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*Sneak Peek* Fantasy story idea


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I've started on a new story, and I want to know if anybody else thinks it's worth continuing. It's a bit dark (understatement), but it's more about overcoming problems than wallowing in them, so it's uplifting too. I don't have a name for it yet, so if you think of a good one please share XD

 

Just to clarify, no underage readers please! I'll censor the curse words for this post, but it'll still mention touchy subjects.

 

OK, I'll start off with the description.

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In my world, where everybody can transform into animals and teenagers are thrown into the unknown to fend for themselves, some rise but most fall. There is no guarantee of safety, or even survival.

In my world, how can I hope to survive, let alone retain my humanity? Can trust grow in a world where a childhood friend would stab me in the back for a chance at a dollar? Is kindness even worth the risk?

 

In my world, those are dangerous questions.

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Too dramatic? I'm wavering on keeping this lol. Oh well. Here's the prologue:

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My name is Hayden. I was sixteen when I was banished by the town I’d always lived in with my family. OK, that sounded pretty dramatic. It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s a tradition to banish people when they turn sixteen, and they’re not allowed to come back until they’re twenty and have found their animal. It’s called the Hunt, and it’s supposed to be the best part of a person’s life. It’s like a break from normality, and we’re supposed to treat it like a vacation. You can go adventuring and have all the fun you want, all paid for by your parents. It teaches kids the skills they’ll need to be adults, like money management, responsibility, people skills, you know what I mean. It also lets them get all the crazy out of their systems, so when they go back to their homes they’re ready to settle down. It sounds good, right?

 

Wrong.

 

It probably all worked well for a little while, back when it started, but some particularly creative *censored* decided that he’d form a gang and hunt down people who are freshly on their Hunt. As soon as you leave your town, carrying all the money you need to supply you for the next four years, they find you and rob you. You’re left with nothing, and you can’t go back to your home, where most people have spent their entire lives. What do you do when you’re alone in an unfamiliar world with no money? You find a job. Of course, since there’s thousands of other people in situations just like yours, there’s a high supply of workers with a low demand for them, and you end up getting paid next to nothing, if you’re lucky enough to even find a job. If you can’t find one, then your only hope is to join up with a gang just like the one that robbed you, and continue the tradition of being a douche. Because of how some people have done that, now any travelling teenagers are treated with distrust, and people are reluctant to offer jobs, making the influx of robbers even worse. It’s a vicious cycle that’s resulted in your Hunt being a race for survival. Occasionally, groups will assemble and chase off all the robbers, but all it takes is one person who’s already found their animal to start the cycle over again. As a teenager, all on your own for the first time, who would try to fight someone who can shape-shift into an animal? Me, that’s who. I was one of the few idiots who try to resist, and I got beaten savagely for my troubles. I had the misfortune of being robbed by a Jaguar, so I had no chance at all. A Jaguar is someone whose animal is a jaguar, predictably. You’d think that would get confusing, but it’s all in how you pronounce it. When we say ‘Jaguar’, you can hear the capital ‘J’. So the same sentence can have two different meanings, depending on how you stress one syllable.

 

“There’s a bear on our porch,” would be met with “Oh *censored*, where’s the Shaman?”

 

While “There’s a Bear on our porch,” would be followed by “Oh, hello, John!”

 

It’s a simple system, but it works. Unlike the system of the Hunt, of course, to get back on topic. After the Jaguar beat the living shit out of me, leaving me bloody, broken, and broke, I thought about my options. I had a snowman’s chance in hell of ever finding a job while injured, and I’d never be able to afford healing if I couldn’t get a job. I won’t lie and say I never considered trying to rob someone else, but I didn’t consider it for long. I refused to be a part of that, and I still do. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t make me a pacifist. Not by a long shot. I ended up following the Jaguar, and that night, I killed him while he slept and took my money back. See what I mean? Not a pacifist. I couldn’t have gotten away with just stealing it back, so he had to die. It was him or me, and he’d robbed me and beaten me already. I considered myself lucky that he hadn’t raped me, too. Anyway, when I got the money back, I went into a town. I had to spend most of the money on professional healing, but I managed to save a little bit, and I’ve protected it since, using a mix of good hiding places, excellent lying, and blending in with all the other penniless refugees.

