My helpful little sister sent me a great email last night that was filled with awesome questions to generate a story from my current ideas. I took my time with the response and came up with a possible idea for the plot of this book. Just thought I'd post my reply to help with the general understanding of what's going on. I'll incorporate it into my info pages so it's easier to look up when I'm writing.
900 years is a very long time and a lot of things can happen, which is what I always end up thinking about when I try to think of plot devices. I did (well, Jesse proposed it) have an idea for a war that would both set technology back and cause humans to want to leave earth and terraform other planets, probably Mars first. Somehow, the war would turn the Atlantic Ocean uninhabitable (possibly some African war full of nuclear weapons that start to destroy the Atlantic Ocean and parts of the Indian so humans are forced to work together to save the Pacific ocean. This would mean a lot of destruction, such as everything east of the Andes mountains in South America (especially the entire Amazon forest basin), the Caribbean, parts of Mexico/Latin America, the entire Eastern Seaboard of America, all of the United Kingdom, and many European countries, not to mention most of Africa, if not all of it) and only a few places would be habitable, such as Australia where Scarlett is from. This disaster would certainly set the technology of the age back and make it so technology is not 900 years advanced. That makes this a little easier to think about, I think. Because this would be a huuuuuge disaster and could easily put the Earth into a rebuilding era that could last hundreds of years simply because of the nuclear fallout. Scarlett could be the one to invent wormhole travel because space travel could also be rather new. I'm not super fond of trying to make up alien races, languages, idiosyncrasies, and stuff so probably no intelligent aliens.
I would like to be as original as possible, but I think I will have to borrow some ideas. I mean, I've already been inspired by several books for my ideas; can't you see Jax [heroine of Ann Aguirre's Sirantha Jax series] in Scarlett? I loved Jayne too much not to have an homage to him. I guess Devon is a little more like Mal than I though, lol. Some of my science-techy thoughts are from other books, like the space-travel age effect is from Ender's universe, but now that I have this war idea, I don't think space travel will be that old and therefore Devon is older for another reason. I think he might be the main plot device. Anyway, I'm okay with borrowing ideas as long as it's okay if I do, haha. I'll give credit where the credit is due!
I haven't thought too much about the planets yet, but I think it would be cool if each one is different. The planets in the Enderverse come to my mind, like each one is dominated by one culture/religion/ethnicity. Kind of like a country on a global scale. So by nature they would all be very different and have varying levels of technology and such.
To be honest, my story hasn't had much of a plot; it's just been character making and through their backgrounds I've been formulating a major story arch. Actually, most of it was created while I've been typing this email, haha. I'm thinking Devon is actually the main plot line, having been created on earth by some country that was able to keep up its technology through the radioactive apocalypse and has created humans that can live forever (their dna doesn't break down over time. Needs other improvements, though) and are probably trained to be sleeper agents or something. Like I said, it's still very new. But Scarlett could find Devon somewhere in the back alleys of space and help him escape from his weird sciencey fate at the hands of this secret agency. Hmm. I guess that sounds like Firefly... Is that bad? The idea is still being formulated, I guess, but maybe it would still work. I'll have to go back and fix the character sheet for Devon if I choose to follow this idea.
So then maybe Scarlett's treasure is saving Devon? She just likes being a pirate to be a pirate and have awesome adventures. I think she's also using it as a cover while she looks for her mother who disappeared when she was still very young. Perhaps the mother was taken by the same agency that made Devon? Oooh, the plot thickens. But for what reason? Maybe Scarlett's intuition is from a mutation in her genes that her mother carries and the agency wants to experiment on her! Ooh, this is fun to think about, haha.
But there is definitely going to be some romance between these characters [Devon and Scarlett]. I think it's going to be a prickly situation between the two of them first. I really want to write some wittily argumentative scenes between them. They're very opposite of each other for this reason, actually. I love romantic comedies, so I guess this relationship will be influenced by that.
And the antagonist of the story would be this agency, I guess? They're the ultimate evil as far as Devon knows, but there could be actual human antagonists for the subplots. I mean, Scarlett is a pirate, she's had to have made some enemies along the way. Plus she likes to out drink people, bar scenes are going to be great.
Now that's some improvement. :D
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