1. MissNovember

    MissNovember Member

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    I'm thinking of writing a new story and need brainstorming help

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by MissNovember, Jan 9, 2022.

    In the act of not giving up, as another user said not to do on here, I'm thinking of a new story, a sci-fi romance and I'm interested in hearing what people's thoughts on the idea, if it's interesting or not. My idea is this:

    After an actor with empath healing abilities discovers that he and the terminally ill fan that he's telepathically connected to are the reincarnation of star crossed lovers during the Holocaust, the actor must find the fan and save her, before too late.
     
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  2. Alcove Audio

    Alcove Audio Contributor Contributor

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    Hmmmmm........

    Some good ideas, but so far, at least to me, it's just a situation, not a story. Lots of questions...

    Why an actor and a fan?
    Why would someone with empathic healing abilities be an actor?
    Why the star-crossed lovers trope?
    Why the Holocaust?


    If this was my story - and it's not, of course - I would drop the "healing" idea (although his empathy makes him a better actor) and lean more in the direction that the telepathic connection is what makes him (unknowingly) such a great and very popular actor. When the fan becomes ill the connection is distorted, affecting his acting abilities, so he must save her to save his career. But first he must realize there is a telepathic connection, then to whom he is connected, then how to find her. He starts out only wanting to save his career, then you dive into the romance aspect.

    Just my two ducats.
     
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  3. MissNovember

    MissNovember Member

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    Well, I was thinking, I'm going to drop the holocaust scenario but without the healing ability, he can't save her and himself, because by her getting terminally ill, so does he, because of the telepathic empath connection they share upon meeting each other. However, he can't use his healing abilities to save himself directly. So, in order to break the connection and save himself from being terminally ill, he has to find her and heal her and thus heal himself. While this happens however, the romance aspect comes in. Huh? What do ya think? Huh? Right? lol
     
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  4. evild4ve

    evild4ve Critique is stranger than fiction Supporter Contributor

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    Ideas are never interesting - only the execution. (e.g. Waiting for Godot - the play in which nothing happens, twice)

    But this looks like the logline of a story - it's got two characters and some conflict.

    1. A is telepathically connected to B
    2. A is an actor whose fans include B
    3. A must find and save B
    4. A and B were connected in a past life

    1+2 gives two dimensions to the relationship between the characters. Structurally, it might be interesting to work the telepathic connection the opposite way from the actor-fan dependency. Perhaps consider making the fan the healer and the actor the patient. What conflicts will the relationship produce? There isn't at the moment an irony or obstacle to 3. I'd approach that by having the actor needing to exploit the fan in order to get her healing abilities - an ethical dilemma - but the point is to open some scope for characters to develop. 4. is currently disconnected from 3. and it's a case of either connecting this fantasy element to the character arc, or cutting it. It's common for stories like this to have the character arcs in the framed narrative and main narrative informing each other - e.g. the past life might be a warning to the current life - so one way of connecting them might be to give the past life a whole character arc of its own, which is different in one important respect from that of the main narrative.

    I personally dislike it when people use the Holocaust in speculative fiction - while the survivors' first-person accounts sit unwatched in archives. But if the star-crossed lovers subplot was someone's true story I'd probably applaud that.
     
  5. MissNovember

    MissNovember Member

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    True, while I was sitting here, brainstorming, I thought up a better story idea anyway. :)
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2022
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  6. Alcove Audio

    Alcove Audio Contributor Contributor

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    Wow, sounds really complicated.
     
  7. MissNovember

    MissNovember Member

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    It's not. It got almost 7,000 upvotes on Reddit when I submitted a year ago to their writing prompt section. :)
     
  8. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    When I read the opening post, I was moderately intrigued. I'm not convinced that "empath" is the correct term for someone with healing powers -- "empath" generally just means having an ability to sense other people's feelings -- but okay.

    But now this movie star (he has to be a star, or he wouldn't have fans) in not only an empathic healer, he's also telepathic. Empathy and telepathy are two totally different form of ESP. I have no idea how unusual it might be for someone to have both gifts, but I suspect it's exceedingly rare.

    And then I'm confused about timeline. You write that he becomes terminally ill because she does. In other stories I've read about people with the ability to take on the illnesses of others and thereby heal them, it's not automatic. The empathic (I'm still not certain that's the correct word for it) healer has to make a conscious choice to take on the illness or debility of the "patient." In your scenario, how and when did the actor and the fan meet? If they met and established a telepathic connection -- why does he then have to find her when he discovers that she is terminally ill?

    I think the raw concept could make an interesting story, but as it has been presented so far I think the plot outline has a lot of holes in it.
     
  9. Aled James Taylor

    Aled James Taylor Contributor Contributor

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    I like the idea of the terminal illnesses. This raises the stakes.

    If this is going to be a novel, I wouldn't just have the characters searching for each other until the end of the book, as that would soon become tedious. I'd have them know how to find each other but held apart by something they need to overcome. This could be a family authority figure, cultural tradition or a social divide. Perhaps the family of the fan thinks the actor is dangerous and uses every means at their disposal to keep him away. You're going to need a great deal of 'stuff' other than the main story or it will appear thin, with many passages much alike. Think of a dynamic setting with many facets which you can explore. The actor grew up in a poor district and has connections to the gangs there. His mother still lives there because she wants to be near her friends. The family of the fan find out about the actor's criminal record, and a previous 'healing' that didn't go so well.

    How would they know if they're reincarnations? Would they have memories of previous lives? You could write a parallel story of those previous lives, pieced together as they remember.

    Rather than an fan, how about a junior actor who plays a part in the same movie/play the actor is in. Then you can have the story portrayed in that movie/play as a parallel story as well.
     

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