Evolution of Stories

Andrea Grey is a supervillain. 

She was once a normal woman. As normal as it can get when you can throw around acid, anyway. She had problems, like her inability to control her abilities, her mother in the hospital, and no way to pay the rapidly growing bills. When Blackbourne Industries offered her a job with great health benefits and training to hone her powers… she snapped it up quickly, no questions asked. Soon she was a skilled security guard, occasionally lent to the city to help with problems. 

But then she started fighting superheroes.

It turns out her new employers aren’t as altruistic as they seemed, using the shipments she protects for far less than noble purposes. The superheroes are struggling to dig up the truth, and the closer they come the more dangerous it becomes for her and her mom. As the situation grows more and more unstable, it becomes clear to her that she’s going to have to choose between doing what’s right… and keeping her mother alive. 



Nobody's Hero did not start off with this synopsis.  It actually started off with a teenage girl with superpowers--that have pretty much stayed the same, excepting the addition of empathy--who was stealing food from warehouses that was originally meant to go to her family anyway.  She dealt with a group of superheroes--teens, as well--who pretty much treated her as a villain before they helped her out and accepted her as part of the group.

That was it.  No real villain, unless you count her.  Just a story about a girl with short black hair in a tough situation learning how to deal with things.  I think I even tried turning it into a comic at some point, and the opening fight switched from a warehouse to a supermarket where she was stealing some food off the shelf.  Seriously.  A superhero fight in the middle of a store simply because one decided to steal a can of peas.

I am so glad it's matured.

I tackled it a little bit later, and those few paragraphs turned into a woman at a warehouse (that much has never changed) waiting for an ambush she felt in her gut was going to happen.  Her hair was now long, platinum blond and wavy and she had light grey eyes.  She was still a villain, but now she was working for an actual bad guy.  I didn't really gather the whole blackmailing bit until much more recently when I watched The Dark Knight and saw Two-Face terrifying a cop who helped the Mob because they paid her mother's hospital bills.

Then the pieces started flowing together.  The main character is stuck between a rock and a hard place, there are people who want to stop her and her boss, and she has a good heart underneath it all that's struggling against the ruthlessness of it all.  

But that's where it stayed at for months until I started getting excited about Nanowrimo.  Two months before, I began putting in plot, made the evil man in charge of a large company, and had an idea of at least one of the things she was going to have to struggle and fight for.

I wrote 50k of it this last nanowrimo, and it need even more major reworking (the description won't quite fit the story anymore, but it'll still be really close).  Scenes will be restructured and so will some plot, and the main character won't be quite so lonely/antisocial.  She'll have at least ONE friend before the story actually starts.  In that 50k her love interest changed.

So yeah.  If you're stuck and can't think of anything to write on, take a peek at some old stories you may have started as a freshmen in high school.  Try and see if there's an idea in them worth salvaging, and tweak it.  What you find yourself with might well turn into an idea worthy of a published book.  Who knows, maybe it'll end up like Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion and find itself being turned into a movie before it even hits the shelves (good luck, but hey, it could happen again)