screw up and do stuff wrong. You already sound able to do this, but it bears saying for the sake of the thread. You can't be a perfectionist unless you have something to perfect, y'know?


Also: Actually the vast horde of 'the competition' is growing year on year, it seems to me. 

Furthermore: It doesn't matter how much you wanna call readers 'guests', it doesn't change the fact they're not going to cut you any slack! (Unless they're kind. You can't trust that kind...)


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## Gavrill (Aug 24, 2008)

What I will attempt to do is write the story to please both me and the readers. If it doesn't do that, I won't whine about it because it'd be my own drat fault. Regardless, Imma write it, show it here, see what happens. Good luck to me! ^.^


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