5 replies to this topic

[mcwriter]

I have an idea rolling around in my head for a fictional, futuristic novel and I would like to pose some questions for it...please take them one at a time and add you thoughts.

**What if you were given the choice to be completely cured, but that the price for that would be very high(not monetary), but they would not tell you what it was, would you do it?

**What if you answered yes and you can walk again and you find out the price was to give up your family friends and everyone who knows you, you could never see them again? What would you do?


Remember this is a purely fictional story idea and I am thinking of several characters who would react differently.
The person with no strong family ties would jump at it.
Another would refuse to give anything up.
Maybe another would do it then change their mind and go back to life as before.
And then you would have the one who said yes, but who didn't go by the rules---of course.
and maybe there are others, the other people who said yes.

The one who doesn't go by the rules has that threat hangs over his or her every move, because if he or she blows whatever they try to do they could end up back where they started or dead.

I am thinking of a few directions this could go where it starts with a simple desire and a lure and turns into something unexpected,..tying in what the heroine initially wants turns out to be different than she thought.

Your thoughts?

[ackrin]

I definitely wouldn't be able to give up my friends and family. Maybe if everyone around me was treating me lie crap. I'd have no problem leaving them behind. This theme reminds me of that movie The Box.

[mcwriter]

Interesting.

I am thinking of taking the characters through a process where they are fooled into a test where they think it is a job, so what is really going is not apparent at first. I want the heroine's or hero's disability to be the thing they want to change, it has to be something very personal and very difficult for them. Among several characters and perspectives, I want them to make some hard choices and what they do as a result of those choices and then ultimately what they learn---not what they thought going in to it. Now don't forget this is also a futuristic fantasy and though this is the general theme, there are other things going on around them they will have to deal with, there is a bigger picture.

Still, the two questions are for ideas on some individual characters.

Now that I have one person's feedback, I have thought of another couple of questions...

**What if, (using the scenario of the questions above) somehow you were tricked into it? What if you were offered a fantabulously perfect body, and say you got to experience it for a few days and with no warning whatsoever, they told you after-the-fact that by accepting it you had just signed away your life and all knew you with it? You suddenly find out you can't go home?

**What if there was a clause that said you could go back but you would have the body you had before?

I am thinking of the the character's experience going from from one point, through these various realizations and emotions, some hope, joy, betrayal and anguish, to what they do about it.

Of course my husband is my harshest critic and he says it sounds like the movie, "The Island" and my premise is full of holes. How's that for telling me like it is?

Back to the drawing board...

Edited by mcwriter, 24 July 2011 - 02:14 PM.

[isobar]

The first one would be no of course because many of these people helped you rebuild , regain and may have helped you in someway how to live again.



As to the second question maybe i possessed some type of power needed to combat an evil that would consume the world we all knew ........ my sacrifice for the greater good of mankind would outweigh my personal torment , suffering and lost , somehow i'd find solace in knowing those closest to me are safe.

[ClaraTaylor]

It would be a dark dark day if my family disappeared. Definitely wouldn't give up my friends and family and if I were tricked into it I would be using the perfect body to fight my way back to my family, regardless of which scientist (aka he who can cure a sci type illness and so should be praised as a god que confusion of whether to save him and let him help others (the greater good) OR knowing he's destroying families break his neck in a slow and overly graphic way) got in the way or how many limbs I break.

[mcwriter]

I am thinking the basic storyline has been done a few times, and the question is I guess, what could make it different. Yes, we want to see the hero fight his way to save his family, but from what? No, he doesn't have to save his family, but he does have to save some of his fellow test subjects because they want to get back to their families and in doing so want to expose the company.

But what if we take this a step further, and in this futuristic society, the "company" that conducts the experiments or cures, is a secret agency whose test subjects are used in a beneficial way for the greater good, somehow? And say that greater good, while it looks great on the surface, really has nefarious motives for the world?

Say they can cure EVERYTHING. Now what are the sociological ramifications of this on the populace? You would have no death from disease or trauma, you would think that most people would die of old age, and even that could make for prolonged lives and what you would have is the problem of over population, not to mention the business of medicine would be virtually obsolete and monopolized by this company.

So essentially the company takes it upon itself to control the population, but how? What is their criteria? What is their purpose? How do they decide who to cure and why?

So the problem comes back to the hero and then he does want to save his family after all, but in addition to that, does he want the world back to the way it was? And once he decides, how does he get others on-board with it?

So in the end, what does it come down to? What are the questions,? the choices?