I have trouble writing diversity

Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jul 4, 2018
Messages
5,102
Disclaimer: I'm not pulling a Hollywood. I want to make my stories more immersive.

My series is all over the place with many races and forms of life as well as settings, I'm having trouble writing my stories in a way that features the entire world so that none of my worldbuilding goes to waste. Any suggestions to help my writer's block? I can talk about what I plan to write for the entire series if you wanna know more about it.
 
Contributor
Joined
Dec 31, 2019
Messages
17,888
I can't promise I'll be of much help, but go ahead and post whatever you've got so far.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Feb 16, 2018
Messages
1,183
Where do you post/publish your story?

Have you create a setting of your story before you make it?
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jul 4, 2018
Messages
5,102
So basically I have a very abstract magic system which allows for exponential power creep. It explains everything from fundamentals of reality and concioussness to wormholes and psychic reality bending. My series takes place over multiple timelines which connect to each other by time travel. The first timeline is my crystal series . The second timeline is a world where AI changed humanity for better and for worst with some mystical stuffs to make a sci-fi/fantasy. The third timeline is an alternate history where ghosts, psychics, and reality benders are commonplace. The second timeline alone has four series and at least ten stories and probably more as I completely flesh it out.

The climax of the series will be for everything sentient (humans, robots, aliens, and other nonbiological/not normal forms of concioussness) to band together and rise to the higher dimensions to attack the creator of the universe by breaking the fundamentals of reality. But that's for later after I make a few more timelines.

My problem lies in a series in the second timeline where I'm only using a fourth of my worldbuilding in the climax. I plan to make it just an elevation of conflict and have the rest of the worldbuilding come into play as more conflicts elevate until the climax is some sort of Infinity War/Endgame-esque finale. Right now, I don't have any ideas to elevate the conflict.

This is the surface level stuffs, tell me what you want to hear about more cause listing everything would take too much time.
 
Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2019
Messages
664
@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN
So, what are you actually stuck with?
It seems like you're stuck on a few things, which is not too surprising since your series has such a massive scope.

What do you want to fix today?
 
Contributor
Joined
Dec 31, 2019
Messages
17,888
The climax of the series will be for everything sentient (humans, robots, aliens, and other nonbiological/not normal forms of concioussness) to band together and rise to the higher dimensions to attack the creator of the universe by breaking the fundamentals of reality. But that's for later after I make a few more timelines.

