A little help for an aspiring storywriter?

[A Rainy Knight]

Facts about self: I've pretty much got the whole "grammar, usage, and mechanics" part of English down, and I'm one of the biggest readers in my school. So, I thought that I might try writing a little story of my own as a hobby of sorts. Something that I could put a little time aside for each day. The main flaw I've got in pretty much everything I write: I can't find any sort of decent way to put my plot in action or bring it to a close. Once I get going, though, I think that I could make something that I at the very least would enjoy reading.

This is my rough idea of something I'd like to try, even though it's probably been done before:

Some sort of protagonist who I will fill out at some point is brought into the world of literature to combat some sort of antagonist. With the help of classic literary characters like the awkwardly noble Don Quixote, the keen Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant Porfiry Petrovich, the gallant Musketeers and D'artagnan, the wild Mowgli, and such and such, the protagonist navigates his way through all sorts of settings to a conclusion. I like the idea of being able to see all these classic characters from a new perspective and trying to imagine what they would be like based on what we see of them in their works.

I just can't think how to put my protagonist in the literature world, what antagonist he should struggle with, and how he should ultimately defeat the antagonist and return to the real world. As you can no doubt tell, I am completely open to fantasy.

[hamishspence]

Last Action Hero isn't this, but its more than halfway there- the villian threatens to bring in other villains from all over the Worlds of Fiction (movie fiction) but we only see one besides him, and only one hero.

its an interesting concept, and a possible place to start drawing ideas from.

[Joran]

Sounds like a pretty interesting story idea; it is reminiscent of other similar stories, but seems like it would be fun to read.

To get into the world of books, here's some ideas that were taken from classic works of fiction.

1) The "It's all a dream" method: Taken from the Wizard of Oz, some sort of traumatic event happens (ie. tornado) and the character loses consciousness and ends up lost in a world they don't recognize.

For example: kid sick with chicken pox, reads while he gets over it, has a high fever and passes out into book world

2) A portal event: Walking through a door or something else leads the character to the world of books. Alice in Wonderland did this, as well as Coraline by Neil Gaiman.

For instance: a old musty library door in the classics section

3) Encounter with a character in the real world: A character from the fictional world crosses over in the real world and the character either chooses to or needs to follow that character back in. The Labyrinth did this as did Peter Pan.

For instance: A person obviously not from this world asks for help

Antagonists... Well, there's the obvious choices of the literary counterparts to the heroes. Kingdom Hearts did something similar to this; Disney characters as heroes and Disney villains as enemies. There was also an overarching villain that was from outside the mythos. It really depends on where you want to go with this. If there's an outside threat to the books, or each book requires some assist from the protagonist.

[hamishspence]

I think The Neverending Story might have done this.

and more recently- Lost in Austen TV series.

[Closet_Skeleton]

There's also Wold Newton and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which assume shared universes and no traveling.

Thursday Next apparently does the whole "traveling into books" thing.

[Joran]

There was also that episode of Futurama where the Giant Brain takes the place of a character in many of the books. However, if well done, the story could be interesting.

[Closet_Skeleton]

There's also The Cat that Walked Through Walls, where Robert Henlien characters use inter-dimensional travel to meet each other and then work out that if there are an infinite number of possible universes, some much match up perfectly to fictional stories.

Then there's of course TV Tropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrappedInTVLand)

[Headless_Ninja]

A possible antagonist: some kind of entity that destroys literary worlds? Erases the books, line-by-line (or even the collective conscious of all storytellers, everywhere [ie everyone]?). Emphasis on damaging the books, which in effect damages the worlds, or more idealistically, harms people's 'belief' in the power of story - this could be child-friendly, or written like a Gaiman novel, whichever you prefer.

[H. Zee]

Hate to say this, but it does sound very similar indeed to Thursday Next (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday_Next). Brilliant idea, but someone else got there first, which happens to me all the time.

Still, I'm sure if you're skilled enough, you could make this very much your own, and original enough to put all such doubts to rest. If this is the case, all power to you, I say.

[TheBST]

How does he enter the Literary World?

He just wakes up there. No explanation required. It doesn't matter how Gregor becomes a bug in Metamorphosis or how the witches and ghosts work in Shakespeare, does it? Believability is more important than realism. Speaking of which...


How does he return to the real world?

Simple: the literary world starts to become indistinguishable from the fictional one, the same way realism- true bedrock realism- has become a greater part of modern literature and the real world has become increasing more surreal.

Have the adventures become less fantastical as they go on. You know, from the Just-So Stories, Lewis Carroll, Dracula, Gulliver's Travels and such down all the way to Dostoevsky, Hemmingway, DeLillo and such.

Since novels borrow so much influence from real life, and as you know, life imitates art- have it end with the protagonist returning 'home' but not totally sure which world he's in anymore. A journey not only through literature, but theoretical literary history.

That's one idea, anyway. I have many, you might have better.

Meta-fiction: No sod'll read it but Critics will rain kisses on your upturned forehead for it.

[MeklorIlavator]

You also might want to look at pagemaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pagemaster), as the idea is similar.

