Greentext the plot of whatever it is you're pretending to work on

>Not being able to write a novel off a single sentence

You're never going to make it in the business if you can't work off prompts.

>implying any successful novel was 'discovered' via prompt

>implying my first published novel wasn't based off a prompt I pulled from tumblr

And before you ask, no I won't link it, don't need to help you all track me down for the two ideas I've already stolen from this thread.

kinda loose for now
>dude is born with mysterious disease which causes him to feel no sensation at all, making him feel disconnected from the physical world
>starts an interest of metaphysical philosophy because of so
>best friend couldn't give less of a fuck
>slight interest in philosophy because of friend, but too much of a brainlet to understand the deeper meanings
>has substance abuse issues
>develops schizophrenia from smoking weed as a child
>feels intense dissociation a lot
>philosophy friend tries to help him with his issues but he doesnt want any help
>his life is going into a downward spiral and frustrates his friend which distracts him from studying
>eventually philosophy friend fucking loses it and "euthanizes" his friend who was basically dead already
>immediately after realizing what he's done, he feels an intense burning in his body and mind
>lays his hand on his dead friend's body and can actually feel things now
>some cain and abel allegory
>some shit about self-destruction, alienation, and internal ethical argument

if you're able to write an entire novel from a few lines of greentext, you deserve the credit for it.

clever girl

I assume it wouldn't be impossible for one dude to ruin such a small ecosystem over the course of a couple of years. I'm not talking huge swathes of forests, I'm talking like 200 acres or so.

I feel like you're severely underestimating nature if you're only talking about a couple of years

I wrote a story based off of a prompt a while back that garnered me somewhere in the range of $400. It was only ~100,000 words, but was completely devoid of any literary merit and was centred around a gimmick in the prompt.

I'm not saying the same is the case with your stuff, but I feel like there's little literary merit in these kinds of stories.

Besides don't you write for the enjoyment of it? To get your own thoughts out there? I'd find little fun in ripping some user's ideas compared to making my own.

Perhaps. I'll have to do some more research I guess. Cheers.

>only 100k words

Nigga thats a lot of fuckin words

Interesting, but I imagine it'd be a bitch to write someone who can't feel shit. Can people like that even function at all if they have no feelings from birth?
I don't know. It'd be a feat if you could pull it off.

i'd call the idea kafkaesque but it would probably be more kafkaesque if he just lost all his sensation randomly one day
people who are born blind function better with their disability than someone who becomes blind later in life
i would imagine someone born without sensation just gets accustomed to it and figures out how to function a normal (yet very limited in stimuli) life

Alright, lay it on me
>Legislative debates about the medical field tampering into transhumanism and human dignity favours the side of genetic engineering
>Government and medical board then support and conduct mass research in the field of biotechnology
>Depressive, hypocritical and indecisive MC who is a scientist specialising in stated field has produced the 'miracle' drug that stops the ageing process of the user and thus grants him 'immortality'.
>MC has ulterior motives of fixing up his life due to bad life decisions and feels pressured since he is a middle-aged now in the given time.
>Steals the drug, run aways from the facility, maybe burn it down, escapes and lives under the government's radar for decades to come
>The story kicks in after years have passed after the incident, maybe around 50-500 years, where he realizes that after his shenanigans, he makes more mistakes than he could resolve and thus feels hopeless and broken
>Then realizes that no one should live this life and thus commits to serving only one purpose: to stop the replication of the drug.

I know, there are so many questions about this, but I don't know about this story.

