1. EstherMayRose

    EstherMayRose Gay Souffle Contributor

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    A Powerful Organisation Taken Down by a Teenager?

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by EstherMayRose, Sep 9, 2020.

    Hi again all, it's been a while since I've been here. Weirdly I'm kind of revisiting my first question I asked on this site.

    So, the backstory of my novel is as follows:
    In the 1920s, a famous and powerful wizard marries a non-witch and they have a daughter. A terrorist organisation that wants to wipe out all the old wizarding families, believing they have misused their influence, and have been responsible for the destruction of many families, invades their home when their daughter is about a year old. The wizard, who specialises in time travel, casts a spell to send his wife and daughter to the twenty-first century, because that is when the wife would be had she not gone time-travelling with him, knowing that the organisation had the numbers and the resources to keep coming back until they had killed all three of them. The wife cannot change their names (I haven't figured out why, any suggestions on that would be much welcomed, but I need the daughter to have some kind of lead when investigating her past) so she starts calling herself Miss instead of Mrs. and changes the way the daughter's name is shortened. They are found by the organisation (I don't know if they have agents across time or if they sent some to different periods specifically to track them down) and therefore keep moving house to escape them, but once the organisation is on their trail, they keep finding them. The daughter grows up not knowing any of this.

    Begin plot of novel:
    At the beginning of the book, the daughter, Vanna, now approaching fifteen years old, is sent away to boarding school by her mother, who realises that constantly fleeing is not working and wants to see if putting her somewhere high-security will work any better. However, on the train (having already said goodbye to her mother), Vanna is taken back in time with a spell to her own time, now the 1930s, and attends a boarding school there as well. She spends almost a whole academic year trying to figure out who cast the spell, trying to get home, and trying to shake off the feeling that she's being singled out somehow, and watched. She is being watched. The organisation, whose existence Vanna is unaware of, have detected her return to her own time and want to kidnap her to use as leverage to get her talented father, who has survived all the attacks against him, to work for them. After a few run-ins with agents, and after two girls are placed in the school by the organisation to act as spies, some agents break into the school and as the pupils of the school shelter, Vanna discovers who brought her to the 1930s, who her father is, that she's a witch, and that she was born in the 1920s and not in 2000. She runs away to process this and the agents succeed in kidnapping her. She is taken to their headquarters, an old house, and then...

    I don't know how to end the book. I want her to use magic for the first time, and more importantly, I want her and her mother to be reunited with her father, and that would mean that the threat from the organisation would have to be sufficiently reduced for it to be safe. But I don't know how to achieve that. I could:

    1. Have Vanna play a key role in bringing down the organisation. It would be very difficult to make this realistic, since it has murdered dozens and the government has been unable to shut it down for decades. What difference could a teenager who has known she's a witch for three hours make?

    2. Not have the organisation be defeated, but instead have her father decide to bring her and her mother home to him as the twenty-first century was clearly not safe for them either. This seems like a lack of resolution to me. It would be difficult to have a satisfying ending with the terrorist organisation still out there, ready to strike again. This would likely mean a bunch of sequels, and I've planned this as a stand-alone.

    Neither option's looking great. The whole ending seems a bit flimsy. Could you lot help me figure it out?

    Thanks a bunch.
     
  2. The Bishop

    The Bishop Senior Member

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    Well I like the 2nd one, it's a more interesting ending in my opinion and as you said the 1st one doesn't make much sense realistically. I don't think as I reader I'd expect the 2nd ending to produce sequels, and I wouldn't mind if it's not satisfying. Since you mentioned realism, I ought to bring up that many things aren't satisfying in real life. And ending like the 2nd one where the organization is still lurking keeps the reader's mind running, even after the story ends, which is memorable and that's a good thing, to have your reader remember your book.
     
  3. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    I would recommend avoiding the first option--too Badass™ if you know what I mean. Welcome back by the way.
     
  4. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    That's pretty complicated.

    I'll answer this one then try to get to more later:
    "cannot change their names"

    They can change their names, but can't get past facial recognition capability.
     
  5. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    Maybe you can get inspiration from J.K Rowling.
     
  6. LastMindToSanity

    LastMindToSanity Contributor Contributor

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    If it's intended to be a YA novel, having Vanna play a big part in taking down the organization is both acceptable and expected. I don't think you want to hear that, though.

    While I don't know how your magic system works, you could go with the angle that Vanna is naturally gifted in a specific type of magic that can help her in that situation, but she has to use her smarts and intuition to be able to effectively use it. It could be that she's a natural with the type of magic that can stun or concuss people, but then she has to figure out how to actually escape before they recover? This does lean into deus ex machina in that she suddenly use a certain spell, even if it's a weak one, but it also requires that Vanna be capable outside of her new power, as she'd easily fail if she can't figure out steps 2-10 in a timely manner.

