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Plot Idea Help/Development(Done)



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Mon Jul 07, 2014 6:33 pm
TigersMoon says...



I posted another post on the book board (is that what it's called?) before I knew about this place. Now I'm posting it (and other details) where they belong!

I asked of you would read my book and I typed a teaser. Here I'm elaborating on the plot and characters.

Teaser:
What do you do when you lose it all?
Make up for it by helping others? Nope.
Get back up and rebuild yourself? Nope.
Join a group of shady, possibly murderous people? Yep.


I know it takes place in a rundown city with no government (so no police or money) and it's chaos. But not people running around screaming chaos, more like murder here and there, and lots of stealing. There's not a whole lot of murder though. Less, in fact. Because there's no laws prohibiting killing, people aren't as driven to do it. (Kind of like that feeling of you want to do something just because your parents won't allow it.) The main character's parents get killed and she doesn't know what to do. That's when she meets someone from the group and joins them. The shady people aren't murder happy, though. (Wow. I'm saying murder a lot.) They do it every now and then. Everyone in the group has nicknames. (Ex. Twist, Redstreak, Gray Moon) If you want to help me with a character, (form below) make their name a nickname, but stay away from animals. (Ex. Fox, Hound, Rat)

I need help with a deeper plot. (I know the main character will feel bad about the killing, but that's it.) I also have 5 open character spaces. If anyone wants to help with that fill out the form:
Name:
Gender:
Age (18-20):
Last edited by TigersMoon on Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Three ghosts in the lighthouse
  





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Tue Jul 08, 2014 4:52 pm
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Rosendorn says...



So I think you've got a bit of a flaw in the world itself.

Groups make societies. Societies are the collection of unspoken rules, regulations, acceptable standards of behaviour, types of relationships, social roles, expectations of those roles, institutions, social structures and social stratification, and ways resources are distributed.

All groups of people have these. "Society" is not limited to a capitalist highly stratified place that is the United States. Everyone from the nomadic peoples of the Kalahari desert to New Zealand sheep herder to the Bronx have their own societies, which, in turn, comes with their own rules.

I'm a huge believer in "characters come from their backgrounds", so I would get out of the "this is chaos" mindset and build up a society that is different from our own. So ask yourself:

- What social system is this? Does any one person rule, or is each person an important part?
- How do they distribute resources? Is it a capitalist system, redistributed along rulers, or an egalitarian one?
- Where do they get resources? Local farms, animal products, hunting and gathering? (And please do not associate "hunting and gathering" with "primitive". How a group gets its food has no bearing on its social sophistication)
- How do they enforce rules? And, no, don't say "there are no rules", because like I said groups of humans make rules for acceptable standards of behaviour. You already have one, which is "murder isn't necessary unless in extreme circumstances". Are people who murder willy nilly shunned but kept within the group, killed by somebody else, outcast, talked to, glared at? Groups have ways of maintaining harmony without judicial systems.
- How do the groups divide up territory?
- Is this how society developed without interruption, or did a cataclysm destroy modern society?
- What defines family? What loyalties are you expected to pay to your family?

And others. These are just to get you started building a world so your characters can come from. I would also like to add a few things to remember when it comes to characters:

- races besides white exist
- orientations besides straight also exist
- genders outside of the male/female binary exist
- Disabilities/mental illnesses are Things (the definition of "disability" might actually be different in this society, because disabled people tend to be more hampered by society than by their own advantages/limitations)

Try to include a wide cast of characters, because travel is a lot easier than people think it is, even in a place without modern transport. Polynesia, for example, had a trade network that was hundreds of thousands of miles large, from New Zealand to some say the coast of Mexico and South America, all the way up to Hawaii, that lasted from prehistory to at least four hundred years ago (aka, multi thousands of years).
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Tue Jul 08, 2014 5:44 pm
TigersMoon says...



Thanks for the tips! To answer some of those questions, each person has equal power. Some people might demand more but they either don't get it or are taken out by others.
As I said, to get resources, they steal. One person would mine and keep the ores in their house, but someone else might break in and steal them. And someone else would steal the ores from that robber.
Enforcing rules is as simple as killing or chasing away the offender.
There is no territory, per say. More like a gang hangs around an area and some people don't go over there because of that. Overall, anyone can go anywhere.
Lastly, family is more like friends. It's the people you hang out with and protect. Your parents might abandon you, and you grow up living with other humans. They become your family.
Three ghosts in the lighthouse
  





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Tue Jul 08, 2014 6:32 pm
Rosendorn says...



You can't simply steal all your resources. Stealing requires a surprisingly complex system that involves storehouses, deficits, and personal property accumulated through some means. I'm asking where those resources they steal come from. How people accumulate stuff, namely food and water.

People have to get food somehow. Either they grow it themselves, keep animals to provide their products and gather they rest, or hunt/gather. Neither of these systems are independent of each other, and you can have people who grow food, hunt, and gather all in one. Each way they get food is often influenced by the area they live in, because one thing about big urban centres is they simply don't have room to grow their own food unless they make a ton of green space. Food takes up a lot of green space, because you need enough food to survive when the crops are done. That either means cultivating the land so you grow as much food as you need (then having a place to store it), or having a big enough area so you can move around and let the areas you'd eaten your way out of replenish their food stores.

Also, even though there's no money, have you ever heard of bartering? Or gift exchanges? People form social relations through exchanges of goods, and these social relations then help them survive. Not everybody has access to all resources, and getting in good with people who have different resources helps everybody out when it comes to surviving.

Humanity has survived via cooperation. As soon as you have a society that's too individualistic, where it's every man for themselves, humanity will go extinct. We are not the strongest or fastest, but we have higher endurance, and we have the ability to work together to get things done.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  








Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!
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