Great stories you never wrote

[GeorgeGlass]

I created a thread like this on the WWOEC forum a while back, but since WWOEC is no more, I thought I'd begin it again here.

Basically, this thread is for story ideas that you had and really liked but that had some fatal flaw that prevented you from incarnating them as word-flesh. Here, you can tell the world about your great idea--the working title (if there was one), the fandom (including "original"), the plot, and the fatal flaw. I'll start:

Working Title: Dead Man's Curve

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Plot: Some time during season 4 or thereabouts, a couple of our heroes' male classmates are killed in solo car accidents on a stretch of cliffside highway people call Dead Man's Curve. They notice that another of their classmates has been lurking around that area and become suspicious, but it turns out that she's an applied math major doing a research project on the inexplicably high accident rate on this one segment of road. Ultimately, Buffy and the gang discover that a demon has been lurking in this area, appearing in a ghostly race car and brain-addling young men into racing against it and crashing. Giles' research determines that if someone were to actually race the demon and win, the demon, in its anger, would take physical form and attack, thereby giving Buffy a corporeal ass to kick. Giles somehow commandeers a muscle car, Xander races the demon to victory, and Buffy beats the crap out of it.

Fatal flaws: I liked the basic idea, but it needed some sort of additional twist to make it interesting. While I was thinking about what that might be, a fellow fanfic writer who was a friend of mine lost her mother and brother in a freak car accident. I just couldn't write the story after that.

Keeping or Abandoning? Abandoning

Edited April 24, 2016 by GeorgeGlass

[DirtyAngel]

Star Wars, I didn't write Star Wars

[julpups]

@GG: Plot and title suggest a proper stand-alone episode at some time during S01-S04. I'd read it.

Is this thread just for proclaiming or should others feel encouraged to offer opinions and suggestions so the story might work after all?

Working title: Not Human at all

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Plot: S04 What if...

Starts with "Living Conditions". The Initiative coincidentally finds out about Willow's witchiness, abducts and confines her in its facility. They fake her death, remove uterus and oviducts, shave her hair and implant a chip similar to Spike's. They consider her not human and want to use her abilities for their own purposes. Walsh is the main meanie here. Riley is one of her captors but eventually turns from abettor to her only connection to the outer world as well as the only one who treats her human. At the end, he's a crucial element to her liberation.

Willow herself develops from plain victim to her own rescuer. The others believe her death until Riley, who started to date Buffy here as well, tells them the truth.

Supposed to be an alternate S04, where every character gets his/her adequate attention and the canon main topics are somehow merged in.

Fatal flaw: Everything! It was foredoomed from the beginning. Story is too big and advanced for a beginner and I didn't thought it through. After two chapters it was like "Errm, yeah. What comes next?" The bright side is that I really started to think about what it means to write a story with everything involved instead of having the "Ha! It just will work out somehow." mindset. The project is on hiatus now until I've gained more experience and skill by writing shortfics with much simpler demands.

Edited April 21, 2016 by julpups

[CL Mustafic]

Working Title: Women’s World (yeah I suck at titles)

Fandom: Original

Plot: For years women have been plotting to take over the world. It started slowly with women in the west aborting male fetuses without their male partners knowing, throwing the male to female ratio out of balance. But soon the idea spread, a world ruled by women would solve so many problems. Women started rising up against their oppressors and with the help of women soldiers trained by groups like ISIS and Boko Haram, women start taking up positions of power in all parts of the world until men were regulated to nothing more than studs for breeding and a few that were lucky enough to be kept as sexual slaves in government owned brothels. A small rebel group of women decide to live free and procreate naturally eventually leading to an uprising that will end the new tyranny that’s replaced the old.

Fatal flaw: There are too many to list but it’s sort of not the kind of story I can write since it has a huge back story and would require world building that I am incapable of doing. Maybe someday since the idea still pulls at me.

[BronxWench]

Working Title: Women’s World (yeah I suck at titles)

Fandom: Original

Plot: For years women have been plotting to take over the world. It started slowly with women in the west aborting male fetuses without their male partners knowing, throwing the male to female ratio out of balance. But soon the idea spread, a world ruled by women would solve so many problems. Women started rising up against their oppressors and with the help of women soldiers trained by groups like ISIS and Boko Haram, women start taking up positions of power in all parts of the world until men were regulated to nothing more than studs for breeding and a few that were lucky enough to be kept as sexual slaves in government owned brothels. A small rebel group of women decide to live free and procreate naturally eventually leading to an uprising that will end the new tyranny that’s replaced the old.

