Need Help With Plot![W:25]

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Put the wife and kid on a plane, while the husband goes up to the haunted house. The plane crashes into the haunted house, and kills the whole flam damnly. The crooked cops publicly mourn, but all meet at the lake for beer shooters when the media goes away. Why? Because the house isn't haunted. It's full of drug money. Why? Because the crooked cops busted someone, killed them, and took all the drug money, because the governor spent their pension fund on hookers.

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

I would take them but park away from the house anf and tell them to stay in the car with the doors locked. I expect the wife can drive. If so then tell her to drive away if someone she does not know comes to the car

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

A mixture, take your wife into the house but have the youngest stand watch at the open front door, not knowing whether to look inside for signs you may need help or turn their back to you to keep watch for townsfolk that may stealthfully approach.

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

I would probably take them with me, even with the risk. It's better than splitting up IMO. I remember listening to a creepypasta reading where someone did something similar to that, and it annoyed the crap out of me.

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

Well... sometimes a story calls for a situation that might not be the most plausible, and characters that don't always do the correct or more plausible thing, they make mistakes...but this can give the author more literary mileage, so to speak...

So, can you get more action, more dialogue, more emotional impact by leaving the family behind?

Maybe so, but if it's not too far a stretch, not too implausible, I'd include the family along, it gives you much more flexibility and more sources of dialogue and more characters to bounce dialogue off of, more personalities in the mix...

Sometimes I will have a character in a story that is just more or less there as a 'prop," a literary "device," someone to bounce dialogue off or just to break potential monotony.

Good luck with it!

Thx

There's a moonshine still in the "haunted" house...:2razz:

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

Very interesting...

I'd have him do both.

Go to the scary house alone and find some danger and then return to the hotel and find that his wife was very uncomfortable left alone and demands to be with him.

In this way, you put the bomb under the chair and show it to the audience as Alfred Hitchcock suggested, then have the protagonist sit in the chair.

However, I've only read books. Never wrote one. My advice on this is about as good as my advice on repairing your car.

Good luck. I hope you do well and have fun.

humbolt said:

Put the wife and kid on a plane, while the husband goes up to the haunted house. The plane crashes into the haunted house, and kills the whole flam damnly. The crooked cops publicly mourn, but all meet at the lake for beer shooters when the media goes away. Why? Because the house isn't haunted. It's full of drug money. Why? Because the crooked cops busted someone, killed them, and took all the drug money, because the governor spent their pension fund on hookers.

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Sounds like real life to me. We should stick to fiction.

My family? I'd also put them on a plane and call some backup/friends to assist rather than family.
But I'm not good plot material.

Things that can help him bring them:
1. the older that the "younger" child is, the more plausible
2. the more competent the reader knows the younger child is, the more plausible (athletic? Smart? think Jurassic Park 1 kids?
3. the more assertive the wife
4. They could have a bit of dialogue where the guy immediately says they need to get on a plane, and the wife (and kid to a degree), talk him into it.

You could also do both. Have them stay in the hotel, but then have them see things that get them paranoid (cop car outside watching them creepers around the hotel?) and they feel they have to get to the husband, and they show up (and scare the crap out of him), and then they are with him and it's a done deal now (they aren't going back without him).

I do like books and movies to have characters that act smart, and yet things still get interesting. It raises the tension for me too. If they do stupid things and get into trouble, I feel they deserve it and there is less tension rooting for the bad guys (see fear the walking dead).

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

He should get a friend involved. Not his family

And here is a tip:

The first thing I do when I begin a story is make a list...

The story development process always starts with a list!

A list of characters with associated notes, ideas for the premise, small details that will enrich a story, research items for authenticity, those flashes of inspiration you get in the middle of the night, things from your own past, anything that you want to preserve for the story.

Very often I will hear a bit of snappy dialogue from an old, obscure movie and will put it on the list and modify it into some version I can use.

