# I need help with my story please....



## Babylonkid (Feb 15, 2017)

Hello everyone. I am brand new. Just registered. Thank you in advance to everyone for reading this and willing to help. I will do my best to keep this short because your time is valuable.

I used to write a lot of lyrics, and a lot of songs. About a year ago I was listening to one of my old tracks and an idea spawned from the lyrics. These lyrics were pretty much the start of the story and I truly believe this story idea is pretty darn awesome. I have no education or training in writing. I have spent the past year debating if I should write it as a graphic novel or a screen play because of the scale of the story and also it's a visual thing. I want to show these locations. Most of the year was spent reading and researching, watching tutorial videos and taking notes. I think I overloaded myself because I still feel confused even though I have the entire beginning of the story. I think I do anyway. On the other hand, I know what to do but because I overloaded I feel I am missing something. My story is so grand and so epic that I decided to go with a graphic novel because, I may be wrong, but a graphic novel (collection of comic books) is a storyboard for a movie. Is it not? I think it is. In all my web searching I can not find a template to use but that's okay. I started writing it as best I could in comic book/graphic novel form. I truly feel dumb because I have read 20 graphic novels in the year, all the videos I watched, all the books and articles I have read and although they are all very good and informative I still feel like I don't know what to do.

Now let me share a little about the story and why I say it is grand and so epic. It has a lot of characters and a lot of locations. Off the top of my head I have about 25 characters with more to come. Most minor but still important. I would say this is action, adventure, sci fi, and maybe fantasy drama. I guess its everything. It has heroes, villains, quests, journeys, and travels. I already have all my destinations, but have not populated the world and I have to figure out what is going to happen at these locations and of course populate it. I have my main bad guys and my main good guys too but I do not have a character profile filled out about them. Will begin that tonight. I do need to work on a love interest for my main hero. One last thing I want to tell you which has been troubling me a lot. In addition to my fictional characters, I am using some real people from the past. Some human, and some mythical. Although I tell myself this is just fiction, a fantasy story, I want to do my best to keep the time period as accurate as possible. I just thought about the Marvel comic Thor. Although Thor is a mythical Norse god, the writers at Marvel make up fake stories about him and his journeys. This thought helps me to not worry so much about accuracy. Like my cousin keeps telling me, "Dude, your not a historian. You're writing a story about some characters." I really need to let that sink in and stop worrying.

I believe I am here to ask advice because I have no one to talk to about this and I think its time I get this out of my head. I do have the beginning written, it is mostly an action sequence with many of the main characters. I need to figure out the difference between Protagonist and Main Character and who will they be. I know that is very important.

Thank you so much for letting me get this off my mind. It's very difficult not having people to talk to about this. I really appreciate your time everyone.  Please, if you have questions, suggestions or advice and I totally open. I look forward to engaging and being a part of this community.

Thank you.
-Alan


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## The Fantastical (Feb 15, 2017)

Welcome! I hope that you are enjoying the forum so far 

Well.... first your protagonist is normally your main character while your ANTAGONIST is your villain. 

https://www.reference.com/art-literature/difference-between-protagonist-antagonist-149552c388c9e846

http://www.storyboardthat.com/articles/e/protagonist-vs-antagonist

But truth be told, starting a story isn't the hard part and you just need to take a logic leap at it. 

 I would start but building an arc for your story, what do you want to happen when? How? Why? Build your story up in layers until you feel that it has enough "bones" to hold it up. If necessary even write out the plot, not in detail but in a rough draft of events and character placement. This might help you keep track of where, why and who, as well as allow you to visualize the feel and how the story "looks".  

https://tutorials.writersdigest.com...story-arc-discovering-the-bones-of-your-story

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-to-structure-a-story-the-eight-point-arc/

Then I would say the next step would be to start somewhere, page one is normally good. Here you need to quickly set up the current Now. This is what (depending on the type of story) your hero is either going to be trying to fix, change, leave behind or protect, return to. From there you need your decisive incident the sets the plot a going and... just go from there. 

Best of luck. 

