Hi there! It's been a while since I've posted here. I've been experiencing writer's block on this story idea I have and need advice. I wanted to write something for a visual novel in the horror genre. I've seen a few that really do it well and wanted to make one of my own. However, the story I have sort of revolves around all the characters really being dead and the whole plot taking place in the afterlife, without the characters knowing this. I know this is a big red flag for most stories, but I was wondering if I could make it work. There are some stories who do this and are able to make it work, but I've been having doubts for the last few weeks. Thanks!
What, specifically, is giving you problems with that? It can clearly work, so we can only help you if you explain what's not working with your attempt.
Nice idea. It taps into that thing the character said in Poltergeist (Tangerine or whatever her name was), that some people after they die just go on exactly as they did when they were alive, and never know they're dead, they need some help with the transition. Also of course The Sixth Sense. And both of those tap into the idea that many of us live as if we're dead, we miss out on all the real and exciting parts of life. Just as in the show The Walking Dead the title doesn't refer to the zombies, but to the survivors. I would try to keep that in mind—it's the vibration between the explicit ideas about the dead acting like they're still alive and the implicit idea of the living who live as if they're already dead that will make it powerful.
You mention that the whole plot takes place in the afterlife. Does it look like the real world? Or is it a totally different plane of existence? What do the dead do? How do they pass the time? Do they have contact with the living?
C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce seems to work on this principle. The people "living" in the sprawling gray metropolis (aka Hell) don't seem to realize they're dead. Or if they do, it's a vague, irrelevant memory, like you'd remember moving to a new city ages ago. It's life as they know it and they take all its oddities for granted.
They were dead all along is a tricky plot twist, and I would say especially for a survival horror story. The whole concept of survival horror is the characters struggle to stay alive, a 'they were dead all along' means the "struggle" was essentially meaningless. A lot of audiences do not like the feeling that the story they are investing time in has no meaning. I am NOT saying you can't do it, I am saying you really have to make sure there is a point to the story beyond 'oh everyone is already dead. The reveal has to be meaningful to the audience in such a way they don't mind it undoes all the tension that lead to that moment. Either the revaluation that they are in the afterlife brings new meaning to the story and/or the characters personal journey was so meaningful in-spite of being dead, or maybe because of.
I think movies or tv can work this concept better than written media. Cold Mountain was like that, and I seem to recall a Twilight Zone episode like that.
Hi, And no one's mentioned Lost? Personally this trope didn't work for me on that show because the first time someone's relative showed up on the island it became fairly obvious they were all dead and I gave up watching. But a lot of people raved about it. I think the most important decision you have to make is whether either the reader or the characters will ever know that they're dead before the big finale and then write it accordingly. You can write it either way and make a good story but you can't really have it half and half. Cheers, Greg.
Sigh.... I really don't want to be that guy.... but in addition to being a wannabe writer, I'm a LOST nerd. Minor LOST spoiler They weren't dead all along. Life on the island was real. There is a reason you might have heard "they were dead all along" but it is incorrect, I can't explain it without spoiling the entire series, but the people who are alive on the island are alive (well there might be a few ghost and monsters).
Hi Hmnut I hear you and I haven't watched the series after the first three / four epps. Because by then it was fairly obvious that they could only be dead. Now having read all the explanations about the ending, it looks like the directors are determined to claim they weren't all dead from the start, despite the fact that large chunks of the audience believed they were and it was some sort of purgatory. But whatever way you consider it, it makes my point. They either were dead and the writers desperately tried to have it two ways with flash backs (which annoyed the crud out of me) flash sideways and time travel, or they weren't dead but everything pointed to that. Regardless they were a Schrodinger's cat cast! Either option is annoying and will upset viewers like me who want a clear narrative..So to the OP I say don't try to have it both ways. Either tell the reader they're dead right from the start or give no hint of that until the end when you spring it on people as a surprise twist - eg the sixth sense. Cheers, Greg.
An interesting book about people being dead (but has nothing to do with the afterlife) is Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card. It's not the recently deceased who are unaware that they are dead, but the people around them.
Hello, I'm still relatively new here and I need advice for a story I'm working on. I posted another thread on this, but I've realized I need a lot of help with this story as it's been bothering me for months. It's a visual novel video game I'm planning to write. Baseline: all the characters are dead. They're in hell. All of them represent one of the seven deadly sins. The game starts as a normal visual novel where they are people working in an office and slowly devolves into a psychological horror game, where the player does not know what to expect next and the realization of their situation slowly comes into light. Even I don't know what to expect, since I've been putting off on making a more concrete idea because of the "they were dead" trope. I've had this idea for a few months, and I know the "they were dead all along" is weak storytelling, but I'm having trouble seeing the story any other way. Whenever I try to think of a different idea, I seem to be putting the characters first rather than the plot. I've crafted my characters and think that they could be put into a different story, but at the same time I'm hesitant to trash my original idea. Any advice is helpful, and I know that "how I write it can determine if it's good or not". What I'm asking is: if you read a synopsis of this story, would you be compelled to read it further? I know this is a lot to ask but I have no one else to ask for advice on this.
We'd have to read the synopsis to know that. My advice—don't worry about people saying "It's been done before" or "It's a worn out trope" or whatever. If you want to write the story, write it. There will always be people who don't like what you're doing. Those are not the people to ask advice from. And, unless you're a pretty accomplished writer and think this stands a good chance of getting picked up by a publisher, then it's you writing for practice and fun and learning how to write better. It's important to get a lot of that done, and don't worry in the beginning if it's going to be an excellent book or not. Your first dozen attempts won't be. Probably more than that. This is the time to have fun, to write without fear and without worrying about what other people think. There's a lot to be learned this way before you start getting into the more technical stuff and become more professional. In a way it's weird that we have resources like this message board now. There was no such thing when I started writing. I was a kid at the time, and there was nobody I could go to and ask for advice or critique or anything like that. I wrote for many years without a thought for that stuff, just for fun, and I kept getting better. That's the way to do it, until you reach a certain point where you've got the basics well in hand and you think you might want to go pro. That's when you come to these places and seek critique. I mean, sure, do it before then if you want to, but don't put really high expectations on yourself and expect to be a professional-level writer right away. There's a lot of writing you have to get through before you get close to that. And don't let people online make important decisions about the book you want to write. I think all too many people these days who want to write come to these places and start sharing their first efforts and then lose the spark because they try to improve too fast and can't reach the level they want right away. Write the story the way you want to write it. You can't write it for anybody else. If you decide to go with what somebody on this mesage board told you, are they going to be there to guide you the whole way through? No. And if they were, it would be their book as much as yours. You're going to be doing all the writing, with maybe a little help here and there from us. But ultimately you need to write the story you want to write, or you're going to lose motivation and inspiration really fast. Help on some technical issues, sure. Grammar and structural questions, fine. But as far as what story you should write and how to approach it, you need to decide that according to what excites you about the idea. Nothing else. Later you can start to write according to trends or what's popular or whatever, if that's what you want to do.
