Ideas would be nice.

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I'm starting my next novel soon (I just finished the alternate WW1 timeline)

It's going to be non-traditional epic fantasy.

Non-traditional in the fact it takes place from the point of view of two characters. It will be half and half (roughly) and the characters will be balanced foes - each will have human motivations and wants.

I want the reader to decide whose "good" and "evil"

I've already got the first character pretty much thought out. An older male with a quiet, reserved disposition. He's well-off and philanthropic but his issues with pedophilia and severe anger issues.

I'm stuck in writers block for the other character and suggestions are welcome.

REMEMBER: Balanced, this character is not a generic villian or hero. He/She is well-meaning but opposed to the other character.

the other can be a young female socialist/ communist, clever, but cold and calculating... believes herself to be highly moralistic despite the fact she wants to eliminate your friend up there and all people like him

How about: a Chicken and an Egg -nah it's been done.

Do animals interst you? -some of the best books (orwell) were done with nothing more then a child's storyline...which allows both the obtuse and acute observer to read it.

never heard of him, but I'll gooogle it..I first read oscar myers! and was about to sing the hotdog song.

seriously though...

What's the plot? ,, I have always liked Techno books, maybe a detective and a robot... no that's been done too.

uh I dunno.

if you want a interesting perspective of using more than one character to tell a story, check out a confederacy of dunces. which isnt' narrated from two characters' view points but the way it's told is definately from more than one perspective.


i think one thing that would be interesting with the older reserved male character would be to have a younger, outgoing male to antagonize each other...not necessarily directly but maybe in political views and points where they meet a couple times in their lives. make both characters neutral and where the reader pretty much sides with one or the other but the story remains the same and leaves it to the reader to decide who is right or wrong...........maybe?


maybe in writing it, you'll have to open up your own mind to ideas and have to justify various positions? it'd be an interesting exercise as well as being an interesting approach to a book.

Hmm....how about a younger male who thinks that he has high morals and thinks he knows what is right and wrong and who opposes the older character based on his own morals... in a way he is even trying to be open minded and accepting of the older character...because out of his good intention, he wants to help the older character. However as the two characters go through a convoluted and crazy journey, in the end the younger character finds himself acting in the same way as the older character or even to a more intense degree. (In becomes clear in the end that they were...sort of the mirror images of one another). It is not that he has given up his morals or has changed significantly, but he discovers that the qualities that he were so against to and that he attributed to the older character were existent in himself as well...his journey would be about the unfolding of the unrecognized nature...The story could show the diversity/complexity/ambivalence of human nature...and the unpredictablity of their actions...Just an idea...

How about someone that wants it for her love/girl who is trapped/dying?

or someone with a dark past that wants to forget it

or someone that has to do things that he doesn't want to because of some external forces?

hope that helps

I'm reminded of a Shadowrun novel I read. I'm trying to remember if it was trash or not. (I think it was) It was written from the perspective of probably around 6 or so different people. Rather, each chapter could have been from a different perspective than the last.


It seems like everything is about good vs evil. It may be an idea to just throw out that idea and just make it a conflict between the two characters. An example of this might be that there's a forest where all kinds of monsters live that are going out and eating people. A group of people might start burning the forest down, which has the response of the people living there responding by killing the tree burners. It could be argued that neither group is really evil, but are instead over reacting. How that would work to the theme could go any number of ways.

Sometime, in some fashion I want to do some kind of story about one of my characters. I've given a fair bit of thought about things but not much is really set right now. I kind of don't want it to be a good vs evil thing, but it may be unavoidable. But certainly where the character shines is from the inner and inter personal conflict (it's going to be loosely based on some experiences I had playing Shadowrun over the net)

Oh. You want suggestions on what the conflict should be.

They should differing ideals. You can decide on personality on your own, but it might be best if the two of them both have a fairly compelling case. Not that I want to start up a debate here (that's for the politics section), but if you look at the abortion debate (pro life/ pro choice), neither side can really be said to be wrong.

Grossly simplifying the positions, one believes that life begins at conception and that life should be protected, and the other that life does not begin at conception and that we do not have the right to interfere with womens bodies.


Surprisingly enough I don't really buy comic books, I've been looking at some of this stuff from the Marvel 'Civil War' line. Seems like this is one of their better lines. On one side, there was a group that wanted to force everyone with super powers to register, and on the other they believed this was wrong. Different writers had different thoughts on this, so individual stories would have a different slant to them.

cool ida once i thought a book was doing that ... then it turned out it was just poorly written and i totally missed the point

a conflict in ideology could get messy .... and subjective

perhaps something with politics an optional subtext, like maby there work together .... you could use something like pranks on each other to contrast there moods and flaws

but then i have no idea how an idea like that would workout

Found this today, hope it helps:

Kurt Vonnegut

Eight rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

-- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.