>MC yarn #1: MC1 Male soldier summoned to his commanding officer's tent, is charged with serious crime of treason.
>MC1 flees, jumps into river, gets washed out to sea
>nearly drowns, is fished out by MC7, a spy working against MC1's country, Country A
>MC7 drops MC1 off at Country A
>MC1 returns home, finds it burned down, kills off a couple of men, eventually finds his younger brother and sister.
>MC1 learns from them that their gov't is looking for some lost scrolls some ancestor of his wrote. Realizes that his distant relatives live in country B, which recently broke off from country A, and that he needs to get there to save them.
>MC1 chases the remaining gov't agent to another port city.
>MC1 sneaks into domestic transport ship the agent is boarding. It's carrying a squadron of gov't agents. Ship is uncoincidentally heading to country B.
>MC1 lands there, takes note of the gov't agents coming out. MC1 attacks, chaos erupts.
>Remaining agents flee back to country A.
>Country A declares war on Country B, where MC1 is living in. Meanwhile, MC1 spends the next few months moving from relative's house to relative's house, searching, and warning them of danger, all while living off of manual labor monies.
>MC1 finds the scrolls that Country A is looking for.
>MC1's current place eventually ambushed by agents, because it is home of some of his distant relatives. Everyone of these relatives die except for MC1 and one of the children, who flee in the middle of all-out war.
>But MC1 was poisoned during the attack.
>MC1 and boy hide in boy's friend's house some miles up.
>They smuggle them both to Country C, another chunk of civilization currently rebelling from Country A.
>the new leader of this country was actually an official who had intel on Country A's king, so he knows about Country A's king's hunt for MC1. He knows MC1's story.
>MC1 learns that he is the reason why Country A went to war with Country B. Hence, he is also the important factor in enabling Country C and Country D to successfully break off from Country A. He is praised for this.
>MC1 is awarded chance to retrieve his siblings from Country A.
>MC1's war party rescue siblings, they are chased by Country A forces through mountains and into Country D.
>MC1 and co. board another ship there, embark for Country C. But the king of Country D realizes who MC1 is, sends Stealthy Bad Guy to snatch his scrolls back.
>So, Stealthy BG boards the ship.
>Eventually SBG fights MC1, but the crew subdue him.
>SBG tells everyone that he works for king of Country D, the crew hesitate, but in the end they think he's full of shit and take MC1's side.
>However, the guy navigating the ship is secretly on SBG's side, recognizing him. He secretly steers the ship back to Country D's port.
>MC1 realizes they're heading back, so he subdues the navigator.
>No other person capable of navigating the ship, MC1 tries to navigate everyone to country C.

(cont.)
>They end up all the way in a vast, barbaric wilderness, where Country A constantly runs its armies as cannon fodder against barbaric
Country E and F, and another Imperial Country G, who also are all at war with Demonic Horde. This is a four-sided war, where it's Country A vs. Demons vs. Country E-F-&angels-&CountryG. This is a another continent, the same one where MC1's story first began, but it's in a different part of it.
and this is just yarn/pov #1

I messed up my greentext. Oh well.

I'd be so fuckin touched if someone stole my plot.

>Man in city showing friend his manuscript
>Friend hates on manuscript, man is upset, gets lost in city
>Overwhelmed by crowds, he ducks into a vacant alley occupied by a mute homeless man
>Asks for directions without success, bum looks at the passing crowd, then down the alley, then up to him
>Decides to go down alley in hopes of avoiding crowds and finding somewhere familiar
>Alley turns into a high walled maze

Don't know where to go from here, man could pursue maze and leave pages of his shitty manuscript as a literal paper trail, maybe.
I'm fairly happy with what I have so far and I will post what I have by the end of the night if you guys can help me out with the plot

Underrated post, 9/10 genuinely kek'd

So why would I care if you steal my idea if no one is going to read it anyway, not in your illiterate third world country let alone in America?

>Political dystopia
>Imagine an American Dictator on the level of Hitler or Stalin
>Imagine that dictator being a woman
>Themes include the dark side of feminity and the political psyche in America
>Narrated by Psychology professor in the political gulag It's based on JPB
>It is essentially the decline and fall of the roman empire but with a fictitious America

Genuine kek.

Fucked up versions of whatever is in each dropped page of the manuscript materialize in the maze

One does not simply hunt rabbits to oblivion.

Also one hactare (2.5 acres) of forest yields about 300 to 1000 cubic meters of firewood.