Fatal flaw: There are too many to list but it’s sort of not the kind of story I can write since it has a huge back story and would require world building that I am incapable of doing. Maybe someday since the idea still pulls at me.

Dammit. Apparently, this idea is a slut-plunnie, because it's tugging at me, too, now. Except space/alien civilization...

[CL Mustafic]

Dammit. Apparently, this idea is a slut-plunnie, because it's tugging at me, too, now. Except space/alien civilization...

LOL Slut plunnie, you can have it though if you want it, cause I am not up to writing something that epic. I shall leave it to someone that has world building skills that I do not possess.

Edited April 21, 2016 by CL Mustafic

[KoKoa_B]

{This looks like it'll be fun...}

Working Title: Dark Georgia Justice... or Dark Justice Georgia... I never figured it out...

Fandom: DC, Justice League International

Plot: A southern vampire (Georgia) is enlisted in the Justice League International group thanks to Batman. (Some of you who know me knows where this is going...)

Fatal Flaws: I'm moving on to this because the plot itself is a fatal flaw. The only thing I knew for sure was that for some reason, Martian Manhunter would be the only one who knew that Georgia was a vampire until a certain event happened. The other members do question why she's only around at night but that group in the comics was only made for comic relief; their ignorance would be excused! The other thing that was definite was the romantic involvement between the two. Fatal flaw: no actual plot but not considered PWP either. Just some scenes of the Martian and the vampire bonding and then a big reveal of their feelings for one another... followed by, of course, hot Martian sex! I did want to play with the notion of Georgia being slowly cured of her vampirism due to feeding off of the Martian; no one knows what Martian blood can do, you know? The problem with that was whether Georgia would simply die on the spot after she's fully cured or as she starts to lose her vampirism, she gains Martian abilities (one scene that kept playing in my mind over and over was where she's feeding on him and her eyes flash red for a moment before turning back. But only the readers would get to see that...).

Another problem, and this is just me in general, is that I had no idea what would happen after all of that. Okay, they become lovers and Georgia is either slowly turning back mortal or turning into a Martian hybrid. After that? Nothing. Would they get married? Would they have children? The story could become endless!

And to note, the story wouldn't have any fight scenes in it. After writing two stories about superheroes, I learned the hard way that fighting is not in my repertoire (mind you, I have two more books to go so... *grabs wine bottles*). Therefore, this story was going to be void of it. Which was fine because in the comic series, they weren't all that serious; it was a bunch of stories about their silly antics and Martian Manhunter sighing a lot, wondering why was he made leader of such a goofball team!

Keeping or Abandoning?: More than likely keeping it...

Edited June 26, 2016 by KoKoa_B

[GeorgeGlass]

Star Wars, I didn't write Star Wars

Maybe not the original trilogy, but the prequels have your fingerprints all over them.

Is this thread just for proclaiming or should others feel encouraged to offer opinions and suggestions so the story might work after all?

My original thought was that it would be for story ideas we have permanently abandoned (although others might take inspiration from them for their own stories). But maybe we could have a fifth header for that, like, "Want to resurrect: [Yes/No]".

[JayDee]

Whoops, I mis-understood. Sorry! Have deleted.

[GeorgeGlass]

Whoops, I mis-understood. Sorry! Have deleted.

Hey, wasn't trying to kick you out of the thread or anything. But maybe story ideas in need of rehab deserve a separate thread, anyway.

Anyway, here's a big one:

Working Title: none

Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra

Plot: Fifty years after the events at the end of Legend of Korra, twelve-year-old Fire Nation citizen Ziya and her older brother Li attend the opening of Future Industries' first rocket-launch facility--Li because the idea of launching satellites into space fascinates him, Ziya because Future Industries president and CEO Asami Sato will be announcing her retirement, with (it is rumored) her wife, Avatar Korra, at her side. As the gray-haired Asami begins her speech, shots ring out, and Li dives on top of Ziya to protect her. People begin screaming that the Avatar has been shot, and Ziya discovers that Li has been shot dead, as well.

