Author:
Blog About:
okey day so!
I play a lot of SMITE, for those who don't know it's a game where the gods - and more recently, fictional/legendary figures from history and fiction - fight it out. This has inspired me to make a story. The idea is that the ancient gods and demons were shattered in a great war eons ago, but fragments of their souls and power have flitted amongst the populace, dormant.
In the last decade, there has been an awakening, one of the god sparks woke up, causing a chain reaction as other deific fragments awoke within the youth of the world. The first to awaken was Odin, though like all others, he was incomplete, unlike the others, however, he set out to find other humans with the godspark of odin within them and take it back.
Obviously, Odin is going to be one of our major villains here.
The other to awaken the earliest was a young boy who discovered that his spark was that of one Dracula, and so embracing his sense of humor, he renamed himself 'Drake'. Drake then set about to create a school he calls 'Atlantis' that's in the - where else - Atlantic Ocean, an artificial island where the families of those with godsparks can come and live, while those with the sparks attend a special academy to be educated but also learn of their own history and powers and come to term with their radically changing bodies and identities.
Obviously, different groups have risen up in protest of this, most vocal are members of the religious right and other religious conservative groups who refuse to acknowledge that these 'gifted children' are the sparks of the ancient gods, though what constitutes a 'god' seems to be rather loose.
But just as destructive are the cults that have begun to spring up, searching for children to take in and 'teach', some wishing to worship them, others wishing to manipulate them, and more often; some wishing to do both. The world is a mess, with various governments uncertain how to deal with this dramatic change, and many stoking the fires of fear over an artificial isle beholden to no power or oversight with a rapidly growing population of empowered individuals.
The main character will be a boy with the godspark of Sol, Goddess of The Sun, and so his body has been rapidly changing to that of a curvaceous, beautiful girl with a fiery disposition, literally.
Thing is, I'm not sure where to go from here... thoughts?
Comments
Hm...
If you have the sparks of gods from different pantheons all attending the same school, they might fall back into their old "cliques", Romans, Norse, Greek, etc. etc. One option is to have turf wars break out between the different pantheons. Another option would be the conflict between different gods of the same function. If the girl is Sol, Maybe she ends up in a situation where she is attacked by Apollo or Ra, or some other solar deity. Or perhaps she falls in love with her adversary, and there is forbidden love, as everyone is demanded that they choose sides?
KISS
"Keep It Simple, Stupid!" Start by sticking to Solette's single, simple viewpoint. You could slip in Cryptic Background References and Cryptic gossipy references to contemporaneous outside events, perhaps to hang later stories on.
Does Solette go to the island academy?
Is she lured into a cult? Perhaps you could portray it as apparently good while slipping in signs of its evil.
Is she captured by haters?
One thing: avoid turning it into a Whateley Academy Universe duplicate.
-- Daphne Xu
Whately
maybe I should just do away with the whole academy thing altogether. It was definitely inspired by Whately, I cannot lie about that.
Schools
The idea of using schools to teach those with strange abilities and shelter them from a hostile world isn't unique to Whateley. There are Harry Potter, X-Men, and Percy Jackson, just to name a few more common ones. I've done it myself in my Hyperverse. It can make a good backdrop, but it doesn't define the story, you as the author do that. Case in point, I have two such schools in my universe and I've done a lot of short stories and I have a long serial. And though the schools are mentioned they hardly ever show up in the shorts and even with the serial it's not really the focus of the story, the characters are.
What is really going to make your story is the plot, the characters, and how people can relate to what they're going through, and it sounds like you have a pretty good idea for all of that in your head. You can still have a school without making it the focus of the story so if it's part of your idea don't feel you have to toss it out because it's been done before, it hasn't stopped anyone else from doing something hugely popular with it. Sometimes you just need to do a story your way for it to shine through.
*big hugs*
Amethyst
Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3
No Whateley!
No Whateley or Whateleyish setup, we already have one too many of those. How about a random group of characters turning up as their god-essences are triggered. Maybe a massive out-system comet collides with the sun and a batch of here-to-fore unknown bands of radation trigger the emergence of the god-like abilities. The speed of their emergence is dictated by the amount of exposure they receive.
Fairly early on Collette's emergence is triggered. Needing a place of refuge she raises Atlantis from the ocean floor, magically cleaned up; proclaims herself ruler/leader of the island and throws it open to all the emerged. All the emerged with good/evil god essences take on the appearance of the god/goddess they are attuned to. The stronger their link the greater their appearance changes. Collette is almost 100% so her changes are extreme. She has the abilities to enforce the sovereignty of the island and force peace on the unruly, but it's a very hands-on job, and inevitably she is unable to keep track of everything. . . . Enter Loki, Pan, and whoever else you care to introduce, both good and bad. I favor the Nordic gods and goddesses over the greek but no hard and fast lines drawn, other gods from different pantheons could be allowed.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Moving from a situation to a story
Starting with the main character, the boy, you need some sort of change to happen in him, and probably in the world around him. Not simply the physical change, where he turns into a curvy girl. To make a story of this, you need an emotional element (an emotional conflict) and you need an endpoint, where things have changed. The change can't simply be that he turns into a girl.
He turns into a girl:
- to do what?
- what triggers the transformation?
- how does he feel about it? Does he go along with it? Does he fight it?
- how do the people around him feel about the transformation, particularly his family - siblings, parents
- does he try to hide it?
- does his transformation ally him with a group he'd otherwise disdain?
- what problems does his transformation create for (a) himself, (b) the people around him, (c) society as a whole, (d) the relationships, desires, and goals of more powerful people?
- is he in love with someone? how does the transformation affect that?
One obvious track for this to take is that he somehow is a key to the liberation of the oppressed, but at the start, even though some indications point to his being the key, "something" is missing. His transformation provides that "something" -- which ideally would be something more than just a gender swap.
- io
To Save Anyone Else...
...the minor bother of looking it up on Wikipedia, this presumably references Sól, the Norse sun goddess, and not Sol, the Roman sun god. (I'd never heard of the goddess before this blog entry.)
Eric
Sol
That could be the hook - protag finds out his godspark is Sol, thinks it's the Roman god, but is surprised when aspects of the Norse goddess begin to manifest.
writing a short story in a big complex universe
Writing a short story in a big complex universe requires lots of ground work. If you care about continuity at all you will need to keep character notebooks with development and timeline sections for each of your characters. Lots of the time this is more work than the story itself.
Sounds like a great project. I look forward to reading it.
Your friend
Crash