# The Story Idea Donation Bin (1 Viewer)



## Kyle R

Got a story idea you'd like to donate for a fellow writer to use?








Whether it's a full-blown plot outline or a one-sentence pitch, we welcome story idea donations of any kind. Drop yours in the bin and help a struggling writer today!

Feel free to reach in and grab an idea, too. Take it as is, or shape it to make it your own. Whatever you decide to do with it, all we ask is that you thank the donator.

Now get to it! :encouragement:


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## Plasticweld

An extrovert and a introvert are seated next to each other on a 8 hour plane flight. I started out with something along these lines as a humor piece and being more a extrovert than a introvert I had a hard time doing the comedy from the perspective of the introvert.  I went to a meeting of introverts to try and find a partner to write with, but nobody showed up :}


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## TKent

How timely! I think I just told you last night I couldn't think of any ideas for story  LOL!!


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## bazz cargo

A Goth comedy. A family go on holiday to Transylvania. No real monsters, just a bunch of weirdos who get mistaken for them.


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## T.S.Bowman

Oh boy. As much as I would love to toss something in the bin..I pretty much only have three decent ideas. One of which I am working on and the other two are gonna be the next books in line.


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## J Anfinson

A farmer finds a cave in the woods of his new property. What lies within is up to your imagination.


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## Kyle R

When an angel and a demon fall in love, they must battle the forces of heaven and hell, which are determined to keep them apart.


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## TheWonderingNovice

A supernatural love story in which a boy falls in love with a girl with a sailor mouth and sassy attitude who helps him overcome his feelings of guilt and inadequacy with tough love, sarcastic humor and occasional slaps to the face. All the while trying to locate his creator to finally know why he cursed. 

( I was thinking vampire - but I really think it'll end up cheesy.) 

Anyways I haven't had the time to develop it well so here it is. Change it to your liking. :read:


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## Tettsuo

Kyle R said:


> When an angel and a demon fall in love, they must battle the forces of heaven and hell, which are determined to keep them apart.



I had an idea similar to this about about a demon attempting to earn his way back into heaven meeting an angel who fell from grace.  Both are in-between but moving in different directions, and impossibility find themselves falling in love.


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## LeeC

Something I started on once, but ran out of time for. Go with it if it piques your interest 

More just a potentially intriguing start to a Cold War Intel story. There've been numerous books in this vein, most notably to me by Le Carré, but I was thinking a mix of film noir style (cynical attitudes and sexual motivations) in depicting such might make for a viable book. 


*Gin Mill Intel*​

She materialized through the smokey haze of the gin mill, seeming to float on shapely, dancer legs leading to the prize. 

Holding a cigarette near her honeydew lips she said, "Light me up handsome?" 

Yeah I was being had, only my mother would tell me I was handsome. Something about her lingo, the words of a working girl reflecting GI influence, but the enunciation more formal. Could be an educated Fräulein trying to make ends meet as they say, but looking past that gorgeous body to how she carried and expressed herself, I dunno.

Lighting her cigarette, I snapped the lid shut as I pressed the side of my oversized lighter to take her picture. It was 1950s Berlin.


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## midnightpoet

Good one, Lee. Berlin noir.


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## aj47

A writer finds an online forum and asks the group to plot his novel.  :razz:


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## LeeC

astroannie said:


> A writer finds an online forum and asks the group to plot his novel.


Tsk, tsk, we're talking fiction here Annie, not real life  

How about a writer that gets substantial help on an online writing forum for a "perfect murder" story, and latter the members learn the writer's spouse has mysteriously disappeared.


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## Joe_Bassett

Two bros join the military by accident (I dunno how, that's your job to figure out).  They then try everything they can to get themselves kicked out when they stumble upon a terror plot/something bad that only they can stop.  What's next is up to you.


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## J Anfinson

A moderator of a writing forum goes on a banning spree when his last thread of sanity snaps.


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## InstituteMan

J Anfinson said:


> A moderator of a writing forum goes on a banning spree when his last thread of sanity snaps.



I didn't think anyone had noticed. . . 

How about: a baseball fan and a soccer fan fall in love. Each discovers that the other's game is beautiful and finds a few other things beautiful, too.


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## T.S.Bowman

InstituteMan said:


> I didn't think anyone had noticed. . .
> 
> How about: a baseball fan and a soccer fan fall in love. Each discovers that the other's game is beautiful and finds a few other things beautiful, too.



Might be better off with a baseball fan and a cricket fan. LOL


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## T.S.Bowman

J Anfinson said:


> A moderator of a writing forum goes on a banning spree when his last thread of sanity snaps.



You pretty much have to be insane to want to be a moderator anyway.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis

Nice thread idea! 

In the near future, most males are kept in permanent statis, or used only as slaves or soldiers. An experiment gone wrong gives the latest super-soldier freedom, and now, in this society where men are viewed as lesser forms of life, they must cooperate with the only free man against some new threat. (Aliens, zombies... Iunno.)


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## Pluralized

A man becomes allergic to his own happiness and, as luck would have it, the only solution (as told to him by the voices in his head) is for him to remove his entire skin. It's just so crazy it might work, he decides, and he begins removing skin. And it's working, at first...


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord

I have a few. . .do with them what you will.

1. Some lizards, snakes, and suchlike live in a town in the middle of the desert. A lazy desert gecko's mother insists that he gets a job, no matter what it is, and he ends up working for an eccentric Chuckwalla lizard who collect old plastic water bottles and keeps them in a house of mirrors. But one night, all of his collection disappears without a trace, and the desert gecko is dragged along on a quest to find them. (This one would exist in a world where the animal are anthropomorphic and live like people, like the world of Wind in the Willows.) 

2. The government of some future society wants to create a perfect world. Before babies are born, the embryos are inspected and any who do not match the standards are frozen and kept for further use (or something). Some common person in this society discovers that her sister, who was said to be miscarried, was one of these children. Though there seems to be little hope, she begins a search for her sister's embryo in hopes of somehow saving her. (This would be in a dystopian setting, perhaps)

3.  After (or during) the mass extinction at the end of the carboniferous period, the last trilobites on earth try to bring together the last of their family, who have been scattered by the disaster.

4. Up in the attic of his house, a boy's grandfather has built a miniature world out of matchsticks and paint: roads, towns, cities, farms, everything. But when the boy comes to stay at the house, he discovers that a miniature race of people actually _live _in this world--and are unfortunately at war with each other.


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## T.S.Bowman

Pluralized said:


> A man becomes allergic to his own happiness and, as luck would have it, the only solution (as told to him by the voices in his head) is for him to remove his entire skin. It's just so crazy it might work, he decides, and he begins removing skin. And it's working, at first...



You, my friend, have a strange mind. Lol


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## T.S.Bowman

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> 4. Up in the attic of his house, a boy's grandfather has built a miniature world out of matchsticks and paint: roads, towns, cities, farms, everything. But when the boy comes to stay at the house, he discovers that a miniature race of people actually _live _in this world--and are unfortunately at war with each other.



Ya know...I think I may actually have something for this idea.

My 8 year old has expressed an interest in writing so I just asked him about this idea and gave him the assignment of describing one of the races. I will be very interested in seeing what he comes up with.


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## Lyra Laurant

ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord said:


> 3.  After (or during) the mass extinction at the end of the carboniferous period, the last trilobites on earth try to bring together the last of their family, who have been scattered by the disaster.



Can anyone write this, please? Trilobites are so lovely! :love_heart:


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## Phil Istine

I'm considering a horror story about a guy whose old mental health problem re-surfaces after having a parking ticket unfairly stuck on his windscreen.  The horror would be about his revenge on the traffic warden and the "corrupt" local authority who upheld the ticket.

I recently received such a ticket (wrongly issued but impossible to prove).  Instead of shutting down the resentment within me, I allowed it to flow and my head started concocting a story from it.  I'm not sure how it will come out on paper.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis

Sometime in the future, (To allow for technology within the story ) a man suffered from severe burns (fire, lightning strike) at a very young age, that left him without a face. Lacking eyes, ears, lips, mouth, or hair. 

An organization dedicated to training 'gifted' individuals has hidden members throughout the populace. One such member noticed, despite his lack of senses, unusually high brain activity. 

Although the medical technology exists to restore his senses, they take him, and keep him scarred to develop his mental abilities. 

He pretends to be making slow progress, but learns to influence technology. 

Of course, he kills everyone in the facility using their own security systems.

I might attempt it in the future, but felt like I lacked prerequisite writing skillz.


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## Schrody

Aliens visit Mars and discovers someone _again_ left their "toys" there. They soon found out it's an outdated technology to them, placed by the Earthlings. One of them accidentally sets up Pathfinder (like in the Martian) with the some sort of static electricity their bodies are charged with, and send an audio message to Earth. NASA received the signal and discovered there is intelligent life in space, coming from the planet orbiting the Epsilon Eridani (11th closest star to Earth), located 10.5 light years, and they look like humans. They learned English by watching our shows. NASA replied and (r)evolution began....


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## Schrody

Lyra Laurant said:


> Can anyone write this, please? Trilobites are so lovely! :love_heart:



I hate trilobites. They're so nasty!