[A Rainy Knight]

Ah, I knew that the idea would have been used already. Still, I'm not intending to make it into something big or sell it or anything. I'd just like something to be on my screen in front of me about which I could say: "I made this, and I'm glad that I did."

Thanks for the ideas, here's what I've fleshed out so far:

It takes place at first in a real-world library. A mad scientist in one of the books has made a daring journey to the fourth wall, found that he is simply a character in a story, and has discovered how to travel from one book to another. He organizes a league of antagonists of some sort, and plots to bring all other story characters to heel. Enter my still-rough idea of a protagonist: Miss Librarian Lady, as yet unnamed. The mad scientist realized when he found the fourth wall that what the league of antagonists needs is someone who has seen the entire story from the outside, who knows everything about the protagonists, settings, and conflicts. The antagonistic scientists develop a device to pull her into a story, and then their forces try to capture her and use her knowledge to finally win the age-old conflict of good and evil. The protagonists of a few stories help to keep her safe while she discovers their full plan. By stealing some of their technology of some sort, Librarian Lady is able to coordinate the forces of good in some sort of epic climactic battle for the fate of literature. As for the ending, the best I've got right now is that she storms the menacing antagonist league headquarters and uses the device that brought her there to escape to the real world, where she'll never look the same way at her shelves again.

I've never read any of those other books, so is this really close to any of them?

[Nerd-o-rama]

It's certainly far enough away from Thursday Next, I think. She's a real-world cop (admittedly, one that focuses on book-related crimes) that ends up gradually being pulled into the pre-existing inter-book world. In the first book, she makes a brief foray with "real" world technology, which catches the attention of the in-book society. The feel and sequence of events would be totally different in your book.

It's closer to Last Action Hero than any of the other stories, I think, and it's still pretty distant from that.

[Ravyn]

Definitely a workable concept.

A few questions, though. (Don't take this as shooting your idea down; I help people write by the Socratic method. At least, when I'm not pointing them to Limyaael's (http://www.insanejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=limyaael&keyword=fantasy+rants&filter=all) work or my own blog (http://exchangeofrealities.today.com) because it's faster than typing the answer to a question longhand.)

One: How do the settings bridge together? Are you going to be using the heroes in their worlds, or having them jump between settings as she does? Are they currently in their plots, or operating normally?

Two: If a character moves into a setting with different rules, does that character acquire/lose abilities and limitations to match? For instance, can Mowgli still claim safety among snakes if he's hanging around Don Quixote's Spain? Would Dracula start disregarding some of the more obscure Stoker vampire rules (not being able to stir from the coffin if someone puts a wild rose on it, for instance) if he entered the world of [pretty much any later vampire novel, really], or Carmilla not need to construct anagrams every time she wants to operate under a pseudonym?

Three: How "Literary" is "Literature"? Are you sticking to The Classics, or are you going to start branching out into more modern pieces of work?

If you need any advice on making the library portion of the story more realistic, I could probably help with that; I've worked in a public library system, particularly in circulation, and I know my way around.

[snoopy13a]

For characters, I'd stick with those in the public domain. That way, you can distribute your work without having to worry about breaking copyright law. I believe that all of the characters you listed, with the possible exception of Porfiry Petrovich (not familar with him personally), are in the public domain.

[Dervag]

Porfiry Petrovich is a character from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, which was written in the mid-1800s. He is in the public domain.

[A Rainy Knight]

One: How do the settings bridge together? Are you going to be using the heroes in their worlds, or having them jump between settings as she does? Are they currently in their plots, or operating normally?

Two: If a character moves into a setting with different rules, does that character acquire/lose abilities and limitations to match? For instance, can Mowgli still claim safety among snakes if he's hanging around Don Quixote's Spain? Would Dracula start disregarding some of the more obscure Stoker vampire rules (not being able to stir from the coffin if someone puts a wild rose on it, for instance) if he entered the world of [pretty much any later vampire novel, really], or Carmilla not need to construct anagrams every time she wants to operate under a pseudonym?

Three: How "Literary" is "Literature"? Are you sticking to The Classics, or are you going to start branching out into more modern pieces of work?

If you need any advice on making the library portion of the story more realistic, I could probably help with that; I've worked in a public library system, particularly in circulation, and I know my way around.

One: The Antagonists (capitalized to indicate the group of them) are the only ones to know how to jump between stories, so the protagonists would begin in their own stories. As for "Are they in their plots," I would pick characters who existed beyond their plots or had loose enough plots to insert mine. Ex. Sherlock Holmes had plenty of life outside of the stories. Mowgli lived in the jungle outside of Kipling's tales. Don Quixote and Sancho wandered to enough places to run into my characters. The protagonists would not enter each other's settings, but there would be a separate plane housing the Antagonist headquarters - essentially a story world created by characters on the literary plane. Also, I noticed how silly I sounded just there. :smalltongue:

Two: See One: they wouldn't enter each other's settings. Also, many of those powers have set limitations, for example, Mowgli's Master Word for the snakes only works with the snakes that follow his Jungle Law. No reason for it to work anywhere else.

Three: I'll use anything that works, it's just that the classics have more memorable protagonists and are generally better known.