Okay, so I have planned most of my story, but the story end worries me a bit. I have a demon who is summoned to Earth. However, he doesn't like it here and wants to go back. In order to do that he has to find a medallion which will take him back, and a willing necromancer to perform the necessary ritual. On the other hand, whole story is told from the point of views of characters who think that the only reason why demon is trying to get his hands on the medallion is to get more demons on Earth. So he's pretty much the bad guy through their eyes. In the end there would be grand revelation. Would you feel kind of cheated with this kind of ending? :redface: I mean, I wasn't planning on putting much of clues, but hope that I would make sense when readers realize he isn't that bad. Could his actions be interpreted both ways? [not sure if I make much sense]
You make sense to me just fine and for me, if you can pull it off, I don't think I would feel cheated. We'll only feel as cheated as you want us to if you do it well. Seems fine to me. Sounds like something I'd like to read, actually, to be honest (which isn't my usual response to posts like this).
Thanks for the response. I feel much better now and flattered to be honest. Now, I just need to sit down and write
Sounds like an episode of Dr Who or anyother sci-fi staple. Very plausible. Should have a real emotion kick at the end. Good Luck.
THANKS FOR THE SPOILER! GEEEEEEEEEEEZZZ. :3 Okay, so I'd feel cheated if everyone's like, "Holy christ, A DEMON" and then at the end they're all like, "Oh, don't worry pplz. He's an okay guy actually." I mean, he's a demon. He doesn't have human morals, and maybe not even human gender (I'd totally be okay if you referred to it as zhe and zhis/zher (depending on appearance, I s'pose)). So really, it all depends on how you handle the ending. Everything's okay (although I'm kind of against the whole "medallion" idea. Just a personal thing since fantasy stories are always like, "MAGIC STONES" or "CRYSTALS LOL" or "LOOK A WOLF" or "THE CHOSEN ONE" or "FARMBOY". It bothers me.) But, really, if there's a good reason for it to be a medallion, like the medallion's metal is made from, like, Kryptonite or something, that'd be cool. Or if it's coated in the congealed blood of Jesus, and when an innocent is slaughtered near it, the congealed blood will turn to liquid once more and the demon can be returned or something? Either way, so long as it doesn't turn around to be like, "we just misunderstood the demon who is actually quite a gentleman" or that the medallion is only there just because you think it'd be cool to have a medallion be the prime goal of the story, then I'm cool with your plotline. Good luck, kiddo.
My biggest problem is that you need to make a demon 'the good guy' so that in the end it works. However a demon wouldn't care about those in his way. He wouldn't care who he hurt or what he did to get those things done. You need to make him look evil, and when he the twist comes in you show he wasn't actually evil. ie like it looks like he kills someone but he doesn't actually kill them. Other wise no one will be wanting your Demon to win in the end. And you can't make him too nice or it defeats the purpose of him being a Demon. A more interesting one would be a Angel stuck on earth trying to get back. And have him on a time frame, (like he only has a month to get back to Heaven for whatever reason). That way he needs to still act all good and religious, if he simply tries to hurt people into doing what he wants he wouldn't get into heaven.
The only time I really feel cheated in a story is when someone uses a dream or time travel to make a set of events seem like they never happened. Otherwise my suggestion would be to go with hints, let the smart people connect the dots before you drop the big revelation as its always gratifying to learn the truth before it hits, nothing like a bit of detective work, makes you feel like your part of the story almost. One problem you will have is how to make this demon seem evil enough for a bad guy so that we can become emotionally involved, the best bad guys are the ones we hate I always find, so making him out to be a good guy right at the end will take some quality writing, if you think you can pull it off though, it would certainly be enjoyable.
I agree with a couple of the posts above, in that a demon is a demon; demons are evil and don't care who gets in their way. If you can pull off having the demon remain evil to the end, heck, maybe even killing one or more of your other main characters (that would be great), that would be ideal in my opinion. If, or when, the other characters find out that the demon is only trying to get home again, I'm sure they would try to help it even though it was still trying to kill everything in its path; I certainly would. It's probably easier to shove a demon through a portal (or whatever) than it is to kill it without more casualties. I don't know much about the story though, so maybe the demon already is different to other demons; I mean I can't think of many who would not want to be on earth corrupting as many people as he can. So without further info it's a bit hard to say. But I do think it would be nice to see a demon retaining its evil nature and the other people retaining their fear/horror for it and the group somehow working together (or even against each other) despite this.