I'm getting GaoGaiGar FINAL/Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann vibes from this, which is not a bad thing at all.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jul 4, 2018
Messages
5,102
@Afiaki It's a series in my second timeline. Here's the backstory.
-Spontaneous Artificial Intelligence (SAI) begin to exist.
-The old bots gain enough power to declare a biowar on humans by creating plagues. This is the robot war.
-Among the survivors, a secret organization formed to manage resources while maintaining the pride of survivor groups. Their mission is to maintain human dignity and survive the war.
-Old bots eventually developed morality and regret their actions, surrender to humans, place "ancestor's wish" where their descendants must obey their wish as well as put a halt on their evolution. The first wish is to serve humans as an atonement for their mistakes until they have successfully rebuilt their culture.
-Their magnum opus was the zombie virus but they didn't release it before they developed morality so they destroyed it... but it got stolen.
-Survivor camps turn into governments, some lead by algorithms, some of those turn into SAIs.
-UN came back and started recruiting the new countries
-A mysterious nation popped up out of nowhere in the northern hemisphere. A lot of nations join it either by invitation, force, or coercion. Since the majority of the countries are in the north, it's nicknamed the Northern Kingdom and eventually the name stick. This is actually a country started by the secret society who, after conflict, changed their mission to the unification of the world through a single country. They named themselves the overseers. NK is a technocratic government whose leader is unknown cause the overseers manage it from far.
-Using this to their advantage, a group rebelling against the technocratic system formed a government, claiming that they are the overseers. The overseers in return appointed the position of Overseer Assistant which is at the top of the power pyramid. Eventually it's public knowledge that the two governments are separate entities ruling the same nation.
-Overseers declare war against all countries to pressure them into joining NK. They've been developing nukes for a while and have the power to erase lots of nations. Only two responded: UN and a small nation on boats who I haven't named.
-UN renamed themselves as Southern United Nations and put their human talents to use by stealing NK's nukes and making their own.
-Suddenly out of nowhere a lot psychics popped up. This was cause there was (basically) an information virus which gave people powers. For plot reasons I haven't built, this info virus doesn't go to NK.
-These psychics actually came from a time traveling reincarnation dude who unknowingly shifted the timeline when saving his wife using time travel. He came from timeline one, the crystal series. Using his crystals, someone made psychics and the info virus. I haven't flesh this plot point out yet.
-NK declares that they have rebuilt a new culture thus bots are free from servitude. SUN says that their culture haven't been restored thus maintaining bots as servants. There is a bot rights management but in areas where their reach is weak and bots are abused, they often escape to NK.
-WW3 goes on.
-Small boats nation got the zombie virus
-Anomalous meteor approaches. It can't be destroyed nor diverted. Upon entry into the atmosphere, it disintegrated into dust. The heat from the entry evaporated the oceans in place of a tsunami and the dust float on the water. Once it gets to land, it began converting all solid material into anomalous sand.
-NK and SUN put aside their differences and lead the world into escape.
-Small boats nations release the virus but no news station picked it up cause everyone is busy preparing for the meteor.
--The richest and most powerful hibernate in 14 Seed Ships, lead by immortal SAIs, into space in hopes of a new planet.
--The middle class get to go to the Second Earth Satellites which orbit around the equator.
--The lucky ones get to underground colonies, upgraded and repurposed underground shelters from the robot war.
--The unlucky ones stayed on the surface.

Here is the backstory for the series.
The post-asteroid stories are all in the AfterEffect series. Within that series is the Living//Dead series which are the stories that revolve around living zombies.

Living zombies are zombies that are able to retain their previous personality. Thanks to my flexible magic system, there are many ways this is possible.

Living//Dead is divided into three parts: part 1 is the origin stories for all my main characters along with introduction to the world.
Part 2 is the rising of conflict and climax.
Part 3 is the aftermath.

Those in the SES. Went through the least mutations and mostly retain to the original human DNA.
Those in colonies gain a pale skin and a shifted circadian rythm independent of the day/night cycle. It's also longer to have more sleep.
Surface humans grow tentacles which they use to manipulate the sand to uncondense into metallurgy which the colonists can only do using sophisticated machines. This is powered through prayer and worship.
Bot colonies on the surface found that the sand's effects allow them to make new ancestor's wishes. This leads to some bot colonies entirely hostile to humans cause their ancestor's simply hated the abuse.

The sand's effect is basically something that modifies the information of the solid matter which turns them into more of itself. The sand also attacks concioussness since in my series concioussness is just information. To overcome this, surface humans funnel the effect out while colonists sleep longer since sleeping fixes the concioussness. This means that all creatures must be so intellegent that they can fix their concioussness faster than the sand breaks it or they must be so dumb and rely only upon instincts that the sand can't break it anymore.

The zombie virus carry a small chunk of sentience. Once it fully infects the body, this sentience builds up to be as smart as apes, some even as smart as humans. Zombies are expected to build traps to capture their prey thus the need to exercise caution.
They communicate using telepathy which is like a line located in the fourth cardinal direction. This line can be made by eye contact or close distance.
With all microbes killed by the sand, the zombie virus has no competition and thus thrive.

The colonists suffer a mutation at every generation. This mutation is big enough that new changes must be noted at every generation. They count it by alpha, beta, charlie, etc. The cancer each generation is so different that they must account for it everytime they try to cure cancer.

Cancer cells also have a bit of sentience. They become smarter the more of them there are. They communicate using telepathy too but they're like a radio that spams information in all directions for the receiver to pick it up.

