The main character is a beautiful 20 years old girl who is damaged by the mistreats of men. She comes accross a pill. This pill should grant her incredible psychological abilities that makes it so she always get her way with people. Here are my thoughts so far: reading mind is too cliche, super hearing is too x-men, remembering everything was done before and prediction is too wacky for a pill. I want something that could be KIND OF justifiable through a pill that was createad in a laboratory. Now here is the big catch! I want and a side effect that gets the reader to wonder if he would've take it or not. Maybe something that would be questioned by moral. After taking the pill she completely loses empathy or something. But that would probably make the reader not care for her, which is not what I want. I want the reader to cheer for her.
Is the pill red? A beautiful 20-year-old girl does not need a pill to get her way with people, especially men. That "pill" is being beautiful and 20. If you're going to make her beautiful and take a pill to make her brilliant, that's a Mary Sue. The trade-off of choice would be that she loses her looks-- has some kind of facial alteration due to the pill-- and the pill's effects must be temporary, so more doses are required to maintain its effect. This would be the central conflict for her: Rely on a pill to give her these "psychological abilities" (that may include convincing others she is still beautiful when she no longer is) and sacrifice her movie-star mug, or keep her looks and maybe... learn some basics of the dating market and relationships so she doesn't go out with shitty men? IMO you need a stronger motivation for her to want this pill, it makes little sense to me that by 20 she would be in spinster-mode regarding men to the degree needed for her to take the pill.
When you say 'gets her way with people' what exactly do you mean? She can make them do literally anything? She can make them do anything for her? She can make them fall in love with her?
Do literally anything is a little far fetched I think. I'm not going for mind control, more like mind reading but something else. I want a tool, not a power that messes with free will...
Extreme migraines possibly? But first you need to know how the pill works. Does it go to the brain? Does it flow in the veins? In the first scenario: The brain, maybe the pill messes with their brain. Like give them extreme migraines or give them mild dyslexia? Or even parkinsons? In the second scenario: The veins, possibly it gives them a lot of fatigue, or make them get rashes easily.
How about they do something to her pupils which has the effect, when she stares into people's eyes, not letting go, to get them to do what she wants?
Consider uncontrollable empathic abilities, the contracting of emotions and pain from individuals near the person. If you like the idea and want more help on developing it, feel free to message me.
Here's something that has not been suggested yet: Spidey-Sense! Less flippantly, what I mean is this. The young woman's senses and processing times have been greatly streamlined. She can't read minds, but she can now interpret clues of body language, pupil response, pheromones to predict what a person is going to do, and her increased reaction time lets her presuppose responses and react accordingly, thus always seeming to be one step ahead. This also gives her a kind of danger sense, based on how she interprets people around her. Maybe her actual senses have also been increased, so she can see/smell/taste/etc. more perfectly, and her brain has adapted by decreasing her reflex response times. She's more agile and now ambidextrous. The problem would then be that the amount of information she has to process can get to be overwhelming. Headaches, anxiety attacks, uncontrollable shaking, etc. Perhaps she can't not react to stimulus. Maybe she just wants to be ignorant for a while, not be able to guess what others are saying or doing next. Maybe she doesn't want to be able to hear and track every conversation in the restaurant all at once. Just an idea.
How about something related to releasing pheromones that will affect the individual. Problem, it could also affect others nearby in the same fashion, so she has to be wary/careful. The extreme use/emitting of pheromones could throw off her internal body chemistry with various deleterious effects. Could be like allergic reactions/inability to eat/digest certain foods, or problems with her hormones or cause rashes or skin reactions, or nausea, etc. Maybe use of certain pheromones have different effects...maybe not immediate but in the days or weeks to follow. The pheromones could cause people, say to be attracted, repelled, aggressive, submissive, protective, annoyed, sleepy, distracted, loyal, etc. They would not have to be normal pheromones, as her body creates special ones. Don't know if it's workable. Just took the notion off the top of my head.
If you look at the way 'real' people get their way with others, they typically are very good at 'reading' people. Body language has a lot to do with it, but it's difficult to control in ourselves sometimes. Maybe this pill increases her senses to pick up on even the subtlest of body language and let her emit her own body language to coordinate with who she's speaking to. The side effect could be physical, like mirgranes (that's a lot to take in!) or vomiting, or a decrease in some 'natural' ability that people have. It could create an addiction. I agree with others that the motivation isn't strong enough. Her 'want' must be related to something she's not getting. Maybe she's kinda nerdy, goofy, and self-conscience instead of beautiful. Have you seen Love Potion No. 9 with Sandra Bullock? It's an older movie, but might help with inspiration. Good luck!
:hippo: There's the pill from The Expanse. You don't get mind reading abilities from it, but it hyper-tunes your ability to read physical cues as regards response from the subject. Something like that, maybe? Side effect? Knowing when people are lying to you (big ways and small) would make for one cynical MC. That would totes suck, tbh. White lies are the glue that keeps culture together.
Theres a bit in lie to me series 1 episode 1 where Loker is practicing radical honesty , and they introduce him to the younger female MC and he say " Hi, I'm Loker, I find you very attractive and wonder about my chances of sleeping with you ?"
That sounds like the directors/producers got honesty confused with simply speaking whatever's on your mind in that very moment. Ah but then we'll have to start delving into philosophy and social structures and and I can't be bothered I do enjoy Lie to Me though! Whenever I see it, I just think of Mr Orange.
How about multitasking? We normally do it by spinning our attention continuously to the tasks we are doing seemingly simultaneously. But in truth, we can focus only at one thing at a time. We find a tempo between intervals of focusness upon a subject that grands the most ideal outcome and productivity and stick to it. We learn this by practice. So what if the heroine can literally multitask? For example take two sources, perhaps three sources of information on the same time and work them out perfectly. She can be solving equations upon higher mathematics and learning how to speak cantonese by listening to a tape on the same time. She can be in a noisy room full of people and follow three different conversations that are happening on the same time without getting distracted while she is also conversing with a friend. The negative effects might be losing her memory of the past. Sacrificing childhood memories and having some memory gaps which they start to increase as she dwelves upon her new abilities.
How about a pill that causes her to exude pheromones, now you might be saying hey I said no mind control. But wait that's not what I am proposing. The pheromones don't make her totally irresistible or able to take over people, they simply make everyone who is around her and smells them very happy, pleasant, relaxed people. Kind of like something similar to a decent buzz. She literally becomes her own party generator and so people are more likely to like her or do stuff for her but nothing unreasonable or that would take them away from her presence for too long or the buzz wears off. The side effects could be that for a certain period afterwards her BO is strong and unappealing or alternately you could have the side effects carry over to those around her who either get hangover like symptoms depending on how much/long they were effected or you could combine the two ideas/effects. If you wanted something a bit less off putting for a side effect you could say that she/they loose their ability to smell and be effected by the pheromones for a certain period after being effected by them. Just an idea anyway.