Kek omg. This is awesome.

This is going to be a bestseller when it comes out

Well the moron market is a fruitful one.

bugs.. easy on the depopulation

Not very interesting and even less realistic.
Over the top and feels anime-ish but intriguing for sure.
Do you seriously think you're going to achieve shit when you can't come up with ideas?
Platonic romances, how risqué!
>which causes him to feel no sensation at all
Sounds like your average 4channer autofellatio but with a semi interesting twist, that'll make it even harder to pull off well.
>I don't know about this story.
Yeah...
Too much detail, too few reasons to care ... and reads like a vidya plot.
Not too bad with potential for something really cool.
Decent suggestion.
Can be decent if you don't sperg out pushing your own beliefs and opinions too hard.

Come on Veeky Forums, you can do better.

>Do you seriously think you're going to achieve shit when you can't come up with ideas?

Worked for most writers on the List.

I've got a few
>5 year old boy invents an imaginary friend
>first person narrative from the perspective of the imaginary friend
>13 years later he still has the same imaginary friend
>that he takes very seriously
>parents have sent him to a half dozen psychiatrists and therapists
>none of it works
>most of the story is just an exposition on how childlike imaginations and daydreaming work
>not sure how to end it but it might end with his parents taking the kid to some kind of mystic who invents an imaginary assassin to kill the narrator in a chase-sequence that will hopefully be reminiscent of the Quilty chase scene in Lolita
Another one that's just an idea, and I don't think I'm good enough to write it, so feel free to steal it:
>takes place in hell
>but no one can remember the sins they committed that damned them
>psychogical detective story where the protag tries to deduce the cause of his damnation

Where did you get that idea? Just because their shit is cliche painting by numbers stuff, doesn't mean they didn't came up with it, after going through hundreds of other unoriginal but their own ideas. Coming up with SOMETHING is too fundamental for writing, and affects the entire thing. Someone struggling with that, won't make it.

Read Walden.
Also look at cases where survivalists failed. One guy in Alaska went off into the woods to live by himself off of nature. He killed an elk but the meat spoiled, and on the way back to civilization he drowned in the river.

Hey reviewbrah, what do you think about mine

Look you shitdick, this isn't Randy Rates plot greentext thread, we don't need your goddamn opinion on

every fucking post. Do you walk into grocery stores and start rating the produce? Well, shit

this apple's a bit browner than the other, I don't understand this cucumber, that's the best

fucking grapefruit I've ever seen. No, you don't do that. So why the fuck do you think we need

you to analyze every fucking post someone puts up? If I ever see some retard rating asparagus

I'm going to walk right up to him and kick him in the dick, because I know with confidence it

will be you

First one is pretty cute and got quite the potential, I feel a bit biased because I really like the themes and because the presentation itself is very well done, instantly opening up floodgates for all the fun things one could do with the concept. Ending sounds ... decent, although somewhat anticlimactic.

Second one is potentially interesting, just too underdeveloped to comment further.

How did you arrive to the idea that there is even a remote possibility that your needs are of any interest for me, user? It's fun rating stuff. If some user gets encouraged by feedback, it's just a little bonus enjoyment. As are the anons who get triggered. If feedback is an issue for someone, they shouldn't publish their stuff for others to see.

Also, there are no good grapefruits. I don't get how people can enjoy that shit.

>snake alien crawls up man's ass while asleep
>man slowly turns into giant female snake
>lays eggs
>struggles to survive and keep eggs safe

A short story collection.

>winter, European city I live in
>popular area associated with bars and clubs and art galleries
>a table is reserved in a bar. It has been reserved for the same person every night, for years
>sometimes he comes, sometimes he doesn't
>a curious young writer keeps going to the bar to check if the man is there
>finally meets him
>they talk
>man finds out young dude is a writer
>ptsd.jpg
>Man slowly opens up, says he used to be a writer too
>hasn't written in years, young dude asks why
>will tell more to the young dude during the course of a few weeks at the reserved table, drinking through it as he opens up
>each story he tells is a short story obviously

This is the general idea.