P.S. The text in your post is in two different sizes and is a little hard to read. You might want to just edit it all to the same font size


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## bdcharles (Feb 16, 2017)

Go to it. Look forward to reading your stuff


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## Bard_Daniel (Feb 16, 2017)

The Fantastical really hit the nail on the head here. There is a lot of work for you to get started on but, as bcharles has mentioned, have at it! : D


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## sas (Feb 16, 2017)

I should just keep my yap shut and go back to my poetry groups. But.........(and this is not a condemnation, at all).....why do most of the young writers (not poets) seem to write a lot of Sci-fi & Horror stuff? Is reality too difficult? Have they spent their entire youth in these fantasy worlds (I suspect this) and this is just a continuation? I did not know this "trend" until joining WF...but I'm kinda alarmed. Gives a new meaning to "Get real".


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## Sam (Feb 16, 2017)

I think you'll find proper sf is harder to write than reality. 

I find it highly ironic that you're criticising fiction writers for writing fiction. That's kind of the point, is it not? 

This is not a condemnation either.


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## sas (Feb 16, 2017)

Sam...no criticism intended for the genre.

My point was that writing sci-fi & horror seems to be fairly age related here (those young; at least, those I know), that's all. My question: Why? Thought that would be interesting to explore. Am I wrong about age?


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## aj47 (Feb 16, 2017)

I guess compared to you, I'm a young granny.


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## PiP (Feb 16, 2017)

Sas, if i was a youngster growing up in today's world I'd also be writing Sci Fi and horror. that said, I am reading my first scifi/horror book at the moment and i can't wait to sign off so I can snuggle up in bed to continue reading it. If you find me back on here at 3am in the morning you'll know the story has given me bad dreams.



> Now let me share a little about the story and why I say it is grand and so epic. It has a lot of characters and a lot of locations. Off the top of my head I have about 25 characters with more to come. Most minor but still important



I'm curious. How will the reader keep track of all these characters in different locations?


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## Terry D (Feb 16, 2017)

sas said:


> I should just keep my yap shut and go back to my poetry groups. But.........(and this is not a condemnation, at all).....why do most of the young writers (not poets) seem to write a lot of Sci-fi & Horror stuff? Is reality too difficult? Have they spent their entire youth in these fantasy worlds (I suspect this) and this is just a continuation? I did not know this "trend" until joining WF...but I'm kinda alarmed. Gives a new meaning to "Get real".



I'll speak for myself, but I think others might agree. When I was a youth I was hyper-curious about everything. I read encyclopedias for fun. My imagination was in overdrive and Science-fiction and horror fueled it. As I grew, I kept my curiosity and turned my interests to real-world science, but my fascination with speculative fiction never waned. I grew up watching The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Night Gallery, and any SF or horror movie that came to town. At this same time we were just getting up and going with the space program, so the real world fed my addiction. When I started to write, I wrote stuff that I would want to read (I still do) and that 'stuff' was speculative fiction. I didn't live in a fantasy world, but I liked to visit them. Now I like to create them. Why that should alarm anyone I don't have a clue, but I can promise you, I'm very real.


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## Babylonkid (Feb 16, 2017)

Good afternoon Fantastical,

Not sure how the font got screwy. I edited, chose Arial and size 3. All looks good now. Thank you for pointing that out. I am enjoying this web site very much.

You mention Protagonist and Main Character are usually the same. I think I understand that. There are a lot of movies I think about such as Rocky, where Rocky is both the MC and Protagonist. But what about an example like the movie Tombstone where Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp are both so close to being the MC?

Thank you for providing me those great links. I quickly looked at them. Tomorrow is my day off of work and I am very excited to read the articles and make progress. I downloaded a few different Character Profile worksheets. They are long with like 100 questions each. Dont think I need all 100, but Im happy I found them. Not sure about building my world though because I am using real cities, but I know I need to populate them. This is fun, it is truly difficult, and I imagine and hope the more I do this the easier it gets. 

