So imagine that you've recently been kidnapped,tortured,beaten,humiliated raped and just plain ****ed over by a race of monsters from another universe.Just before they've finished pumping you up with magic so they can serve you as an hors d'oeuvre you manage to break free of their chaotic hellhole and run.You then catch a look at yourself in a puddle and realize those years of torture took their toll on you and that you are a horrible twisted beast made of hate.HOWEVER,via the magic of..........magic you manage to sculpt your face to something resembling its original form and stumble to your old home.Lo and behold you find that there is another version of you who has taken your place (the other version is actually the main character) and that he's stolen your friends,family,girlfriend and is blissfully living the life meant for you.Your new paranoid self snaps and you decide to murder the imposter and take back your life. How would you do it?It's just you,you have a ****load of magic but you have to do it in a way that allows you to simply slide back into your original role and you must completely dispose of the body so as not to raise any questions.
Sorry, but this isn't an incidental detail. It's at the very heart of your story, so why would you want to have other people create it for you?
Cog hits the nail on the head. How the plot is addressed will determine a lot of things including genre and target audience. If this idea was tackled by Simon Green, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Douglas Adams you would have four totally different novels that could attract wildly different audiences. Indeed, the reader might be hard pressed to even recognize all four novels came from the same basic plot. Plots are a dime a dozen, it is the writer's own interpretation that makes the story come to life.
