Weekly Plot Help Post

[alison-sky.livejournal.com]

Please use this post to talk about the plots you are forming, snags you've come across, and ask for just brainstorming help from your fellow community members.

And please, also take time to read through and see what everyone else is doing. Who knows, maybe you might hold the key to someone else's NaNo victory!

Comments

70yr-old semi-werewolf

[tarlwen.livejournal.com]

I have a big problem with my NaNo plot this year. It all started out with the vague idea that it'd be fun to write something set in a retirement home for werewolves. That sort of evolved into the idea that there aren't really any werewolves, but that people who decide on an active law-enforcement career (notadministration but investigation) can decide to be genetically altered to gain some werewolf-like qualities that help them solve crimes (better sense of smell/sight that kinda stuff). There is, however, a strong dislike against these people in the general populace and the semi-werewolves have to agree to stay away from the rest of humanity after they leave their profession, thus the specialized retirement home and stuff.

Anyway, my main character (Peter) just decided that the nurses in the retirement home are plotting something, probably even aiming at killing each and every one of the semi-werewolves. The only question is: why the heck would they want to do that? I can't really think of any reason right now and the fact that the idea of putting the whole thing into some post-apocalyptic setting is still floating around my brain only makes things more complicated.

Help? Suggestions? Anything?

Re: 70yr-old semi-werewolf

[feigned-living.livejournal.com]

My suggestion is to flesh out your werewolves a bit more. What are the side-affects of the genetic alteration, both good and bad. If you find some really bad ones, BINGO, there's the reason they're wanted dead. Also, perhaps one of the nurses has a grudge against them for something they did to herself or her family when they were young and in law-enforcement. Or possibly the nurse's family helped create these genetically altered werewolves and asked that she help destroy his/her creation. Or maybe she just doesn't like wolfies.

Re: 70yr-old semi-werewolf

[brazilnutz.livejournal.com]

Would you be willing to lose the element of ostracism? The altered crimefighters could be in a specialized retirement home because their hyper-acute senses make it difficult for them to tolerate the smells and textures of a standard nursing home (not big on them myself, and my senses are just average). I just think that it makes it more likely that people would volunteer for this sort of operation if they didn't believe that having it would automatically make them hated by a large percentage of the populace.

As to why the nurses might plot against the residents: in our current society, drugs and money are big motivators for crime. Your nurses could have access to drugs (painkillers? sleep aids?) used to treat the genetically altered that have hallucinogenic properties on the unaltered populace. They could have a nice little drug ring going, if it weren't for those pesky former detective patients.

Also, would you willing to not have all of the weres be former crimefighters? If Peter and perhaps one or two others are former detectives, the ring could operate longer and more convincingly than if all of the residents have investigative experience. Again, if you lose the element of ostracism, you could have non-altered geriatrics mixed in with the altered. Perhaps the baseline residents might choose the specialized home because of allergies which make the cleansers used in regular nursing homes as unbearable to them as they are to the altered.

Re: 70yr-old semi-werewolf

[captain-emily.livejournal.com]

You already said that there is a strong dislike for the werewolves, so use this. Perhaps the nurses and staff are secretly members of a group whose ultimate goal is to purify the gene pool and eradicate what they might see as "abominations." You might even throw in a bit of religious extremism.

You could even adapt this idea for a post-apocalyptic setting. The extremists are worried about the survival of their species. Or even better--perhaps they see the apocalypse as punishment from their deity for mankind's dabbling in things he was never meant to and ultimately "playing god." They believe that if they eradicate the werewolves, their god will forgive them and make everything better.