Challenge Story: TNO

Chatterbox: Inkwell

Challenge Story: TNO

Challenge Story: TNO and BellaTrix

So let's get started. Are we going to do this in turns, sort of like a Round Robin, or share our ideas beforehand? Also, what IS a chapter story, anyway?
Let's get this straight. :)
submitted by BellaTrix♡♥♡
(March 17, 2009 - 3:56 pm)

back to the Inkwell

I would think some general planning ahead of time, and then a back-and-forth sort of thing. Like, I write a scene, you write a scene, or I write a half-scene and you finish it up.

I believe "chapter story" would refer to an extended story (novella-length), though not necessarily with chapters. Something more than a one or two scene short story, anyway. I doubt it means a full-length novel. Though we could shoot for that if you want.

What do you want to write about? We could do science-fiction-y, as that's an overlapping preferred genre if the Author Pairs thread is anything to judge by. We could give steampunk a try, though I might be too tempted to flaunt the fruits of my month-long research marathon, and anyway I'm already in the beginnings of a middle in a steampunk novel.

So, science fiction? Shall we brainstorm? 

Some cataclysmic event, obviously. Whether on a small scale or something huge, like the planet being stolen in order to fuel a dying sun (heh, too much Invader Zim). 

Er... What about a moon colonization? The protagonist's friend is relocated to the moon colony, we could tell a story with letters or something.

Or we could just set it on a different world entirely. Aliens, mwah ha. They'd have to be very different than earthlings, of course. And... what if earthlings landed on their planet, bringing fatal disease in a very European-conquering-Native-Americans sort of way. Meh.

What do you think? 

submitted by TNÖ, age 15, Deep Space
(March 17, 2009 - 6:21 pm)

Yeah, science fiction's good. Cool ideas. Maybe let's do something about aliens: humans get a bit repetitive after a while.

So your idea's interesting, about the disease. Mmm . . . what about . . . the human civilization has died out (from . . . ?). The aliens go to Earth to try to find any remains of human life. They find there is no life left on Earth . . . or are there still life forms, just not humans? (Do they find humans interesting? Amusing? Do they care?) Maybe they find the last survivor. Is it a human child? A man? A woman? Or a raccoon? What do they do?
This is pure brainstorming. Are we doing it though the eyes of an alien, "I saw . . ."? Or "Bob saw . . ."? Or "Bob sees . . ."? Are we doing it in letters? That would be interesting, because there could be two different views: you and I.
Or do you not like that idea? :)
submitted by BellaTrix♡♥♡
(March 18, 2009 - 9:11 am)

I like the idea of doing it with letters, like what Bram Stoker did with Dracula. 

Say the humans haven't died out. An alien crash-lands on Earth, and paranormal investigators immediately start assessing the threat. The alien doesn't have any interest in conquering a tiny backwater planet, though - he/she/it just wants to go home. In the meantime, the alien must go undercover to escape the paranormal investigators and conspiracy theorists. Highschool, anyone? ^_^ We couldn't do letters but it might be fun. 

submitted by TNÖ, age 15, Deep Space
(March 18, 2009 - 5:53 pm)

Hmmm . . . okay . . . but why do aliens always crash-land? Don't they have better control over their crafts than that?

Oh, aaand . . . why are aliens always interested in conquering planets? yes, I know, you said they weren't interested in Earth, but why are they interested in ANY planet? I mean, if humans were to go to an alien planet that had life forms on it, they wouldn't exactly want to conquer it, would they? Haven't you watched Star Trek!? *waves arms around wildly* IT ALL REVOLVES AROUND STAR TREK!!!
*coughcoughcough* Ahem . . . so if we did that, the story would be all about escaping paranormal investigators? Seems to lack something . . . the intrigue of science fiction . . . *shrug*
submitted by BellaTrix♡♥♡
(March 19, 2009 - 8:50 am)

Crash land? Let's say they don't, but our alien is an amateur pilot. The alien could be the equivalent of a 15-year-old human with a driver's permit. Which would explain why the alien would be flying around so far on the fringe of the galaxy.

Perhaps the gravitational pull of the sun/other planets caused the alien to lose control, and his only hope was to crash-land on the surface of the nearest planet, which happened to be Earth. 

As to why aliens always want to conquer Earth, I think it's to assuage the egos of the writers. Powerful, other-worldy beings interested in our insignificant little solar system? Yeah. *shrug* That's my theory anyway.

Intrigue? Yeah, kinda.  But that would just be the beginning of the novel, not the plot. There would be the whole I-wanna-go-home factor, obviously, and the challenge of fitting in with a different race. Um... We could introduce a friend/parent/guardian/concerned other who followed our alien, and do something with that.

Or we could do something entirely different, and not involving earth at all.