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## midnightpoet

One of my ideas is historical fiction; my original idea has it set in Dallas, sometime in the early 20th century (1900-1920), centered around black culture, especially with blues/jazz as background.  Of course it could be in Memphis, Chicago, New Orleans.  I had in mind a detective story, but anything could go here. Of course, my main problem is I'm much too white-bread to do it justice.  It needs a Walter Mosley (One of his best was _Devil in a blue Dress_).  Anyone?  I think it could make a great story.


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## Kyle R

After inventing a perpetual motion machine to solve the world's pollution crisis, a young inventor finds himself hunted by a violent clockwork man with a failing heart, who wants the device so that he can live forever.


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## JustRob

Two suggestions for world builders.

*Era World
*The race on a planet have solved the problem, of people not being able to come to terms with rapidly advancing new technology and being prevented from using their old technology, by dividing the planet into sectors. Each sector uses only the technology of a given era, so one may only use horse-drawn vehicles, another gas-guzzling cars and another eco-friendly electric vehicles. Equally technologies such as health care do not migrate from one sector to another, so there are both advantages and disadvantages to being a registered resident of any one. Eventually sectors dwindle in size as their populations decrease and new ones are formed, so the overall planetary society has been stable in this way for a long time. The story writer would have to work out what might threaten to destabilise this arrangement and what the resolution would be. This would be an interesting challenge for anyone who likes plots with many issues and components to them.

*The Artificial World
*A very advanced race living on a vast artificial world, a sort of space station the size of a small planet orbiting a star, have always debated about their origins, the details of which have been lost over time. Did they once have a home world somewhere and some or all of them brought this place here or, as some believe, did they totally destroy their planet as they built a more and more complex artificial home on its surface and then deeper into it until all trace of it was gone. Where then is the answer? Is it somewhere out in space or deep within the heart of their world? Will they ever know for sure whether their home is actually home? This has a nice philosophical edge to it, whether people should look inside themselves for answers or look beyond themselves, so the characters could have similar conflicts within their own personal lives to parallel the global one. Introspection versus extrospection.

Both of these suggested worlds have far-reaching implications, but they could provide the setting for a story that tackles just some small aspect of life there while also providing scope for more connected stories in the future.


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## Schrody

Kyle R said:


> After inventing a perpetual motion machine to solve the world's pollution crisis, a young inventor finds himself hunted by a violent clockwork man with a failing heart, who wants the device so that he can live forever.



This sounds so awesome!!! 

Why don't you write this?! 

I would so take this one if I weren't full with ideas to execute...


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## Kyle R

Schrody said:


> This sounds so awesome!!!
> 
> Why don't you write this?!
> 
> I would so take this one if I weren't full with ideas to execute...



It was a story idea I noodled around with during my steampunk phase. But I've since moved on to superhero fiction. :encouragement:


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## Schrody

Kyle R said:


> It was a story idea I noodled around with during my steampunk phase. But I've since moved on to superhero fiction. :encouragement:



Oh, I'm tempted, really tempted...


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## The Green Shield

A blind, orphaned, one-legged, painfully thin, pasty-white, buck tooth Irish boy named Eamon discovers he's the Chosen One destined to save the world from an army of demonic elves. His allies are a chicken and a prostitute who snuck out from the hellhole den she used to work in. They must journey through the vast forests of the Amazon, the mighty mountains of the Ozarks, the deep blue of the Pacific, the chilling gloom of the biggest cathedral of the dead before finally delving into the lands of Egypt and Nubia to obtain the seven trinkets that will re-seal the Great Rift that kept apart our world and the world of the demonic elves. 

He discovers his true parents, Lancelot and Lady Guinevere, who had been locked up in a time portal by the evil elves who chucked the baby Eamon through the Rift hoping it'd kill him but it instead plunked his tiny, helpless ass in the hands of the cruel, _cruel_ stablemaster, Henry Furlstod who beat the shit out of him for every minor transgression including sneezing in the man's presence. There's a tearful reunion, but alas, they were mere shades and crumble into skeletons and dust in his very arms. 

There is love. A noble woman attempts to woo Eamon and make him the rightful heir of her vast estate. Of course, he's 15 and she's, like, 30 and wants to dress him up like her dead husband. He's _VERY DISTURBED BY THIS!!!_ Thankfully servants sneak him out at night. Turns out she is insane, very insane. Doesn't stop him from having a crush on the elf princess.

He endures many trials, suffers many hardships including: almost dying of scarlet fever, suffering a broken arm, getting the shit kicked out of him by a golem, losing his right ear and left index finger to pirates, and suffering a near-fatal demonic possession by the evil DORGOB, an evil, _evil_ Elf Warlock who is also the big bad. He's also the father of that elf princess AND HE IS NOT AMUSED!! He tries to torture Eamon to death, but the elf princess kills him, sacrificing her life to do so. Eamon must understand wisdom and courage from this.

Twists are revealed, there is hope, there is fear. Triumph and tragedy. The chicken dies defending Eamon from bandits. The woman reveals her name is Viola and she comes from a long line of ancient kings the elves once overthrew. She must win her throne back.

Oh, and did I mention that Eamon has a heart condition? Yeah, he has that to deal with too.

------
#1- I was not drinking when I typed that.

#2- You are free to do what you will with that plot.

#3- Thank you, OP, for this thread. I'll be here all week! 8D


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## Schrody

The Green Shield said:


> A blind, orphaned, one-legged, painfully thin, pasty-white, buck tooth Irish boy named Eamon discovers he's the Chosen One destined to save the world from an army of demonic elves.



Well, that's an original hero


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## The Green Shield

Schrody said:


> Well, that's an original hero


No, no he is not. This is the *Donation Bin*, so any plot or characters I think are horrid and cliché go here. You're welcome.


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## Schrody

The Green Shield said:


> No, no he is not. This is the *Donation Bin*, so any plot or characters I think are horrid and cliché go here. You're welcome.



Just because it's "donation bin" it doesn't mean all characters here are cliche, and that goes for your yours too. I wasn't sarcastic.


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## The Green Shield

Schrody said:


> Just because it's "donation bin" it doesn't mean all characters here are cliche, and that goes for your yours too. I wasn't sarcastic.


I know, I'm just kidding around.  I like to mess with people sometimes, it's what I do.

Few more from me:
- A sports team plays a game in April 1865 in the middle of Alabama. The South and the home team loses at the end.

- Aliens invade Earth...to pick up an alien they left stranded in the Arctic. They told all the leading scientists and the UN of their intentions and everyone's oddly OK with this.

- A plucky band of Americans and British explorers reach Tibet and learn of a special child who is native to Tibet who shall fulfill a prophecy. The Americans and British vow to protect this child as the child saves the world from an ungodly evil. There is a scene where one of the Americans/British say, “We'll do whatever we can, but that don't make us experts on everything you Tibetans can do. I, for one, am happy just providing more muscle to buy that kid a little extra time to do that world saving thing.”

- A British professor finds himself in Ancient Roman times and must serve as the personal guard to Julius Caesar..


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## Kyle R

After surviving an industrial accident, a young maintenance worker discovers she has the ability to control steam—and the machines that use it.

(Best suited for a steampunk setting for maximum possibilities.)


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## Pluralized

A flock of sheep have been together so long they can no longer think individual thoughts. The wolf, sensing the reduction in the relative flock intelligence (F.I.), formulates an intricate plan to convince them all to lie down and submit, one by one so the wolf might eat for years. One sheep breaks away, fools the wolf, and plays along until...

And with the wolf vanquished, the burdensome flock destroyed, the bloodthirsty sheep wears the wolf's skin in order to slaughter the rest of the wolves back at the den...

Ok so I probably should go to bed.


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## Kyle R

Epic.


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## Bishop

The writing prompt that got me into writing a novel in the first place.

"You walk into a diner and the door opens with a long gust, blowing about napkins and papers form inside the diner. A slip of paper flies off of a woman's table and she chases it as it tumbles outside, and falls into a storm drain. She turns and looks up at you, tears billowing, and says, 'You've just killed me.' "

The novel I wrote off that one is... really really really really really bad, but we all start somewhere! Maybe you can do better with it.


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## popsprocket

A black comedy about a serial killer who hunts down a copycat that he feels has plagiarised his style of murder.


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## Renaissance Man

I have a plot a started about a year ago, that I just don't have time to finish. A 39 clues style young adult or more accurately all ages series involving a self defined realist who works for a television company trying to snuff out any imagination he sees whose part of the 'we never landed on the moon' theorists who is then mistaken for an alien invader by our extra-terrestrial benefactors and must work with the alien woman who tried to arrest him, when things go wrong and the galaxy's only hope ends up falling to this unlikely pairing. Each book would feature a different planet and co-writer, while the prime writer of the two main characters stays consistent. I would've read the 39 clues but they were too expensive and I felt that two main characters constantly changing hands without a consistent actor/actress whose personality is consistent was just a big mistake. Hope some aspect of this helps someone.