Fast forward fifteen years. No new Avatar has appeared, and one by one, the portals to the Spirit World at the poles and in Republic City have closed. Ziya is now an agent of the Fire Nation's National Bureau of Investigation, and in her off hours, she continues to investigate the shooting that killed Avatar Korra and Li. The assassin shot himself before he could be apprehended, and most people think he acted alone, but Ziya believes otherwise--not least because, under his hair, the killer had a tattoo of an ancient symbol for the digit zero, which is associated with an obscure anti-spiritual cult. And while many think that the age of the Avatar has ended and that the closing of the spirit portals is a natural phenomenon, Ziya refuses to believe that anything as mundane as a bullet could put an end to the Avatar cycle.

Meanwhile, in an orphanage in the Fire Nation, a fourteen-year-old boy from the Earth Federacy wonders why he is the only non-bender among the children there. He also wonders why they are almost never allowed outside the orphanage, or why the children who are "adopted" are never seen again. Most of all, he wonders why he continues to have nightmares about a long-haired woman with glowing white eyes.

Fatal Flaws: This thing would be freaking huge--like writing a whole new Avatar TV series--and having recently finished one epic story and started another, I just can't handle a third. Even if that weren't the case, the thoughts I've had about who is responsible for kidnapping the Avatar, suppressing his powers, and forcing the spirit portals to close have been vague and unsatisfying.

Keeping or Abandoning? Abandoning

Edited April 24, 2016 by GeorgeGlass

[KoKoa_B]

Maybe not the original trilogy, but the prequels have your fingerprints all over them.

My original thought was that it would be for story ideas we have permanently abandoned (although others might take inspiration from them for their own stories). But maybe we could have a fifth header for that, like, "Want to resurrect: [Yes/No]".

If we include that fifth header, would that mean we ourselves would resurrect or are we giving permission for others to resurrect?

[DirtyAngel]

zombie plunnies!

[GeorgeGlass]

If we include that fifth header, would that mean we ourselves would resurrect or are we giving permission for others to resurrect?

Wow, this thread raises some complex practical issues. I'd say that if the poster is abandoning the idea, then by posting it they are giving others license to pursue the idea themselves if they wish. Otherwise, the poster would be soliciting suggestions so that the poster could attempt to make the story work. So maybe the fifth header should be something like "Keeping or Abandoning?"

[KoKoa_B]

Wow, this thread raises some complex practical issues. I'd say that if the poster is abandoning the idea, then by posting it they are giving others license to pursue the idea themselves if they wish. Otherwise, the poster would be soliciting suggestions so that the poster could attempt to make the story work. So maybe the fifth header should be something like "Keeping or Abandoning?"

I like that. And after I reread what I asked, I felt like an idiot! LOL

[GeorgeGlass]

I like that. And after I reread what I asked, I felt like an idiot! LOL

Why? It was a good question. In fact, I just went back and added "Keeping or Abandoning?" lines to the two story ideas I posted previously.

[GeorgeGlass]

Working Title: No Future but Itself

Fandom: CSI (original series)

Plot: A white man in his early twenties is found dead in the apartment that he shares with his mother. Doc Robbins’ medical examination and tox screen reveal that the victim died of an overdose of codeine—a medication prescribed for his mother, not for him—which he had taken on top of his own prescription medication. The pills had been crushed and mixed into a vanilla milkshake, and the CSIs suspect that the mother might have done it. The young man had been injured in a motorcycle accident a year earlier and was dealing with chronic neuropathic pain from an avulsion injury at the nerve root. The detectives interview doctors at various walk-in clinics, who describe the young man as a drug addict. But we eventually learn that this was a case of “pseudoaddition,” in which a patient goes from doctor to doctor in a way that mimics drug-seeking behavior but that is really an effort to find effective treatment for the patient’s intractable chronic pain. Greg (who is still the DNA analyst at the time of this story), acting on a hunch, tests the victim’s DNA and discovers that the victim had a gene (found in about 1 in 11 white Americans) that prevents him from benefitting from the pain-relieving properties of codeine. We eventually learn that the young man had crushed the pills himself in an attempt to make them act faster and had drunk them in the milkshake to cover the bitterness of the codeine. They were ineffective at first, and he had no more of his own meds, so he kept taking more and more codeine until he overdosed. The story ends with Grissom reciting an Emily Dickinson poem:

Pain–Has an Element of Blank–
It cannot recollect
When it begun–or if it were
A day when it was not–

It has no Future–but itself–
Its Infinite contain
Its Past–enlightened to perceive
New Periods–of Pain.

