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Okay y’all…
Now that I’ve finished the first draft of my sci-fi dystopian (and diving into the edits), I’ve been picking my next book project from my endless list of plot bunnies. And I think I’m going with a superhero book, that I’ve actually partly outlined already.
But I’m having a bit of trouble getting the plot off the ground. I need some inspiration, you wonderful people 😉 Here’s what I’ve got so far (warning: this is just a rambling, not a coherent blurb):
Okay, so there’s this orphan girl (Kaylee) who lives with her grandparents. She does gymnastics (quite convenient for a future hero don’t you think? 😛 ) and she loves to read/have close some vintage superhero comics her dad had. She’s very much an introvert, and wishes she could do something worthwhile that people will notice.
Okay, so her grandparents want to go on a vacation just the two of them for their anniversary, but they’re worried about Kaylee. She encourages them to go, and they end up leaving her to stay with an kind of ‘mad scientist’ uncle who she’s never met.
So, I have two ways the story could go from there. 1) she messed with something in his lab that gives her her powers 2) her uncle is mad-scientist experimenting and injects something into her to test it. I personally like the second option.
Another idea I had was that Kaylee was raised specifically to be a hero (to fight already established antagonist one day?); her grandparents aren’t actually her grandparents, instead two agents hired to raise her right.
So that’s pretty much all I have so far. I can’t figure out a good antagonist or the actual plot, cuz all that’s kinda just set up. So if you all have any ideas, or any place to find superhero story prompts, I’d love you all forever! (well, I do anyway 😉 )
One more request. My character is biracial. Her mom is white and her dad is black. I’m having a hard time trying to explain this in a book while still being sensitive of people’s feelings. I’m biracial too, so the situation doesn’t feel too sensitive, but still…
Thank you! 😀
I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.comAaaaand forgot to tag people 😛 @rochellaine @kaya-young @alia @ariel-ashira @seekjustice @catwing @daughteroftheking @claire-c @skredder @ingridrd
I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.comI think the second option is good, but I also think that she should have met him at least a few times even if she was too young to remember properly. But what if he’s not a mad-scientist? What if he’s actually good but there are some bad people who caught onto his experiment and have been funding him? However, the experiment is ready for experimental testing, but there are still a few bugs in it that the uncle doesn’t like. The bad-guys then reveal their true nature to him and threaten to kill Kaylee unless he experiments on him. However, Kaylee doesn’t know any of this and thinks her Uncle is bad. They try to make her a supervillain, but her Uncle risks his life to help her escape (they keep him alive though). She tries to get to her grandparents and it’s a race to see who can get there first, Kaylee or the bad guys. Just a quick idea I had.
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
@skredder ooh yeah that’s a good idea *writes it down* thank you! <3
I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com@jenwriter17 What a cool bunch of ideas! I like what @skredder suggested. I will try to think of something, and let you know if I have any ideas. So, do her “grandparents” care a lot for her? What happened to her parents? And do you know what theme you might be using?
I think biracial people are beautiful. I guess one way you could let readers know how she looks is that you could have a picture of her on the front cover. And I got the idea you might be biracial when I looked at the hairstyles on your pinterest board. 🙂
Not sure I was very helpful, but…
"In a mask, was he?"
@ariel-ashira Yes, her grandparents really love her a ton. Kaylee was told her parents died in a car accident, but I want the accident to be linked to some superhero business of some sort (maybe they were heroes???). haven’t quite figured out the theme.
yeah I guess Pinterest boards can tell a lot about a person 😉
thank you! 🙂
I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com@jenwriter17 Whenever I hear “superhero WIP” I become wary because I pretty much hate Josiah’s stories, but I’ll try to give an unbiased opinion. 😛
So…my first thought on reading your ideas was that if I read the book I would immediately think her grandparents were villains. Maybe you should play this up a bit, and either have her trust them and suddenly find out they’re bad, or have her trust them, find out they might be villains, and then have a big reveal where they weren’t actually villains, but the people she thought were good were actually bad, and her grandparents are actually the real good guys. Either way, I think I would definitely suspect that her grandparents were villains, so you might want to hint at that being the case.
As for the biracial thing, I guess you might call me that too, since my dad is middle eastern and my mom is from here, but the word “race” really throws me off. God created one race: the human race, and I know labeling different colors of skin helps to identify what someone looks like when describing them, but I don’t like the way it divides people. I like what Ariel said about having her picture on the cover of your book. That would immediately give the readers an idea of what she looks like. Would it be possible to describe her parents or her without bringing race into it? Could you just describe her dad’s “piercing dark eyes,” and “charcoal skin,” and her mom’s “fluffy blonde hair?” Kaylee’s skin would be “olive” and her hair “frizzy,” or something like that? What do you think? In my opinion that would completely take away the sensitiveness of the subject. Especially since “biracial” almost implies that it’s unusual, and it shouldn’t be considered weird for people to marry when their skin is a different shade from that of their spouse.