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## Amnesiac

Idea I've been toying with for some years, and the murder is actually based on a real event: Man is digging a pond in his backyard, but before he puts the liner in, he digs an additional recess that's the same size as his wife's vehicle. He kills her, stuffs her in her car along with her purse and most of her clothes and toiletries, and then rolls the car into the recess. He pulls the liner over it, fills the pond with water, claims her as a missing person, and gets away with the murder -- Except she's still there, haunting him, sleeping next to him in bed, doing a variety of things that slowly cause him to lose his mind. (Shades of Poe's, "The Telltale Heart.") Finally, he starts trying to kill himself. She lets him get nearly to the point of death, but saves him each time, until he finally, in relief, manages to kill himself. The final scene is her ghost drifting across the yard and sinking into the pond.


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## PhunkyMunky

Last night I was thinking about all of those who ask for story ideas and I thought to myself, why not do a comedy about someone who wants to write a story but has no story ideas? 

The MC goes to ridiculous lengths to find a topic and in the end, he sits down to write a story about how he didn't have anything to write about and the first lines of the story, are the first lines to the story you're now reading! :cyclops:


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## Crowley K. Jarvis

A bunch of fictional characters enjoy playing a virtual reality simulation of a normal human life.

Suddenly, no one can log out of the game. They're stuck as boring ol' humans.


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## JustRob

In this season of alleged goodwill it must be time for those writers who have turned to the dark side to be considering the plot of an alternative Christmas Carol, so ...

Scrooge doesn't heed the warnings of the spirits of Christmas and remains a miser. Consequently in their desperation the Cratchit family kill and eat Tiny Tim. At the time Bob Cratchit remarks grimly, "God help us, every one." The story doesn't end there though. Subsequently Scrooge disappears without trace and is forgotten. Neither his body nor his fortune are ever found and the Cratchit family live happily ever after.

Maybe nowadays it is necessary to put across the Christmas message more forcefully.


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## Schrody

Okay, this has already been done, but you can give it your twist... A man is committing serial suicides by killing his "copies" from parallel worlds, and he can't be accused of murder, since he's killing himself...


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## JustRob

Schrody said:


> Okay, this has already been done, but you can give it your twist... A man is committing serial suicides by killing his "copies" from parallel worlds, and he can't be accused of murder, since he's killing himself...



But suicide is effectively illegal in the UK although I don't think anyone has been successfully prosecuted for it ...  Certainly assisting in a suicide is regarded as being an accessory to a crime though. 

If he killed a copy who had already killed another copy, could he claim that it was self-defence?


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## Schrody

I don't know is it illegal in Croatia, but if you try, and fail, you would be placed in a mental hospital (until they get sure you're okay and won't try again), or you could go voluntarily. I don't think those persons stay there for long, unless they're a menace to society...

Other copies didn't kill other copies, just that one guy


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## Arrakis

I don't mean to troll or put this thread down, but mine belief is that every writer should learn to draw ideas from their _own_ mind. When someone else gives you an idea, they're basically lifting the mental weights _for_ you. It's like someone in a gym helping you bench press; sure, you might make some progress, but not as much progress as doing it yourself. Sometimes, you have to learn to get stronger by yourself. After all, there may come a time when you will have nobody lean on--and then what? Independence is vital, after all. [Shrugs] But maybe that's just me.

How I work when mentoring writers is that I make them tell me about their story. Afterwards, I challenge them by asking them things _about_ their story; why the character is doing this, why the fictional world is this way, etc. In mine opinion, founded upon experience, that actually encourages them to use their _own_ mind, thus levelling up their creativity.

[Shrugs] That said, however, to each his/her own.


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## aj47

When I chaired a conference last June, we had a panel discussion where writers talked about ideas they would not write.  I view this thread as being along those lines. It's not that we're looking for ideas--it's that we have more than we can write and maybe one of our ideas could be a prompt for someone else to springboard from into something wonderful.


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## MzSnowleopard

Off topic:



T.S.Bowman said:


> You pretty much have to be insane to want to be a moderator anyway.



 So what does that make me since I admin a board, soon to be 2?


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## T.S.Bowman

MzSnowleopard said:


> Off topic:
> 
> 
> 
> So what does that make me since I admin a board, soon to be 2?



Ummm...I did two for a while as well. Seti and Calm Chaos. I know the insanity. It will get you too. Lol


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## Schrody

After reading someone's suicide letter on the forum, a girl discovers that his/hers ghost/soul/whatever is following her in order to help him/her to find peace as it can't reconcile with its own premature death. 

It's worth a shot


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## MzSnowleopard

Still off topic: 



T.S.Bowman said:


> Ummm...I did two for a while as well. Seti and Calm Chaos. I know the insanity. It will get you too. Lol



I know the insanity well, I was on the admin / mod team for 2 star trek groups. The insanity comes from the chaos in dealing with members ( on those forums) and sometimes the other admins / mods. On my current forum- it's quiet, sometimes I want to poke a stick at some of the members to see if they're still breathing. Then I find them alive and well- on Facebook. LOL

That could be a story in itself- it has actually happened to me. 

You're the admin of an online community, someone who claims you're friends has stopped participating on your board. You run in to them, alive, well, and posting on a board whose owner views yours as competition- and wants to absorb your members. You pick the content of the boards. How do you handle these issues?


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## popsprocket

Young wizards caught fighting in the middle of street, visible to humans for blocks around, are court martialed by the magical authority for their actions.

[video=youtube;G0OGjPzHOB0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0OGjPzHOB0[/video]


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## The Green Shield

popsprocket said:


> Young wizards caught fighting in the middle of street, visible to humans for blocks around, are court martialed by the magical authority for their actions.
> 
> [video=youtube;G0OGjPzHOB0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0OGjPzHOB0[/video]


OK, that sounds pretty damned awesome! 

-----

Here's a story idea you all can use:

A guy who is totally not Beowulf fights an evil lich who kills people with green magic. He saves a small kid who has a disfigured face from surviving the lich's mighty blast and he cares for the child while working on a way to stop the lich.


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## Schrody

After the death of his father, a boy, growing to be a man, has to take over his family business and map all the stars in the galaxy (I intended it to be Milky Way, but it can be any other), experiencing adventure after adventure, and learning about/stumbling upon intelligent alien life. 

Came to me in a dream


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## MzSnowleopard

Schrody said:


> After the death of his father, a boy, growing to be a man, has to take over his family business and map all the stars in the galaxy (I intended it to be Milky Way, but it can be any other), experiencing adventure after adventure, and learning about/stumbling upon intelligent alien life.
> 
> *Came to me in a dream *



I love it when this happens.


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## Schrody

It often does  I'm not dreaming, I'm "watching" blockbusters


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## Khalid M

Four youngsters meet up every sunday to go explore an off-limits area,  where space is warped and strange objects abound, all while trying not  to be noticed by the authorities who don't want any information to go public.


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## The Green Shield

A bunch of cars and trucks become sentient and try to kill people.


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## ArrowInTheBowOfTheLord

I saw that someone posted an idea based on a dream, so I decided to give the premises of some of my more coherent dreams.

1. A girl and her father are staying at a hotel for a special trip. The hotel gives out free toys to the children there, and the girl receives a stuffed snake. She discovers that this snake comes to life when no one but herself is around, and she soon becomes friend with this snake, who insists on being called 'M.' One day, however M mysteriously disappears. . .

2. On a desert planet in space, a young man keeps a zoo of a hundred different animals. But some interplanetary 'bad guys' steal all of them, except two parakeets. He and the parakeets set off to rescue the animals; the green parakeet is hesitant (he's scared), but the blue parakeet is eager to go on an adventure. The man and his parakeets travel to the bad guys' base, which turns out to be very strange; it is made up of perfectly identical living rooms housing perfectly identical elderly couples. At the center is a huge grocery store, where the young man and his parakeets have to face the bad guys' guards. The captured animals, however, are enjoying themselves just fine on the desolate moon where they are being held, conducting wrestling matches between lobsters. Whether or not the rescue will be successful is unknown. . .

3. A new girl at a boarding school tries (unsuccessfully) to be popular. But one day at an ice-skating party, the school's vampire detectors start going off, and only she notices. . . 

5. Three friends are forced to find their way through a maze, which has rooms along the corridors where they must face challenges. In the first of these rooms is a playground half-sunken in a lake of lava, and here they must battle half-woman, half-spider monsters who are said to be extremely clever and extremely crazy. The rest of the challenges aren't likely to be any easier. . .

6. After helping a girl escape from her cruel parents, a boy finds that he has the power both to generate snow and to travel through dimensions. The first dimension he travels to is a two-dimensional and pixelated, and there a tiny ninja is being attacked by evil blue droids. The boy generates snowballs for the ninja to fight back with, and the ninja thanks him for giving him a way to defend himself. The boy decides then to use his powers for good, helping people in different dimensions. . .