Fatal Flaws: I had the idea for this story many years ago, sometime in the middle of CSI’s run. I liked the way that slow-motion visuals were used on the show to depict the events that led to the CSIs’ findings, so I had the idea of including still pictures in the story to the same effect—for example, a series of drawings of how a nerve avulsion injury occurs during a motorcycle crash. But finding such images and then somehow inserting them into the text (which most story sites won’t allow) seemed too daunting a task. Plus, the story seemed both too gloomy and too preachy for me to enjoy writing it, so I ended up leaving the idea alone.

Keeping or Abandoning? Abandoning

[KoKoa_B]

I realized I never responded -__-

I always get this feeling of asking stupid questions, especially when I'm around you guys! No worries, though...

[GeorgeGlass]

Working Title: Sherlock Homeboy
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Plot: Sherlock Langston Holmes is a poor teenager from Chicago's South Side. He has a gift for solving crimes that variously earns him respect and enmity in his community and among the police. He survives by his wits and with the help of his best friend, Johnny Watson, a varsity linebacker who dreams of one day going to medical school.
Fatal flaws:
1. There's no story here -- characters and setting, but no plot.
2. I don't know jack about what life is like for poor black teenagers on the South Side.
3. Does anybody still say “homeboy”?

Keeping or abandoning? Abandoning

[KoKoa_B]

19 minutes ago, GeorgeGlass said:

Working Title: Sherlock Homeboy
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Plot: Sherlock Langston Holmes is a poor teenager from Chicago's South Side. He has a gift for solving crimes that variously earns him respect and enmity in his community and among the police. He survives by his wits and with the help of his best friend, Johnny Watson, a varsity linebacker who dreams of one day going to medical school.
Fatal flaws:
1. There's no story here -- characters and setting, but no plot.
2. I don't know jack about what life is like for poor black teenagers on the South Side.
3. Does anybody still say “homeboy”?

Keeping or abandoning? Abandoning

I could answer #2 but it looks like you’re abandoning it. But the answer to #3 is no lol

[jungledrums]

Working Title: The Bone Collector
Fandom: Naruto
Plot: Remember that filler episode where Naruto and Team 8 fought those crazy bee ninjas? I had this idea where the one woman Suzumebachi swears vengeance on the genin, Hinata specifically. She hears rumors of a powerful witch and against better judgement seeks out their help. What she actually finds is this cackling, foul mouthed, old hillbilly in cave and his pet crow. He claims to be a witch but she just assumes he’s a dottering old hack ninja. So Kurenai, Kiba, Shino, Hinata and Akamaru investigate this blighted village where a young lord claims there is a plot by the farmers to kill him, and he just wants them to investigate and see if there’s any truth to the rumors.

At that point I got stuck on where to go from there, other than a few hazy ideas. Team 8 would have to solve a mystery, while fending off raiding parties of zombies and skeletons. With a touch of horrible dreams a la “The Serpent And The Rainbow”.

Really the whole idea was just an excuse to have Team 8 have their own adventure, fighting skeletons and well, a D&D style necromancer.

Fatal flaws:
1. While the eponymous Bone Collector was A LOT of fun to write about (think the unholy love child of Mumm-Ra and Otis B. Driftwood), and he stole show…He is an outside context issue for the ninja. He’d be more at home in a D&D or Conan The Barbarian story than in Naruto. That made it harder to justify his abilities and how it would contrast to the ninjas and how their world worked. Balance was an issue I just couldn’t work around without poking holes in accepted canon.
2. Team 8 themselves. They were never really explored much in canon, so I had to fill in the blanks myself how their group dynamic would work. Shino is especially difficult to make interesting. Kurenai was also with them supervising them as Kakashi would Team 7.
3. I tried working an angle of him being the servant of a Discount Cthulhlu god. This ended up requiring a whole backstory in of itself, with an ancient Groman/Not Atlantis city (in order to justify having a bunch of Hoplite skeletons roaming around the extremely Japanese setting of Naruto), and trying to staple it into an otherwise “working within canon” story.
4. Getting from point A to B was one thing. Giving the Team banter between themselves ended up not being as interesting as I had hoped. The whole plot revolved around their mission being a trap. The bee ninja woman kind of fell by the way side as the idea just fizzled out.
5. The team fighting their way to the Necromancer through his spooky zombie infested woods was cool and all but. But. . . actually fighting him? It goes back to problem 2, how to do it in a way that makes sense and doesn’t end in a curb stomp battle for either side. You gotta be damn good to convince cynical ff readers you’ve made a genuine OC and not just another Sue power fantasy.
6. Ninja aren’t exactly equipped to fight the undead. It’s not like in Inuyasha or something where Miroku could whip up some sacred sutra and Turn them. In order to justify spirits and other ghoulish fun that would mean giving the ninja something to level the playing field. I came up with the idea that Hinata’s byugugan can be trained to see spirits, and over the course of the fic she would learn how to unlock this ability. As an added bonus, to give the villain a reasonable motivation, he would be out to steal the byuguagn for said purpose. After I wrote it out, it just felt like cheating though. Typical readers of Naruto crap tend to frown on this kind of canon welding too.
7. My alternative to make the story make more sense was to pull a Shyamalan and make the so called witch...an actual fake! As in he’s just an old ass ninja who using illusions to make it seem like he’s this all powerful sorcerer, when in fact he’s a fraud. This idea bored me and was a chore to try and write.