    With the names, it could be that a wizard/witch's magic is tied to who they are, so changing their identity muddles and weakens their magical ability because they're rejecting themselves? (This would be variable for people who feel more like a Claire than a Jessica) But I don't know if that would conflict with the rules you already have established.
     
  7. Stormsong07

    Stormsong07 Contributor Contributor

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    What if the organization has one fatal flaw that Vanna exploits? Say, a list of every member and where they live. And Vanna only gets that because they took her to their main headquarters, a place where no one else has been. And she finds this list and uses it, along with her wizard daddy, to pretty much be like "Stop what you're doing or we'll get you/expose you to the government".
     
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  8. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    People can't change their names because your true name is what you use in every spell. Most wizards time travel, at least to look at dinosaurs. Once you time travel, you must always be truthful about your name or the spell ends, killing you in every timeline.

    1--when she is in the future, her mother digs up dirt on the past history of the organization and evidence of their time travel. She gets dirt to use as blackmail.

    2--alternately, her dirt allows her to find the password to the magical barrier. She crosses the barrier and destroys the villainous load bearing device, destroying the seat of their power.

    3--alternately, she uses the dirt to figure out when and where the enemy will be committing a crime and she mails a tip off to the then head of the Men Who Stare At Goats, and blackmails the evil wizards into letting her family go, provided she cancels the letter.

    4--She steals their time traveling device and doubles herself, then combines with herself to become a double powerful witch who must always call herself by her name twice, but can do two fireballs at once.
     
  9. EstherMayRose

    EstherMayRose Gay Souffle Contributor

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    Thank you for all your replies. Sorry it's taken me so long to come back to this: university started back again so I didn't really have time to think about it.

    It is a YA book, so yes, there's the expectation that Vanna will have a key role to play in defeating the bad guys.

    I already had the idea that she's good at memorising things. This has already been mentioned as serving her well because education in the 1930s focused a lot on memory, but what if she found a spellbook in the room where she was being held and memorised a spell or two while she's figuring out how to escape. She'd have to use her brains to figure out how to use them to escape, but that then leaves the question of why they didn't make sure all spellbooks were out of reach of her, even if they knew she'd never used magic before.

    I also had the idea that her friend, who can already perform a few spells, some of them quite complex, could send the wizarding government a tip-off as to where Vanna is so that they can rescue her and arrest the bad guys. This begs the question of how she knew where Vanna was. If there was a spell she could perform, why did the government not use it on the bad guys?

    And I've decided for definite that the government were closing in on them for a while before Vanna's capture gave them the opportunity they needed to find their headquarters. Perhaps while there, Vanna could call for help somehow. With a spell, maybe? I still don't know why, after all these years, the government were getting close now. I had an idea that they were getting more bold in their attempts to capture Vanna, but this might make her too Special.

    I had an idea a while ago that a witch's magic is tied to their name, and Vanna's mum didn't want her to lose her powers, deeming that that would put her more at risk than keeping the same name. Because people have many reasons to change their name, I had an idea that a person's magic is tied to their true name - which may or may not be the name they were given at birth.
     
  10. The Multiverse

    The Multiverse Member

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    potential adjustments that you may want to consider, time travel has many versions of cause and effect, each one having it's own set of rules. When playing with time, rediculous worlds open up and it can be overwhelming.

    To start, ttpical time teavel mechanics cause the travelers to take an extreme backseat to society for fear of altering the future. Going back in time can cause a series of events that makes the time teaveler never be born. There's also the branching timelines theory that says when you travel to the past, you create a completely new timeline running parallel to your original that continues on with the changes you've made and will not effect the original timelime. Theres also paradoxes with time travel that are really fun to employ if used correctly.

    For you though, my "food for thought" for you is for the organization to not be destroyed. With time travel, all things can be undone. If the father is killed and the mother and daughter escape through time, then have the girl be hunted and eventually captured and interrogated. Have one of the captors give a history lesson. Then have the girl somehow meet the leader of the organization and learn the true origin of why they are hunting down and killing magical beings. Have something like, before the father died, he created an artifact that will allow one jump to any time of the user's choosing. My version is that it's meant to save the user, however, the girl uses it to go back to the incident that sparked the orginization's hatred and set the event right. This way, those who died are no longer dead, the organization is now friendly, rather than violently opposed, and you'll be able to really lay on the tragedy heavily through the story. Literally anything goes. Afterall, by changing the original event, time would undo any negative events born from that moment. You can literally do anything as long as you solidify your ending.
     
  11. cosmic lights

    cosmic lights Contributor Contributor

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    That's one of my pet peeves about YA. Teens unrealistically saving the day, like leading a rebellion with no knowledge of how to do when an adult solider with experience in warfare would have been a better choice. But this is fiction. What about a teenager who possess the power needed to defeat the key opponents? There could be a combination effort for example. Like an agent trained to handle this situation helps the teen.