7. A family discovers a beautiful island in the middle of the ocean, untouched by man. What is remarkable is that there are multiple biomes in an extremely small space on the island, including a cold evergreen forest, a humid mangrove, and an area of hot springs. The family realizes that a lot of tourists going there may upset the delicate balance, and so they decide to live there secretly, hiding it from the rest of the world. They name the major river the Craig River, after the father in the family, and build only two buildings: their house, and a place where they spend Christmas, which they call "the inn." After the family has live there a while, two mysterious strangers, a husband and his pregnant wife, wash up on the shore of the island in a raft on the night before Christmas. These people say nothing of where they come from, but say only that they are "looking for a place to spend Christmas." Despite their suspicions, the family allows the strangers to stay in the inn. They have no idea of how the appearance of these two people will change their life on the island forever. . .

8. Two spinosauruses (a kind of dinosaur) named Jacob and Rebecca are married with one child. They live only a few miles from Crystal Lake, where all of the spinosauruses fish for their food. But an ancient prophecy has always hung over this lake; it was said long ago that the clear waters will one day run with blood. So when a group of tyrannosauruses attempt to take over the lake, Jacob rushes to defend it. . .

I realize that some of these may not make much sense, but I thought that someone may want to use them.


----------



## dale

i did have an idea that would make a great horror story. i don't wanna write this type of story.
but i was thinking that you know those people who drive SUVs and they have those "family stick figures"
....there's probably a name for them. i don't know what it is. but they basically tell everyone following
you exactly how many people are in your house and if you have any dogs and how many are kids?
well, my idea was that a serial type killer would watch for these and choose families based on their
togetherness and happiness for his own twisted purposes. and by the stickers, he would know exactly
how many people were in the house and whether they had a dog. i thought it could be a pretty sick,
psychological thriller, in the right hands.


----------



## T.S.Bowman

The Green Shield said:


> A bunch of cars and trucks become sentient and try to kill people.



Sounds oddly familiar. 

Anyone for a bad movie?


----------



## MzSnowleopard

T.S.Bowman said:


> Sounds oddly familiar.
> 
> Anyone for a bad movie?



I imagine that Bruce Boxleitner might say "I'll pass this time. The first one was bad enough."


----------



## T.S.Bowman

MzSnowleopard said:


> I imagine that Bruce Boxleitner might say "I'll pass this time. The first one was bad enough."



I wouldn't bet on it. Hollywood is doing a "reboot" on just about everything these days.


----------



## MzSnowleopard

T.S.Bowman said:


> I wouldn't bet on it. Hollywood is doing a "reboot" on just about everything these days.



After the run on Transformers 1-4 I don't think that Transmorphers would stand a chance.


----------



## LeeC

To me story ideas abound if one opens their eyes and minds ;-)

Take for instance this photo I noticed that could seed a whole book.


----------



## MzSnowleopard

LeeC said:


> To me story ideas abound if one opens their eyes and minds ;-)
> 
> Take for instance this photo I noticed that could seed a whole book.
> 
> View attachment 11715




That's what I call skilled. WTG pilot


----------



## InkwellMachine

Ah man, this thread is rad as heck.

I'm actually putting together a Youtube channel for this, so expect me to come back in the near future for feedback and stuff.

For now, here, have an idea. Not a plot, just an idea: *A cemetery spilling over with gorgeous flowers, all unique in their own way, and all strangely reminiscent of the corpses they feed on.*


----------



## LeeC

InkwellMachine said:


> Ah man, this thread is rad as heck.
> 
> I'm actually putting together a Youtube channel for this, so expect me to come back in the near future for feedback and stuff.
> 
> For now, here, have an idea. Not a plot, just an idea: *A cemetery spilling over with gorgeous flowers, all unique in their own way, and all strangely reminiscent of the corpses they feed on.*


Hey, another eco-fiction piece


----------



## Schrody

My God Ink, haven't seen you for ages!


----------



## InkwellMachine

*@Schrody~ *​Been busy. Been reeeeal busy. I'll tell everyone about it pretty soon. :b How are you?


----------



## Olly Buckle

I had a thought for an sf story, but the problem is someone has to realise that we are being exploited by our pets , and I am not sure how. What they realise is that cats imbibe our life force, that is why they like to sit on laps, they are draining us as they do so, why else would such a fiercely independent animal do that? Dogs on the other hand are just dogs, they want to be too warm and lazy and eat too much, the problem is they are telepathic and controlling as well as stupid. Cats are fairly small compared to us, so they don’t rob us of so much it kills us, and dogs are  stupid and not that influential, so we are still innovative, but we do tend to lethargy, and wasting the products of our ingenuity on trash rather than eradicating poverty and disease. 
We humans have always had an inkling about this; hence legends of vampires etc., but the hero is the first person to fully realise this; what will he do about it?


----------



## Schrody

InkwellMachine said:


> *@Schrody~ *​Been busy. Been reeeeal busy. I'll tell everyone about it pretty soon. :b How are you?



I'm good. Glad you're back! ^^


----------



## Schrody

LeeC said:


> Hey, another eco-fiction piece



I have one too - about a plant that eats people. And no, "Little Shop Of Horrors" wasn't my inspiration :lol:


----------



## Olly Buckle

Schrody said:


> I have one too - about a plant that eats people. And no, "Little Shop Of Horrors" wasn't my inspiration :lol:



There is an old story, H G Wells maybe, about an exotic orchid collector found sucked dry in his greenhouse, and the new plant is flourishing suddenly. Then there is 'Day of the triffids' of course. 

It is like Woody Allen said "The Ancient Greeks stole all my best ideas."


----------



## Schrody

Olly Buckle said:


> There is an old story, H G Wells maybe, about an exotic orchid collector found sucked dry in his greenhouse, and the new plant is flourishing suddenly. Then there is 'Day of the triffids' of course.
> 
> It is like Woody Allen said "The Ancient Greeks stole all my best ideas."



As original as it may seem in the first place, you suddenly realize it's not original. BUT, never mind. For the history of writing is forged on the old ideas. Mine is a real plant, i.e., it acts as a parasite in real life.


----------



## Jack of all trades

Arrakis said:


> I don't mean to troll or put this thread down, but mine belief is that every writer should learn to draw ideas from their _own_ mind. When someone else gives you an idea, they're basically lifting the mental weights _for_ you. It's like someone in a gym helping you bench press; sure, you might make some progress, but not as much progress as doing it yourself. Sometimes, you have to learn to get stronger by yourself. After all, there may come a time when you will have nobody lean on--and then what? Independence is vital, after all. [Shrugs] But maybe that's just me.
> 
> How I work when mentoring writers is that I make them tell me about their story. Afterwards, I challenge them by asking them things _about_ their story; why the character is doing this, why the fictional world is this way, etc. In mine opinion, founded upon experience, that actually encourages them to use their _own_ mind, thus levelling up their creativity.
> 
> [Shrugs] That said, however, to each his/her own.





Inspiration can strike in a hundred different ways. I once wrote a short story because I saw a title that caused me to see a scene in my mind. Does it make the story any less mine because it originated with someone else's title?


----------



## Jack of all trades

This thread is a great idea!


----------



## Jack of all trades

I once had a dream, so many years ago I nearly forgot it entirely, about tracking a serial killers, getting closer each time he killed, the last time hearing the murder, but arriving too late to save the victim. I, having gotten his attention at last, became the next victim. I awoke as I was about to be killed.


----------



## bdcharles

A perfectly ordinary everyman, a civil servant perhaps, is teleported to an alien world. This world is in many ways like ours; see the sports fields and gymnasiums just past the treeline. Against this shockingly familiar setting, imagine the next thirty terrified seconds of this man's life; he knows where he is; he has the first _first _glimpse of another world - but he dare not breathe. At some point he's going to have to. And now, from the trees, there is movement.


----------



## LeeC

Here's a wild idea with a foot in scientific reality that someone might make a speculative fiction storyline out of.

First, crude oil originates from fossilized organic materials (plants and animals) which geochemical processes convert into oil over some millions of years. 

Second consider that peak oil (maximum extraction reached and declining), accelerated global warming, and runaway population (beyond what the Earth's closed system can accommodate), are all looming on the horizon, and occur within the same century. 

If humankind thusly shortens their existence span, consider that we might be the primary source of organic materials in replenishing oil reserves. 

So, some millions of years down the road a new life form evolves that has the potential to get out of hand. In your story you could have them repeat the same mistakes, or have the intelligence to live in harmony with the natural world, or maybe even be constantly at war with a similar life form that's bent on repeating the same mistakes. 

Now, sci-fiers come up with stories of humans escaping a dying Earth, but what if we never overcome the natural obstacles to travel untold light years into an expanding universe. Even if we find some means to do so in time, it's unlikely such will accommodate all the population. 

Leave the magic pill occurance thinking out of your story, and create more realistic speculative fiction


----------



## Olly Buckle

A person with an immune system disease is treated with a radical  therapy that destroys the immune system and then regenerates it using stem cells harvested before the destruction. Not  only does it work, it works better, scar tissue gets regenerated, they appear younger, and over time it becomes apparent that they are 'immortal' so long as they don't suffer a fatal  injury. However, when attempts are made to replicate it they all fail, though they do cure the disease, and nobody can figure why. Imagine what happens to such a person, the information it might be possible to extract from his body would be far more valuable than he, and though no-one would want to kill the goose that lays golden eggs once they realised his body would heal perfectly they would not be very limited in their experimentation. Escape? Where to? There ought to be some good twists in that, the irony of course being that he would outlive all his tormentors.


