Young Writers Society

Well, there's this inter college tech fest and they have a Creative Writing contest which I really want to enter.

One of the topics is "You need a quantum of plant to shine some sun. " and I've been playing it over in my head for a day. What do you think of my interpretation so far? I'm making it weirdly lose, like sun shine meaning happiness and stuff.

The plot:
Some futuristic year
A typical apocalyptic scenario (I'll work on details later.) with plants dwindling like crazy. Increase in CO2 levels, global warming and all that shizz. There's no hope.

Also, the end came during my half-sleep time in the college bus. What do you think?
There's a sudden growth of plants as if someone planted seeds and they grew in a few nights. Surprise, surprise!
And then,
we shift to a happy kid, who decided he's bored of god-modding in some 'create a planet' video game and he's letting them live.

It sounds weird, but what do you think?

It's a very basic outline.

Comments appreciated.

It sounds interesting to me, though I think the twist ending might be a bit tricky to pull off without making it look like a badly done deus ex machina. If you can hint throughout the story that the world is within a video game, I can see it working.

I'm also wondering who/what the characters are, what the plot is, and how will you move it forward/seamlessly tie the real and virtual worlds together through it.

Thanks Ky, I'm still working around the details. I'll be updating this after the weekend, and then maybe start writing.

I'm totally confused by the topic for the contest, but your plot is interesting. It is very basic, with no real plot except for set-up and an ending. I like the ending, but Kyllorac is definitely right about giving the reader hints. That way, when we're like "huh?!" we can read over and be able to catch the hints earlier. Thus, we think you're a genius, and the mystery is quite satisfying.

Now, just a few ideas to help you brainstorm the dastardly plot.

* If all the plants are dying, that means oxygen is dwindling down, right?
* If it's a video game, maybe you can hint that everyone kind of looks the same, because it's a simulation game. Kind of like Zombie Outbreak Simulator
* But if it is a PLANT simulation game, that means that most of the humans would be pretty boring. Since most of the AI is being used on the plants

Anyway, hope you have fun with this story!

Two things:

- There's a very famous short story by Ray Bradbury ("The Green Morning") in which a man plants seeds on the otherwise-dead Mars and they grow overnight into a forest. Not saying that you can't write another story with similar flavours, but I've always found it useful to keep stories with overlapping content in mind, just as a reference point of what not to repeat.

- I think you can do much much better than that ending. It's pretty gimmicky and not super original. (It runs in the vein of stories in which it was all a dream, or it's all just being written by someone with writer's block / an artist painting a picture / etc.) The reason the it's-all-a-dream ending (or this ending) is so frustrating to read is because the story ends up being something of a cheap trick. There's no actual point to the story, then -- it doesn't reveal anything significant, it's not supposed to resonate with us on any level. It becomes about the ploy, the twist, not the entire narrative you've been crafting before that little boy pops up with his video game console. You undermine the entire story with that ending. I personally think you can spin a story out of trees growing in the apocalypse (or even, say, a scientist who is struggling to grow trees in a dead world) -- a story with genuine conflict and emotion. Don't sell yourself short.

Thank you guys for the input.

Okay, so I'm scrapping the video game idea, as it will most likely end up as a case of deus ex machina.

So, there's the scientists (which was an original plan of mine, smaur. Thanks, anyway ), an (almost) dead world where the population live in little clumps and how they are surviving. (I might throw in cannibalism. What do you think?)

And I'll work out the end later.