 

You’d think that eventually, somebody somewhere would have the bright idea of stopping the tradition that resulted in many people being killed or maimed, but the idea has never taken hold. We’re a violent people, and the Hunt is such a huge part of our culture that I can’t see it stopping anytime soon. It’s brutal, but it does weed out the weak links. Survival of the fittest and such. Generally, if you want to live to give your own children advice about their Hunt, you have to be either smart, strong, or lucky. I’m a modest person, but above that I’m practical. Modesty is a luxury I can’t afford right now. I have to be honest with myself to survive. Keeping that in mind, I’m smarter than most other people, and I’m fairly strong. I’m almost six feet tall, and if I ever had any fat on me it’s been worn away by the last six months. My muscles are defined, and I’m careful to eat just enough to keep them that way. There’s a fine line between being too weak to defend myself and looking well fed, which is like putting an “I have money” sign on. You’d think that being smart, strong, and practical is enough, but I have plenty of disadvantages as well. I’m good looking, for one, so I’m more memorable and I’m more likely to be raped. My luck, for another. Sometimes, it seems like my luck alone is determined to negate every advantage I’m lucky enough to have. If a road forks, I’ll always pick the path with the bear traps all along it. That’s not just me being pessimistic. That’s me being realistic. I’ve been Hunting for six months now, and I’ve encountered as much danger as some people see in their whole four years. Of course, some of it I bring on myself, like trying to resist when I was mugged, but there’s only so much I can tolerate. I won’t let the Hunt beat me down. After four years have passed, I still want to be someone I can respect. To make sure that happens, I made rules for myself before I ever started my Hunt, and they’ve kept me sane. It doesn’t matter what life throws at me, I will not break those rules. They’re my fundamental beliefs, and they keep me away from what most people do in their Hunts. If I break one of these rules then life will have broken me, and I’ll die before I let that happen. My rules are simple.

 

I will not harm innocents. I will not join a gang. I will not rape anyone, ever.  

 

As you can see, non-innocents have almost no moral protection from me. If I need money to survive, I’ll rob a robber. To save an innocent, I’d kill a murderer. Hell, I have killed murderers, and for less reason. Of course, the ones I really hate are the gang members. They’re the cause of everything bad about the Hunt, and I’d happily kill one just for being what they are, if I could get away with it. I’m not a saint. I’m a survivor. One less gang member living is one less to deal with later.

 

Now that you know more about me, I’ll explain my current situation. I’ve managed to keep most of the money I had left from healing, so I have twenty-seven dollars. That’s not much, but it’s more than most other people have, so I need to be even more careful. If I didn’t have it, then getting stopped by gang members would mean I’d probably only be raped, and I’d have a decent chance at getting away with my life. Since I do have it, if I’m caught by a gang, I’ll probably be mugged, raped, and killed. They’d assume I was a rival gang member, because who else would have that kind of money? I’ve thought about hiding it somewhere and only using it when I need it, but staying in one area would be pointless, since I need to be searching for my animal. Also, if people start to remember me, they might notice that I’m not getting malnourished. I can pull off the ‘penniless refugee’ disguise if I keep moving, because I look like I just started my Hunt and only recently lost all my money, but if people notice that I’m not getting any hungrier they’ll realize I have money. Because of that, I don’t stick around anywhere, but I always check all the animals in the area before I leave. I’ve checked almost all the usual animals already, but I haven’t found mine. When I do, I’ll supposedly feel a connection to it. The animals will recognize that I’m a kindred spirit, and they won’t attack me, so I’ll just have to live with them, as they do, until I’ve unlocked all my powers. It sounds easy, but I’ve already checked all the forest creatures, all the desert creatures, and I’m travelling through the forest to the tundra now, trying to find all the animals. Hopefully mine will be somewhere around here, and hopefully it’ll be something useful. I’ve seen too many cases of people who’ve found their animal, only to have it be a squirrel or something. The ability to climb faster is cool, but trying to survive the rest of their Hunt would suck. I’m currently looking for a snow leopard, because that would be a really good animal to be. The resistance to cold would mean I could live in freezing places where most other people couldn’t go, and it would be really good for fighting off any robbers who found me anyway. Oh well. I can’t allow myself to imagine it past listing the advantages and disadvantages, because that will lead to hope, and hope ends in disappointment. I have to be realistic to survive. I’ll have time for hope when I’m safe in my village again. Until then, I can’t be human. Humans let emotions cloud their judgment. I have to be a machine, emotionless but infallible. That’s why I have my rules. I can’t have morals, so I have to maintain a set of rules instead. I won’t break those rules, and I will survive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope.

