I am trying to write a story, but i am stuck for days now thinking what the bad guys are and what do they do. I know that maybe it sounds rediculus to have a story, without knowing your antagonist, but what i want to show with my story could work with any opposition, so i didn't think about them until i finished with every other aspect of the story. My story is about normal humans that are dragged to a world where monsters rule. They are terrified but they know that as the only ones who know about the existence of the monsters they must fight them. The protagonists cant go back to their everyday live. They are trapped in a world where they can die in any moment and every mistake is punished hard. I am not going to make it easy for them. Injuries persist and drags them down, making the hunting that much harder. Psychological pressure takes it’s toll and it drive the characters are on the verge of suicide or madness. Death is a very real possibility and can happen from the simplest screw up. My main goal is to depict what would happen in real life, if every day men started hunting powerful monsters (with ties to the government maybe?). One thing that the protagonists have for them, is that although their bodies and souls are getting more injured as time walks by, they gain more experience and they are becoming better hunters. I want to show that an excellent hunter is not someone who can run a marathon at sprint speeds and after that he can win the aiming olympics. It’s the man who has the knowledge of how to hunt and prepares in such a way, that his body is not getting in the way of the hunt. Also all this pain makes them tougher. I have imagined a scene that the monsters catch one of the heroes and try to torture him to get information. After all the pain that the hunter had to endure from the hunts, he has become tougher and does not brake under the tortures. After seeing this the enemies try to give him telepathic images of hurting the ones he loves or destroying the things that he lives for, only to discover that he no longer considers himself alive, and has given up everything in his life. His only thought is to stop them. My only problem is that i cant think about what the monsters are and what do they do? I was thinking about vampires, but i am quite bored of them, and just killing some people every night, by drinking their blood is not very scary. Also, i want to give something more epic, like having the enemies having a secret agenda or something like that? I am playing with the idea that they are trying to get power to stop a demonic invasion, but i am not sure about anything. One idea i had while trying to register was having the enemies organise mass suicides, because suicides destroy the souls of humans and that creates “spirit bombs” that can hold the Demon army from opening a portal (or something) and at the endgame they plan to make the vast majority of the people to kill themselves (99% of them?). Some could say that they are a necessary evil, because they sacrifice humans for the greater good, but it is not so. The demons wouldn’t destroy the humans souls. The humans would die here and go on on whatever the afterlife is. The enemies do this because their only life is here, they have no after life, and they destroy immortal souls to save their skin. Maybe they sold their souls to the demons for immortality here and powers, and by doing so they opened the window for the future invasion they are now trying to stop. But i dont know if this is a good idea or how to implement it. Should i say that the enemy uses organized religion? Do they use some of the New World Order conspiracies to brainwash the people to kill themselves? Do they kidnap people and brainwash them? I like the first two options, but then how do the heroes learn about them? How do i make it personal and more direct? I was imagining that the story starts by an attack at the main protagonist, stopped by the hunters, and then joining them because he wants to fight. Sorry for not having a strict structure and saying whatever came to my mind in the last paragraph.. Looking forward to seeing your ideas!
So if you want the monsters to make people kill themselves maybe they should be a psychological freddy kruger type monster. They go into your dreams and terrify you nightly so horribly that you kill yourself to end it. Or make you have such frightening hallucinations that you kill yourself. Either accidentally, for example the monster makes you think you can fly so you jump, or it makes your worst fears come to life after you. But they aren't really there. Or they can possess people to do certain things? So one of your monsters can go into the body of a child and make her kill herself in front of her mother. Then the mother is so distraught she kills herself too
I remember years ago reading some sort of animal transforming good guy story that fought what I believe were aliens that were slowly infecting the minds of everyone alive. I think they had slugs put in their heads or something. Go from there, imo.