Keeping or abandoning?  I started the first two chapters before fizzling out. I think I’ll scrap the fic and use the Necromancer character I made for something else. Maybe put him in a setting that makes more sense for his type of character.

Edited January 19, 2017 by jungledrums

[jungledrums]

On 10/26/2016 at 8:01 PM, GeorgeGlass said:

2. I don't know jack about what life is like for poor black teenagers on the South Side.
 

Read The Warriors by Sol Yorrick.

Dead serious. It’s all about black adolescent street gangs, their lives and how they form. Their mentality. Granted it’s set in like the 60’s or earlier, but it paints a vivid enough picture that it could easily be applied to inner city youths today. After all, war...war never changes.

[GeorgeGlass]

I didn’t know the movie was based on a book. (“Waaaarioooors, come out and play-aaaaay….”)

Years ago, I read a book called The Vice Lords by an anthropologist who studied Chicago gangs. Pretty interesting stuff.

[jungledrums]

Yeah, the book is really good. I started reading it this year. Waaaay different from the movie though. The movie is pure fantasy compared to the book.

[GeorgeGlass]

Working Title: Twist My Arm
Fandom: The Loud House
Plot: After their successful double date at Jean Juan’s French-Mex Buffet, Bobby proposes to Lori that they go on more double dates with Lincoln and Ronnie Anne. Lori, glad to do anything that involves spending more time with Bobby, readily agrees, but on their first date (at a retro drive-in movie theater), she finds that having the younger kids along is cramping her style because Bobby won’t make out with her when they’re around. Lori gets Lincoln alone and pressures him to make out with Ronnie Anne, reasoning that Bobby won’t worry about him and Lori making the kids uncomfortable if the kids themselves are making out. This strategy works, so, on subsequent dates, Lori pressures Lincoln to go farther and farther with Ronnie Anne, until things get completely out of hand.
Fatal Flaws: (Warning: Spoilers for “Relative Chaos” ahead): Now that Bobby and Ronnie Anne have moved away, this story would be AU, and I don’t like starting a story under those circumstances.
Keeping or Abandoning? Abandoning. Luckily, I’ve got another Loud House story in the works (titled “The Loud House After Dark”) that I’m really excited about.
 

[GeorgeGlass]

On 6/30/2017 at 10:02 PM, GeorgeGlass said:

Working Title: Twist My Arm
Fandom: The Loud House
Plot: After their successful double date at Jean Juan’s French-Mex Buffet, Bobby proposes to Lori that they go on more double dates with Lincoln and Ronnie Anne. Lori, glad to do anything that involves spending more time with Bobby, readily agrees, but on their first date (at a retro drive-in movie theater), she finds that having the younger kids along is cramping her style because Bobby won’t make out with her when they’re around. Lori gets Lincoln alone and pressures him to make out with Ronnie Anne, reasoning that Bobby won’t worry about him and Lori making the kids uncomfortable if the kids themselves are making out. This strategy works, so, on subsequent dates, Lori pressures Lincoln to go farther and farther with Ronnie Anne, until things get completely out of hand.
Fatal Flaws: (Warning: Spoilers for “Relative Chaos” ahead): Now that Bobby and Ronnie Anne have moved away, this story would be AU, and I don’t like starting a story under those circumstances.
Keeping or Abandoning? Abandoning. Luckily, I’ve got another Loud House story in the works (titled “The Loud House After Dark”) that I’m really excited about.

FYI, I’m un-abandoning this story idea. It occurred to me that this story would work even better if Bobby and Ronnie Anne came back to Royal Woods for a few weeks during the summer. That would put a limit on Lori’s time with Bobby and increase her desperation to make (out) the most of it.