Hey everyone, it's been a bit of a while since I last posted on here. I had an idea to start writing a story where two high school students are the guinea pigs for their science teacher's project, since the teacher figured out how to safely initiate time travel. It will be sort of an action/sci-fi/romance story. The two students, male and female, will be time-traveling to a fictional ancient civilization. (I watched a documentary on how Atlantis might have sunk last night so that's where I got the idea for the story. And yes, the fictional civilization will meet an untimely demise at the story's climax.) Would it be best if I provide a bit of the story regarding school and the time travel experiment in the introduction, OR should I just jump straight into their adventures in the ancient city for the intro, and provide the story as to how they got there through actions and dialogue? (Personally I think the latter would be much more interesting but tell me what you guys think!) (To add just a little more info, they realize that they have no way to get back to the present, so it's like a one-way ticket to the past.)
If you think the latter idea is more interesting, that's the way you should write it. That's my opinion.
Maybe do both - As the science teacher starts to discuss in very scientific terms his project - the girl mock yawns and presses the button or whatever to start the time travel process.
I'd start here...and edit afterwards: It was a normal day at Evercity High School. Upon the playground swings Jack unwrapped his tuna sandwiches, whilst across the yard, Jenny skipped among a crowd of pig-tailed girls. A plume of smoke rose from the science block...
I would go with the second. Everybody's been to school and knows how it works, so all we really need for the whole backstory is "students--teacher--experiment." You can get that into a few words of conversation or narration.
That's how I wrote it. I already outlined the first few chapters, so I think I should be off to a good start.
I'm not sure if it's okay to quote my story in here, but here's how I started the introduction: I must be dreaming. All I could see above me was the blinding white light of the sun, its warm rays soaking into my bright-pink skin, which was starting to peel slightly at the shoulders. The air was filled with the rhythmic sounds of horse hooves clopping on the cobblestone road just behind the small beach where I reclined on a hammock. I reached for my silver goblet of water, and let the crystal-clear, ice-cold liquid run down my throat. I lifted my head up and stared at the ocean in front of me, the sunlight glinting off of the rippling blue water. Suddenly, a dark shadow partially blocked my chest, and I looked upwards to see a beautiful, slender girl standing over me. Her long, reddish-orange hair glowed in the sunlight, and a pair of emerald-green eyes were focusing on my face. She was panting as if she had just finished a marathon, and her expression suddenly changed to that of immense relief. “Michael,” she joyfully exclaimed while kneeling down to my left so that her face was level with mine. “You actually made it!” “W-what do you mean?” I asked her, blushing slightly. “You thought I was gone forever? Jenna, you know I’d never be gone for good!” “We time-traveled here just twenty minutes ago,” she said, brushing her hair back, which softly rippled in the warm breeze. “Somehow we must have split up once the process was over, because you were nowhere to be found. I was so worried about you.”
Okay guys, I think I've finally reached the point in the outlining process where the story is finally "getting somewhere" with the rising-action part. Michael and Jenna are visiting with royalty, and the king and queen have special powers that alert them to new guests within the city. their power comes from a special jewel called the Stone of Sinful Secrets. It grants whoever possesses it a special power that he or she can choose. Once someone acquires this power, they would have it for the rest of their life, or until someone else acquires the Stone's power. So of course Michael and Jenna wish to time-travel to the 21st century, where they originally came from. Later on in the story, a group of terrorists will arrive and assassinate the king and queen while they are sleeping. (The powers can only be used when awake.) So obviously the terrorists will gain powers of their own (not sure what they will be yet), and the story will probably go on from there until a natural disaster of cataclysmic proportions strikes and destroys the city.
