I'm going to write a 5 novel series.
It is about a DIA analyst who becomes involved in a conspiracy when his best friend, an FBI agent, becomes the target of a CIA mind-control test and dies. His best friend's death sets him on a path to uncovering the truth about this conspiracy.
Give me advice on how to keep this from being trite and cliched. I want it to be like James Bond but with deep contemporary themes and realism.
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At the end of the story, he realises that he was the villain all along...
sounds impossible with that premise
Actually I planned on killing him off un-heroically and just ending there without an funeral/is he alive or not? bullshit.
That plot is totally trite and cliched. Revenge! Conspiracy! The government spooks are bad guys!
I think you should do the exact opposite:
Someone keeps sending his best friend chocolates and cookies. Everyone knows who it is! It's totally obvious AND IT GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP!
How do you know how many novels it will be before starting
ok
You haven't even seen it yet and I'm terrible at explaining things (I'm autistic). And I legit want to see what you have to contribute.
I outlined it.
>how to keep this from being trite and cliched
The MC is not frantically trying to explain and convince people along the way, nor is he trying to constantly downplay it to himself as "not really a conspiracy," he basically has no idea of the extent to which his probing would reach if he did it properly, but the reader gets more of a sense about how large it goes.
Also, about 2/3 of the way through the novel, the MC becomes a "useful idiot" to the people running the program. They don't kill him off, but by the end of the book he thinks he has totally gotten to the bottom of what happened but the reader knows he has actually been duped into assisting with the coverup/maintenance/even the implementation of their scheme.
Same user. Just to clarify: the MC is not a dumbass, he does get a lot of stuff right along the way, but the way its set up is such that not even the different departments working the thing know enough about the others to provide a complete picture if he did crack them. So instead he gets bits and pieces, starts getting FED bits and pieces, and by the end is convinced he has figured it all out.
(i apologize for the long reply, I have unrelenting autism)
This is what I've been going for really (except the part about playing into the scheme which is a good idea). Thanks.
>The MC is not frantically trying to explain and convince people along the way
This is really the big thing I'm avoiding. Being a DIA analyst, people already respect him and he really doesn't need to "convince" anyone of anything, so he'd really rather not. Part of his character is he is highly focused unless something catches him off-guard (which is what takes him down the rabbit-hole).
One character that "helps" him catch the first baddie is a Man In Black who feeds him misinformation and after that he doesn't call him out on it because he knows he's above him and he can easily end him and his quest.
>I have unrelenting autism
Can you stop pointing this out? It's not necessary.
Yeah, I like the sound of that. You know what would be new as far as my knowledge? The MC is almost bothered by the whole thing because he's super busy. Like, chasing up some of these things are almost just nagging thoughts he can't get rid of, but his principle emotion is often that he has better things to do and that he can't let anyone find out about his investigation because he needs to seem more efficient than that.
So it's not even that him looking into it would be scandalous, but he's under constant pressure to get a lot of work done, and so he's trying to hide the fact that he's wasting time with things that aren't really related to his job.
Well im an actual human intelligence collector.
The DIA is shit, so make sure your protagonist is a crayon eating retard.
The FBI is too busy jerking off to their CT budget to be involved in a conspiracy.
And the CIA just drone strikes people nowadays from air conditioned rooms.
If you want to be accurate it'll be a kafkaesque beauracratic nightmare where your HUMINT guy instead of doing his job sits through his 15th annual PowerPoint slide show followed by renewing his certifications for three hours, after which he struggles to write one single report because his boss continually sends them back because the words are too big and the date isn't written in the autistically correct format that changes format depending on the part of the report.
Also he tells every girl at the bar he's basically James Bond so they'll sleep with them.
I would totally read this. I want actual crayon eating and office masturbating over budgets.
[/spoiler] im writing a semi-fictional version of it rn desu senpai [/spoiler]
This I like. Already what I've gathered was this guy sees this threat that he knows how to handle only he's too pressed to handle it atm and on top of that the whole thing with his friend being attacked really gives him double vision going back and forth between problems. His job rewards efficiency and order and he can't do his job right when everything's going to shit around him.
This I really really want to get right (I said I wanted realism). Realism is what I want to add in to set it apart from stuff like James Bond and that glorified violence bullshit.
However, I think the boring reality of things has to be juxtaposed with even more horrifying reality (e.g. MKUltra, Die Junggebliebene, etc.) though I don't see contemporary audiences connecting with any of that which might actually be a good thing if done respectfully and educationally.
>The FBI is too busy jerking off to their CT budget to be involved in a conspiracy.
They're not involved. The guy who dies just happens to be FBI.
That's what I'm getting at. The horrifying reality is that intelligence is boring and a tedious exercise in crushing paperwork.
There's no conspiracies anymore. If you so much as leave a paper out you're getting your access to the SCIF revoked and a full investigation by a overweight bald guy with a coffee stain on his carbon copy white button up that smells like cigarettes and bourbon.
Good way to put it.
Or are the conspiracies now just hidden... In plain sight.
I'm sure you already know this but I'm going to point out you did it wrong
>hurr durr life is meaningless
Definitely an ending worth reading 5 novels for
How is the story coming along?
That's not what I meant at all.
I'm in the process of writing the synopsis of the first one, though I know how it goes because I also made a quick rundown.
I know basically what happens in the next four but not completely.
I do not at all know about publishing. I doubt anyone would buy this.