What is it about/notes:
>man's youth
>man's first existential crisis
>man's depression that doesn't fade through the years, explains his views
>man living the bohemian literary life
>he finds the bar and the table with his friends in this stage, frequents ever since
>First time man is published (he's still relatively unknown and forgotten by the time he meets young dude)
>man finds love and settles down with poet who's also depressed
>their years together, struggling but as happy as it can be given muh depression
>She can't take it anymore and commits suicide
>man can't write anymore
>he keeps going back to the bar
>that's how he meets young dude
>concludes his story with a monologue that sums up his mentality through the years
>"that's a beautiful story"
>"write it then. I won't. It's yours"
>says goodbye to the young dude
>man drowns himself in the river of the city
>table is still reserved for weeks, no one realizes he won't come back
>then they do and the young dude "takes his place"
>him and his friends are the new "generation"
>hint at young dudes own depression and similar fate
>short story collection was actually written by young dude, based on what the man told him

It's loosely based on the notebooks I kept from 17 to 24. Some stories are lighthearted, some are heavier.

Too bourgeois. Poets struggling in Europe and writing about being cosmopolitan is something that's been done for over a hundred years now

>when you go to bed tonight you will hear a strange sound
>you will look around, not knowing where it came from
>after thinking it was just a nonthreatening noise or your imagination you will try and go to sleep
>as you feel your eyelids getting heavy and the world growing darker you hear the strange sound again
>you jolt up, desperately looking left and right
>you don't see anything
>your chest pounding and your body trembling, you say to yourself: "just a dream, just a dream"
>despite saying this you go over and turn the light on, before getting back into bed
>you're drifting off to sleep again
>you dream of beautiful women and wonderful adventures
>you awake burning in agony
>a masked lunatic is on top of you, strangling you to death
>your eyes bulge as you try and remove the villain
>your arms drop, everything fades into eternal darkness

Sounds neat, maybe not as a collection though.

>man comes home to work to find his wife in bed
>Bleeding, naked, and dead , blood seeming to have gushed from vagina
>She was raped, and suffered so much internal trauma that she bled to death from the act itself
>He's a photographer, and he loves the scene so much that instead of helping her or calling an ambulance , he takes photos of the gorgeous moment
>Is taken aback by the lifelessness of the corpse
>After a few photo sessions, he begins making love with the corpse to feel how it must've been to be the rapist and watch his wife die
>Finishes up
>Leaves her be, and develops the photos
>Leaves corpse right where it is , video taping it's decay.
>One week later, after reviewing the tapes, he sees that there is a man repeatedly looking through the windows for 5-10 minutes every day at the same time
>It's him, the rapist
>He knows what the husband has been doing and is intrigued
>the husband eventually invites him in
>Asks him for a favor
>"Show me what it was like"
>Story ends with him being raped to death next to his wife's corpse
>"I'll see you soon, sweetheart, I'll see you soon"
Thoughts?

Meh, worst that can happen is it gets rejected. You're perfectly right though. Most of acclaimed writers in my country got drunk and struggled on the exact same streets my friends and I did (and to some extent still do).

That's just how it is, and if I want to write something loosely based on my first hand experiences, I cannot hide it. It's bourgeois and overdone, but that's the nature of living the literary life -no matter if pseud as in our case or "authentic" as it was for those who came before- in my country.

Sounds like the preachy work of someone that read dystopian fiction too much as a teenager.

Jesus Christ, why are you trying so hard to be edgy?

Edgy af

Because edgy is exactly what I want it to be? The grotesque is not meant to be pleasant.

Fucking plebians.

>man writes great plot for novel
>it's breathtaking
>posts it on Veeky Forums
>woman steals plot
>woman becomes next rupi kaur

That suggests that rupi was good at some point. You can't even string a thought together, what are you doing here?

Not giving out good plots to be stolen, FBI.

