My idea is a psychological thriller. The trouble is, I don't want it to be a "crap slasher flick" as I put it. I want my characters (there will be four, I believe) to be in dark danger, but not like Psycho Serial Killer danger or Atomic Weapon danger...Danger from within. Any ideas?
For example, there were many dark myths about prophecies. Some of these prophecies would be absolutely horrible. For example, one guy was told that he would kill his father and marry his mother. His father, who knew the prophecy, tried to do everything he could to keep his son from his fate (after all, who wants to die?) but alas! By trying to fix things, he actually set them to be.
Shakespeare also did this -- just look at Macbeth!
With that said, a psychological thriller can be just about mind games. Something is about to happen... but what? How do the characters try to prevent or encourage that thing from happening? And does how does it go awry?
That sort of stuff is always FASCINATING to me anyway.
Another idea is to have a really really good bad guy. Not some insane guy -- that would never do. Someone who plays with your characters minds and can actually turn your characters against each other.
For instance, Agatha Christie had this story about twelve people who were invited to a house in the middle of no where. And then, slowly but surely, every one started to get knocked off. Who? And why? From a note they were given, they knew that there was one traitor in their midst. The question was, who was it?
Again, let's turn back to ancient stuff. In the biblical days when Jesus was walking around and stuff, there was a guy named Judas who was tempted to bring Jesus in for some silver. To betray him. And did he ever...
You see, psychological thrillers don't necessarily have to have insane guys running around with chainsaws. They're about people. All these stories that I've referred to have some sort of element of psychological thriller-esqueness. They deal with what the characters are thinking and how they try to help or hurt their chances at some event.
So, if you EVER get stuck or want to have an idea to write about, first look to literature and mythology. This isn't cheating -- honest. There really are no original ideas. There's just original ways of telling them. Good luck!
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"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach
Main Entry: paranoid schizophrenia
Function: noun
: schizophrenia characterized especially by persecutory or grandiose delusions or hallucinations or by delusional jealousy.
If you read Fight Club, or see A Beautiful Mind, these are both good examples of what it looks like.
If you want some sort of mental peril from within, this is the best route to take. Of course, you'd have to know a lot about it before you could even come close to creating a character with this disorder that is believable.
There is also multiple personality disorder, which is also sometimes called schizophrenia, but I don't know how right that is. Its a lot different. With that, what happens is the person will actually have several different personalities, all with different names that they want to be called. The person with it has a strong feeling that he needs to be protected or saved from something, but doesn't really know it. Then they devide themselves against themselves in order to protect themselves. To my knowledge, there isn't any cross personality communication. Me Myself and Irene would be a bad movie to watch to understand this, it only makes fun of the disease, not explain it.
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