I was never in to Game of Thrones so I do not watch it but I bought the first book yesterday. I want to read, thinking it may help? Help with how to write basically. Characters, the locations, whatever I can learn. Maybe Harry Potter is another good one because of all the characters. I watched the first film and I did not like it so I never watched the other. Lord of the Rings is another one I want to read. Although completely different, it kind of resembles my story because of all the characters. As mentioned in my first post, I have about 25 characters. 

I know Im all over the place. I want to thank you for your time and help. Talk to you later.
-Alan


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## Paul DeYoung (Feb 16, 2017)

I just finished my first novel - it's a sci fi comedy that was never intended to be more than a short story. I drew about 20 images for it and I own comic books that are better counted by the metric ton so I kinda can relate to you here. The things I found most useful for me was to have somebody I could bounce ideas off of and to make revision my best friend. I'd say write any scene to start with, no matter it's place in the story, just as long as you are energized about it so the words just flow out as fast as possible. Dickens used to say that he had no control over his characters and that they simply did what they wanted and he only reported it. For me it was easier to kind of go at it In medias res and get to know your characters by what they do. 

Just my two cents. Also I think sci fi/fantasy/horror fiction is a generational response to the times. Half of our reality is starting to feel like a sci fi novel while the other half is steeped in tragedy. I don't write about "reality" because my aim is to offer an escape from a world that is one instagram away from a nuclear holocaust. As far as the history goes, you just need enough accuracy to get by - case in point: The entire Peaky Blinders series.  Little smudge of history and a whole lotta BS(I'm a fan of the show, just saying). I've read the Eddas and sagas etc and outside of the names Marvel didn't use much else. 

Steady on friend!  Also if you need any advice or anything about graphic design I might be able to help. Spent the last year learning by painful trial and error.


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## Babylonkid (Feb 16, 2017)

Thanks for the encouragement!!

Good question. I think its because of our imagination. Being a kid and growing up we are mostly drawn to heroes, and superheros, action and adventure and worlds of fantasy. Most of us still have the kid in us. Reality is not too difficult, its just not fun and interesting. I know there are miserable people out there and depressed people, but a lot of us like fun, mystery, adventure, and sci fi.

Hi there. Great question. Because most of the characters stay put in their location, I don't think I will have trouble keeping track. Of my estimated 25-30 important characters, only 6 or 7 are traveling. I hope that makes sense. =) I am very excited about this.

Thank you.

Hi Paul,
Thanks for the encouragement and offering to help. I will keep in touch. I would love to read your book. Let me know where I can check it out. "just as long as you are energized about it so the words just flow out as fast as possible". I love that you said this. That is how I got much of the beginning. Thanks again and have a great day.

Hi Terry. Twilight Zone is an all time fav. I still watch it! Any day now I will buy the super cool Blu Ray box set!


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## Paul DeYoung (Feb 16, 2017)

I'd be happy to send you a copy.  It's only in electronic form. I'll see if can fig out the attachments on this thing when I get home and let you know.


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## Sam (Feb 16, 2017)

sas said:


> Sam...no criticism intended for the genre.
> 
> My point was that writing sci-fi & horror seems to be fairly age related here (those young; at least, those I know), that's all. My question: Why? Thought that would be interesting to explore. Am I wrong about age?



No criticism taken. I was serious about the "no condemnation either". 

You're wrong about age, yes. Saying that kids write sf and horror these days is blithely ignoring the quite literally thousands of writers who have written in the genres for over a hundred years. You ignore the masters, the foundation, and some of the greatest writers who ever lived: 

Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Roger Zelazny, Dan Simmons, Kurt Vonnegut, Larry Niven, John Brunner, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula Le Guin, David Brin, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, and many others. I don't mean to name drop, but I could go on -- and I've only dabbed my hand into the genre these past few years. 

I won't go into detail in terms of horror, but let's just say you can go all the way back to John William Polidori and his 1819 tale _The Vampyre_. Or Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ (1817). Or, if you're so inclined, you go all the way back to Horace Walpole and _The Castle of Otranto _(1764) and the start of the gothic genre, which would eventually become the horror we know today. 