----------



## Schrody

LeeC said:


> Here's a wild idea with a foot in scientific reality that someone might make a speculative fiction storyline out of.
> 
> First, crude oil originates from fossilized organic materials (plants and animals) which geochemical processes convert into oil over some millions of years.
> 
> Second consider that peak oil (maximum extraction reached and declining), accelerated global warming, and runaway population (beyond what the Earth's closed system can accommodate), are all looming on the horizon, and occur within the same century.
> 
> If humankind thusly shortens their existence span, consider that we might be the primary source of organic materials in replenishing oil reserves.
> 
> So, some millions of years down the road a new life form evolves that has the potential to get out of hand. In your story you could have them repeat the same mistakes, or have the intelligence to live in harmony with the natural world, or maybe even be constantly at war with a similar life form that's bent on repeating the same mistakes.
> 
> Now, sci-fiers come up with stories of humans escaping a dying Earth, but what if we never overcome the natural obstacles to travel untold light years into an expanding universe. Even if we find some means to do so in time, it's unlikely such will accommodate all the population.
> 
> Leave the magic pill occurance thinking out of your story, and create more realistic speculative fiction



In my defense, I always try to implement plausible science


----------



## LeeC

LeeC said:


> Here's a wild idea with a foot in scientific reality that someone might make a speculative fiction storyline out of.
> 
> First, crude oil originates from fossilized organic materials (plants and animals) which geochemical processes convert into oil over some millions of years.
> 
> Second consider that peak oil (maximum extraction reached and declining), accelerated global warming, and runaway population (beyond what the Earth's closed system can accommodate), are all looming on the horizon, and occur within the same century.
> 
> If humankind thusly shortens their existence span, consider that we might be the primary source of organic materials in replenishing oil reserves.
> 
> So, some millions of years down the road a new life form evolves that has the potential to get out of hand. In your story you could have them repeat the same mistakes, or have the intelligence to live in harmony with the natural world, or maybe even be constantly at war with a similar life form that's bent on repeating the same mistakes.
> 
> Now, sci-fiers come up with stories of humans escaping a dying Earth, but what if we never overcome the natural obstacles to travel untold light years into an expanding universe. Even if we find some means to do so in time, it's unlikely such will accommodate all the population.
> 
> Leave the magic pill occurance thinking out of your story, and create more realistic speculative fiction



I posted this on a publisher/editor acquaintance's site also. She not only liked it, but suggested the title, "Soylent Black is ... People." Speculative fiction isn't the kind of writing I'm into, but it's an idea for those that are.


----------



## CPMurphy

An honest politician, a man who follows his father into the world of politics, but unlike his father he tries to stay honest to his beliefs. because his father is known to take a bribe or two, people believe the son will be the same, he exposes the shady side and is targeted politically and also finds his life in danger, he now must try survive and expose those who are after him.


----------



## CPMurphy

Just some details i thought could be used,,,   John Harding worshiped his father, his father peter was quickly becoming a shining light in the world of politics, known as a man to get things done, he made sure when he sorted out a problem for someone it always came at a price. peters career skyrocketed and he ended up in a high powered government position. john decided to follow in his fathers footsteps and too entered the world of politics, he also found his rise to a minor government role amazingly rapid. mostly gained by his fathers name, one day when john is offered a bribe he is so annoyed with the corruption he exposes two fellow government ministers. he is heralded as the new face of politics, then one morning he is charged with the crime of rape, the evidence against him so strong he quickly realizes he is been set up. he sets out to try find out who is behind the frame up only to discover its his own father, when he confronts his father he is given two choices, go to jail or follow the path of so many others and turn a blind eye to corruption and indeed become part of it, john decides to take option three, gather enough evidence to expose his father,   

i just thought up the idea last night so i havent had time to think it fully through, but for a platform to build on it might be ok


----------



## Renaissance Man

This is semi similar to other stories that I've written already with assistance. But corrupt politics honest politicians and father son hatred are common story ideas, so it's not entirely surprising. You seem to keep being on the threads I decide to post on. Guess that shows similar tastes.


----------



## Arianna

A daycare or preschool makes it very clear kids must be picked up no later than 6:00 pm. Parents who are even one minute late don't get their kids back. 

A truck driver walks walks into a diner at 2:00 am. It is obvious to employees and other customers that the driver was spooked by something.


----------



## sigmadog

A taxi that takes passengers not where they want to go, but where they need to go.


----------



## Book Cook

A teenage girl finds out that her enigmatic crush is actually a mummy and the girl who unwraps his linens will witness his sparkling body*. 










--------------------------------------------------------------------
*Must be kept in a cool and dry place.


----------



## Olly Buckle

JustRob said:


> Two suggestions for world builders.
> 
> *Era World
> *The race on a planet have solved the problem, of people not being able to come to terms with rapidly advancing new technology and being prevented from using their old technology, by dividing the planet into sectors. Each sector uses only the technology of a given era, so one may only use horse-drawn vehicles, another gas-guzzling cars and another eco-friendly electric vehicles. Equally technologies such as health care do not migrate from one sector to another, so there are both advantages and disadvantages to being a registered resident of any one. Eventually sectors dwindle in size as their populations decrease and new ones are formed, so the overall planetary society has been stable in this way for a long time. The story writer would have to work out what might threaten to destabilise this arrangement and what the resolution would be. This would be an interesting challenge for anyone who likes plots with many issues and components to them.
> 
> *The Artificial World
> *A very advanced race living on a vast artificial world, a sort of space station the size of a small planet orbiting a star, have always debated about their origins, the details of which have been lost over time. Did they once have a home world somewhere and some or all of them brought this place here or, as some believe, did they totally destroy their planet as they built a more and more complex artificial home on its surface and then deeper into it until all trace of it was gone. Where then is the answer? Is it somewhere out in space or deep within the heart of their world? Will they ever know for sure whether their home is actually home? This has a nice philosophical edge to it, whether people should look inside themselves for answers or look beyond themselves, so the characters could have similar conflicts within their own personal lives to parallel the global one. Introspection versus extrospection.
> 
> Both of these suggested worlds have far-reaching implications, but they could provide the setting for a story that tackles just some small aspect of life there while also providing scope for more connected stories in the future.



I like these two, many are very simple metaphors, these have a bit more potential. It struck me your disaster for the era world could be something like an epidemic that reduced the population to the degree that the various remnants needed to unite, or was of such an overwhelming force they needed to unite to overcome it. New things come from such combinations.


----------



## Jakeus06

I love the idea. I'm a bit of an introvert. At least more so than an extrovert.


----------



## Guard Dog

Had no idea this was here, but now that I do, I'll make a donation:

The first manned mission to Venus discovers that the planet is actually inhabited... by the spirits of those who have died on earth.
...and that any who die on Venus end up back on earth as a similar life form, since the planets are linked in a peculiar manner.

Further complicating things is the fact that now that someone from earth has died there, it's inhabitants can cross back and forth at will.



G.D.


----------



## NathanielleC

What if werewolves aren't really allergic to silver? Waking up naked in the middle of nowhere is still pretty inconvenient. So in the days leading up to a full moon a clever werewolf convinces the people of his and the nearby villages to fashion bullets made of the rare and precious metal. The following morning he finds himself in the middle of the forest with a handful of dented silver bullets that his body has expelled while returning to human form. He now has some silver to trade away for clothes and a ride back to his village. 

Yeah, there's some stuff to work out but that's why it's only an idea. I have no appetite for vampires and werewolves anymore so I leave the idea to you.


----------



## Guard Dog

Here's one that could be a horror or a comedy. Also has potential as an Erotic version of either.:

A woman goes on a hike in an ancient forest at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, while on vacation in Romania. She stumbles upon a series of stones that were once a place of worship dedicated to creatures thought to only be myth or legend.

She takes a stone with strange markings engraved on it as a souvenir, thinking nothing of it. However, she finds when she returns home that she has angered the spirits of the place, and that one of them has decided to get revenge by inhabiting her vagina, and speaking from it at the most inopportune moments, to her or those near her, as well as manipulating her libido and causing random orgasms. Also, the woman soon finds out that the creature can read minds, and LOVES busting people for lying or not telling the whole truth.


Anybody brave enough to try doing something with that one? :devilish::icon_cheesygrin:




G.D.


----------



## NathanielleC

Oh here's another one. What if Elon Musk really murdered someone and stuck the body in a spacesuit before sending it up into orbit with the Tesla? 

Or you could make an Elon Musk proxy. Or it could be someone working for the company who saw an opportunity to hide a body. My point is it would make a most intriguing mystery novel in the hands of the right author.


