im looking for ideas im about to start on the chapter that introduces the true antagonist a robot by the name of the general. In his introduction chapter the crew bords a deep space satellite station. Then after learning he is pulling the strings they desired to destroy the facility to sever his comm link to the alliance commander "permintly". So the crew Rebords there ship and gets away to a safe distance. Then they are hailed by the station and after answering the general introduses himself and shows the missing link in the alien crew members past. Then I want him to give them a warning. Something like this Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything. --- sovereign (mass effect) I want him to say something that will fill the crew with dread, something that states that there to late to stop him and everything is already in motion. And once it succeeds all life will come to a end. I've spent hours on this and I can't think of anything that sounds good. I want the reader to feel the same dread the crew is at that moment. Now FYI the general is a A.I. A few million years old, he believes he is the ultimate forum of life. He turned on his creators mer minuites after being installed in his ship. And after a Langtry war with the techics he has spent the rest of his time passaintly waiting. Using his comm to minipulate the alliance commanders offering them to be speared in exchange for there assistance. In the mean time or before anyone found the beacon with his comm codes he spent his time ordering his forces to mine every resource from his home galaxy. Creating a massive fleet of ships all of them more powerful than any alliance ship.
I won't tell you what to write, I do think your focus is on the wrong thing. I will suggest the short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. I will admit this short story is utterly depressing, but the AI has a very memorable speech that does make you feel that sense of dread. And how it's done is that the author has built and maintained the depressing tone throughout the story, so when you hear that speech, it's just icing on the worst cake possible. That's actually your key, not necessarily the speech itself. You're not going to stick a dreaded speech if nothing else happens to establish this character as a reasonable threat. I recently was playing the game Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. If you ask anyone who played the game what the best boss fight was, they will say it was the boss fight with Fenrir. Yes, there was a second boss fight with the main antagonist Hela, but that was more part of the resolution than anything. Fenrir was the one that stuck with players, mostly because of an emotionally charged cut scene that happens prior. That cut scene is basically nothing. It lasts less then a minute of the protagonist, Senua, pacing back and forth like an angry animal, making angry faces and screaming in rage. I think she only says one sentence in that whole thing. But it's effective, not because of the scene itself, but because it was built towards. Fenrir is the thing that kept going bump in the dark throughout the course of the game. He was the thing she was most scared of. It was what I called an earned moment. So as you're figuring this speech out, think of two things. What is the tone? Second, has this been a moment you've effectively built to? If you've done the tone right and built to the moment, that second questions should be easy.
There are certain things a writer must do for him/herself, because they are part of the very essence of the creative process. This is one of them. Because if we do it, it's no longer your story, it's our story. Best of luck.
I would say, please use spellcheck. Publishers will disregard a messy manuscript and writing your first draft the way this post is written is less than ideal. If you write your speech this way it won't read very well. You could have a great monologue that looks terrible becuse its speled laik this's.
I got lost at it being 'a few million years old'. I think the only dread the crew would feel is someone knowing their secrets. Why don't they just blow it up while he is talking/threatening them?
My point is, if you type it correctly, it will look better, and you'll be able to tell if it's good or not more easily.
He didn't know the crews secrets, the idea is he is patient and littery has a galaxy worth of ships at his disposal. So this speech he gives is like a warning that he and all of his ships are coming and they will be the end of everything
I would like to second @Kallisto 's comment about the best villain monologues coming after we know enough to be afraid of the villain, and now that I've heard it put that way, I would actually like to take it a step further and say that the villain makes the speech more than the speech makes the villain. If the serial killer in a cop drama had not been established as a figure of dread, would him saying "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti" have crossed him over the line from "not scary" into "scary"?
Whatever it says to them needs to tie into whatever they know about it. If it is just a random voice saying this, there is no reason to be scared of it. An example: You answer your phone one day from a blocked number. The voice says "You will die in the next month". You will shake your head and hang up. But, if you answer it and a voice says "This is Icepick Jones (whom you just read is the number one hitman for the mob) and you will die in the next month". You will probably be scared since now it has context.
Exactly. Finding a barren wasteland of life destroyed, then meeting the machine who takes credit for the destruction, would carry more weight than meeting the machine first and then seeing his handiwork.
That is so true. If I were to narrow down the biggest reasons why a dramatic and emotionally charged scene fails, it fails for the following reasons: 1. I don't care about the characters. And that could be any reason. That was the main reason the King Arthur film from 2005 failed for me is because I didn't care about any of the characters. There were good moments, I guess, but when people like Lancelot dies, I didn't care. I didn't feel like King Arthur just lost his brother. I didn't care when some other guy dies... They tried to make it powerful, but no I didn't honestly care. 2. Meandering between one plot point and another without building up any kind of tension. Yes, stuff has to happen, but it can't just be stuff. It has to have some kind of point. I normally see events that do nothing to build tension in stories where the author is so focused on their political, social, or religious message, that they forget that they're supposed to be telling a story. It's called being in love with the sound of your own voice. But it can also happen when a writer is trying to pad their story with extras. 3. Inconsistent tone. There is a trend going on, especially in Marvel movies, where they undercut tension with something called Bathos. It's where you establish a very dramatic moment, then quickly undercut it with a joke. It's a good technique in comedies where you don't want to make things too serious or creates an uneven tone, but if done with stories that are supposed to be more dramatic, it also creates an uneven tone. There's also accidental tonal shifts that are usually done with a lack of skill. The author isn't sure what kind of story they want to tell or is unwilling to sacrifice more humorous scenes in the name of creating a consistent dark atmosphere.