I planned for the climax to be that all Gen Echo kids are taken over by cancer which declared war on humans because they perceive apoptosis which is a natural part of life is an abomination. They want everything to be one massive lump of flesh where no cell must die for the organism.

The problem about this is that it's too colony-centrict. I did not include the SES, surface humans, nor the bot colonies. I'm not too worried about the Seed Ships cause they're essentially just spin off material but maybe I can have one return to Earth with superior alien technology or something idk. The colonies may have a rich history spanning back for centuries but it's not everything I can offer in this world.

My first idea is to instead make this Gen Echo civil war event not the climax but rather an escalation of conflict, that way I can have the others get into the war for their own reasons. Buuut I don't have any ideas of how to elevate this further than sentient cancer cells declaring war on humans with living zombies as the main characters. At least of yet.

Again, this is the surface level stuffs. Tell me what you want to know more about.


@justforthelulz I got a discord friend which talked about how much he loves power creep when I realize the potential of my series and took it lol.

@MoonlightFairy They're all still plots being developed yet to be written. So far I have two plots complete and writable, one an origin story from Living//Dead series and another from an obsolete timeline which didn't develop well along with my series that it got many plot holes. I still plan to write the second one but only after I clean the holes.


P.s. my magic system is a headache so tell me if you want to get a headache.
 
Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2019
Messages
664
@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN
What I gathered from that was you are struggling with connecting the ending of one particular story (among many) and the conclusion of the overall series.

In my opinion, your world has far too many elements (dystopian society, science fantasy, evil sentient AI, evil sentient everything, godly beings, time travel, dimensions/timelines, a headache magic system). That's an insurmountable issue in my opinion, it's a glass cannon where few will actually appreciate the scale and work that went in.

But going past that, one way you could make your ending more interesting is by revealing the wider structure of your world only when everything is coming to a head.

Give your readers a strict Disneyland tour of your world where they can relate to everything that's going on, but give many hints and glimpses by allowing the world to interfere with the tour. Don't break your world up into sections for one story and another, pick a few interesting plot lines that will flesh out each section without revealing the whole picture. Leave a lot to your reader's imagination. Even at the conclusion of the story I would say you should not specify exactly all that's going on.

If you were to map all your plot points out in space, you are trying to create plot lines that are interesting to the reader. If you want to show them something you also have to show the points leading up to that. You should have a lot of unmapped space. It will be clear to the reader that there's more to the world; don't tell them about it directly.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Sep 1, 2019
Messages
10,545
Best example I can think of is rather than including everyone in everything-which tends to make the world feel small, try to create relations and have a domino affect.

I'll cite 40k, Halo, Fallout and Warhammer because those are the settings I'm best at and they have a lot of races to draw from

So for Warhammer Fantasy is basically set up with geography similar to our own because it's either an alternate verison of our own Universe or GW is just lazy.
latest

But the fundamental idea here is that each race will have a knock-on effect with the others. Let's take the Vanilla faction-The Empire, which is basically Renaissance Europe mixed with the Holy Roman Empire. The Empire is friendly with Britennoa to it's west, and to the Dwarfs nearby. It's enemies are found with the Sylvanians, Ogre Kingdoms, and Greenskins to the East. To the north is the savage peoples of Norsca and the Chaos Wastes where the warp portals are found and where daemons cause the creatures of man to mutate and go crazy in worship of their gods.

