Adopt-A-Plot

Here are a couple ideas I came up with during the summer but have ditched in favor of my other idea. They're very short and not completely thought out but they're up for grabs and changed to/for anyone that wants them! If someone does write them, I'd like to see them once they're done just to see how the ideas fold out, if that's alright. Enjoy!

Beautiful woman is stranded on a deserted island for X amount of years of her life after being taken from her home at a very young age. Then after X years are up, she is taken to her home city and left on her own to adapt.

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A college student finds a book full of empty pages. They start to write a story. But everything that happens in that story starts happening for real. They could write that someone caused a burning swirly vortex of doom would appear in the sky to kill off the unworthy and it would happen. The only problem was, once it was written, it could not be undone.

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Each chapter, a different murder with the same signature calling card. A marigold (means hate). Each chapter would be the crime itself from the victim's POV until death then the next chapter would be the killer's POV after the killing with the planning ending it
OR
Same only going backwards from jail to trial to each murder

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A certian kind of tattoo that sucks in the people's soul. The tattoo artist is really a diabolical genius bent on destroying the world. Up to a college student to save the souls of all the people who got an evil tattoo.

This one has been hanging around me for a while.

Tentative title "Impersonate the Dead". So, we have the technology to resurrect (referred to as "reanimate") the dead. Natch, it's [i]not[/i] used for evil, but to reanimate historically important people, who, once reanimated, go through a sort of "decompression" (well, wouldn't you be confused if you "woke up" after dying surrounded by doctors?), and then work in museums. Possibly there's some kind of ethics debate.

The MC, Harry Everyguy, decides that there's money to be made here. Since some of the reanimated don't work for the museums at first, he finds a list of those people and steals an identity off the list, then goes to work at his local museum. Unfortunately for Harry, his coworkers from the same original time period keep trying to chat him up.

It's 2 a.m., please pardon all nonsensical syntax and sheer looniness. Harry Everyguy is a long way of saying "Joe MC", or, "The main character".

I was thinking about using these for a while (read: maybe a day or two per plot), but ultimately I deciding to stick with the one I'm planning. So. Just a note that both are set in the not-too-distant future, maybe 30 years tops.

__A mother finds herself fearing for her child's life when she finds that her old internet buddy took a promise too seriously. A woman has travelled halfway across the globe for the sole purpose of collecting FMC's firstborn child.

__The current epidemic of naming children uniquely has finally worn out. The new generation of parents have created the [name here] Movement. Every newborn child is named in a fashion similar to that of the early to middle 20th century. Ten years after the Movement has been established, an Internet rumour surfaces that a child with an unusual name has been discovered. Apparently, burning people at the stake is back in fashion, too. What follows is a national manhunt for a small nine year old who may not even exist.

Okay, average object-that-predicts-things book, except this times it's wikipedia. ^_^

The MC is this high school student, who has lots of fun editting wikipedia (wrongly, of course). S/he usually does this right before a hwk assignment, when s/he knows all his/her classmates will be on wikipedia.

Theeen, one day, he posts something minor on wikipedia (my idea was originally he posted a tv show got cancelled), and of course, the tv show got cancelled in real life too.

So, the MC is a bit suspicious and decides to try it out. He then edits a large variety of posts, ending in something very humourous (I have no idea what).

Yeah. I was going to do something like this for NaNoWriMo, but I thought of a far better one.

A college student finds a book full of empty pages. They start to write a story. But everything that happens in that story starts happening for real. They could write that someone caused a burning swirly vortex of doom would appear in the sky to kill off the unworthy and it would happen. The only problem was, once it was written, it could not be undone.

^^

I love this idea. I want to write. Yet I have a story plot. bah. Will hold on to this idea in case the other one goes bye bye.

A person is found dead; amongst his/her belongings a letter is found which says that if they are ever killed, suspect Main Character, who also happens to be this person's worst enemy. The main character, however, definitely did not kill this person, despite numerous pieces of evidence to the contrary. See, the person committed suicide as a final act of revenge against the main character, and now it's up to him, under constant scrutiny by the authorities, to exonerate himself.

A plot I was thinking about for a long time, but then decided to abandon:

The memoires of a 5€ bill. Imagine all those things your money might have seen and heared. Imagine all the those things your money actually would hate (droped on wet asphalt and then stepped on with muddy shoes...), and write about it from a bitter first person PoV.

