BozeSG's Mind Leaks

I made up a comedy story a few days ago and since i probably won't turn it into anything, i thought i might post it here:

Sky Mermaid
The story is about a boy who's scared of anything he sees. one day, his parents decide to go on a trip so they leave him with his uncle who's house is in the seaside for a few weeks.
the boy tries to cope with his fears so that his uncle and his wife won't know about his cowardliness, but one time, in the middle of the night he freaks out when he sees his own shadow on the wall while going to the toilet, so he runs out of the house and hides in the beach nearby, but again he freaks out at everything he sees (mostly, about the fact that the line between the sea and the sky is not distinguishable) there so he runs back into the house.
the next day, when he wakes up, he finds a baby mermaid (as big as his thumb) in his uncle's aquarium on the verge of being eaten by the other fish, turns out that at night, whenever the sea line cannot be seen, the sky and the sea connect and this baby mermaid had fallen from the sky to the sea and got into the boy's cloth when he was hiding in the beach.
the story revolves around the boy trying to raise the mermaid in three weeks ( the mermaid's got a frightening growth speed ) so she can go back to her home in he sky.

sorry if my literature skills suck, that's the main reason i got into manga and stuff that don't need much writing.

EDIT: i decided to turn this thread into a story/plot critique thread, from now on, i'll just post new stories/plots which come to my mind so other users say their critiques or comments about it. how is it going to help me? i'll become more and more skilled in both creating stories and telling them and i might get a hint of how the reader reacts to stories... so i'd appreciate it if you would just post your thoughts about the stories or point out things that are wrong about them.:cat_see:

FYI, the stories posted on this thread are mostly not going to be used by myself, so if you ever became interested in drawing a manga based on them, just let me know.:cat_thumbsup:

I don't like the way the mermaid appears, it seems a little too fantastic, if you know what I mean. I think having her fall out the sky or something would be more interesting than giving a weird, hand-waved explanation involving the sea and sky 'connecting'. I also think you'd need to foreshadow the appearance of the mermaid rather than just having it happen at random after he goes home.

Other than that, though, I like this significantly more than most of the story ideas that get posted here. It has a pleasingly 'fairytale' ring to it, like some of the old European folk tales, and if you executed it correctly it could be very interesting. On the other hand, it could be terrible if you did it badly (anime tropes would turn this into an abysmal Moe-style story), but that applies to everything. It's not cliché-ridden, though, and the concept is somewhat original, so I think you should give it a shot and look forward to reading the end product. :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ShaunG

sorry if my literature skills suck, that's the main reason i got into manga and stuff that don't need much writing.

---

Manga is harder to write than pure prose precisely because it utilises fewer words: what little there is needs to make as much of an impact, when combined with the images, as a large quantity of text would in a novel. You shouldn't forsake writing skills entirely unless you plan on having a partner to do all the writing for you.

Yeah, that's what i thought at first.... but later i came against this huge obstacle: "HOW THE HELL IS SHE GOING TO GO BACK TO THE SKY?":monkey_headbutt:

Those stories were actually the theme i based the story on, but unfotunately :monkey_ehheh: i even don't have the qualifying skill to turn that into a manga... that's what i mostly do, i make up stories in my mind when i'm bored, then i keep some in mind to turn into manga after i earn the skills and i just forget about some ( i can't turn a hundred stories into manga afterall, no matter how skilled i become ), so as i said at first, i just posted this cause i thought it'd be a waste to just forget it.

i know what you mean, my problem with literature is just describing stuff, i just can't describe stuff with words, i can't really get the scene that's in my head to the reader, that's why i'm trying to do that with manga... and i'm not forsaking them, i'm just saying that i'm not really talented in them (and english isn't my first language ,my own language has little popularity too.)

I agree. I like the idea, but it could go into moemoeland or Ponyoland really quickly if you're not careful. (And man, did I hate Ponyo. </unpopular opinion>)

Quote:

---

i know what you mean, my problem with literature is just describing stuff, i just can't describe stuff with words, i can't really get the scene that's in my head to the reader, that's why i'm trying to do that with manga... and i'm not forsaking them, i'm just saying that i'm not really talented in them (and english isn't my first language ,my own language has little popularity too.)

---

Just some advise, I think you could maybe post a short story or something with as much detail as you can put in it, and have it crit and see what you need to work on with your detail or anything else. Unless you don't like your work to be crit. That's something that helped me though.

@brain132: I'll be using your advice then.... on a bit bigger scale. thanks.

OK! so this is the second story:
It's been 40 years since the citizens inhabiting cities last saw the sun, it all happened when it started emitting a weak kind of radiation that would mutate human's soul, weakening it until the human would die of the lack of living courage. unable to move the colonies into other planets, the governments made counter-measures by creating a movable cloud of smoke made from nano robots to cover the sky, but the problem with that would've been the impossibility of satellite coverage and thus the reduction of security.
With that in mind, the governments added a capability of "tagging people" to the nano machines, the system worked like this: every person with legal identity would need a "tag camera" attached to the back of his neck, recording everything in his life, the nano machines would judge the person with a smart software. every person would be allowed a white and bright tag camera after birth but if he commited any crimes the colour of the camera would fade into dark black.
the story has a parallel structure at first, switcing between a death row prisoner with a pitch black tag camera who is sentenced to sunlight possibility (exiled from cities) and a couple with bright gray ones who hold a high status within the nobles in the city and then it proceeds with the couple running away from the city and meeting the death sentence prisoner.
after that, they decide to make a village in a cave, accepting anyone who is abolished and banned from cities.... but that won't last long as the city governments starts to attack their growing community, with getting fed up with the attacks, the villagers decide to infiltrate cities and take down the government...