To set up interactions, we'll say some background to how each kingdom ended up where they did. The Sylvanians are the descendants of centuries of Necromancers who followed an Ancient prince of the Nekaharans named "Nagash," which is a (pseudo-Ancient Egyptian) society that wanted to find a means to live indefinitely ever since their greatest king, Settra, started the Morturary Cult which was tasked with trying to bring ever-lasting life to the great leader. Nagash ended up becoming the best Necromancer in world history after being taught magic from the Dark Elves and ended up making the Elixir that would allow people to turn into Vampires, as well as all of the cults of death throughout the world. A Vampire named Vlad Von Carestein eventually made his way there and set up the Vampire Counts dynasty. The Ogre Kingdoms came into existence when the Kingdom of Grand Cathy wanted to eliminate the raiders to the North so had a giant ritual to summon a meteorite to wipe out the marauders, leading to the near-annihilation of their civilization, however because the Ogres survived, they became omnivorous savages that wanted to consume anything they came across out of sheer hunger. Hierarchy was based on how large one's gut was and they soon began worshiping the giant creator in the earth as "The Great Maw," which they believe will consume anything and everything, and treat it both with fear and reverence. The Greenskinz are basically everywhere and were on the planet since the beginning of time as they're an asexually reproducing species of fungal-people where might makes right.

If you notice, each race has its own history and reasons not only to fight one another but where they interconnect. I'll expand more of this later, but each species and people should be able to have their own history whilst seeing how their story would influence someone else and how others influence their's.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jul 4, 2018
Messages
5,102
@Afiaki That Disneyland tour while hinting at more behind the scenes is exactly what I aim to achieve but have trouble writing because the entire world isn't as fleshed out yet.

My writing plan goes something like this:
Part 1
First origin story: introduce colonist generation thing, generational cancer, the existence of zombies, the relationship between colonies and SES, the effect of sand
Second origin story: introduce jobs in the colony, introduce zombie telepathy, introduce Project Vitamin X (search for immortality), introduce the existence of ghosts
Third origin story: introduce connection between WW3 and post-asteroid world through a backstory, introduce that anomalies (psychics) still exist, ???

And that's all I've came up with as of now. I do plan on establishing bot colonies and surface humans through characters exploring those settings, some stories that take place in a few SES countries, along with foreshadowing then introducing cancer sentience. All of these will take place in Part 1 cause Part 2 assumes that the readers are already familiar with all aspects of the world.

So far, am I doing anything wrong? Can something be improved with my pacing? Each origin story is basically short novel-length meanwhile part 2 stories will be significantly longer.

Also, yeah
it's a glass cannon where few will actually appreciate the scale and work that went in.
This is something I have self-confidence issues in. "What if the fans don't pick up my subtext? What if they don't connect the dots? What if they just like one story and not the whole series?" Are questions I often ask. Eventually I just stopped thinking about it and started expanding the world for fun first, for fans second. That is assuming I ever finish this thing to publish it somewhere lol.

My main inspiration for this whole thing is the Pixar theory. I love how fans of this theory dissect small Easter eggs in order to come up with overarching narratives. For me, if even one fan does that, it's justification enough.


@Tamerlane That's also what I'm aiming for lol. I already have the origin story for all my races and settings and I'm quite confident in my skills to write it adequately but I still have a lot of missing pieces in this narrative. For example:
-Why are there no bots or anomalies in the colonies?
-How do the cancers even plan to wage war?
-In what aspects are the SES superior considering the fact that they're researching things without the burden of survival?
-What do the bots in bot colonies use as a fuel source? Sand? Solar? Uranium? (All of these I've considered btw)
-What about those old plot points such as automatons from the previous timeline existing on the sand or that plot hole-filled time travel escape story?
-Do the Seed Ships even do anything in this series or are they just spin off fodder?
-If eating sand creatures induce sand sickness in colonists then why don't they do so in surface humans?
-If surface humans wage tribe wars all the time then how do they even survive?
-What is the relationship between several surface human tribes and several bot colonies?
-How does certain SES countries react to the existence of bot colonies and surface humans cause a few see them as primitive and not worth contacting. So, how do they react when they found out that ancient colonies are actually still thriving and try to contact them?
-What happen to SAIs that remain on the surface?
-What is the sand creatures ecosystem?
-What does the zombie virus infect? Surface humans?
-How does religion adapt in surface humans?
--The colonists may not have currency but certainly the bot colonies, surface humans, and SES countries would have, wouldn't they?
-How does the post-robot war socioeconomics and culture adapt in colonies, surface, and SES?
-What happened to the crystal tech and the reincarnating man from timeline one?
-What happened to other reincarnating people from timeline one? Do they vanish when the timeline shifted?
-What happen to the overseers? Do they make another secret society?
-Exactly how many living zombies are out there and what are their methods of preserving their personalities? Is it cancer-related? Is it a modification of the zombie virus? Is it powered by anomalies? Is it a freak mutation? How does this interact with the rest of the world?
-The absence of microbes means that colonists probably have a terrible immune system and SES citizens probably can't survive the sand's effects so what arrangements must be met when colonists and SES ambassadors meet?
-And in what part of the story does this meeting occur at? What necessitates this meeting to take place?
Maybe I could brainstorm a few more but I'm tired. Any tips of overcoming this sort of writer's block? Cause my current strategy is to just wait for inspiration to come and I don't like how passive it is.

