Ideas, Cherry Soda Bottles, and Time Warping Inspiration, ETC

[Michelle Black]

@leon-fleming Oh my gosh!!!! that looks like a book that needs best seller on it:) Who are your characters?

[Kathleen]

@leon-fleming

Not sure why I’m only finding this forum page now, but better late than never!

Okay, so here’s the first thing that popped into my head after reading your premise.

I really like the idea that every time he time travels, he is making an alternate universe, and not really changing the past.

But I think a cool way to take advantage of that is to have the main character have a very traumatic past. Maybe his entire family got killed, or he got sentenced to prison for life, you know just something AWFUL.

So MC James goes back in time before the catastrophic event happens and splits that into two timelines and then lives in the alternate universe where he avoided the horrible event and still gets to live a happy life.

However, since he didn’t change the past and is just living in a different timeline, the other version of himself is still living in the bad timeline that still exists. And he is absolutely miserable wishing he could change the past but only one version of himself has that power and that version is living in a good timeline.

Somehow the version of himself living in the bad timeline, (I’ll call him villain James to differentiate from MC James), figures out that there is an alternate timeline where the catastrophic event didn’t happen.

Desperate to get into that universe, villain James takes drastic measures to find a way into that universe which ends up harming other people. Which slowly turns him more and more evil. The more desperate he gets to find a way into that universe, the more harmful things he does, and the more twisted he gets.

Eventually, he finds a person who doesn’t have the ability to create alternate universes like the MC James, but a person who has an object, (maybe the cherry soda bottle?), that gives you the ability to travel through all the alternate universes. (Maybe the MC’s love interest?) The object can take one person to alternate universes as much as they like, but only has the power to carry two people at once three times every hundred years or so.

Since she won’t give him the object, he instead bribes her to take him to the alternate universe, where the catastrophic event didn’t happen and to take the other version of himself MC James back to the bad alternate universe so that villain James can take is place.

When the villain James gets there, the plan works he swaps places with the MC James.

So now the MC is stuck in the bad universe. (Maybe somehow he loses the ability to time travel, or maybe he can only time-travel so far in the past and the catastrophic event that changed his whole life, happen too long ago for him to travel to.)

The only way he can get back to the good alternate universe is if he steals the magic universe traveling object from the girl.  The girl with the object isn’t able to take him back because she used the power to carry two all three times.

And she won’t give it to him for one, she’ll never be able to get it back once he leaves, and two she despises the MC for something he did to a version of herself in another alternate universe.

So yeah, that my very plot holey idea that kinda just exploded in my head when I read your ideas for Piece of Mind.

Hope that wasn’t too confusing.XD

Not sure if any of those ideas will work at all, but maybe they’ll inspire some other better ideas and stoke the idea fire in your head after reading them.

 

 

 

 

 

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Kathleen.

[Not-So-Secret Secret Assassin]

@leon-fleming

Okay, what about this? The main character creates two different universes. In one universe, the love interest helps him become a better person. In the other one, the love interest dies, and then he just continues down a downward spiral into evilness. Evil James goes to the other parallel universe and commits a crime (preferably a murder), and then sneaks back to his own parallel universe. All the DNA evidence is pointing to good James, and now he is framed for a crime by his alternate self.

Oh, and the love interest is a detective-in-training and so she is thrown into conflict when she realizes that her beloved James is the criminal.

Flawless and handsome (as ruled by my grandmother.)

[Alien and Sojourner in a Foreign Land]

Okay, so just a note before we go on: I’m planning it so that the story comes to James, instead of James making the story. It comes to him; his flaws are so deeply threaded into his character that he wouldn’t have made the story even if he could.

@merieshenanigans XD Yeah, cherry soda is going to be a N.D. Wilson’s-imagination-like element. Something that is just totally out of the normal in the setting. XD

Nothing special about them really, except what they are. They’re just there, you know?

[Alien and Sojourner in a Foreign Land]

@michelle XD Thanks! Well, first (of those that I can tell you about), there’s James (obviously), a girl who’s a bit of a mystery, future love-what’sit-lady, a Guy, another guy, an aged couple who’re dead, and a group of kids around James’ age. I’m still working on the details of their characters. Descriptive, right?! XD

@kathleenramm Great ideas! I like that one about something AWFUL happening to him in his past, but he wouldn’t regard it as particularly terrorizing in his current predicament. Lots of things happened that brought on his characteristics to this point. Emotion-ripping types of things. I’ll definitely set these aside in the NOTES sections.

@not-so-secret-secret-assassin Nice ideas; I might use some elements, but this isn’t exactly what I would refer to as a detective-crime-etc novel; I could definitely use some of those things in a different light, though.

[Michelle Black]

@leon-fleming  Oooh sound so cool! How did you come up with the idea for the story?  Also just a random question (because that is just who I am lol) what is your middle name?

[Alien and Sojourner in a Foreign Land]

@Michelle Oh, you know, these things just sorta happen; I had a few ideas off of this KP, then I merged them with some other ideas I’d briefly written out, and so developed Piece of Time. Time travel came in as a little thing.

Do I have a middle name?

[Michelle Black]

@leon-fleming Time travel like Doctor Who:)

yes, do you have one buddy lol XD

[Alien and Sojourner in a Foreign Land]

@Michelle Not sure exactly what Doctor Who is, but I’ve heard of that a lot before.

Well, that depends on who you’re asking. I’ve got lots of middle names. Not at the moment, though.

[Michelle Black]

@leon-fleming those are not middle names, those are pet names:) like when you were born:)

[Alien and Sojourner in a Foreign Land]

@Michelle Yeah, I know what you mean; I wasn’t referring to fake names.

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