i am curious if anyone of you ever got amazing idea for a plot that made you think you are incredibly sick to come up with something like that, shocking but weirdly attractive ideas. also maybe such type of plot idea came from your mad dream? or maybe you've read books that made you like wtf most of the time you were reading it? maybe you even feel disgust in both cases but couldn't stop thinking of it? please, let's discuss jaw-dropping plot ideas (i just now suddenly got idea for cannibalism related plot... thinking of it in details makes me wanna vomit but it is so impressive that i actually wanna write it. probably i was inspired by cherry juice while i was cooking a pie T_T xD). the only book so far i can remembber with such plot was Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite. even though half of book was disgusting, i read it all without pause, really jaw dropping plot(for me, at least).
I can't say that I've personally come up with an idea that's made me sick to my stomach, although I have written scenes that made me actually stand up, walk away from my computer and spend the next day or two trying to convince myself to keep writing. Sometimes the plot just requires horrible moments, and if I myself am feeling the emotions I'm trying to make the reader feel, then my job is all but complete. That being said, I didn't really answer your question. In relation to the cannibal thing, if you think it's impressive then write it! Unless of course you start throwing up because of it, then maybe stopping would be the best idea.
I had a dream about a possessed little girl like on the exorcist (but still looked normal) who forced me to brutally kill or be killed.
I try not to go too extreme. Mainly because I just don't want to enter that mind frame. I've read some horrifying, real life crimes on the internet and I have a hard time with just the idea of turning anything like that into entertainment. If I'm going to go bizarre or sickening, it's only for villains - villains who will eventually get their come uppance, not for anti-heros or dark humor. I've read some Poppy Z Brite and Dennis Cooper but they're a hard read. At the end I don't actually say wow, I liked that, because I'm always battling the content. I've had a few moments in my fiction in which I had to take a step back and rethink the scene. In one book a man stepped on an animal and killed it - which I described in detail. Every time I read it, I clutched my stomach - I finally ditched the scene and went another route. Another scene in another book, with my most psychotic villain, had him biting a chunk of flesh from an arm and started chewing it. I'm finding that shock-vaule however, is actually devaluing my work. I want to be chilling, or thought provoking -but not disgusting.
I don't like to write disturbing scenes (I write children's fic mostly), my jaw-dropping stuff I think of is usually embarrassing moments. I've had plenty of those to relate on. I did have a super disgusting dream once about a group of people stealing a little kid, murdering the boy, and then performing taxidermy on him which they sent to his mother. Sickest dream I've ever had, so I could never write it. Just writing it here makes me feel horrible, I don't know how my brain thought it up! And, I don't even watch disturbing stuff on TV.
Ok, I've seen a few other posts and I have some more to add. A scene doesn't always need to be completely disturbing to jar your readers either. I wrote one short story that was meant to be a prologue to something I was going to write but I've filed it away for now. The setting was a young couple in the near future in a boston coffee shop. The guy had tried to propose the night before but things went bad because of his nervousness. So he decided to give it a shot again since he didn't have any food in his stomach (heh). He pulls out the ring and proposes, she starts to get all teary-eyed, then theirs a flash of light. He is a cop and he instinctively tries to reach over the table and cover her up but everything in the coffee shop gets swept across the wall with force. They both survive but when I got to that scene in my writing group their were audible gasps by about half the class. Take a point really high then contrast it with something awful. I even went really relaxed with the description of how things looked after he stood up to see what happened (I could have made things much more gory). I was kinda inspired by the scene in the film version of Sum of all Fears when the nuke goes off in the stadium and the show a shot inside the hospital where the glass goes flyin and people that were standing get knocked on their asses. Another little short story I wrote was from my villians PoV for a future scifi series I want to work on. The villian starts out in a diner, he doesn't like the pie he's eating and is kind of an asshole about how he tells the waitress. He gets the info he needs sent to his phone then feels a little guilty for being an ass to the waitress so he leaves her a generous tip. He heads down to the address he was given, breaks in, and finds two people asleep and he subdues them and ties them up. Then he begins searching for what he came for. He can't find it so he takes the gag off the male and asks him where he can find what he's looking for and the villian grabs it. The problem is not everything is there. So he talks to this guy who had already sold bits and pieces of what he'd stole. The female that was with the male wasn't a wife so he checks her ID and finds out she works at a nearby diner (it's scifi and he had access to information I'm just not giving all the details at the moment). He asks how their pie is and its supposed to be the best in the city. At which point he pulls out a pistol and clips them both, looks at his watch, and thinks great. I have time for some pie. That one had a few gasps as well when it was read in my critique group because of how cold and callouse the villian was.
My plots formulate as they go along. Sometimes when starting, I have no clue how it will end. Each night I go to sleep, and my MC, Kate, is so real now, that I can just go: "Okay, Kate, tell me what's going on now." And basic ideas will start kicking around before I fall asleep, however, by morning several thousand words on ready to be typed. FWC, you're absolutely correct: a scene doesn't have to be brutal to shock people. My opening chapter in DAD has Kate needing to assassinate a arms dealer, knowing he has a wife and children, and the moral dilemma of being personally responsible for making someone a widow and depriving some kids their father. It's a jarring emotional start to a book that's dark, high action, and spent dealing with as many internal conflicts as external. PR starts jarring too because of how she was introduced, and what had happened to her "off camera." It's all how you write it. Shock effect doesn't always mean gore...which the horror movie scene totally forgot after "Saw."