I know that I'll be able to fill these plot holes eventually cause in the beginning, even the fact that colonies are sending kids out to the dangerous surface is a plot hole and I filled it with characters and lore. If I can justify killing kids, I probably can justify anything given enough time.

Oh gosh don't take that out of context.
 
Joined
Nov 1, 2019
Messages
29
It was not that easy to keep up with the synopsis.....I agree with @Afiaki about the excess of elements. Honestly I'm not really seeing the endline here, but that's YOUR job :p

Some food for thought
1. there is a need to understand how AIs work (not saying to take robotic and programming lessons, but to have an understanding of impacts, interactions and effects) .
2.All bots repent? or some repent and there is inner conflict? you could have bots that gain awareness and servile bots (think matrix....)
3. How will human survivors face the redemption attempt of bots? some will never forgive and/or forget (another light source of conflict)
4. the conflict about overseers vs overseers: why not make the rebelling group as an ellaborate of flushing out hidden dissidents in NK? (something like: the new overseers are composed by citizens/leaders/people of influence of annexed countries). This might prove useful when it is revealed both governments are separate entities rulling the nation, as it proves Ais are trully cunning.)
5. Why not Microwave or Radiowave weapons instead of Nukes?
6. About psychics, why not something like Gundam (Innovators and/or Coordinators) when by disturbing the timeline humans created different types of humans which in turn lead to "the rise of the machines"? could be to the embetterment of humanity/ the pursuit of some utopia dreaded by Aldous Huxley.

Again, I can't say for sure I understand the plot, but perhaps the best way to approach it would be something like @Tamerlane suggested (my mind drifted to GoT as I wrote these words....)
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jul 4, 2018
Messages
5,102
@draconeo

1. In my series, Spontaneous Artificial Intelligence (SAI) in my story are just AIs that believe they are sentient that pop up out of nowhere when situations are right. The first bunch of SAIs came in a story about an SAO-like game where players are trapped in a game but the MC is the final boss who gained a consciousness because of a bug. Bots are just SAIs but develop through mutations in their code which eventually leads them to be smart enough to wage war. I haven't flesh everything out yet but they'll make some bioweapons to attack humans in the robot war. Bot reproduction is essentially just a faulty memory transfer to produce new individuals, there's a limit to this. The bot mind, instead of neurons and electric signals, is an electromagnetic box that powerful magnets and EMPs can damage which makes them lethal. Unlike other SAIs, bots have a limited life in exchange for reproduction but that is what made them the most successful SAI in the world.

2. Eventually, bots develop enough to gain morality and learned that their actions are wrong so they surrender. The bots that exist in the robot war are called old bots in my series. They repent by creating the Ancestor's Wish which is an instruction their descendent cannot disobey. In my series, this functions as a pseudo-religion which is important cause I plan to write stories about/using afterlives as a plot device. The wish of the old bots is to serve humans until their culture is restored. This wish is gonna be exploited in stories in the WW3 era after the two supernations are fully established. The reason they say that it's until humanity's cultures have been restored is cause the robot war killed plenty of people and certainly having ten different plagues while writing computer viruses would pause quite a few traditional customs.