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So yeah. Chapter one is an average day for Hayden, and then it switches to Matt's perspective (I'm using this story to work on writing different personalities and views, so there'll be plenty of different perspectives) and you learn a bit about him, and how he thinks. I'll add in more characters as the story goes, because I want to practice writing supporting characters, and I'm not going to be shy about killing them off, too. I'm not going to turn into George RR Martin or anything, but I'm definitely experimenting with the whole 'main characters aren't necessarily safe' idea. My other stories so far have been pretty lighthearted, so I'm looking forward to writing a darker, more real story. That's not to say there won't be happy moments, though. I'm a sucker for romance, and I couldn't keep love out of my stories if I tried. To explain more about the magic system (I kept it vague in the prologue and in what I've written of chapter one so far), everybody has an animal. They can transform fully into this animal, but even in human form they still have some of the animal's traits. For example, a Chameleon would be able to camouflage themselves as a human, a Bear would be stronger than they look, any aquatic Animals could breathe underwater, etc. Later in the story, Shamans will play a bigger role, and they'll have a magic of their own, more in line with what you'd expect when I say 'magic' XD. I'll stop now, before I give away too much. I can't wait to see what you guys think!

 

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I find the use of second person 'you' along with the first person POV stream of consciousness to be a difficult read, but that is a personal preference. The world building is good, but your beginning here is mostly an info dump. You're allowing your character to narrate the world, so that's better than you telling the reader as the author, but from my point of view as a reader is that I'd rather 'see' the scenes than be told them. I want the hook of all the drama you share to pull me into the story, instead of getting a relatively dispassionate rundown of the events in a slightly sarcastic bitching tone from the character. Giving us a look into the world could start with Hayden saying good-bye to his family and then being attacked would both take the reader along with your character both emotionally and physically. Is he afraid? Fatalistic? Does he blithely leave home or does he try a strategic exit to avoid the gangs?

 

For example, you could have him say goodbye in the late evening, as maybe other youngsters tried to leave during the day, thinking the daylight hours would be safer, but he goes for the more dangerous time of long shadows? Instead of going along a path a road, maybe he could live in a forested area and take to the trees instead? He could then avoid the gangs you mention form, but had the bad luck of meeting the Jaguar in the trees, as the real animal is inclined to climbing and attacking from above.

 

Unless you have a word limit for some reason, it's always better to start a story IN the story. Dropping the reader into a scene like that would still allow for them to get a good sense of the culture as it happens, quickly followed by a burst of action to hook them, yet it wouldn't be too confusing. You could still use some of this existing scene, actually, if you have him mentally bitching out the 'way things are' as he limps off to try and find a healer after he gets his money back.

 

Otherwise, I find the culture and the storyline as outline, what bit you have shared, to be intriguing. Definitely take your time, build your mythos and society solidly, and then have fun with it. I enjoy paranormal, and write it as well, so I know how hard it can be. Good luck!

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I have to disagree with Cia. As a prologue, the info dump works for me. I wouldn't want the chapters to be like that, but as setting for the story, it gave me the background needed in the minimum space, and entices the reader to wonder what's going to happen.

 

Of course, a lot depends on what the story is about. If this is just background and it's what happens next is the story, then having all the lead up events narrated as fully described events would be cumbersome. It might be entertaining, but it could also make people wonder what the story is about. The prologue you've give eliminates that possibility.

 

Ideally, the information contained in the prologue should be delivered to the reader piecemeal through events in the story. For example, the Hunt, the gangs/robbers, and shapechanging could be introduced by the encounter with the Jaguar. A single scene that introduces three key factors in the story background. That would be stronger than the info dump...but it means that you're starting the story at that point, and you then have to get through the rest of that background (the healer, the masquerading as another penniless refugee, the distrust of teenagers, etc). That could be done and it could be interesting...but it could be tedious, too.

