So I have an idea for my protagonist for my writing project. He's a passenger onboard a large Blade Runner-looking spaceship to an off-world settlement. Several months before the events of the story, he accidentally kills a teenage boy in a car accident. He feels deeply ashamed, but is also desperately trying to simply forget what happened. While he saying he is heading off-world to find work, its also implied he wants to escape his guilt by leaving Earth. So he wakes up from hypersleep and the spaceship seems abandoned. Most of the rest of the story is him trying to survive the violent horrorshow that has infested the ship while learning that he can only grow past the accident and redeem himself if he confronts his past and accepts responsibility for what happened. Problem is, I'm trying to think of an he takes that would cause him to come to this realization--his turning point. Although he meets other survivors, he also spends much of the story isolated. Any thoughts on the premise are also appreciated. Total noobish gremlin here, so any advice is apprieciated.
Inner monologue? have him work through it as he goes through... maybe the ships A.I. could be talking with him. Edit: Maybe the alien queen is psychic and torments him with his sins causing him to face and over come it.
There's many ways for a turning point. If he's meeting other survivors maybe there can be a teenage boy that he gets close to and tries to protect in penance for what he did. going through the stages of grief with the boy, he's lost, he denies what he's done, he tries to bargain for the boys life. etc.
Maybe some of the horror characters remind him of experiences in the past. Or if not the characters, then the scenes and moments he has escaping their lethal grasps reminds him of the old days You could have regular intementent flashbacks of him growing up as a child, his first girlfriend, his first time winning a trophy etc.. all giving peices of the internal jigsaw puzzle he has going on inside him, with the end result being accepting his past and moving on, possibly literally on the next escape pod out of wherever he is..
Maybe he finds himself unwillingly responsible for protecting another survivor who he takes an immediate dislike to because they remind him (not too obviously, but for him personally) of the boy who died: the story would then have him not wanting to remain with and protect this new person but unable not to because of his feeling of guilt, and the two can slowly become closer as he overcomes his irrational dislike and guilt, and also learns more about the new person as a person who deserves protection in their own right.