I myself am currently wroking on a novel that physically made me sick when I dreamed it up. Very, very heavy themes. Drugs/physical abuse/psychological traumas. The compassion that I felt for a fictional character that I myself created forced me to pull my car over and take 10.
I've never had a plot idea like that. I think that I could if I wanted to, but I have no experience with disturbing themes. It wouldn't be natural coming from me, I know. I would feel like I was copying someone else all the time... I've made myself very sad at times thinking about things my characters could go through, but I don't think i've ever disturbed myself.
I've got a creeptastic little thing coming up in one of my still-to-be-written chapters which involves a little harmless play-acting with a discovered skull. But I don't want to give the rest away!
I've written a disturbing scene or two, but not anything that was particularly gory or gruesome. Honestly, I feel like a scene doesn't have to be a slaughterhouse to be disturbing. A strange woman peering from a window, a child who knows more than they should, a little hint of eyes peering from the shadows... true, scenes like those probably more suspenseful than they are disgusting, but they're definitely enough to make my skin crawl when I read them.
The novel I'm working on currently has a particularly gruesome scene involving the main characters leg getting pretty much ripped off. The story is written in first person PoV so I am going to be far more elegant about it than talking about how the water is full of blood and the fact that her leg looks like spaghetti. She is bleeding out and things are going to much calmer and more peacful in her mind and I refuse to end it with, "and then everything went dark." because that is the biggest, dumbest cliche cop out ever, nobody dieing thinks, "and then everything went dark" and I cringe whenever I see someone write the line. After she gets dragged from the hole she was caught in and is being dragged through the water by her boyfriend she is going to recount how she is confused why Kyle is so frantic because now that the werewolf can't get them everything seems so peaceful. I think that is a much better way to end it and has an almost bitter sweet appeal to something incredibly gory. Of course, I must say, that death isn't always the end of a MC.
Deathnote (an anime) was pretty awesome. Kid finds a notebook that kills whoever's name he writes in it. He uses it to rid the world of criminals and becomes a serial killer of killers while other people are trying to catch him, it gets pretty insane by episode 2 and all the characters are a shade of grey, you can't really call any of them an antagonist or protagonist.
I will write a scene into my novel which will depict torture by the Taliban on a British SAS prisoner-of-war. Specifically, electrocution, (testicles-electrodes, you get the picture.) waterboarding and a bit of finger-breaking! Hopefully, I'll be able to adequately describe the horror and pain. As its written in first person, should be quite the challenge!
After his older brother gets killed my main character murders all his brothers classmates, plus the murderer. He regrets almost immediately, and carries the shame with him the rest of his life. As chance would have it he later ends up killing his own younger brother later, as he is "sort-of possesed" and is fixed on killing the middle brother. He brings his decapitated head along with him as evidence. This all is central to the plot, I like the ideas ... and it's going to be incredibly difficult to write well. In a second story of mine both the main characters are fixed on commiting suicide. In a third the one male main character is alone on the planet in a post-apocalyptic world and essentially spends the entire rest of his life looking for a woman to have sex with. A fourth is about a "mad scientist"-type character trying, and even manages at one point, to take over the world and takes joy in tearing down society. A fifth one is about a president who goes missing, and weird things follow from that mystery ...
Is it the right time to point out that a story idea means nothing, and that it's all about what you do with the idea? Well, not entirely true. The concept means something TO YOU. It's that excitement, that spark of inspiration, that drives your creativity. So it is important that the idea is jaw-dropping FOR YOU. Or at least that you see the potential the idea has in your hands. I don't see much benefit in sharing these ideas, although perhaps seeing that the ideas that seem so cool to each poster aren't quite as exciting to read about illustrates my point. And if someone else's idea does spark some interest, chances are you are seeing something very different than the original poster did.
One of the sickest and strangest stories I ever thought of was a heavily Autistic teenagers family is horrifically murdered in a freak set-up from a sick serial killer and the autistic child goes on the hunt for him.
Yeah, Cogito might be seen as a party crasher here, but I do think he's got an excellent point : Have an idea. Your own idea. An idea you love. Use it for all it's worth. Nothing wrong with doing research or having a bit of fun or anything like that, but it will always boil down to you actually getting stuff done --- something which is hopefully amazing for everyone to behold, once it's finished --- polished and ready.
Anything by Stephen King. That man is seriously disturbed and I can't read his work. I read an excerpt once and I couldn't sleep for days.
^I'd say he did his job then (somewhat). I think he's great, although I'm reading the uncut edition of The Stand right now and I'll admit there are some scenes that are disgusting.
Most of plot ideas have some element of darkness within them. I think that's because most of my life has been pretty dark and I relay it into my writing, it's I really can do to be honest. I don't know how to write a happy character. Nothing would sicken me to the point I'd have to stop writing, although I've written some scenes that have left me completely bereft of feeling. The hardest scenes for me to write are scenes that involve a Mother, most of my stories the MC has lost her Mother because recalling the beautiful relationship one can have with their Mother leaves me very, very upset.
Every one of my stories are fraught with darkness and harsh realities. Whenever I get an idea that I can really work off of, it's going to be something most people will think is strange, disgusting and/or inappropriate. It doesn't bother me much, though, because I know I'm not insane, and if I refrained from adding to my stories from the dark pit of my mind, I would be doing a serious injustice to the writing. When writing something awful (not awful in execution), you can't water it down without the serious risk of losing potency.
I have this plot in mind since I was in high school, Its about love and crime but I have no time to write a complete story about it...
