posted
Well im new on this of forums (and in writting too) but i have an idea for a book and need help.
Mi idea is a story about someone who feels that he dont fit in the world, he feels like all around him is wrong or should be in another way. Then he tries to change the world but realize that thats imposible.
Thats my idea. I had these idea because sometimes i feel that way. I asked some friends and family members if they have ever felt like that but only a few said "yes". I want to writte this story but i dunno if peaople will understand it if they have never felt like they dont belong here.
Then my question is: Have you ever felt these way? or close to these way? and what do you think of my idea?
if you can help me ill be the happiest person in the world (cant say the same about my character xD)
posted
I think what you're describing is a certain kind of loneliness. Everyone, or so I'd think, feels lonely from time to time. But of course, they feel it in different ways.
Be careful with the idea. What you have right now isn't so much a story, as much as a character. The idea of a 'lonely' character, out to change the world, isn't anything extraordinary. That's why you have to MAKE it extraordinary. This can happen in multiple ways, usually through the events that the character undergoes.
So, ask yourself how you can make this characters story interesting.
What kind of conflicts does he have? Are the conflicts he has with the world (Character VS the world), or with himself (Character VS self)?
Is this a story about change? For instance, perhaps through his struggles he finds that one man cannot change the world. But he himself, can change.
From the sounds of it, your character is going to be the story. Give him conflict. Find ways to make his journey unique, interesting, and most of all difficult.
Furthermore, make sure you don't go overboard with the changes. Most people in the real world are resistant to change. If this story is about his own change, then it needs to be a struggle. He can't simply wake up one day, and say "Oh hey, I'm changed!"
Make sure the character isn't perfect. Nor completely unlikeable.
[This message has been edited by Gan (edited January 29, 2009).]
posted
I think that this is the foundation for a deep and interesting character. Of course it should be rise to hundreds of questions. A novel link story for me seems to always stem from two sepparate and major ideas. One usually related to character(as you have) and on related to a speculative event and or plot. It seems that his is the areas on which you need to dedicate some creative flow. Do you want this to be SF, fantasy, or horror? What kind of neat pseculative stuff do you want to use to generate genre interest? Atomic rays? advanced and beneficial alien race in danger from the military? a strange and powerful new gadget or invention? Steampunk era or far into the future?
Where does the MC find the answer? What other struggles adversity conflict does he face? What does he learn? about himself? about humanity? What is the cost of his success? His gifts or abilities? his knowledge?
What does he/she lose?
you can see where I am going here.
I find it helpful to keep a notebook in this phase. A place where you can scratch ideas, Creating character names and profiles, (When worldbuilding) notes on different races, religions, practices, currency, wheather geographic patterns, alien species, social structures notes on who knows who, etc...
Even just to jot down random quotes, topics, plot events. I usually plot out chapters or at least a general outline in this notebook. It is the only way I can write chapters...especially when there are more than one POV characters and subplot elements to contend with.
Most of all don't give up and don't underestimate the amount of time, dedication and migaine causing work involved in typing 100k awe inspiring words.
Oh yeah. btw, I do know what it feels like. I sense that you also know what it feels like. Draw from that. Use that emotion to add depth to your character. Your writing will be better for it. THe fact that you asked this question shows me that you are on the right track because you have that longing. A novel can change the world. I can name several that have...hundreds.
Happy writing!
~Scott D
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited January 29, 2009).]
posted
I think you are right, thx for your help. What about this: what if the character really doesnt belong to this world? what if he feels diferent because he really is! what if i make my MC's search not to change the world, no, to find a place were he feels he belongs? maybe find someone who knows were is he from and how to get there. But before i start writting the story i want to know if people feels that way aften or not...
Posts: 8 | Registered: Jan 2009
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posted
I think everyone's felt out of place at one time, so I don't think you're readers would be confused. Maybe they don't feel out of place in the world, but they may have felt it at a party, in school, in their family, in a job, or somewhere else. Then we all go through the struggle to either change the situation to fit us, leave the situation, or change ourselves to fit in with the situation.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Jul 2008
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posted
People can relate to "Not belonging", or loneliness. There are plenty of stories out there, that deal with such subjects. If this is your main concern, don't worry about it. The story should make itself apparent, and readers will have no trouble connecting.
To make the audience really 'connect', and understand, all you have to do is make the character believable, and likable (Despite his flaws).
As far as not belonging to this world. Well, you could take that in many different directions. He could, literally, not belong to this world (This would lead into a science fiction type story).
Or, he could simply be living in the wrong place.
Either way, if you take this route, the story is going to be about this characters journey to find something he can relate to. Whether it end on a different planet, or in a different part of town, is entirely up to what direction you decide to take.
[This message has been edited by Gan (edited January 29, 2009).]
posted
Several areas for story research that might suggest a premise for the story, a predicament is already apparent. He feels he doesn't belong here. One of the more common motifs of stories, if not the most common one, is the familiar stranger struggling to belong in a hostile and alienating society.
Existential crisis, adult avoidant or adult reactive attachment disorder.
Been there, still there, never gonna get better, just more able to accommodate to it, I am what I am, that's my story. Hopefully, one day, there will be a reversal of fortune, from perpetual poor fortune to glorious good fortune.
posted
If you want to set up a brainstorming session in realtime, we could set up a time and exchange IM. I have done this with reasonable success with a few other Hatrackers in the past when brainstorming plots. It can be good to bang ideas off a peer. Sometimes it is hard to find one in your imediate area. Send me an email if you want to give it a try.
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posted
Well i read the Harry Potter books but i think that he dont feels he does not belong tho that world, he just dont feel familiar to that world, but he knows he can fit in there. after all he is a wizard in a wizardry world.