----------



## Olly Buckle

Not so much a plot line, simply a way of creating a rich character.
He looks at the largest selling vehicles, the honda c90, ford transit, mini, vw etc. and realises they have various attributes in common. Relatively cheap, versatile etc. He designs a car that uses a small electric motor to run a fly wheel. The batteries that run the motor can be charged in a number of ways, a small internal combustion engine, charging off the grid, a couple of steam engines, one powered by high heat quick burning fuel, like twigs or straw, the other by slow burning stuff like peat or dried dung, a photo electric cell, a wind turbine. The user picks the one/s appropriate to their environment. It comes as a basic flat bed unit which the purchaser builds the body onto using tubular units that slot together and are then covered and held together with fibre and resin. It can be anything from a two seater inner city runabout to a utility farm vehicle, or small delivery truck. 

They sell, he becomes rich.


----------



## DarkGhost

Here's a StarWars idea I had, a young force user is raised by the Sith, he becomes one of their most powerful fighters, however he pulls an opposite of Anakin and switches from the dark side to the light, but he retains some of his Sith powers, force lightning and stuff. He carries a black light saber which hints that he still has some darker qualities, therefore the Jedi thinks he is still Sith, and the Sith hate him because he turned on them, so it's basically him fighting against the Sith and the Jedi all the while having an internal battle of which side is right.


----------



## JustRob

Olly Buckle said:


> I like these two, many are very simple metaphors, these have a bit more potential. It struck me your disaster for the era world could be something like an epidemic that reduced the population to the degree that the various remnants needed to unite, or was of such an overwhelming force they needed to unite to overcome it. New things come from such combinations.



I think that world and culture building novices don't spend enough time creating stable systems to disrupt but instead plunge straight into an unstable situation which makes the reader wonder how it could possibly have evolved. With a culture like Era World one would assume that many of the simpler potential issues, such as how to deal with an epidemic, would have been resolved over past centuries, so it would have to be a very unusual event that could cause a serious disruption with no stock solution. (I'm sorry, but that thought has derailed me into contemplating the consequences of the election of the current US president; "checks and balances in the system," as they say over there. One can only hope.)

Usually the approach is to introduce the coincidence of several disrupting events which create an unusually difficult situation, although this can seem contrived if overdone. _The Day of The Triffids_ by John Wyndham is a typical example. Cultivating killer plants that can walk around as a useful resource isn't a problem because they are slow-moving and one can easily see them coming if any happen to escape. Of course, if almost everyone in the world were to be blinded by the light from a very peculiar shower of meteorites then things might be different, but there's very little chance of that happening.

Perhaps writers think too big when going the opposite way and thinking small can have more scope. The recent real impending disaster on the island of Sark is a good example. The island has something like 500 people living in 300 homes and under ancient laws is run entirely by its own legislature, so is effectively a miniature nation. The price of electricity there had risen substantially and the owner of the company was ordered to reduce it by their government, so he said that he couldn't continue to run the business at a loss and threatened to turn off the diesel generators installed in an old coal store that power their national grid. The government of Sark has now attempted to resolve the problem by offering to buy the business, i.e. nationalise it. Thinking small like this provides more scope for individual personalities to have more impact on events. It is more plausible that one individual on Sark could seriously disrupt the system than that one man in the White House in the USA ever could. 

For a fictional example of thinking small consider the novel _The Mouse That Roared_ by Leonard Wibberley, also a film, where the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, the fictional equivalent of Sark, declared war on the USA. If the Sark situation isn't resolved then the people there have been told to adopt a "wartime mentality" and it is possible that the government there may have to ask for the assistance of the British military to maintain the power in the short term. Grand Fenwick hoped that when they inevitably lost their war the USA would provide them with aid to overcome their own financial difficulties. Unfortunately they effectively won it through unforeseeable circumstances. Yes, thinking small can actually have scope while thinking too big can depersonalise the issues into becoming just statistics.

Referring back to my Era World concept, cars are banned on Sark and transportation is by tractor and horse-drawn vehicles. For example their ambulance service is a trailer pulled by a tractor. It's simply how the people there choose to live.


----------



## Olly Buckle

My stimulus was thinking about the way that the first world war started off with local regiments who spoke local dialects and were lead by officers who understood 'their' men and spoke received English to each other. The scale of losses meant that remnants were combined, people who, initially, could not understand each other, and promoted middle class people to lead them. The result was a profound change in the way English is spoken regionally and the development of BBC or Standard English as a universally understood, if not spoken, form. The unexpected results of synthesis, good material for the imagination there.


----------



## Jack Dammit

Fishing trip massacre


----------



## PSFoster

Here's one I started but got lost in the middle of writing it.  A mortician who owns and operates a small mortuary is killing the people who gave him a hard time in high school. He uses chloroform to knock them out then takes them to his mortuary. When they start to wake he drains the blood out of them without infusing embalming fluid. He then takes them to a place where they will be found. He even offers his expertise to the police.  I had too much going on to expand on it and somehow lost the notes I had.


----------



## EternalGreen

A geneticist loses a young child tragically, so she clones the child illegally and attempts to impress the old identity onto the new child. The story is told from the PoV of the child who slowly discovers their false identity.


----------



## indianroads

Dying man in a failing marriage rides from Los Angles to Bangor on a motorcycle to visit the grave of a lost love from his younger years.


----------



## EternalGreen

indianroads said:


> Dying man in a failing marriage rides from Los Angles to Bangor on a motorcycle to visit the grave of a lost love from his younger years.



Plot-twist: she's back as a wraith. Her love for and infatuation with the protagonist has become even more obsessive, intense, and unhealthy than it was in life.

And it's not mutual.

She has a grave dug next to hers and engraves the protagonist's name on the headstone, and the protagonist has to escape back to Los Angles before she drags him into it.

He goes home, pulls through whatever condition he's suffering, and saves his marriage. He's safe from his ex-girlfriend.

For now.


----------



## Olly Buckle

Can't see it as a 'Happy ending' story, couldn't he and ex die in a bike accident?


----------



## EternalGreen

Everyone would see that coming. 

The "happy" ending where he goes home, fixes his marriage and stays alive would be the second twist.

Maybe he's a follower of an obscure religion with an afterlife that seems bright and joyous compared to the clammy, dark world of living with a wraith--and he prefers to go to the bright afterlife when he eventually dies; hence the conflict of the story.


----------



## TheManx

Oh, I have ideas, all right. Lots of them. But they’re MINE. ALL mine. And none of you can have them! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!


----------



## indianroads

EternalGreen said:


> Everyone would see that coming.
> 
> The "happy" ending where he goes home, fixes his marriage and stays alive would be the second twist.
> 
> Maybe he's a follower of an obscure religion with an afterlife that seems bright and joyous compared to the clammy, dark world of living with a wraith--and he prefers to go to the bright afterlife when he eventually dies; hence the conflict of the story.



No. Over the course of the journey the reader learns of his life etc. It ends with him sitting by his lost love's grave watching the tide go out - and he dies.

It was a story idea I had some years ago but could never completely flesh out.


----------



## indianroads

Next novel - the idea which I'm still toying with (gotta finish WIP first) is for the two main characters to be bad people, and is set in a world much like Stalin's Russia during the 'Terrors'.

MMC is an assassin for hire, has a chip on his shoulder, works mostly for a rebellious group called the NGP. 

FMC is a member of the secret police and is out to get him.


----------



## Joker

Human radio waves are discovered by the galactic community, which only has a dozen or so sapient species. The story is told entirely from the aliens' POV as several species jockey to be the ones to uplift the humans, to gain a diplomatic feather in their caps.


----------



## Mutimir

indianroads said:


> Dying man in a failing marriage rides from Los Angles to Bangor on a motorcycle to visit the grave of a lost love from his younger years.



This is actually pretty good. It actually inspired me to write something similar. Thanks for the jumping off point.


----------



## Olly Buckle

Magician is only capable of working magic on very small things, until one day he learns a shrinking spell.


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## ehbowen

An OB-GYN has been practicing medicine as the only such specialist within 70 miles in a small town in Montana. He has earned the ire of a local activist because he refused to refer her for an abortion. When a new female OB-GYN comes to town to establish a practice the activist celebrates and then begins assassinating the established doctor's reputation. When the new doctor investigates the allegations, she finds that the male doctor was originally a resident in a cardiac surgery track and was married. His wife was eight months pregnant when they went home for Christmas to a rural part of New England. While there, his wife went prematurely into labor but the only doctor in the vicinity was a General Practitioner not skilled in such a specialty; they lost both mother and baby. When the male doctor went back to his residency he changed his specialty to OB/GYN and vowed to set up a practice in an area which was otherwise unserved. The two doctors end up falling in love, getting married, and have a son.


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## rarie

A person can teleport, but only in the same latitude as themselves - if they teleport to a different place in a different latitude, the speed change would kill them.


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## Olly Buckle

rarie said:


> A person can teleport, but only in the same latitude as themselves - if they teleport to a different place in a different latitude, the speed change would kill them.



I want to ask if that has to be exact, or if there is any latitude? Sorry. Presumably up and down is no problem, places are different levels above sea level, but how about straight up? From a platform to a satellite in stationary orbit?


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## rarie

Olly Buckle said:


> I want to ask if that has to be exact, or if there is any latitude? Sorry. Presumably up and down is no problem, places are different levels above sea level, but how about straight up? From a platform to a satellite in stationary orbit?