    Option two is definitely better.
     
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  12. EstherMayRose

    EstherMayRose Gay Souffle Contributor

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    So I've got the ending mostly worked out, but I'm not sure I like it. It seems kinda contrived and I still have a few questions to work out.

    *Vanna is knocked out using a potion by henchmen who have broken into her school. She wakes up in a storeroom in their headquarters, and is taken to meet the big boss. He tells her they will be holding her here indefinitely while someone contacts the witches' government - for whom her father works - to tell them they have her. Hopefully, they will be able to use her as a bargaining chip to persuade her talented father to work for them. If he refuses, they will kill her. He explains their organisation's aims - to wipe out the old wizarding families to put their aims into place (still haven't worked out exactly what they stand for, but they do believe that only a certain type of wizard is acceptable and anyone else will suffer under them) - and tells her that the house has spells on it to make it impossible for people to find unless called there. He has her taken back to the storeroom.

    *Hunting around the storeroom, Vanna finds a spell (where? Why wasn't it removed so she couldn't cast it?) to call for help, probably in a book. Knowing she can't take it anywhere with her (why?) she gets to memorising the spell. This would allow her to use her previously-established skills to help her so it's not all coming out of nowhere.

    *She breaks out of the storeroom (how?) and sneaks into a room she saw on her way to see the boss where potion ingredients are kept and locks the door behind her. (Where did she find the key?) She calls for help from her friend who brought her to the 1930s and hides in a box to wait.

    *She stays in the box for an undetermined amount of time (it needs to be long enough to send help but also it probably wouldn't take long to find out that she was gone) until people notice that the door is locked when it wasn't previously, and find her in the box. She gets out before they can grab her and escapes the room by climbing out of the window and down the ivy. She settles on a ground-floor windowsill when they begin to cut the ivy, but before she can climb down, someone opens the window and drags her inside. She kicks him in the thigh, giving him a dead leg, and climbs back out of the window, running for the front gate. She is a fast runner but she doesn't get far before she is tackled to the ground and someone holds more knock-out potion in front of her face, but a series of black cars pull up outside (how do they get through the gate?) and the bad guys flee. She passes out as she is lifted into one of the cars and wakes up back at school. She is later told that the government were already closing in on their location and so had agents in the area, who were the people in the black cars.

    Seems sort of complicated, and also feels like they have pretty lax security which, for an organisation that's evaded arrest for 20-30 years, doesn't seem right. What do you all think?
     
  13. GraceLikePain

    GraceLikePain Senior Member

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    The thing about life is that it's way easier to destroy than create. So, it's possible for Vanna to destroy something important, if she tricks her way into sneaking into their headquarters or wherever -- pretending to be a pizza girl, or maybe an IT tech, or a new hire, or whatever -- any can destroy a device that way. So, that's a possible way to have her succeed at something. Don't even be worried about lax security in that case. Human nature is the weak link here, as a computer program can't be lied to or tricked. So as long as she knows how to appear normal and safe, she's in. However, it would be great if she somehow suffered from taking it down, like she succeeds in destroying or limiting their powers, but gets shot.

    Maybe she doesn't have to shut down the organization. Maybe weaken it, help someone else take it down, or maybe change the leadership. What I recommend is making a list of options, whichever options come to mind, no matter how stupid. If you write the options down, you'll get them out of your brain and be able to think of new things.
     
  14. Accelerator231

    Accelerator231 Contributor Contributor

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    Alternatively, she's just the kick in the can that topples a house of cards. She doesn't need to be the one to destroy everything. She just needs to be the one kick in the knee that just knocks them down. Expose several leaders that lead to the organisation's majority being captured or crippled. Destroy a vital piece of infrastructure. Kill an enemy leader to provoke a civil war. Kill the guy who knows the passwords.
     
  15. ruskaya

    ruskaya Contributor Contributor

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    The way I understand the story from your plot summary is that this organization singles out individuals that might turn out useful or cause trouble to their cause. In which category is Vanna falling? If they think she might be useful, they need to persuade her to join them, how? Maybe that is why she is sent back in time, so that they can persuade her by changing her perspective on something/situation?
    She might topple down the organization by sowing doubt among some important members, who already have a personal feud going on? Maybe she accidentally finds out about secret or hidden traffic of magic? This could cause an internal war.
    If it a YA novel, then I think you can easily get away with a teenager bringing down a powerful organization, for an adult novel I would say it is more realistic she exposes them to the world, and then leave the rest to other equally powerful bodies, like a governmental (of magic) one.

    I was expecting Vanna to learn about her own abilities with magic while back in time, because she has to spend time figuring out (by trial-and-error) how to return to her own time, and because there is magic and magic is what made her travel back in time, presumably she would have to use magic to return to her own time.
     

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