Any ideas? 

submitted by TNÖ, age 15, Deep Space
(March 19, 2009 - 5:35 pm)

*frown* The whole Alien-Crash-Lands-Spaceship-On-Earth-And-Wants-To-Go-Home thing is interesting, it's just that it's been done so many times before. It's sort of . . . repetitive. Same for the whole Alien-Wants-To-Conquer-Earth thing: it has just been done over and over and over and over again. We could do that, like, based on the standard thing:

1. Alien crashes on Earth
2. Alien meets humans
3. Alien wants to go home
4. Human helps to go home
-Or-
1. Aliens land on Earth
2. Aliens want to conquer Earth: evil aliens
3. Aliens kill humans
4. Aliens kill more humans
Like, we could do that, but make it more original, like a comedy? Like the mother alien is sobbing over her son in space? Or maybe alien does NOT want to go home? :)
Or make it more about the aliens, why they want to conquer Earth, they have second thoughts, conversations, etc.
Or we could come up with a whole new wacky idea?! *looks eagerly at TNÖ*
submitted by BellaTrix♡♥♡
(March 20, 2009 - 7:42 am)

Like, Agent to the Stars or something?

Wanna go with the humans-land-on-alien-planet idea? 

submitted by TNÖ, age 15, Deep Space
(March 20, 2009 - 6:53 pm)

"Agent to the Stars?"

Hmmm . . . maybe.  Is that what you want to do?
submitted by BellaTrix♡♥♡
(March 21, 2009 - 10:15 pm)

Agent to the Stars is about aliens who hire a Hollywood agent to negotiate their first (peaceful) contact with Earth. It's funny.

Anyway, satire might be fun. 

submitted by TNÖ, age 15, Deep Space
(March 22, 2009 - 3:11 pm)

Okay . . . we could do the HUMANS-conquering-ALIENS idea, or the humans-bring-disease-to-aliens idea, or just friendly human-gets-to-know-alien, or Earth-is-destroyed-and-humans-need-new-home . . . ? And we could do it with two views: one alien, one human . . . *gets excited* Okay, when we've figured that out, let's get down to details: what is the name of the alien planet? What does it look like? What does Earth look like? How, er, evolved are the aliens and the humans (by humans I mean, like, technology wise)? What are the alien's and people's names? *gets even more excited*

submitted by BellaTrix♡♥♡
(March 23, 2009 - 8:18 am)

I'm partial to the humans-bring-disease idea, personally. We could write from the alien's point of view! And make up random diseases (squee!)! Or something.

Names? Um...

Some human names that I like: Wyatt, Tomas, Xavier, Xander, Cordelia, Cassandra, Nellie (^.^), Devin, Nicole...

Alien names... Well, I'm fond of just hitting random keys and picking combinations that look cool, for example, Jefnsfa. The downside of that is that generally nobody can pronounce the names.

Technology? Humans would have to be more advanced than we are, and have the capability to reach other solar systems. Beyond that I would say they've figured out how to accomplish everything five times as fast, but nothing really has changed from where we are now (for example, it takes the same amount of time to clean a house despite faster ways of getting things clean). Aliens would be about the same, I should think, perhaps a tad bit less advanced, and with a very different culture/religion/etc. 

Earth would probably much the same, just more crowded and with less diversity of life (seeing as how we humans are so successfully destroying animal life). And more smog, more metropolis/megalopolis areas. But no world peace or anything froody like that. In fact, more wars and more problems! Yay! (no GIR, that's bad) 

submitted by TNÖ, age 15, Deep Space
(March 23, 2009 - 7:54 pm)

*nod* Sounds good. Humans-bring-disease, then? We're agreed?

Okay. Humans can reach other solar systems/galaxies. (What year is this!?) More pollution, war, etc. Good (er, bad). But I do think humans should be really technologically advanced--like, REALLY. It should be fun coming up with new inventions, anyway. :)
I like your names, but here are mine: Maron, Sheilla, Masscus, Lattia, Kazey, Lyoll, and Rashella. Aliens should have nutty, random names, like you said. *nod* Mmmm . . . Mystivver, Fellon, Annox, Sassiawa . . . *shrug*
Okay, and the point-of-view thing: I think there should be both a human and an alien . . . I also think it should be like, "I saw" or "I see" instead of "Bob saw." I'd like to try that. What do you think?
submitted by BellaTrix♡♥♡
(March 24, 2009 - 12:30 pm)

First person, you mean? Yeah, that'd be cool. We could do it with journals, letters, etc. and switch between point of view (why yes, I quite enjoyed Dracula, how'd you guess?). That way we could reveal the story and still keep things hidden from the reader without the narrator(s) deliberately hiding anything.

What year? Eh... I'd say we jump ahead at least a century or two. 

submitted by TNÖ, age 15, Deep Space
(March 24, 2009 - 9:02 pm)

Yes, I quite agree: I love first person/alternating views. I also think a century or two would be smashing.

Now we have all that straightened out, let us come up with the lead characters! Yay! Shall they be female or male? I do too many stories with girls as the leads, so maybe male . . . ? Or to eliminate that problem, female human, male alien (or vice versa)? Me likes that!
Shall we do a tad more planning, or just lunge headfirst into the depths of the story and see how it goes!? *evil, slightly insane grin*
submitted by BellaTrix♡♥♡
(March 25, 2009 - 9:10 pm)

I like female human, male alien.

I also vote we just plunge into it. Which POV should we start with, human or alien? And then we'll move over to the other thread.

submitted by TNÖ, age 15, dDeep Space
(March 26, 2009 - 10:20 am)
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