Well, it's only a rough idea I had. Presumably there'd need to be some latitude to work in or the power would be _very_  limited. I'd say that re. the straight up thing, as long as the ground  and the satellite were moving at the same speed, it should be fine. (In  real life, there'd obviously be a pretty big speed change because a  stationary orbit would be moving a lot faster than the earth's crust,  but it would depend on what you're teleporting in relation to.) In most  stories with teleportation, the character is teleporting in relation to  the earth, thus not stranding them in the depths of space. I was just pointing out that even in relation to the earth, the speed change should probably kill them in many cases.
But you can decide, I guess? Make it your own!


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## Phil Istine

rarie said:


> Well, it's only a rough idea I had. Presumably there'd need to be some latitude to work in or the power would be _very_  limited. I'd say that re. the straight up thing, as long as the ground  and the satellite were moving at the same speed, it should be fine. (In  real life, there'd obviously be a pretty big speed change because a  stationary orbit would be moving a lot faster than the earth's crust,  but it would depend on what you're teleporting in relation to.) In most  stories with teleportation, the character is teleporting in relation to  the earth, thus not stranding them in the depths of space. I was just pointing out that even in relation to the earth, the speed change should probably kill them in many cases.
> But you can decide, I guess? Make it your own!



If we stand on the equator and jump, the planet should whizz around at  about 26,000 miles per 24 hours beneath us.  If we can stay in the air  for two seconds on the equator, we could travel sideways at 1,083 mph.   That's 18 miles per minute, so two seconds would send us 0.6 of a mile  or about one kilometre.

On the same basis, if the universe appears to expand at faster than the  speed of light, we  can achieve super light speed travel by standing  still.

Once Professor Simpkin realised this, he developed the Simpkin Uber  Relativity Drive which he called SURD, after all the equations he needed  to make his calculations.  When the first couple of attempts went  wrong, his peers mocked him and called it abSURD.

Eventually, he got it right, but hadn't allowed for the direction of the universe, so went flying into the Sun.

It's okay, I'll take some more tablets now.


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## David K. Thomasson

An opening scene (which I've decided not to use, but I think it has merit). It ends with a puzzling question. An intriguing story could be built around an answer. If you can think of one, help yourself. You can, of course, transplant the action to any place on earth and modify characters and other details to fit your idea.

*An opening scene*
1,300 words
_The place: __Bedford County__, __Virginia_


Scarlett Middleton rolled the Cessna 152 out of a left turn and pegged the directional gyro on 348 degrees. She nudged the right rudder pedal to hold the VOR needle at dead-center. The altimeter read 3,900 feet, which in this part of the county put them about 3,000 feet above ground level.

In the right seat Nick Petit held the cable release. His camera was mounted on the wing strut and locked at the correct down-angle. He glanced at the digital readout of the DME, distance measuring equipment, on the instrument panel. They were 7.5 miles outbound from the Lynchburg VOR, a navigational radio beacon.

“Half a mile to go,” he said.

Scarlett nodded. “Yep.”

Nick and Scarlett knew this drill well enough now to run it in their sleep: Take off from New London Airport, a general aviation facility seven miles southwest of Lynchburg that also served as a drag strip on occasional weekends. Fly five miles east to the Lynchburg VOR ground station, turn left and pick up the 348 outbound radial. It was eight miles from the VOR beacon to the ravine. At about the six-mile mark Nick always spotted the familiar keyhole-shaped building off the right wingtip. Poplar Forest, the historic second home of Thomas Jefferson. Nick’s dad, Luther Petit, worked there as grounds superintendent.

Nick and Scarlett had been flying this track three times a week for the past four months. Today was the final run. Nick was enrolled in a photography course at a local college, and this was to be his semester project. Sixteen weeks ago while riding with Scarlett over the Bedford County countryside, he had spotted a dump truck spilling its load of dirt into a ravine. Two days later he saw another truck emptying a load, and now there was noticeably more dirt in the ravine. Evidently they were filling it, and it promised to be a long job; a truckload in a gorge that size was like a tablespoonful in a washtub.

Nick chose this as his photo project. He would create an animated time-lapse series that showed the filling of the ravine from start to finish. But this presented a puzzle. Time-lapse series are usually shot from a tripod at a fixed location to capture day-to-day changes in the weather, the erection of a building, or some such subject. How do you shoot from a fixed location in an airplane? Scarlett solved the problem.

“Simple,” she explained. “We fly the same heading and altitude from the VOR and use the DME to shoot from the same distance each time. That’ll put us at about the same point in midair for every shot.” A couple of dry runs showed that a heading of 348 degrees outbound from the VOR took them on a track parallel to the long axis of the ravine, and the eight-mile mark at 3,900 feet gave Nick exactly the perspective he wanted.

Scarlett agreed to split the plane rental with Nick. Now eighteen, she’d already logged more than three hundred hours and was working toward her commercial license. Nick’s project would allow her to log more time at half the cost. Today, four months after they’d begun the project, what had once been a deep, ragged wound in the earth was a smooth expanse of brown soil. A pale green haze glowed over most of its surface, grass seed just beginning to sprout.

The DME read 7.9 miles. At exactly 8.0 miles Nick pressed the cable release and the Canon 5D Mark III fired a burst of six shots in one second. He waited a tick and fired six more.

“That’s it,” he said with a fist-pump and a grin. “Project’s done.”

“Not quite. You still have to put all those pictures together,” Scarlett said.

“I’ve been doing that all along. They’re already stacked and aligned in Photoshop. I even equalized the color temperature. This afternoon I’ll add today’s shot, create the animation, and that’ll be it. Shouldn’t take more than an hour. Then you can watch four-months of filling take place in about thirty seconds.”
___

It was a little past six that evening when Nick rang Scarlett’s phone.

“Hey, you got see this. The series runs like a champ, thirty-seven seconds and smooth as butter. There’s one thing, though, that’s kinda weird.”

“Weird how?” Scarlett asked.

“I’ll have to show you. Can you come over?”

“Mom’s just putting supper on the table. Around seven?”

“I’ll be here.”

When Scarlett arrived, Nick was in the den where he kept his computer. He started the animation, and the ravine filled the screen of the 24-inch monitor. The only quick movements were the dump trucks, a blue one and a yellow one, that briefly appeared and disappeared in some of the frames, and a little white Bobcat crawler tractor with a dozer blade that was spreading the fill dirt.

“Most time-lapse productions are just a series of pictures that jump from one frame to the next,” Nick said.

 “I used a Photoshop tool called ‘Tween’ that inserts extra frames between the shots that I took so that each frame fades smoothly into the next one.” He ran it again, obviously proud of the result. The dirt rose in the ravine like water filling a swimming pool.

“Cool,” Scarlett said. “You should ace the course with that. You said there was something weird. I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

“Where do you think all that fill dirt came from?” Nick asked.

Scarlett shrugged. “Probably highway construction. When they cut down a hill and have extra dirt, they’ll give it away to anybody who’ll haul it off. A few years ago when they built that bypass over in Amherst County, my uncle got thirty or forty loads to level his backyard and plant a garden.”

“Well, this dirt didn’t come from any highway project.”

“How do you know?”

“Watch it again,” Nick said. He ran the animation. “Do you see it?”

“No, the trucks just sort of flash in and out of view. You can’t tell where they came from.”

“Yes you can. Watch closer.” He restarted the animation and stopped it after about three seconds and pointed. “See right along here? The trucks are starting to wear a track in the grass beside the ravine.”
“Okay. So?”

He ran the animation another five seconds and stopped it. “Now the track is worn down to bare dirt, so you can see exactly where it goes.” His finger traced the path on the screen. “The closest highway is Gumfree Road more than half a mile east. But the trucks never went out there. When they left the ravine to reload, they followed along beside this fence, turned through that gate, drove across this pasture and into the barn.”

Scarlett brushed her short auburn hair off her forehead. “So, what are you saying?”

“The fill dirt came out of that barn, Scarlett.”

“But what’s weird about that?”

“I went on Google Earth and zoomed in on this farm. The satellite images were taken a couple years ago, so I was able measure the ravine before they started filling it. It’s sort of wedge-shaped. By moving the cursor and watching the changes in elevation, I could make a pretty good guess at the depth. From that I worked out the volume. It easily comes to more than twelve thousand cubic yards. My dad said those trucks hold about six yards. That means it took more than two thousand truckloads to fill the ravine. The barn’s only thirty yards long and fifteen yards wide.” He cocked his head and looked at Scarlett.

“How did they get two thousand truckloads of dirt out of a _barn_?”


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## ehbowen

David K. Thomasson said:


> An opening scene (which I've decided not to use, but I think it has merit). It ends with a puzzling question. An intriguing story could be built around an answer. If you can think of one, help yourself. You can, of course, transplant the action to any place on earth and modify characters and other details to fit your idea.
> 
> “How did they get two thousand truckloads of dirt out of a _barn_?”



Sounds like the CIA is building Wildfire II (_The Andromeda Strain)...._


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## David K. Thomasson

ehbowen said:


> Sounds like the CIA is building Wildfire II (_The Andromeda Strain)...._



Unlimited possibilities. That's the beauty of it.