 

In short, the way you did your prologue is, to me, fine, but only if the first chapter is not in that style, and introduces the major story line fairly quickly.

 

PS: I may be biased because I used exactly the same technique that you've used in the prologue of my novel Heart of The Tree. The prologue is an info dump that introduces the story itself by describing the setting and the events that lead up to what happens in chapter 1.If you take a quick look, you'll see that the prologue and chapter are very different styles.

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I like the idea, Faxity, but I wouldn't start it as you describe. It's almost a flashback, and I think you can start at the beginning, show the kid getting thrown out of the house, and actually make chapter 1 about the Jaguar robbing him. In other words, don't overlook opportunities to expand the story points you already have. Too much of an "info dump," as Graeme says above -- too much exposition. I think it works better if the explanation comes out over time, so that over the first couple of chapters we understand what the rules are and what the protagonist wants, and how (and whether) he's going to get it.

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I can see your point with blending first and second person, so I'll make sure to correct that. The info dump was because I was setting the scene for chapter one, but I scrapped my first idea anyway, so now the prologue was a bit redundant XD. I like your idea of starting with Hayden's departure, and I can see a few ways to work even more sarcastic bitchiness in XD (it's going to be important to hayden's character later). 

 

I definitely don't have a word limit lol I can see this story getting pretty damn long (i'm liking it more and more as I consider working your suggestion into the intro :) )  and for the most part I agree with you about starting the story in the story. I think that an info dump could work as a prologue if it was interesting enough and the opening scene in chapter one supported it (Graeme provided a perfect example with 'Heart of the Tree'). I think I'm going to end up with a mixture of both, like you suggested, since I want to convey Hayden's views on the subjects more than just the subjects themselves. 

 

I'm happy to hear you like the premise XD I'll try to fully flesh out the world. I know what you mean about paranormal being hard lol. I started out writing fantasy with a 'how hard could it be' mentality, but after putting down a few miserable failures, I have much more respect for paranormal writers  :P

 

Onto Graeme's reply! XD

 

It's good to hear you liked the prologue style, and I did switch to present time first person in chapter one, but I feel like I could do a better job of it if I did it in first person. I felt like Hayden's role in chapter one was a bit weak, so I want a stronger prologue to make up for it (even though I'll probably fix it).

 

I'm definitely going to try to work with your idea of using the Jaguar as a learning experience. That would be a much stronger way to introduce those topic, and I'll play around with time skips and flashbacks until I'm satisfied (since I don't think I can pull off the six months until the present in the story without making it boring).

 

I checked out 'The Heart of the Tree', and you definitely pulled off the info dump there. I had to tear myself away from chapter one so I could get back to writing this response, but at least I have another story on my reading list now XD.

 

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Now onto The Pecman's reply lol I hope there's no word limit on the forum

 

I agree with you about the info dump not working in these circumstances, but I'll have to work with it in just the prologue. Chapter one is on a fixed timeline, so I can't have the Jaguar in that (I want the flashbacks out of the way ASAP lol). 'Don't overlook opportunities to expand the story points you already have.' That sounds like really good advice XD. That was my biggest mistake with all my previous attempts at fiction. I'll definitely keep that in mind, since it'll probably apply to a lot more than just this story. I can see your point about too much exposition, so I'll try to tone down the tidal wave of information lol. I'll try to work with adding the info in slowly, like you're suggesting (I think it would make for a better story overall) but I might get impatient lol. 

 

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Wow, I wrote a lot XD. Thanks for all the replies and awesome advice so far! I'm done with writing for tonight (it's 2AM where I live lol) but I'll have a lot of work ahead of me tomorrow :) I think I might make a habit of posting new story ideas on here XD you guys have been really helpful!

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This forum is a great place to get input from a wider array of folks--those who might not read your work usually, or outside your typical beta/editor team, authors/editors/readers, etc... Of course you should use it! Good luck on your re-write, it sounds like you already had some good ideas on where to go with your story.

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