Sat 29 Mar 2008
Help me do some plot spinning, BBQ’ers!
I’ve got a serial story/novella in the works (9,600 words so far), and I’m stumped as to who will be the Bad Guy/Bad Girl.
Plot: A hairdresser in California is subject to psychic visions while she sleeps, which come true. Her husband is a programmer/science type who doubts her. He secretly works for a government contractor in San Fran that gathers information on suspected terrorist activity in the U.S. (domestic only). She does not know this, she thinks he works as in middle management at a software company.
The husband’s workplace spits out information on people based on data collected from supercomputers. One place is Amherst, Massachusetts, where there is a group of anti-war activists.
Meanwhile, in Amherst, we have a dude who is an FBI agent who has infiltrated himself into this anti-war group. He has fallen in love with the leader, an older woman who is a college professor. She has a connection with a homeless guy who is a veteran of the Gulf War and he and her FBI boyfriend hate each other (she has no idea her boyfriend is with the FBI and her boyfriend doesn’t get why she puts up with being friends with this homeless tramp).
In California, there is a spy within the govt contractor’s office who misdirects information so that the FBI will go hunt people who aren’t really a terrorist threat.
We find the hairdresser correctly predicting a big Cali earthquake, while our FBI agent was sent to Austin, Texas on a wild goose chase on bad information sent to him by the California office. He returns home to Amherst to find his girlfriend and her friends planning a trip to Washington, D.C. to protest the current war.
Our psychic hairdresser has a premonition about something bad happening in D.C. but she is wrapped up in earthquake stuff (their friends have been hurt, etc.). All she sees is something vague. I’m thinking she is going to eventually go to D.C. to stop whatever it is she sees and everyone involved will wind up there for a big climax.
Who is the bad guy/girl? The FBI agent? The disgruntled vet? The spy in the California office? One of the members of the anti-war group? Or someone mysterious who was totally missed by everyone?
What would float your boat as a reader in this situation?
Posted by Marie Mon DieuOkay, let's hear it.
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The spy in the Cali office. Although it doesn’t make sense that the psychic wouldn’t smell a rat about her husband’s activities.
She only has visions about Big World Events. She thinks they are from God, or something else (working title is “God’s Messenger,” sort of like a modern day Kassandra). And thanks for your input: I forgot to say that whomever comes up with the winning villain will be written in as a character in the story!
I think the homeless vet is a member of an ultra secret group of ex Spec Ops operatives who have banded together in a plot to do something nasty in DC. He is torn between their right wing agenda and his love for the professor, but ultimately he will betray her.
I’m going to go with the FBI agent, but that may not be unrelated to my prejudice against the FBI.
Two ideas… one, that the homeless guy is going to do something bad to the protesters in D.C., or that one of the protesters is going to do something bad there. It might be weird for the homeless guy to have contacts with the spy in the gov’t office but maybe you could make it work. Otherwise, maybe the protester who wants to do something bad has ties to the spy, who is diverting the attention of the FBI to Texas (and the homeless guy could be a red herring). At the last minute the FBI, while diverted in Texas, realizes the bad stuff is going down in D.C. and figures out who it is — but the reader still thinks it is the homeless dude.
Really great ideas so far! I’ve decided to upload the story to GoogleDocs if anyone wants to read it for clarity. It’s a draft, however, please keep that in mind. I’ll wait and see if there are more answers/input for about a week before I continue.
Thanks to anyone who’s answered so far.
I’ll vote for the hairdresser’s hub, perhaps in cahoots with the anti-war professor — they’re real terrorist moles, or maybe just paid traitors, planted in a not-real “terrorist” group and the organization that monitors it.
What would float my boat is if none of the characters would be the “bad guy/girl” but that all of these people, with good intentions, would cause something catastrophic to happen.
people aren’t just good or bad, that’s all interpretation. everyone does a little something from time to time that someone else will think is bad or good.