Try this.

Go from a secondary character who meets this person. Start the story at that character's life-changing experience that pushes them together with your original MC. Over time make sure you leak in the hints at his history. Outdated mannerisms, intimate knowledge of historical events, constant desire to have said serum in a closed container on his/her person.

I highly doubt you have anything worthwhile. Though you can test me if yPu want to.

I agree that its edgy but it could also be really interesting depending on the execution

>CEO of a Google type corporation has a mental break and is going to pull an Enron in 7 days.
>Various employees live life unaware of the fact that it is their last week of solvency.

I've actually posted most of the story so far in threads around lit.

>too few reasons to care
are you talking about motives for characters, or motives for you to read it?

Nah, the motives seem alright, just presented in a way that doesn't allow me to build any interest for it. Like, there was nothing striking about the situation, the goal or how MC1 deals with it all. Obviously greentext format is somewhat limiting for that, but hey, jus' sayin'.

I'm not going to be pulling a Tess D'Ubervilles where all the grotesque elements are left out of the novel but are implied to happen "off screen" in fact I somewhat want it to be the anti-thesis of that kind of that kind of horror, instead I want it to be as graphic and detailed as possible

>Man and dog on a cross country journey.
>Wacky hijinks ensue
>Begins getting darker and less wacky the farther from civilization they go.
>Man decides to murder a homeless man he meets in the woods.
>Once they get back to more populated areas it starts to lighten up and become wacky again
>Turns out the man never existed and it was the dog the whole time.
>Dog lays down and dies in a back alley.

Oh, alright. Yes, the tone I used to present it was really crude. Maybe I should work on how I pitch things if I ever try going to a publisher or editor. Thanks anyways.

>war on terror in a setting resembling the cold war era (with futuristic bits like much more advanced medicine)
>lighthearted tone edging on satire to balance out the bleak stuff
>told from multiple points of view (idealistic megalomaniac, pretentious artist, disillusioned triple agent, sociopathic heiress, naive refugee, and a chick who tries to be a decent human being, hence obviously dies in the middle)
>they cross paths, fuck each other over, fuck each other, and have long witty dialogues, sometimes while fucking or fucking each other over
>there are also lots of terrorism, gambling and bad decisions between the banter
>it's mostly about following big goals and sacrifices on the way (ambition vs love) and exploration of the nature of suffering/problem of evil, the joys of hypocrisy and playing around with perspective/subjectivity and obviously absurdism
>in the end it's revealed that the majority of the book was written by one of the characters, who might have or might not have had her hands in all of the happenings

>man escapes zoo in a satirical feminist dystopia, finding refuge in a woman's house.
Haven't really thought about it too much, but the woman might pity him? Change her worldview?

Have some filler happen which leads up to this woman imprisoning him and treating him like he's her pet rabbit. Perhaps you can make it so that his desires gradually shift to wanting to go back to the zoo just to get away from her.

>guy wakes up with a mysterious plastic knob growing out of his head

>An account of a man's suicide as told from the perspective of the noose.

>you can do better
I can but the rest of these fucks don't have a chance

>be me

>Prologue starts with a character on jury duty attending a trial
>the one being trialed is a US whistleblower
>as things start to get more heated, a bomb goes off
>next chapter the protagonist of the novel who works in the police is assigned to the case
>investigates the debris and ruins of the courthouse
>everyone in the department is "convinced" it was a deliberate terrorist attempt
>protagonist thinks that's not the truth and begins to dwell deeper
>he comes across a "rabbit hole" of a conspiracy and becomes increasingly paranoid

Based Gregory Berrycone

>murder mystery where the perpetrator appears to be made up of the amputated parts of 14 different people

>protag is a young lad who is bored of life and wants to do something interested
>is envious of other people who are wealthy and stuff
>proposes an idea to steal an invitation of a party
>turns out said party is for wealthy and influential people of the small city the protag resides about
>the party is held inside a mansion by an unknown host
>it was a death trap all allong where guest after guest ends up disappearing/turning up dead
>protag regrets his decision

I'd read it.