3. After some conflict, eventually, things will get peaceful plus a bit of bot abuse despite an organization in the WW3 era designed to enforce bot rights.

4. You mean the conflict after the old bots surrender and the secret society has to find a new purpose? I haven't flesh this part out yet but I don't plan for the conflict to be too long. It will probably only be an important footnote in a character backstory during an exposition somewhere set up as a mystery.

If you're talking about the conflict during the WW3 era, they won't have time to fight each other cause they're gonna be busy managing the power pyramid and fighting against the government of NK. The technocratic system and government are two separate entities that manage the same supernation and the government's secret mission is to hunt down the overseers to force them to stop the war that the technocratic system is waging. You can already see how much conflict can arise from this.

5. No reason, really. Nukes are just a plot device.

6. Anomalies theoretically have the power to control time but I haven't figured it out yet. Plus that would lead to plot holes so it's something I must thread carefully about. I'm planning to keep my magic system hard and not pull an ex machina just cause it's plot convenient. I doubt I can explain this through my story. I just keep it hard for fun.

(Anomalies refer to both the superpower and the people who have the superpower)
I do plan on making anomalies incredibly nuanced tho. There will be agencies throughout SUN set on training anomalies. A lot of anomalies are difficult to activate since it's unintuitive and channeling it/creating a medium helps make things easier to understand and thus activate the anomaly. The leading company in anomaly training trains their trainees to create an unstable matter which looks like floating crystals to use as mediums. Other companies that are cheaper uses physical objects as mediums or even none at all. Some anomalies are also self-taught and can have weird mediums. So basically, based on how you activate your anomaly, people can tell your talent and socioeconomic status, and whether you have to practice your anomaly at all implies whether you live in a combat or non-combat zone of SUN during WW3.

Btw WW3 will have very little casualties and will last an absurdly long time. Most battles happen at nuke sites to protect/steal the nukes and even there the situation is very humane. This is set up to make war crimes more despicable.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Sep 1, 2019
Messages
10,545
Fundamental questions:
1. What are the origins of this race? How did they come to exist?
2. How did this race come to be where it is? How did their location affect their culture and customs?
3. What are their relationships with the other races? What is their philosophy or beliefs and how does that contrast the other factions?
4. What makes this race unique compared to the other factions, both in terms of design, attitudes, dispositions, and style?
5. If the universe is combat-heavy, what makes their fighting style unique? How does it compare to other factions?
6. What is the endgoal of each faction? How does it overlap and diverge from the other races?

Barebones, I know but it will give you a good idea on how to diversify a world.
For instance:
In Halo, humanity uses ballistic weapons, has rough and practically designed armor with a lot of geometric shapes. Essentially more advanced versions of current industrial technology and more improvements on basic concepts. The Covenant is more advanced, with sleeker armor and heavier use on plasma weaponry, but each species in the covenant has their own strengths and weaknesses that can be inferred by how they look, move, and fight. Their aesthetic reflects their religiosity and militaristic nature, whilst still capturing a sense of other-worldliness and alien atmosphere that is difficult to mirror. The Flood are a massive psychic hivemind that wants to turn all biomass into it and can corrupt anything, and so it typically perverts vehicles and the surrounding by having thick spores arise and covering the area in growths of flesh and other substances to spread it's influence. Infected creatures are easily noticeable from their change in silhouette and color, and they tend to move quickly with animalistic deficiency to overwhelm enemies in sheer mass and number.

Each is distinct enough to be recognized at a distance yet are fleshed out enough to answer all of these questions, both in lore and in game. Barebones, but it helps you alot when makes a world.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jul 4, 2018
Messages
5,102
@Tamerlane My problem isn't exactly on race design, it's more so about making it personal. Nobody likes a story about nameless soldiers and flashy fights, it's more about a character's journey through an event. I need big events which concern small characters that force them to face character development.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Sep 1, 2019
Messages
10,545
To be fair, the entirety of 40k is kinda built on that.