And it's extra easy with a word processor... you load in your list first, maybe accumulated over months or even years, and when you begin your first chapter in earnest, you just start loading that in with your list working it's way further down the page, you see?

As you incorporate items into the story you take them off the list, so your list is getting ever more diminished as your finished draft grows...

Thx

he could go to the house while the rest of his family tries to figure out what the cops are hiding in town. this might require the kids to be a bit older.

If you want to leave the family behind, but also include them in the action you can always use a cell phone between them to maintain that link...

Thx

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.

Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

I personally don't like books where characters act in stupid or overly emotional ways.

I would never take the wife and kids with me into a situation of possible danger.

I'd call up my best friend(s) if he or they were close enough.

The wife would never agree to just leave, so I would tell her to wait with the younger kid at the hotel/motel until I got back.

If the plot makes me disappear then that leaves the wife to hassle the police and news organizations until "something" is done.

Problem is, this is an old story and unless you have some twist other than:

1. Aliens,

2. Inbred cannibal hillbillies,

3. Serial killer, Cult

4. People eating house,

5. Mutant/strange acting creatures (ants, worms, frogs, wasps, bees, dogs, spiders, etc.)


Then it's already been done and done to death.

He needs a bad-ass ex-military relative he can call to help. When he arrives (hopefully from somewhere close) send wife and other kid home to safety. Or, call all the inlaws and outlaws to help. That's what family is for.

Did you ever see the movie "Next of Kin?" Great flick, with bad-ass relatives.

Rosie1 said:

He needs a bad-ass ex-military relative he can call to help. When he arrives (hopefully from somewhere close) send wife and other kid home to safety. Or, call all the inlaws and outlaws to help. That's what family is for.

Did you ever see the movie "Next of Kin?" Great flick, with bad-ass relatives.

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LOL no, this is a horror book so they need to be as vulnerable as possible- they cant call for outside help.

I guess I'm trying to figure out how they all stick together without them acting stupid like bringing a kid along towards possible danger- thats the only thing which concerns me.

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

No real man would knowingly lead his remaining family into such a dangerous situation.

So he must leave them someplace he feels they would be safe. But the best he will probably get, if nobody in town is helpful, would be to park them in a local hotel/motel. This assuming they have not any established friendships yet in the town...that they are alone in this quest.

He returns to the house alone... but the wife, already worried, scared for her husband, who she trusts and loves dearly, recieves a call on her cell from his cell about a half hour after he departs. Its just a blank call for a few seconds...she asks if he is there...gets no answer and then the signal evaporates...she tries desperately to call him back to no result.

What can she do? The police are, and will be, of no help, proven to a degree of certainty already in the story previously somehow... she cant do nothing...and with the police seemingly duplicitious she cannot leave her child behind unsafe ...so she must take her child with her despite her misgivings about taking him/her along.

Age/sex of the child should help guide the plot in different directions but neither affect the decision to go, altho at age 15 to 19 they could probably be left more safely behind, alone...but also might demand, at that age, to go along.

Also, the family wouldnt probably have access to more than one vehicle if traveling to visit this town, so the husband would most likely have to take a taxi or something leaving his wife the keys to the car so that the husband feels more comfortable leaving his remaining family behind with this assured manner to beat a hasty retreat out of the now ominous town, under their own power, should that need arise.

This also gives the wife plausible ready access to transportation not requiring additional characters, when coming to her husband's "rescue" when the mysterious dropped call comes.

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

Good story line.

Remember to challenge your protagonist and not lighten up on him. Perhaps he could leave the wive and child behind, but they follow. Maybe they have an urgent message, or maybe the older boy shows up at home and they all go to get the father. I think all of the family should end up in the house. Nothing creates more tension than parents who know their children are in danger but they are unable to save them - until the very end, of course.

Good luck!

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

Depends on the outcome you're looking for. If they all come out alive, he takes them with him and the wife and kid don't end up being the typical helpless anchors, but are useful in helping get the other kid back.