Here is my suggestion:

Upon realising that three years have gone by since she last ate chocolate, a formerly fat woman in her early thirties decides to take a break from her diet and goes to a candy shop. Much to her surprise, when she gets there she notices that all of the nine customers present to the shop are either former neighbours or ex-classmates of her, people she hasn't met nor heard about for years, since she moved to a city far away from her hometown. Why and how all those people have appeared at that place simultaneously? Have they been invited by someone else? If so, who's done it? What for? And why hasn't she received any invitation? Or has she?

If someone adopts this plot, please let me know, and I'll gladly read your story. :-)

A college student finds a book full of empty pages. They start to write a story. But everything that happens in that story starts happening for real. They could write that someone caused a burning swirly vortex of doom would appear in the sky to kill off the unworthy and it would happen. The only problem was, once it was written, it could not be undone.

Have you read Death Note? ^^ I just thought of Light Yagami finding the Death Note. When you write a name into it, following certain rules, the person dies [if it is their real name, if you're thinking of their face, etc. etc.]; the Wiki article has the rules of the Note in it. Only, in the DN pilot manga, you can use an eraser to undo the deaths if the bodies are still salvageable.

The world and the people on it are protected by Guides. They take the form of animals and are not completely immortal, but still very hard to kill. They blend in so well that most people don't notice anything unusual about them, but the MC was born with the ability to hear them talk. One day, one of the Guides tells the MC that s/he has to steal from a jewelry store. The MC thinks it has some sort of spiritual significance, although in reality the Guide was just bored out of his skull from living for ages, and felt like abusing human gullibility for once. When s/he gets there, s/he manages to prevent an attempted robbery. S/he is now convinced that the Guide is a magic animal which can predict the future, and captures it and keeps it in a cage.

All sorts of things could happen then.

--The world and the people on it are protected by Guides. They take the form of animals and are not completely immortal, but still very hard to kill. They blend in so well that most people don't notice anything unusual about them, but the MC was born with the ability to hear them talk. One day, one of the Guides tells the MC that s/he has to steal from a jewelry store. The MC thinks it has some sort of spiritual significance, although in reality the Guide was just bored out of his skull from living for ages, and felt like abusing human gullibility for once. When s/he gets there, s/he manages to prevent an attempted robbery. S/he is now convinced that the Guide is a magic animal which can predict the future, and captures it and keeps it in a cage.--

^^
Exactly the same as this, but in stead of immortal animal guides, use girl guides (girl scouts).

It's a beautiful summer morning and a small group of teenagers wakes up in the middle of a forest.

They don't know each other, they have never met each other, they have no idea where they are or why.
They have some of their personal items with them - a diary maybe, a teddy bear, - but also some equipment to survive in the forest, matches, a knife etc.

They decide to try to find a way out of the forest - and maybe, in a way, they find a way out of their own unsolved problems at the same time.
But why is all this happening?
Could they help each other, even though they are completely different and total strangers?

That's up to you :)
This story has been dwelling in my mind for so long, but I don't think I will ever be writing it - so it's all yours!
The setting was originally in Finland, where it really could take days, or weeks even, to walk through a forest - but there's no poisonous plants, snakes or angry bears like in USA ;) Of course it really doesn't matter where the story happens, but if you want an extra challenge, do some research and place your characters in Finland.

and.. Have fun!

A high school music teacher moves back to the small town where she grew up, expecting to take her place as a respected adult member of the community. But some things have changed since she left, and others have stayed exactly the same. A lot of her old friends are gone, moved to the cities or other places more interesting. The older folks all treat her like the girl she was when she left, even though she is married now and has a degree in music teaching. Her husband grows distant, clearly unhappy in this small, sleepy town, and more and more often goes on trips out of town without her. She turns to her students, who are her only friends in this harsh place that used to be so comforting to her. One student in particular catches her eye... and her heart.

Yes, this is a student/teacher romance, for those of you who feel up to it. I sure don't. Especially since this is based on people I know.

I dug up the links to some past adopt-a-plot threads, if anyone's interested.

2006: http://2006.nanowrimo.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=136&forum...

2005: http://2005.nanowrimo.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=23&forum=...

This one is simple -- one song lyric. I'm actually using it for my novel, but there are just endless ways you could take it.