> Novel is the life story of a schizoaffective transsexual who thinks they're a dragon
> Interwoven narrative jumps back and forth between school life, a bizarre lovecraftian style dream, the challenges of mental illness and all the general bullshit oppression narrative that goes with being trans, a video game series they're working on, and a trip to europe that ends in adopting some sort of weird heretical christianity.
> It's just my life desu
> mfw I'm trying to finish writing it before I kill myself because I'm homeless atm with no real chance of escape.
> mfw can't write, can't think, no discernible talent

you can steal all the ideas you want, but you still can't write a single line to save your life.

>set in Hungary
>great grandfather fights in WWI, drinks, beats son
>son grows up, has child, is now grandfather
>grandfather fights in WWII, drinks, beats son
>son grows up, has child, is now father
>father does not fight in war, still drinks and beats son, both live with grandfather
>grandfather lives to see what father does to son firsthand, and in his old age tries to convince father that this is not the way to raise a child, despite raising father in this exact way
>grandfather tries to be role model for son, doesn't know how
>fights with father often
>father eventually kills himself after coming to realisation he is a piec of shit
>son runs away
>years later, son returns to granfather with child of his own
>they live together uneasily
>he drinks too much one day and hits his son, and leaves the next day forever
>grandfather tries to raise grandson himself to not be like him or father

>all of them are named Istvan

Then you've got nothing to worry about, right?

Quick, tell me that idea you think will put your name on the map :)

I mean

If you just write a short book about your somewhat fictionalised experiences as a homeless person, intercut with your bizarre dreams, and then kill yourself shortly after it's published, it could gain some attention. Dead artists are better in the eyes of the public, for some reason.

I'm expecting it realistically to be about 300 pages. I don't want to write about homelessness. Homelessness isn't interesting. Nor is it's uninteresting-ness so interesting that I can't capture those themes by writing on other aspects of my life.

So are you counting on its bizarre qualities?

I won't post my main idea, since it's actually really good.
This is my second idea, which is really undeveloped.
>Fantasy world. Not with elves.
>A hotel isolated in the woods, with no signs of civilization close by
>The woods have mystic dangers and monsters the deeper you go
>Woods are not that important to plot, as most of the action will be inside the hotel
>Main character explores the hotel, and finds out about all the interesting characters.
>The main question after a while becomes: if the woods are so dangerous, why don't the monsters attack the hotel?
>Will use the allegory of the hotel being a star, and the forest being darkness.

Would read

What's the conspiracy? This is only worth it if its not some faux political bullshit.

>>all of them are named Istvan
Fucking kek

I'm just trying to be sincere and capture my perspective and philosophy, preferably in the right tone and using the right tools of expression.

my novel doesn't have, or need, a "plot"

Getting some 'Serbian Film' vibes from this one. Would maybe read.

This one actually sounds interesting. I can imagine it having various points where characters interact with each other, retold from different points of view. Would it simply be descriptive, or would it be narrated in a 'unaware of what is going to happen, they make these plans and do this' sort of way? Would read either way.

>he was never really there meme
Unless this is extra satire, then stop. Would not read.

Seems quite needlesly complex and with too many characters, but perhaps that's just your description. Interesting concept, difficult to pull off effectively. Might read.

This would really only be interesting if there either very obviously is no conspiracy, or it's never revealed whether there is one or not or left vague. Otherwise, would not read.

Agatha Christie please go

I can't imagine this as anything other than surrealism or tumblr-tier garbage. Would not read.

Somehow this reminds me of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. Would read.

Underdeveloped is right. It just sounds like that one episode of 'Over the Garden Wall'. Would maybe read.

>inb4 autist responds to every post

> I can't imagine this as anything other than surrealism or tumblr-tier garbage. Would not read.

Then you're unimaginative, and also predictable.

If that is your first book and you cannot write, you should really pick an easier idea.