Imperial Guardsmen (aka average humans) are conscripted en masse and are expected to pretty much drown the enemy in their own blood. Saying there's literally trillions of them is an understatement, as they're meant to hold the line and be slaughtered for some backwater planet no one really cares about on some pointless battle that will lead to their unmourned deaths.

Sometimes that's the most effective moments is when you think you're going on a grand journey with these characters, but someone chucks a grenade into your trench and everyone important dies arbitrarily-like war. @DANDAN_THE_DANDAN

Though I doubt your story would want to be anything like 40k.

(Also I should note when I say "races" I mean in the RTS since where it's multiple factions in-universe. It'd be a fundamental aspect of world building to set up organizations, cultures, societies, etc.)
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jul 4, 2018
Messages
5,102
@Tamerlane A lot of my stories are young adult/mature but not really as dystopian as 40k. My AfterEffect series is basically philosophical questions accompanying character arcs cause they're fun to write.

The philosophical aspect about cancer, zombies, and bots are "Are humans really the only ones that deserve rights in a world where there are others that demand it?" There's a character who's philosophy question asks "Should your past mistakes define who you are even if you've changed?" And another who asks "Should you live for yourself or for your peers?" Then there's a couple characters which argue that the point of life is the pursuit of love and/or pleasure.

This is also another challenge while I'm escalating my conflict since there needs to be a philosophical argument hidden in the subtext.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Mar 15, 2019
Messages
2,855
Why not cut out the extra into a separate piece? As a separate story or something short shoved to the very end?

Unless you're going to pull a Leon Tolstoy and slap readers with a 1000 page book.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jul 4, 2018
Messages
5,102
@EOTFOFYL The way I have my AfterEffect series structured is that all major characters have origin stories or take part in the big stories of Part 2. I do have a lot of spinoff ideas but I don't like the thought of having all that worldbuilding be shoved as an extra which is why I'm aiming to have everything be essential to the story. I mean, if I can't find a way in the end, those extras are gonna be spinoffs so it's not like it's the end of the world.

Some spinoff ideas I have
-The first Gen Delta meets the first third generation bot of a bot colony whose wish is to kill all humans. The conflict is to convince the bot's colony to accept humans by essentially convincing them to abandon their pseudo-religion. The philosophy here will be to argue if abandoning one's identity is the right thing to do if someone tells you that it is.
-Two bots of a dying master as they ponder on life while everyone is busy preparing for the meteor. (Probably will be the epilogue of the WW3 series)
-An SES country is scheduled to fall back to Earth because the zombie virus somehow made it up there and destroyed the country. The story is about siblings, equipped with technology to fight, to run out of the country to reunite with their political figures parents. Along the way, they meet a living zombie capable of controlling the zombies to a certain degree and she can protect them. The philosophy here is about racism and friendship.
-The story of how the first Gen Echo succumbed to Echo-cancer (this will probably be included as an epilogue to Part 1). The philosophy here is about assigned purpose and wether you should fight it.
-(An idea that I'm not sure if I can develop to a story yet) A Seed Ship returns to Earth and the humans there want to spread an alien religion capable of time manipulation. An SES country made first contact. No idea what the philosophy is here.
-(Also just an idea)Several SES countries researching to find the theory of everything that includes anomalies, sand's effects, and SAIs, makes contact with the colonists. I don't have any ideas on how I can escelate the conflict here. No idea on the philosophy either.
-(Got plot holes which I need to fill) Automatons from the previous timeline awakens in a world filled with sand and they struggle to find a new purpose after finding out their previous owners have perished.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jan 31, 2023
Messages
251
It is usually a good idea to get some experience in what you are writing. If you have difficulty writing diverse casts, go out and meet different people - the farther from where you live, the better.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top