"The story of a woman on the morning of a war." (Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Easily")

GO.

Yay! Adopt-a-plot's back, my favourite NaNo thread ever!
Anyways, here's something I thought up during science class. Yes, we were having a discussion on In Vitro Fertilization.

A newly married couple, both with important, high-paying jobs, decide that they want to have a kid. They don't want to adopt (for whatever reason) but both agree that the wife is too busy to take nine months out of her job just to carry around a child (they figure that they can hire a nanny after the kid is born, so they won't have to miss much work that way, either). So, they decide that the only way to make it work is to do in vitro fertlization - using another woman as the carrier of the couple's reproductive cells.
So in enters MC, the woman who is going to be carrying around the baby for nine months. She has a low-paying job, and needs the money badly. She volunteers to be the carrier (the couple are paying a lot of money) and so a baby is implanted in her uterus.
Eventually, MC starts to get attached to the little girl/guy growing inside her. She learns more about the couple's plans for it, and decides that she doesn't want the baby (which, by this time, she considers her own) to live a life without parents who have the time for it.
The story revolves around MC fighting to keep the baby as her own, while the biologic parents do everything they can to stop her.

That's about as far as I got... Feel free to use it, change it up, or do anything with it.

By the way - does anyone else feel that the website's running really slowly?

Since my Nano this year is a combination of a couple of plots stolen from last year's Adopt-A-Plot thread, I figured I'd contribute something here in return. :)

For a good home with someone with a talent for writing epic romances:

This is a twist on the old "eternal love" story. The main characters are a pair of ill-fated lovers that have been reborn for a second chance at love lost. After a chance meeting (present day), they find themselves strangely drawn to each other, and soon begin to have bizarrely detailed dreams recounting their past lives. There's one problem - Character A does not fit Character B's sexual preferences. This has a number of possibilities - in my mind, I saw the original couple being male/female, and the new couple being male/male and both characters having to deal with being straight but suddenly attracted to someone of the same sex. You could also have the new couple be female/female, or even have the original couple be same-sex to avoid confusion between time-lines ...

This is a really good plot idea! I'm probably gonna adopt it. Yeah, the website is running slow because of the thousands upon thousands of returning users. By tomorrow, Chris said that the site would be speedier.

Ignore this. NaNo feels like hating me now.... XP

lol. DN was the first thing I thought of too when I read that one. btw i think i might be snaggin this one-- partially, though, because I think I wanna do something a bit different with it. the whole notebook thing im keepin tho.

lol. DN was the first thing I thought of too when I read that one. btw i think i might be snaggin this one-- partially, though, because I think I wanna do something a bit different with it. the whole notebook thing im keepin tho.

Here are three I'm releasing to the world:

Two siblings, separated when they were very young, have the ability to sense other people’s emotions. One of them grows up well in a loving family and becomes a successful psychiatrist, using his/her ability to help people. The other had a bad childhood and develops many mental issues, eventually being sent to see a psychiatrist. Of course, that psychiatrist turns out to be his/her long-lost sibling.
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Every night, a man dreams that he's walking around the town where he lives, able to see other people but unable to be seen by them. He thinks that he just has boring dreams, until things he sees in the dream world start really happening. One night, he witnesses a murder in his dream, and of course, it really happens. He knows who did it, but when he tells the authorities, they arrest him - because how would he know all the details so perfectly if he wasn't the murderer? He could turn out to actually be the murderer, he could just be crazy, he could put the real killer in jail - it's up to you.
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This one was inspired by http://www.sketchswap.com/. Basically, you submit a sketch and you get a random sketch someone else has submitted. The plot is that a woman used to be an artist, but when she became a successful detective, she no longer had time to work on her art. In the case she’s working on, she somehow discovers that a clue is in http://www.sketchswap.com/. She has to submit hundreds of sketches before coming across the one she’s looking for, and while doing so, she realizes how much she misses art and how important it is to her.

AlexisKitten I love the idea of the killer and the victim! I think I might use this if it's okay with you?