What you're intimating is akin to saying that dystopian fiction started with _The Hunger Games _and that young people like to write it today. Dystopian fiction, which is a sub-genre of speculative fiction, of which sf is itself a sub-category, started a long time ago as well.*

*I think I have that correct, re: speculative fiction and sf.


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## Ariel (Feb 16, 2017)

sas said:


> I should just keep my yap shut and go back to my poetry groups. But.........(and this is not a condemnation, at all).....why do most of the young writers (not poets) seem to write a lot of Sci-fi & Horror stuff? Is reality too difficult? Have they spent their entire youth in these fantasy worlds (I suspect this) and this is just a continuation? I did not know this "trend" until joining WF...but I'm kinda alarmed. Gives a new meaning to "Get real".



Science-fiction and horror are typically a commentary about the world around a person.  Fantasy, which is its own genre, is a different kind of commentary and is usually more escapist (I find) than either sci-fi or horror.  None of these genres are about living in a fantasy world though there are fans who wish they could.  They are another way of learning about the real world.  I've learned about science, math, history, and politics from reading these genres.  I have learned tolerance from fantasy and science fiction--most of these include worlds where people are not "people" in the same way as you or I.  I can apply the things I've learned from these novels to the real world and I believe they have made me a better person for having read them.

If that's not real then I don't want to know your definition of it.


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## sas (Feb 16, 2017)

Due to my background, I've seen recent brain studies on those young (teens/20s). When viewed their brains are now showing patterns similar to sociopaths. Disconnected, so to speak, from the real world. The more time spent on tech interaction, as opposed to inter-personal, the more the disconnect. It made me wonder if that was the reason for the draw to non-reality writing. It would make a great dissertation topic.

I didn't mean to imply that writing sci-fi wasn't hard to write, but that maybe, for the young today, writing reality is harder, due to the disconnect. Hmmmm.


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## Non Serviam (Feb 16, 2017)

I write speculative fiction and I'm 46 in a few days. I often feel disconnected from the modern world -- I appear to be living on a planet that's much less inclusive and tolerant of different people than the one I grew up on. This is not associated with enjoying spec fic, though. That's a little too facile, as a connection to draw.

Spec fic frees you from some difficulties as a writer. My hero can be cooler, my villains more terrible, my settings more imaginative, my plots less constrained.

I don't want to paint a refined landscape in oils. I want to draw heroes and monsters in felt tip and crayon; I write to have fun and play.


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## Ariel (Feb 16, 2017)

sas said:


> Due to my background, I've seen recent brain studies on those young (teens/20s). When viewed their brains are now showing patterns similar to sociopaths. Disconnected, so to speak, from the real world. The more time spent on tech interaction, as opposed to inter-personal, the more the disconnect. It made me wonder if that was the reason for the draw to non-reality writing. It would make a great dissertation topic.
> 
> I didn't mean to imply that writing sci-fi wasn't hard to write, but that maybe, for the young today, writing reality is harder, due to the disconnect. Hmmmm.


I wonder if the subjects of the study were chosen for the study because they were showing signs of aberrant behavior?  I also can't help but think that sociopaths may not display sociopathic behavior in a forum in which they are likely to receive societal and punative punishments for their behavior but if placed in a forum in which such restraints are removed and they can hide behind relative anonymity then they may unleash that behavior. In other words, is it the technological connectiveness or a pre-disposition towards sociopathic behavior these study subjects are displaying?


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## The Fantastical (Feb 17, 2017)

Babylonkid said:


> Good afternoon Fantastical,
> 
> Not sure how the font got screwy. I edited, chose Arial and size 3. All looks good now. Thank you for pointing that out. I am enjoying this web site very much.
> 
> ...



I believe that there is no limit to how main main characters you can have while there really only ever is one protagonist. But remember that main character and protagonist doesn't mean good guy. While normally they are the word protagonist is more a description of the roll the character plays in the story. 

Here is a little more about having multiple characters/protagonists. 