In relation to the quoted posts below, I refer to my quoted post above. Demons are not evil. They are amoral. While the human mind is somewhat predetermined to define anything amoral as evil, the truth of it is that a demon does not necessarily have to be evil. Some may be, but making a broad generalisation about it is wrong. Good and evil are human concepts. I'm willing to bet that a rabbit is smart (or dumb) enough to know that its hunter is not malicious; only hungry. Equally, moral is a human concept, and as such, demons would be without moral; amoral. The above is one of the things I loathe about contemporary fantasy novels. There is too much of this "evil monster" rubbish. Because of this "evil" crap, too many "monsters" and non-human/non-sapient antagonists have behavioural patterns of "evil" things.
Demons (of the most common variety), have been around since the Aztec empire, and perhaps they no longer exist, but who are you to say that they are imaginary? I'm an atheist, yes, but I'm partially agnostic and I'm subject to a little bit of faith in things like that.
Getting back on topic, I think cruciFiction had the right idea. If you can paint the demon's actions as morally ambiguous, your other characters can interpret his/it's actions as evil. I'm quite interested to see how your ending pans out, will you have the characters kill the demon before they realize they made a mistake? Or will they have a revelation in the climax of the story?
Just to say that I completely forgot about this thread. I accidentally went to check something and saw all the answers. Thank you all Well, in the end it comes to that I have to have some clues and that I can't pull anything out of my hat. Just fingers crossed that I'm able to pull that off. And just to make things clear, the demon in the end isn't going to turn around to be some misunderstood guy. He's responsible for most of the killing, but his intentions aren't what the group thought they were. He wasn't going to summon his friends and they're not going on killing spree. Everything he did was to get back home, with mild case of misunderstanding human moral. And not having enough patience to properly interrogate people. I'm basing some parts of demons from Slavic mythology, so I guess that might play part in his motivation of going home rather than destroying our dear world. As for the end, I'm still not sure how it's going to happen. I still don't have the whole scene in my mind. You gave some great ideas for the origin of the medallion. I know it's kinda clichéd idea, but it just ended being part of the story. There's a reason for that, hopefully which doesn't sound that childish. I'd like to explain everything, but then I'd have to explain the whole idea, the premise and the whys. But in the end, I'm not having it just for the sake of having it And once again for answering, and giving me some great ideas.
"It was all a dream" and "OMG they were dead all along!" are the only endings that make me feel cheated (Looking at YOU writers of 'Lost'!!!) A good twist can really make a story. It's what generates the feeling the reader takes with them once the story has ended.
I don't think you got the ending of Lost. They weren't dead all along. In fact what happened on The Island was actually real and did happen. It was the Side Reality that arrived in the last season which was them all dead, a place that the Survivors created to come to terms with what happened. Christian Shepard tells Jack that in the last five minutes of the show.
congealed blood of christ. EDIT: I keep putting the above in capitals, and it turns it back to lower case. I'm scared. Use my congealed blood of Christ idea. It's heaps cool. <-- this'll do, I guess. No sense of urgency or amazement, though
Creepy! I have to try it too! congealed blood of christ EDIT: OMG! Why does it do that? Other things I write don't turn into small letters! If the only things the demon does is finding a medallion and hiring a necromancer, it could absolutely be interpreted both ways. It's probably better if you can find some way to hint at the ending, though. For example, make one of the "heroes" seem narrow-minded and prejudiced against demons. For a funny ending, you could make the demon lecture the humans for being prejudiced and racist That's what the demons want you to believe. Mine are pink and fluffy. And very evil.
Back in the day, they only had upper case. Jesus is getting his ****s and gigs in the afterlife by using lower case when people attempt to talk of his blood in caps? Alternatively, I've stumbled upon the beginning of a great conspiracy. We are all characters in the fiction of Life... by Dan Brown. That's what they want you to believe.
