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Hey all, I realize I have been blowing up the Forums, and am probably annoying everyone. I am not sorry. I did want to get some feed back on what to write next though. I had a few ideas for stories, as well as one long term project already started. The long term project I plan to make a giant fantasy epic with 16 unique full blown endings (that is not counting times you die mid story or otherwise get the death/random ending page). I think it will take a long time to complete, and I want to make it my best work.

That being said, I am not sure if I want to just focus on that right now. I have some other story ideas that might be fun in the mean time. I want to get opinions on if I should just continue my main story, or try one of these. I tried to pick topics that I haven’t already done, are in the categories with the least stories on this site (more meaningful content, I hope), and that will allow me to practice elements for my main story. My first two stories were like that (sort of) as well. I learned a lot from them!

Here are the ideas:

• main story is a fantasy adventure where you are naturally good at dark magic, which is illegal due to the back story. You have the choice of being the villain and getting more and more dark and evil; or being a good guy and trying to change peoples opinion about dark magic by continuing to be more of a hero character.
• A fantasy romance story where you are a princess, but your father is the stereo-typical evil tyrant. He raises you from birth to be cold, heartless, ruthless, and a general in his army (he doesn’t have a son). You get defeated in battle, and the warrior that cuts you down also saves you. He tries to help you recover, and learn to be a normal human. Along the way you learn to make relationships from your first friends, to (eventually) falling in love. This has started as a novel I am writing (on paper in a notebook) when I am bored. I was thinking about adapting it, and adding a few different branches to the story. It may be hard, it was originally planned to have one ending and no choices.
• A modern romance story where you are the nerdy new kid, who has a crush on the stuck up popular girl in school. Every guy likes her, but she has never dated anyone. Might include a few other love options to mix things up and provide different story paths. This is the one I have least developed currently.
• Open to other ideas and topics, but if I don’t think it is interesting I can not write about it. I will be too unmotivated. So if you suggest something I will talk about it, and would be willing to bounce ideas around! But I am not likely to pick it over one of these three ideas.

My initial reaction to all three ideas is that they are pretty broad--broad enough that they all feel familiar.  So I would recommend thinking about what makes your version unique and interesting. 

1.  I like the idea of changing people's opinion about dark magic.  What is dark magic, in this world?  How do you do it?  What's the source?  Why is it dark?  Is there any particular reason it could be used for good, and if so, why is it dark magic? I would think less about choosing hero/villain explicitly and more about making particular difficult choices that slowly change you--choices where it may not even be *obvious* which is hero and which is villain would be amazing.  For this, you may want to think about some non-binary choices so you aren't falling into the pattern of 1.  Good deed, 2.  Bad deed.

2.  This one has potential for sure.  I would recommend starting from the end.  What are the end states?  What are some interesting ways this could turn out.  Think a bit wildly.  Think about really variable states of the world, and then work backwards to figure out how you might get there.  What is the father doing, the army, the family of the warrior, his second-in-command, his liege, the court wizard, whatever.  Find interesting places to put these pieces on the board, and go nuts with it.  Then the hard work will be creating a natural path to get there with real choices for players to fork.

3.  In my opinion, hold off on 3 for now.  It's too undeveloped, and this kind of straight-up romance is hard.  I would probably recommend putting it on the back burner.

The first two are more developed and I can provide some details if you wish.

The first one is actually a story game you could preview for some of those answers. It is not nearly done, and not fully proof read though. It also probably needs to have some of the pages paired down, or broken up. But to answer your questions above dark magic is just a type of magic, like fire magic, it can be powered up through the use of onyx (each magic has a gemstone or rock type that amplifies it with natural magic). There is nothing that makes dark manic evil, except for how it is used and the stigma it carry’s. Everyone has a certain amount of each type of magic in them, like a mama pool for each element. Your character has little mama for other types of magic, but an ocean of mana for dark magic, making it your only option to ever use magic (you don’t initially want to use dark magic, but want to be powerful). I have a structure planned out, the first choice is to embrace/repair an old friendship (leading to “hero” track), or to push this friend away and remain isolated (leading to the “villain” track since your friend is your positive influence that keeps you from going that way. The idea is to slowly develop which every you choose and add in more choices like are you violent or benevolent? Or do you pursue love, or go the lone wolf route? Each choice alters your development slightly to aggregate 16 unique versions of the main character. That is the idea anyway. I have it all drawn out in a story map too. Maybe I should take a pic and upload. I am excited about this story.

2 is less developed, I need to come up with different endings. As it stands I only have one. The main characters dad is trying to conquer the entire world, and your only desire (due to your upbringing) is to help with that. The warrior that slays you is actually the king of another country, although you don’t find out for awhile. There is the silly comic relief right hand man as the lutient, who could make for another love interest. He is loyal to the king, and extremely powerful, but not as serious. He is one of the girl/main characters first friend, since he is the one that guards her room while she is recovering. There is already a warrior in the nation that she is “captured” by that tries to kill the main character, and is more like her father in his thought process (cull the weak type thinking), he could also turn into a more twisted love option that stunts her development. Eventually, the main characters father will try to invade the country that “captures” the main character again (the first invasion is when you are captured) and I want the main character to have to choose which side to fight on somehow. I think it would be fun to practice character development and romance.

Yeah 3 is the one I am least excited about. It is very generic, but would be good practice for a romance topic. Rather than a back burner this one will likely never happen unless I feel I need more practice in the romance genre.

Idea 1 really sounds interesting, but I agree with what Gower said about it. The story would be really cool if it was difficult to tell whether you really were a hero or villain character.

I can modify it to make it a slower progression, so you are not aware of you being evil. I like that angle. I can see how long I can keep the main character in the dark of how much he has become what people fear he may be...

The second one sounds the most interesting to me, but maybe that's just because it was pitched in more detail than 'be good or evil' and 'get the girl" and it seems to imply a full cast off characters in what I imagine would have to be a politically complicated situation.

Ultimately though you should be writing about what you yourself are the most interested in. Whatever details grab your interest will do the same for at least some readers, and you have to be excited enough about an idea to be able to maintain that interest throughout writing the entire thing and all the branches.

I hope to write both one and two eventually. Although, two may stay a novel and no one here will get to read it (lol). I want both stories to be complex, with a lot of politics. In the first story it is more like people try to kill him the moment they realize he is a dark wizard, good or evil, and he has to decide how to handle that. The second one I really like as well though.