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## Olly Buckle

A combination of intelligence services, foreign powers and big business have got a businessman/showman elected as president. A serious epidemic has swept the country killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, but it has been played down as combating it would be economically ruinous. The disease gets into the White house and it is imperative to get the president , who is old and overweight so at high risk, into isolation, they are also half way through an election campaign. Someone has the bright idea of pretending that he has the disease and he is whisked into an isolation ward whilst the Whitehouse staff are tested and infectious members removed  The President then makes a 'miracle' recovery and tells people not to worry about the disease, American doctors are the greatest and he is lauded as a strong man hero. He wins the election, but then actually contracts the disease, to cover up the deception he is killed by a hit man and then some opposition figure framed for the murder, having the right administration is more important than the individual to the filth actuall running things.


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## Gofa

Olly your plot just does not draw me in 
too difficult to accept and suspend disbelief
maybe fiction is not your strength and you should look at more historical ventures


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## River Rose

Olly Buckle said:


> A combination of intelligence services, foreign powers and big business have got a businessman/showman elected as president. A serious epidemic has swept the country killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, but it has been played down as combating it would be economically ruinous. The disease gets into the White house and it is imperative to get the president , who is old and overweight so at high risk, into isolation, they are also half way through an election campaign. Someone has the bright idea of pretending that he has the disease and he is whisked into an isolation ward whilst the Whitehouse staff are tested and infectious members removed  The President then makes a 'miracle' recovery and tells people not to worry about the disease, American doctors are the greatest and he is lauded as a strong man hero. He wins the election, but then actually contracts the disease, to cover up the deception he is killed by a hit man and then some opposition figure framed for the murder, having the right administration is more important than the individual to the filth actuall running things.



Now this is a bedtime story I can curl up to w a mug full of warm brandy and drift happily into slumber land knowing at least one thing is right w the world again.


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## Olly Buckle

As an extra to that, how about if the thousands of extra deaths are not down to covid? It really is a very nasty disease requiring hospital treatment for many but it is also being used as a cover to assassinate thousands who might vote the 'wrong' way once they are helpless in a hospital bed. Those who would be likely to vote for the other guy get better and go home. Expect a new infection to hit in about four years. Microbiologists are working on viral and bacterial diseases that are triggered into an active stage by attitudes of the person infected, just pray them commies don't get there first


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## indianroads

How about a society where medical science has found a way to rewrite memories? Don't like your childhood? Abusive parents? Cheating spouse? Just go in for a rewrite and live a different life. This could be interesting because we could play with questioning reality.


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## ehbowen

Toying with a premise which starts off as magical/fantastical and eventually develops into dystopian SF: A race of primitives worships and tends a magical "alter"...which turns out to be an incredibly powerful ancient artifact for changing (altering) reality....


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## Arsenex

ehbowen said:


> Toying with a premise which starts off as magical/fantastical and eventually develops into dystopian SF: A race of primitives worships and tends a magical "alter"...which turns out to be an incredibly powerful ancient artifact for changing (altering) reality....


You mean like the White House podium?


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## Arsenex

In keeping with today's breakthrough headline:
The human race ends up killing itself through mass angry combat after the expanded use of hydrogen fusion overloads the atmosphere with helium. The constant squeaks of everyone talking funny due to the excess of helium at first makes everyone laugh, but eventually gets on all of our nerves. Insanity prevails and we do each other in, while screaming at each other in high-pitched voices.


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## Joker

Arsenex said:


> You mean like the White House podium?


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## ehbowen

Arsenex said:


> In keeping with today's breakthrough headline:
> The human race ends up killing itself through mass angry combat after the expanded use of hydrogen fusion overloads the atmosphere with helium. The constant squeaks of everyone talking funny due to the excess of helium at first makes everyone laugh, but eventually gets on all of our nerves. Insanity prevails and we do each other in, while screaming at each other in high-pitched voices.


"Remember me, Eddie? When I killed your brother? I talked...just...like...this!"


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## Arsenex

In a not to distant future, everyone has a free chip embedded in their head that allows instant communication with anyone else, anywhere, while the chip owner retains full rights of rejection of any contact attempts they don't want. The world governments eventually make this a mandate and it seems everyone ends up benefiting from it, whole industries arise around it. Then, a programmer working for the company that manufactures the chips uncovers a dark secret. The chips can be used to control the mind, and a countdown timer is running, leading to the day when that feature will be enabled and used by a world government cabal. The programmer has to enlist the help of others to prevent this grand conspiracy from taking place, after the powers discover that he (or she) knows.


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## indianroads

Arsenex said:


> In a not to distant future, everyone has a free chip embedded in their head that allows instant communication with anyone else, anywhere, while the chip owner retains full rights of rejection of any contact attempts they don't want. The world governments eventually make this a mandate and it seems everyone ends up benefiting from it, whole industries arise around it. Then, a programmer working for the company that manufactures the chips uncovers a dark secret. The chips can be used to control the mind, and a countdown timer is running, leading to the day when that feature will be enabled and used by a world government cabal. The programmer has to enlist the help of others to prevent this grand conspiracy from taking place, after the powers discover that he (or she) knows.


Isn't Elon Musk suggesting that we put a chip in our brains?  Yeah, that's a big no, thank you very much.


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## Arsenex

indianroads said:


> Isn't Elon Musk suggesting that we put a chip in our brains?  Yeah, that's a big no, thank you very much.


A free instant connection to everything where you control the access. Voluntary at first, where those who adopt it reap big benefits. Strict government privacy controls in place, of course. Once it starts to reach cellphone-type saturation, the governments come in with mandates where those remaining are forced into it or they are essentially left out of "everyday" life. There are big incentives to join, and big disincentives to not join. Then the final holdouts are rounded up, for their own good of course, and implanted. During that roundup is when the countdown clock begins and is scheduled to conclude when the last holdout has been chipped. So the MC has to work fast, and with a rapidly decreasing population of people who can help (the unchipped). I think this could easily be a good action/suspense thriller (which I don't write). And I'm thinking there might be a Ken Barrett character in those holdouts.


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## indianroads

*Government privacy controls* is an oxymoron... but you're right, it could be a good story.
Actually, I have an idea cooking where the MC wakes on the street with no memory. The government has wiped his memories as punishment for a crime. Elon's brain chip might work in that story.


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## Arsenex

indianroads said:


> *Government privacy controls* is an oxymoron... but you're right, it could be a good story.
> Actually, I have an idea cooking where the MC wakes on the street with no memory. The government has wiped his memories as punishment for a crime. Elon's brain chip might work in that story.


If the government was going to put a chip in your brain, what kind of chip would you want it to be? I'm going with a Dorito.


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## indianroads

Arsenex said:


> If the government was going to put a chip in your brain, what kind of chip would you want it to be? I'm going with a Dorito.


Yeah - I like Doritos, the wife thinks they're gross, but that leaves more for me.


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## Arsenex

indianroads said:


> Yeah - I like Doritos, the wife thinks they're gross, but that leaves more for me.


Of course, with the Brits here, that would be what kind of crisp would you want put in your brain. And that just doesn't make any sense.


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## indianroads

Arsenex said:


> Of course, with the Brits here, that would what kind of crisp would you want put in your brain. And that just doesn't make any sense.


Yeah, I'd like to hear the answer to that.


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## S J Ward

indianroads said:


> Of course, with the Brits here, that would what kind of crisp would you want put in your brain. And that just doesn't make any sense.





indianroads said:


> Yeah, I'd like to hear the answer to that.


But a chip isn't a crisp! It's just a piece of deep-fried potato like a french fry but meatier. Why would you want to shove a piece of fried potato into your brain? A British crisp is like a dorito but made from thin slivers of potato and, unlike a dorito, edible!
Might work for a story though... Chip-head's car hit the wall at over a hundred, flying through the windscreen and connecting with the imovable object, his brains were instantly mashed.


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## S J Ward

The Hadron collider at CERN, is looking for god-particles and creates a black hole. The technicians are able to contain it, but they can't collapse it. If they power down the collider, the black hole grows exponentially. Meanwhile Russia are providing the majority of the power to Europe. That power they aren't providing they are interfering with, cutting cables and whatnot. The war isn't going well for them, so they start on a quest to removing all power to Europe unless the world gives in to their demands. And Switzerland is on the cards too. How will power be kept running? OR what happens when it goes off and the Black hole takes over?


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## Joker

Arsenex said:


> In a not to distant future, everyone has a free chip embedded in their head that allows instant communication with anyone else, anywhere, while the chip owner retains full rights of rejection of any contact attempts they don't want. The world governments eventually make this a mandate and it seems everyone ends up benefiting from it, whole industries arise around it. Then, a programmer working for the company that manufactures the chips uncovers a dark secret. The chips can be used to control the mind, and a countdown timer is running, leading to the day when that feature will be enabled and used by a world government cabal. The programmer has to enlist the help of others to prevent this grand conspiracy from taking place, after the powers discover that he (or she) knows.



Kinda sorta the plot of Snow Crash but not really.


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