Animorphs? I used to love that show. But yeah I think brain-slugs probably aren't the way to go here, it's more poetic to have humans tricked into serving the villains' agenda through their own greed and ignorance. Something a bit more They Live-ish, with multiple conspiracies concealed behind the masquerade, and enforced with supernatural powers. I quite like the 'soulless immortals fighting the demonic invasion' idea. Or perhaps the antagonists could themselves be demons, angel-like beings that rebelled against their own race, and who now stave off the apocalypse, either for for selfish reasons or because they genuinely believe that it's better to destroy some souls than have all souls live in service of the angels. As for how to make it personal, the obvious thing to me was if the protagonist's spouse or child was a victim of the conspiracy, being kidnapped or violently sacrificed or, (to me the most interesting) being brainwashed and enticed away to sacrifice themselves willingly. That would leave the protagonist feeling angry, guilty and desperate for answers, and their investigation into the death would eventually lead them to the hunters, whom they'd be eager to join to get revenge and atonement.
I thank you all for your replies. The animorphs idea was a good one and i will keep it for a future project! Like Kesteven said though, brain slugs or a freddy monster isn't poetic enough. I think i will go with the antagonists forming a new religion and then forming cults with the inner members, when they need a mass suicide to "bomb" the demon world. The hero will be a reporter, that tries to find the truth, only to be targeted by the villains for getting close to the truth (that the religion forms cults, not the whole "we are soulless monsters" thing) . This set's the personal survival horror mood much better in my opinion, then getting in this for someone else, like having someone close being a victim (that sets another mood entirely).
You could have the bad guys be demons inhabitable human bodies, then killing human kind from the inside out.
So... New problem! I want to let the characters know about all this soul stuff. The only thing i can think about to let them have this information is bringing near the end (7/10 from the end) a character that tells them about the immortality of the soul, how those suicides destroy souls and that by fighting their problems humans are becoming stronger in the next life, wherever they live it. This last bit, comes to play at the end, when the incoming demon invasion comes, and the protagonists instead of saying it is all over, try to organize resistance. Only problem is that having a character come in 5 minutes before midnight and say all this, looks like an information deus ex machina. What are your thought's on this and any idea on how i could give them these information?
Controversial idea... if you've got monsters behaving in the real world as humans 'possessed' could they be there to drag souls back to their reality to feed the population... so, in this scenario, a suicide bomber kills himself to take him home, as well as drag, innocent souls to his world to feed the 'others'. Life in one world is therefore earned through killing or capturing the monsters in their own world (an eye for an eye), their souls dragging the protagonist’s soul closer, and closer to home. Your protagonist reporter could have found their way to this world through an accident where they killed one of these monsters, perhaps through an accident or maybe even a foiled attempt to kill others, giving them an un paralleled awareness of this new world, unlike anyone previous. The twists to this could be that a monster from another world, sees a normal person from ours, as an equally evil monstrosity, bringing a certain morality to the killing; is it right to kill a 'monster' in order to get home to your own species of 'monsters'. Additional twist could also be the possibility that being killed a particular way in the 'monster' world, could bring you back to your own but the uncertainty makes the protagonist fight these uncertainties... perhaps they could be cornered in a room with the monsters outside and the only option is to die, leaving someone behind. That’s the kind of book ending I foresee..! Perhaps your protagonist, could be the bad guy who influences others to commit suicide in order to riase an army to prevent the 'monsters' from attacking, his argument being he knows how to get them back...? Or not.
Personally, the way you have described your story in your initial post instead of having a 'specific' set of monsters. Why not just start off with your Protaganists surviving in the environment, and having the environment itself become an antagonist. It creates an endless source of opportunities for realistic struggle that would suspend your readers belief and maybe help inspire you to figure out what kind of race/monster would be better suited for the environment to dominate the food chain. The rulers of that world so to speak. Thats how I would go about doing it. I wouldn't focus much on trying to figure out the specific content first. I would build the world. If its hunter gatherer situations your going to be describing a lot of survival scenarios. You can pit your Prots against different animals, weather, plants, etc as if the very world was alive with malevolent energy bent on exterminating your prots. Which would lead them to discovering a race of X throughout their journeys/chacterization. And before I would even know what that race of X monsters is, I would have to be very well intune with the world I am creating. What thrives, what would make sense there. Is there a reason this world exists? What is sustaining this world? Does something feed off of it, if its a specific source of energy? (These are me just brainstorming) But I hope you catch my drift. -Ghost