Oh, and about the grandparents being agents thing, that’s a cool idea, and I don’t think it makes much of a difference whether they are or not. Either way would make a cool story. Them being agents would probably work really well with the “villain suspicion” thing I was thinking, but they could even actually be related to her, like Spiderman’s – um, dad? (I don’t really know the Spiderman story, I just heard that someone, I think his dad, was originally part of the experiments or something.) So they could be her actual grandparents and still be agents if you want to use both of your ideas.
Hope this gives you something…but I’m not sure what! 😉 😛
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@rochellaine Why don’t you like Josiah’s stories?
"In a mask, was he?"
@jenwriter17 Here’s a thought, her mad scienctist uncle could have given her parents super powers. The bad guys found out he was experimenting with giving people powers, but don’t know he succeeded. The uncle knowing what they would do if they had the powers pretends to be far behind on his creation. He keeps all his notes in codes so the bad guys can’t read them, and pretends to be mad (eg. Reverting back to an extinct language (that maybe Kaylee can understand, because her parents would use it?), losing things in right in front of him, claiming something hat has been in one place a long time had just appeared, etc..)
I think that her grandparents should be her grandparents, but they want her uncle to give her the powers so the bad guys can’t kill her as easily (and so she can follow in her parents footsteps and protect people from the bad guys using the gift. They want to protect her and have her reach her potential.).
And she has two sets of grandparents so maybe the other set could get involved too. 🙂What do you think?
IMMA KAPEEFER! Til we're old and gray!
@ariel-ashira I think I’ve only read three of them, and since they’re stand-alone there might be a few that I would like. First-off, the thing that till make the most sense to you is I don’t like darkness. And his stories are full of that.
Now, about the specific stories. One was advocating the right to kill one person to save many. That is a very immoral stance, and even looking at it apart from the specific morality of that action, I believe it’s been shown that those who are willing to sacrifice one to save many are more inclined to commit murder in other cases. (Disclaimer: I have not looked this up, so I cannot prove this idea or argue for it. I only know that it sounds very logical.) Killing one to save many is not something I would support, but is something that modern governments are suggesting just like population control and killing the disabled and elderly to make way for young healthy people.
I don’t remember the plot of the second story I read, but the third one was the one he published on SE a little while ago. That one had a protagonist that did continually bad things, and nothing ever got resolved. The story finished with him completely in the wrong, and leaves the reader feeling empty, rather than satisfied, but wanting more. If it were part of a series, where we would follow the protagonist to his eventual righteous ending, I would have been fine with it, but a story without a resolution and no definite moral stance is something I will not ever desire to read again.
….Sorry for the definitiveness of these statements. I just got really annoyed with Josiah’s writing. I know he can write well, and I liked him when I met him in person, but I don’t want to read any more of his stories, and I don’t like the morals he uses in them.
Does that make sense? (And please don’t let me tell you not to read them. If you enjoy them, that’s fine with me. 🙂 )
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@jenwriter17 *DISCLAIMER* I may not have been the one to call for this, because I’m not a big superhero person. I’ll try to be helpful though. *END OF DISCLAIMER. HAVE A NICE DAY*
My biggest advice would to work on all the villain’s motivations and make them human. I think you’ve got the opportunity to give Kaylee adversaries that will challenge her personally, something that isn’t all that common in superhero fiction. So give her people to fight that will get under her skin and mess with her mind and all that stuff us crazy writers seem to love to do to their poor characters. *rubs hands together whilst thunder booms in the background*
As for the general story, does Kaylee have friends that could impact her character arc? Is Kaylee interested in having powers, or does she want to remain normal? Are there a lot of superheroes and villains in the world?
Blog: https://weridasusual.home.blog/
@rochellaine cool ideas! 😀
yes, I agree. God created us all equal and skin color doesn’t make anyone better or worse than someone else. I like your description suggestions. It’s the ‘charcoal skin’ part that people are super sensitive about I think. Skin descriptions that might be just fine people would think offensive. I’m not saying ‘charcoal skin’ is offensive, it’s actually probably one of the best skin color descriptions I’ve come across. I guess maybe I could try to describe other features like the kinky curly hair or something too.
@catwing Those are really good ideas too!!! 😀 thank you!I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com@daughteroftheking good idea about the antagonist; i can tend to not put enough work in the antagonist.
She has one best friend (Christy), but since she’s major-super introverted, she doesn’t really have any more. I was thinking of making her bestie the villain, but then it seemed kinda obvious.
I think at first she will hate having the powers, cuz she wants a normal quiet life (introvert 😛 ). But I want there to be some character that encourages her to do good with it.
I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com@jenwriter17, this reminds me a tad bit of my sister’s superhero book. Anyways, I really liked idea that her grandparents were good but she thinks they aren’t. (grandparents aren’t used much as more than place holders in most books) I love reading about grandparents with larger roles.
WIP - Decisions
Kapeefer til we're old and grey@alia okey-doke 😉
I'm a Kapeefer 'TIL WE'RE OLD AND GREY!
www.jennaterese.com
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