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog/2010/12/02/having-multiple-protagonists-in-your-novel/

http://www.how-to-write-a-book-now.com/multiple-lead-characters.html

http://thewritepractice.com/protagonist/

I think doing some epic (genre) reading is a brilliant plan. I get the feeling your book is leaning more towards the sci-fi so I would like to suggest you read Chung Kuo series written by David Wingrove. When you do don't get lost in the bigness of the world, instead look at the characters and how many of them the stories actually work around. 

GRRM is now known for having the biggest list of characters but if you really look at each book, look at the POV (point of view) characters, he only ever has ten or eight going at once, then he kills one and replaces them to bring "new" characters into the story. But they are dead, not active moving characters. 

Anyway what I am trying to say is that even the most grand epics, like LOTR are actually a small story with a few characters set in a big world. I mean I can name the main, important characters from LOTR without running out of fingers, Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, Gandalf, Aragorn, Smeagl, Gimli, Legolas. That is nine characters and even then the story really only centers around, Frodo, Sam and Aragorn and even then Aragorn only takes up main character status towards the end of the second book, third book and EVEN then his story is in many ways second to the story of Frodo and Sam and the Ring. So... All that epicness and you really only have a story about two hobbits going to destroy the great evil. So... LOTR boils down to two characters. 

Wheel of Time only has a cast of five or so characters, Sword of Truth only has three. The Shannara series only ever has two or four characters a book, Wars of Light and Shadow only has two and Chung Kuo only has about six active moving characters at a time for all the hugeness of the world. So it goes through the epics. 

So, look not at your world for a moment but at the story that is going to take place in that world. Now how many active characters do you need to make that story alive? How many of them are good guys? How many bad? How many on the fence? How many are Main Characters? Of many Supporting Cast? 

Look, think, prune. The best advice I can give to any fellow writer be it about characters, prose or writing anything.


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## Mutimir (Feb 17, 2017)

I think we already have an idea here for a sci-fi story here. Technology turning disconnected youth into sociopaths. Just make sure you advertise it on FB.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Feb 17, 2017)

To comment on Sas's thoughts, I think that younger people have always been attracted to the sci-fi/ horror/ fantasy genres. I don't it think has anything to do with a disconnect; I think the genres appear as more exciting. Personally, I'm more into cerebral reading whatever the genre, but when you grow up around slasher flicks and Star Wars (I grew up in the seventies) it wouldn't have been surprising that the young people of that day would be into Stephen King and the like.

(By the way. I'm not saying King wasn't cerebral; of course he had/has an amazing imagination. I was using him as an example as an author a person of my generation would have wanted to emulate)


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## Terry D (Feb 17, 2017)

sas said:


> I didn't mean to imply that writing sci-fi wasn't hard to write, but that maybe, for the young today, writing reality is harder, due to the disconnect. Hmmmm.



There is no 'reality' in fiction, by definition. All novels build a fantasy world for made-up characters to perform made-up actions. It's just that what you call 'reality' is simply a realistic -- not real -- time and setting. On the obverse side of that, all good fiction -- be it SF, horror, fantasy, erotica, detective, or any other -- deals with the reality of people (even if they are green and have tentacles) and emotions.


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## Babylonkid (Feb 17, 2017)

Hello Fantastical,

Thanks for the links and details on LOTR and others. I guess I made my story sound Sci Fi and though it has maybe a slight touch of Sci Fi it is mostly adventure, action, drama, comedy, fantasy. As I am breaking it down, it actually is Sci Fi if I go back to I suppose what would be the origin story. This things huge. Maybe breaking it down in to sections is the way to go. I know itll click soon. It has to.

Thanks again.
Alan


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## The Fantastical (Feb 18, 2017)

Babylonkid said:


> Hello Fantastical,
> 
> Thanks for the links and details on LOTR and others. I guess I made my story sound Sci Fi and though it has maybe a slight touch of Sci Fi it is mostly adventure, action, drama, comedy, fantasy. As I am breaking it down, it actually is Sci Fi if I go back to I suppose what would be the origin story. This things huge. Maybe breaking it down in to sections is the way to go. I know itll click soon. It has to.
> 
> ...



I am sure that it will come together eventually.  You just need to shift the pieces around until the fit. Keep at it!


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