Oh I love this... its right up my street... oh dear plot crisis... my novel was going to revolve around different people drinking different beverages... but maybe this would work better.... road trip around europe as it wends its way across different countries... I wouldn't do it in the first person though as thats not my style but hey its an idea for interconnected short stories... oooo brain cogs ticking overtime now

Ok I think I'm definitely running with this one... the note is the central axis from which I step into different peoples lives, the note per say isn't going to have a personality, if anything its more like the reader is the note as it arrives in peoples pockets and you see a glimpse of their life up until the time they spend it

I'd think of this as a good plot beginning, one I've tried to write for ten years. A guy steals a prototype PDA from work. (when I wrote it, I imagined a future device that had a massive 100 Mb of storage and a radio modem!) As he walks home, a little girl runs up to him, yells for him to help, and runs into the door of an Italian restaurant. He follows, thinking there has been a fire or someone is hurt (he's not a bad guy, just a thief!) and wanting to help. As he passes the door , he sees the young girl standing to the side, a diabolical smile on her lips... He can't seem to stop, sliping into the darkness. He looks up, to see writing over the doorway he is slipping through. It reads "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate." (Well, I've eaten in restaurants that SHOULD have had that over the doorway)

When he wakes up (on a featureless plain or somewhere humorous - you decide) he realizes that
A) the PDA still functions on the Internet (through an ISP called InfernalDaddy.com) and
B) he is in Hell

I have kept trying to write this as a series of emails back and forth between our luckless thief and the inventor. Whether or not the inventor mounts a rescue attempt or the guy meets Virgil or something - well I've tried them all.

In Hollywoodspeak,I see this as Dante's "Inferno" meets Pournelle and Niven's "Inferno" meets Taylor Caldwell's "Dialogues with the Devil" meets Harvard Lampoons "Bored of the Rings" . Maybe with Showgirls thrown in - I'm sure that is the only movie you can see in Hell ;-)

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"Welcome to Heaven, Here's your harp / Welcome to Hell, here's your accordian" - Gary Larsen

It came to me just now while talking with my sister. Enjoy (and if you use, please let me know if I can read it at some point! I'm sure the idea is nothing new, but I see so much oppertunity for humor and I'd love to see what someone does with it...)

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Teenaged punk god Cthluhu (he can't always have been ancient… right?) decides to rebel against his society (mainly his parents), and so sets out to set up a cult for himself on primitive Earth and become a legend… only he has to deal with the shuggoths, who are plotting to take over the cosmos, and Dagon, a mercenary god who is on the run, shows up and attempts to pull off a coup with the aid of the ancient ones.

Cthulhu has his tentacles full if he wants to leave his mark before his parents show up and haul him back home, where he'll be grounded for a couple millennia...

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(I know. Lovecraft would be spinning in his grave, poor guy... *evil grin*)

~Merc

P.S. Pardon spelling errors and mistakes… it's waaaay too late and I can't find my copies of Lovecraft stories… anyone feel free to correct this.

One more Adopt a Plot / Premise. This one from an employee of mine (Todd) mixed with a abandoned graphic novel of mine. It concerns those homeless people we often encounter on streetcorners or outsidethe subway. They appear to the uninitiated as homeless or mentally unstable - seeminglysinging or talking to imaginary friends or the thin air or... Usually, we just slip them a couple of bucks and move on. But - what if they were talking to another apparent homeless or mentally challenged person a bock or a continent away? And carrying on a coherent communication with one another. Todd also decided that this is discovered by a good doctor and they function to do Good Deeds passing intel or communications ala' "Windtalkers". Or I guess it could be a bad doctor...etc.

Not wanting to steal anything from Hollywood except to parody it, my idea was to have this communications network "hacked" by a young person who is seemingly in a coma (he is overloaded being a nexus of all of the others) who then uses them to see the outside work and affect change. Being a fan of the latter-day Dean Koontz, I would make this a positive change, blah blah, but feel free to use it as you wish.

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that's fine, you're more than welcome to it! I hope you can do better than I did!

In vitro is just the process of creating an embryo outside of the body and then putting it into a human womb, and that womb most often belongs to the owner of the former egg. :)

What you're talking about--the use of another woman's womb--is called surrogacy, and was the source of much controversy in the 1980s, especially where the surrogate was also the biological mother (i.e., owner of the egg). There was a merry slew of made-for-TV movies on the subject, and a few big legal cases (eg Mary Beth Whitehead/Baby M).

Not trying to be a nudge, just that whoever adopts this one will have better luck with their research looking up surrogacy rather than in vitro.