PoS said:

OK, I'm kinda stumped with this, and I hope some of you can help me out. :mrgreen:

I'm somewhat stuck plotting a horror/thriller book. Here's an analogy: let's say there's a haunted house not far from the town. A man takes his family for a visit in town, but his eldest child goes up into the mansion and disappears. The man begs for help but the local cops are hiding something and warn him not to go to the house, but he goes anyway.



Now my question is, should he take his wife and younger child to go with him? Is it plausible since they don't trust the cops? What would you do in this situation? If you were the husband, would you take your wife and other kid up there or leave them in a town where you don't trust anyone?

Any suggestions welcome. :2wave:

Click to expand...

Oh, how I would like to see the guy's wife having an affair with the local cop and the haunted house is their secret meeting place. The eldest child went ahead and discovers the secret in the house. Now Mom and local cop are in a pickle and both are trying to keep the husband out and make it so the discoveries made by the eldest child are part of ghostly illusion...or are they?

Well, this is Debate Politics, so even if it's a book sub-forum, I'm surprised nobody has given you the following advice yet, so I will:

The man leaves his wife and younger son in the hotel, goes into the house anyway and finds his older son and Stormy Daniels naked and handcuffed to a bed. The handcuffs are police-issued ones. He realizes that the police is with Donald Trump. He frees them and plans to call Michael Avenatti but meanwhile Michael Cohen's thugs have surrounded the house. Before they enter and handcuff everybody back to the bed including him, he manages to place a call to his wife instead, who drives to the next town and tries to enlist the local police and the State Bureau of Investigations. It turns out that the agents don't believe her, using the "but Hillary" defense; they suspect that the house is the headquarter of a ring of pedophiles. They tell her not to call Obama for help because if he comes in, they will call ICE and arrest him for being an illegal alien born in Kenya. She then manages to call Avenatti herself, who calls Mueller, who calls the FBI. They come and arrest the Michael Cohen thugs and free everybody again, but Trump gets word of it, fires Rosenstein, gets a puppet in his place, who fires Mueller and orders the man, his wife, his older son, Stormy Daniels, and Michael Avenatti arrested. Trump goes to Fox News and calls it all fake news and a witch hunt. By now everybody forgot about the young son who hid under a desk when everybody was being arrested. He finds an audio tape that Cohen left there by mistake. He listens to it, and it contains undeniable evidence of collusion of the Trump campaign with the Russians. He sends it to the New York Times. They go public with it. The sane part of the population gets outraged and there is a blue wave. The house and even the Senate flip. Trump gets impeached, convicted, and removed from office. Everybody rejoices and thinks that there will be a happy ending. What they forget, is that Pence then becomes the president, and by executive order changes the United States into an ultra-fundamentalist theocracy. Inept Pence in his first address to the nation mentions that he and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton (he kept these idiots in place) will give to North Korea and Kim Jong Un the same fate of Libya and Gaddafi. Kim Jong Un, feeling doomed, fires his nuclear weapons towards Seoul, Tokyo, and San Francisco. Pence at first says good riddance to San Francisco because it is full of sinners and gays anyway, but Bolton convinces him to fire a nuke back at North Korea. The Russian and the Chinese get pissed off because of the radioactive fallout into their territories and fire nukes back at the US which retaliates massively. The entirely world population perishes in the resulting nuclear winter. The end.

GreatNews2night said:

Well, this is Debate Politics, so even if it's a book sub-forum, I'm surprised nobody has given you the following advice yet, so I will:

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In case you havent noticed, the Book Nook is under the Non-political forums section, and I wasn't asking for anyone to put any politics into this, so its pretty sad you would have to inject such partisan stuff into a thread which isnt one.

PoS said:

In case you havent noticed, the Book Nook is under the Non-political forums section, and I wasn't asking for anyone to put any politics into this, so its pretty sad you would have to inject such partisan stuff into a thread which isnt one.

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Gee, you can't take a joke?