The "not belonging" emotion im talking about is deeper that that, its when you think all around you is kinda wrong, when you think all should be in another way.
In my story i want to make my MC to feel that so he can descover, by trying to change the world and failing, that maybe he really do not belong here. By descovering this he will stop trying to change the world and start searching for the place where he belongs.
[This message has been edited by Hari (edited January 30, 2009).]
posted
But Harry Potter started out in a world that he didn't belong to: the muggle world. He found the world he did belong to, though, but it took him all seven books and a lot of struggling with people in the wizard world who didn't want him to belong there either.
My point, Hari, is that part of what made the Harry Potter books so popular was that lots of people feel they don't belong and are looking for where they do belong, and the Harry Potter books resonated with that.
posted
Harry Potter is definitely a prime example of someone in a not-belonging world. It may not be in the same context that you're thinking of, but it's the same idea, just done in a different way.
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posted
C. J. Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg is about a familiar stranger struggling to belong in a hostile and alienating society. The imaginative premise is one of brood parasitism as the title suggests. The story smoothly switches perspectives between coprotagonists Duun and Thorn. A human child, Thorn, raised from cloned cells is brought up in an alien society under the tutelage of an alien Shonun, Duun. At one point in the story Thorn becomes aware that he is not of Duun's people. Of all that I've read, the Hatani trial scene in Cuckoo's Egg is my single most memorable reading experience, still, decades after I read it. My second most memorable reading experience also takes place in the novel, the open door trial earlier in the novel.
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posted
Once or twice. In fact, I read authors, so I've read all I can lay a hand on by and about Philip K. Dick, including biographies.
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TheOnceandFutureMe
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posted
That is the plot of almost every story published in the New Yorker. Just saying.
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posted
People who feel that they don't belong and try to find where they do? In THE NEW YORKER?
I thought the plot of every NEW YORKER story was two (or more) people sitting around talking about all their problems and then the story just ends (as if the author forgot to submit the last page).
We ought to just have a thread for bashing it, so we can keep these kind of empty comments out of the rest of the forum. I hate to see writers this jealously entrenched in their old, tired dogmas. It makes me sad (and hostile). It makes me feel very lonely.
posted
Because, I mean, isn't it our job, as writers, to question the things that are assumed to be true about various kinds of fictions? Isn't it our job to find things out for ourselves? Surely we know, as writers of this weird stuff, this bin stuff, this escapist stuff... Surely we know, we ferchrissakes writers of genre stuff -- WE know what it is to be dismissed by the carriers of tired dogmas.
Is it our revenge, now, to turn the tables? To say: Only our thing is good, and you -- you who practice another thing -- you are crap. Is this our sweet moment of justice?
In the long years I have heard these dismissive comments about literary fiction, I have never once heard someone who sounded as if he actually read and understood the fiction, and then rejected it on merit. The day I hear that, I'll eat a hat. What I always hear is people who clearly have either never read it, repeating the dumb jokey things they've heard about it, or people who read a few stories they didn't like, and painted the entire genre with the brush of their disappointment.
Don't we writers of genre fiction know that game? Don't we know enough to reject it?
What I advocate for writers is: Love to read. Be open-minded. Write.
[This message has been edited by Troy (edited February 02, 2009).]
posted
I read The New Yorker. I don't see much that's overtly "literary," per se. Nor plotless, nor impenetrable, nor two or more people just sitting around talking about their problems and then the stories just ending. New Yorker stories are about the ups and downs of existence in a megatropolis or the forays of denizens of the megatropolis outside the megatropolis. I also read Ploughshares, Boston Review, and quite a few other literary journals, as well as stories in other genre digests, genres of all kinds.
I challenge anyone to name a published plotless story and support the indictment. Even reviewers who've remarked that any particular story by X is plotless, isn't in any sense plotless, not that I can see. I've read a fair sampling of those so-called plotless stories and found they hit all the milestones of plot.
posted
Ah, extrinsic, to clarify, when I use the word literary, I speak not of merit, or of difficulty, I only mean it to describe the genre that is sometimes called mainstream, sometimes literary, and was commonly called, when I was a kid, contemporary. In using "literary fiction" to define the genre, I mean to differentiate it from the genres with which most of us are probably most familiar -- the "speculative fiction" genre (or genres, depending upon which particular school of thought you belong to.)
I, too, used to read the New Yorker. The other "literary" magazines I used to read on a regular basis were Glimmer Train, Story, and Atlantic Monthly. I soured a little bit when the Atlantic Monthly went to publishing fiction once a year. It was the one I always looked forward to the most.
I have just (within the past few months) let my subscriptions to various magazines lapse. (They were Fiddlehead, Zoetrope, F&SF, and Asimov's, if anyone wants to know.)
I'm keeping my subscription to Cemetery Dance.
...But yeah, I liked your post. I just wanted to clarify what I intended to mean when I said literary, because it occured to me that my meaning may not have been very clear. We see this bashing all too often around here and it disheartens me.
It is a genre, just like any other, with tropes and cliches, and in which 90% of the stuff that gets published is nonsense, just like in any other.
posted
Well i think this topic is becoming a discution xD
I was thinking in make an idea posted in this Topic, to make a real time discution about writting metods, if anyone is interested please send me a mail or a private message with your mail so i can send you when its going to take place and decide where (msn, yahoo, etc)
posted
Without reading much beyond the first post I feel the need to make a suggestion.
Watch anime. Lots of anime. The themes of alienation and lonliness along with someone trying to change/remake the world (often as a result of alienation and lonliness) are very common in anime. When I read the first post Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments: Lain immediately popped into my mind (of course they do tend to pop into my mind frequently...)
Also, you might try writing a short piece or two on the subject before moving on to book-length
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