Quote:

---

(anime tropes would turn this into an abysmal Moe-style story)

---

We do NOT need another one of those. Like most concepts, this has potential to be good, but Delph said enough about that.

I like this second story just a bit better (though the portrayed mood of the first one was more to my liking). Though, if they're sentenced to the "possibility" of sunlight, how would the governments attack them? Missiles? Drones?

I like that there's a lot of possibility for conflict. First of all, looking at the projected ending, what would actually happen if the refugees managed to take over the cities? While it seems like the right thing in the context of the stories, a city run by people who who were cast out of it for various reasons would NOT last long. One side of the cast could believe this to a good thing, i.e. if the government who cast them out was communist if they were capitalist, or vise-versa, while the other side could be thinking exactly what I just did.

Also, would the refugees accept a serial killer? How about a rapist? Or a pedophile? Or a serial killing child rapist? There should be conflict there. I hesitate to say "the more the better," because if we're so overloaded with problems that we can't keep up with the story, it's not gonna work. Everyone has their individual problems to deal with, but at the same time there are a lot of overshadowing problems that affect them all.

All in all, this is quite a good concept. It's been done before, but nothing's truly original. There are really only a few basic plots in existence*; it's all in how you write it.

*

SPOILER! :

The first seven . . .
1 - [wo]man vs. nature

2 - [wo]man vs. man

3 - [wo]man vs. the environment

4 - [wo]man vs. machines/technology

5 - [wo]man vs. the supernatural

6 - [wo]man vs. self

7 - [wo]man vs. god/religion

. . . can also be grouped together and put into another group of seven:

1. Overcoming the monster -- defeating some force which threatens...
e.g. most Hollywood movies; Star Wars, James Bond.

2. The Quest -- typically a group setoff in search of something and
(usually) find it. e.g. Watership Down, Pilgrim's Progress.

3. Journey and Return -- the hero journeys away from home to somewhere
different and finally comes back having experienced something and
maybe changed for the better. e.g. Wizard of Oz, Gullivers Travels.

4. Comedy - not neccesarily a funny plot. Some kind of
misunderstanding or ignorance is created that keeps parties apart
which is resolved towards the end bringing them back together. e.g.
Bridget Jones Diary, War and Peace.

5. Tragedy - Someone is tempted in some way, vanity, greed etc and
becomes increasingly desperate or trapped by their actions until at a
climax they usually die. Unless it's a Hollywood movie, when they
escape to a happy ending. e.g. Devils' Advocate, Hamlet.

6. Rebirth - hero is captured or oppressed and seems to be in a state
of living death until it seems all is lost when miraculously they are
freed. e.g. Snow White.

7. Rags to Riches - Cinderella.

And there are even more ways to classify them, but everything boils down to those few things.

--disclaimer: I ripped those examples and stuff from Google answers.

Like i said, i had a fairytale story in mind when i wrote that, do i look like someone who only thinks about moe to you?:cat_yell: /jk

I'd say that there isn't any threat if there's no sunlight so the government soldier would only need to wear protective clothing, well... covering themselves from the sun is how the refugees keep living anyway.

I was thinking more along the lines of them being unsuccessful and die:monkey_chainsaw: but i guess i still hadn't mentioned that so you're pretty much right.

That's a very good point! i guess i should keep their community a bit more limited so that i can proceed smoother (for example, throw in the government attack a bit sooner.)

I didn't understand what you meant in the last part and the spoiler,:cat_whirly: did you mean that every story can be written in a few different styles and those are the ones mentioned in the spoiler?

This third one is a bit one shot-like...

The story is set in a flat earth... or should i say... two flat earths...
Rast and Chap are two broad and flat plate-like continents parallel to each other in a way that if someone from Rast would look up at the sky with a very powerful telescope, he would see someone who's living in Chap and vice versa. In the middle these two plates is a another plate made out of unbreakable hard glass, which is essentially there to cancel out the reverse gravities of the two worlds.
The people who lived in these two continents were proud of themselves and in the hope of gaining domination, they started to attack the other world, but the glass plate made them all ineffective creating a situation of discomfort for the residents in the two worlds.
And so, the younger class started a new way to challenge each other: Graffiti Wars.
By wearing protective clothing for the atmosphere pressure ( it looks like an old diving suit ) and a new technology for creating long ropes, they hang from the glass sky with a hook and they try to do graffiti on it, there are no rules, it's just that whoever does it better earns more respect for his/her continent.
Now the story, is about a graffiti artist who has made a home for himself in the sky and his job is to monitor the other artists who do graffiti on the sky and keep a record for their works, but one day, he sees small cracks on the glass sky....

Phew, this plot was pretty hard to explain...