First of all, Hi everyone, I'm new. I've posted around some places, and I'm not getting much response on a problem I'm having with my story, wondering if anyone has any thoughts. Basically I'm writing in Television Series format, and the premise is about various illuminati-type conspiracy factions battling it out and My main character stumbles across evidence connecting his missing parents to the conspiracy. He ends up getting taken in by a black-ops organization that his parents were a part of whose focus is combating these conspiracies while also tackling day-to-day terrorism. My MC has a younger brother that gets dragged into it later on. My question is this, episode by episode there's going to be recurring villains who will get to know the members of this squad during their various meetings trying to thwart their plans. Now They arent superheroes, so their Identities will invariably be exposed fairly early on, and what's to then stop the conspiracy from finding out where they work, where they live and trying to kill them off because they know the truth? I don't want to go down the 'witness protection' route, and one opinion i've gotten is that the heroes might be protected by the conspirators attracting too much attention if they start killing them off or targeting family members, or they don't bother because they know the heroes don't have the necessary hard evidence to bring them down yet and they are just more of an annoying hindrance showing up when they go after a secret weapon/artifact etc, to further their plans or something, and they only try to kill them there instead of wasting time tracking them down and murdering them at home/work. If you made sense of what I'm asking, you can see I've got a bit of a problem here trying to establish the rules of how my setting works in this story here. Any ideas for how I can get around this? Thanks in advance.
Wouldn't that problem add a lot of tension to the story? I don't see why you wouldn't embrace it...if they're fighting to unravel this conspiracy, to find his parents, while dealing with trying to protect his brother, all while these villains are pursuing them trying to eliminate them....seems like it would make pretty compelling watching to me, whereas if you didn't have the on-going tension of pursuit, the show might be a little too episodic and disjointed? And if they still have day-jobs, which is what it seems like you are suggesting....I'd consider rewriting that, I don't think it would do you any favours...it would be like if Jack Bauer had to go do an 8 hour shift at his day job for a third of the season...
Well part of the reason I want to start out this setting as fairly suburban is that's there's a plotline where the younger brother and his girlfriend infilrate a secret student society with cult/anarchist movement/sinister ties at their school in their final months before graduation, so for a while there before they join the main group and find out about my MC's new 'Job', they'll be keeping secret lives from each other, so that could lead for some good drama and tension in the first Arc or so. after that maybe they can go 'on the run' for a little while. ETA: also they don't have 'Day Jobs' as such, I'm thinking the Black-ops organization fronts as a Technological Research company or something which goes places.
hmm...well yeah, I guess while things are just beginning to get going, you could maybe just have your heroes thwart the attempts of the villains to attack them at home/work, as in the beginning it would be fairly plausible that the villains wouldn't want to risk openly exposing themselves just to get rid of this one small group, but obviously that route has a very limited lifespan (there are only so many times you can escape death) but you could maybe keep it running long enough for the brother to find his way into the organisation.
Thanks for your thoughts (and any still to come) I'm working on doing the first 5 or so draft episodes so everyone can get a better feel for my story. Even if i have to do some massive rewrites down the line, it'll be great to get some feedback once you get to know the characters. I'll let you know when I've put them up.
