Forums » Creative Corner » Read Thread

Can I get your opinions and ideas for this story?


Here's the story:
There once was a young, seventeen year old, boy who lives in the rural part of his country. he lived with his younger sister and mother. His father was away fighting a war. This war was a fight between humans and monsters. Each one wanting a part of the other's territory. This war was causing families to lose their jobs and homes.Most of the money was taken away, by the government, to fund the war. The boy's family was not exception. In fact they barely had any money to live off of at all.

The boy worked day and night to provide for his family for the boy's sister was often sick and bedridden. She had a rare condition that disabled her ability to walk properly. The cost of her medicine took what little money the boy's family had. His mother had to stay at home to take care of the younger sister. You see, women were not allowed to do men's work. Their job was to stay at home and raise the children. As a result, the boy had to grow up quickly so that his family could survive.

One day, the soldiers of the country came to the boy's town. Curious, the boy made his way to the front of the crowd that had gathered around the soldiers. The soldiers started to call out most of the names of boys who lived in the town, the boy's name among them. The soldier's asked for the boys that were called, for they had been chosen to join the war.

The boy was terrified. He was not only going to war but he had to leave his family behind. Who will take care of them when he is gone? Alas, the boy could not escape his fate and was taken to the capital to be trained.

He could not escape his fate to join the war but maybe he can change his destiny.

This is all just 'telling' and feels like more of a description of a story than anything. I'd skip all this for a more active intro and reveal any relevant backstory as you go, at whatever pace the reader actually needs to know it.

A scene with the soldiers arriving and your character getting a choice to move through the crowd to learn more, or else hang back and try to stay out of the way, would be a more exciting intro that raises questions in the reader's mind right away. Instead of telling us how upset he is to leave his family behind, actually show it actively in the story.

Thanks for the feedback!

So I read this at a description. Have to say, as a setting I love it and I absolutely would love to play the game.

Here is a trap though, you have a brilliant setting, but setting is the easy part. How will this become a story, where is the twist? If you don't plan ahead for this a little bit then there is a risk that the story just runs out of ideas and peters out once you reach the war.

So what could happen? You have a lot to work with ...

• Maybe we can discover a cure for our sister, derived from some? But what risks would you take to actually take to acquire it? Would you risk your own life? The survival of your unit? Would you risk losing the war?
• Perhaps we can discover avoid the draft and join rebels instead that are allied with a faction among the monsters?
• Perhaps we can discover that the war is a scam to control the population, and the monsters aren't that bad after all?
• Maybe we can find a treasure, but then we would make sure that we keep it somehow?

So basically what I am doing here is going through every sentence of your setting and thinking how could the story change this.

It was described as a prologue in their other thread, so I'm not sure if any of the stuff before they get drafted is a controllable part of the story.