Lions and Ink

[Ends up this is a rehash of a post I did a while back. I didn't realize. Well, more detail now.]

My latest thought for a story, as I stall on finishing The Rainwalkers, goes like this:

Lauren is dying on the operating table. The anesthetist talks to her, trying to keep her awake. He makes a joke about Lauren = Lion and continues by telling her the lions need her so she needs to stay. "The lions are coming to see you, you can't go away." Lauren dies for three minutes and thinks she hears an afterlife being tell her the same thing. When she wakes, lions are attracted to her. They escape zoos and animal rescue sanctuaries seeking her. She has an awkward bond with them as they don't use words. The government collects her, taking her to a special school.

There she meets Ink Girl. Her special ability is she constantly leaks ink from the palms of her hands. But after a sexual encounter with a boy at the school, she begins to leak ink from any orifice without a sphincter to hold the ink in. The whites of her eyes turn black. She must wear a mask covering her mouth and nose and she is fitted with a special suit. If she cries, which she does often, ink rolls down her cheeks. Her special power is more of a handicap.

Beat 'em Up Boy is a weak fifteen-year-old. He isn't strong, but any damage he takes heals within minutes. He arrives with a friend from the project that created them. Her body is severely damaged. She no longer heals, but through the occult practices of the team that made her, she can never die.

Our true superhero turns villian. After forcing himself on Ink girl, the boy who can stop people's thoughts, allowing him to walk through rooms unnoticed, is banished from the school and participation in any government programs. Furious that his powers cannot be used to serve the citizens of the United States, he vows to kill Lion Girl and Ink Girl.

Lion Girl's mother is stabbed in the eye walking into a store. There are no security cameras in that area and no one saw what happened. She was walking and studdenly she had a horrible pain in her eye. Lion Girl knows exactly what happened.

As Lion Girl and Ink Girl attack and defend themselves from the Mindfreeze Boy, Lauren has a slight advantage. As long as she has a lion nearby, she can see and hear.

I don't know where I'm goign with the idea or if I'll even write it. But I've had the oddly powered Lion Girl and Ink Girl in my mind for quite a while.

Lion Girl and Ink

I've had a hokey idea about a girl attracting lions for a while. The lions escape their zoos and animal rescue farms, walking hundreds of miles to lie on her front yard, to be close to her. Another special girl I've wanted to write about is one who has ink weep from the palms of her hands.

Now, I'm trying to think of a story for them. I have some good premise on Lion Girl's POV. But Ink Girl is much more interesting. I've though about another special/mutant who is amoral and through a traumatic experience involving him, Ink Girl begins to weep ink from everywhere that doesn't have a sphincter to keep it in.

But following the plot I've thought up, the story would be around 30,000 words. That is not nearly long enough. Also, I wanted the love interest to be the main character from another story I want to write which I've been calling Beat 'em Up. But how to actually get him to hang out? I don't see any reason.

I've got some time to ruminate on it. I haven't finished the Rainwalkers rough draft yet.

Marathon

The challenge my two remaining characters have is swimming across Marathon Key. Unlike what it sound, it isn't twenty-six miles long. From the bridge on the east to the west bridge it's fourteen miles. Since all the keys they've seen after Upper Matecombe have been washed out, this is too.

I've been working on how to torture them as they swim across, but also keep them alive.

They leave with some two-year-old snacks and drinks in their backpacks. Empty bottles and unopened chip packages fill a carry-on bag, used as a flotation device.

The crap:

1. Everett wants some chips and opens the carry-on. The chip packages and bottles float out and the bag sinks. Everett freaks about how he just killed them. They're probably only to two miles into the swim. They decide to split the floating items 50/50 between their backpacks. I need to choose what items they stored in the carry-on, lost forever to the sea.
2. Mirka gives up. It's too much. She's tired. It's hopeless. They are dead. Then she sees boats on the horizon. Everett says she's seeing things, but recall that Ev has bad eyesight. Mirka swims off in some random direction. She is very excited. He's "Don't leave me," but believes she is killing them. She then changes her mind, saying she sees buildings on the water. She's right. They're buildings tall enough to stick out of the water. Everett and Mirka sleep the night in an upper condo.
3. There is a map drawn on the wall of one of the condos. People with a boat were trying to get away from Key West to the main land, struggling with the changed terrain. Everett and Mirka now know Key West exists. But the map has few details about getting to Key West as the things the others found important were areas Mirka and Everett have already seen.
4. Mirka and Everett recover for a day, gettin low on food. When the tide is low, the roofs of taller houses can be seen. They swim to them and dive for food - breaking windows, opening doors, and swimming through houses to find pantries. Cokes and bags of chips float, ya know.

That's what I'll be writing in the next few days. I still haven't picked my points on the food diving.

Writing Faster, More Discouraged

The swimming chapter "Florida Bay" is getting longer. Our protagonists swim, wade on sandbars, and walk atop bridges they must climb as the islands washed out. It's one micro-adventure after another. I'm not sure if it makes for interesting reading. There are fun scenes - cute, sad, and violent - but the chapter feels choppy to me.

I need to rewrite to first chapter. The first paragraph should pop pop pop. The first five pages need to make people say, "Ooh, forget that bacon I was cooking, the iron I left on, and the tub I'm filling, I want to sit down and read this puppy." It doesn't do that now. Particularly irritating is my attempt to establish the love between Everett and Iris on the first page. Having a guy play with his dog doesn't move the story along.

The Rainwalkers will shoot past its goal today or over the weekend. It's within four thousand words of the 60k goal and my characters are only a quarter of the way to Key West. They have a shark, the main character throwing the love interest off a bridge into shallow water, the protagonists being pelted by deadly rain, and a coma to go through. The main character trying to transport the love interest ten miles will take some words too.

The very final page, I have no clue. I have about six different ideas. Any of them could work if I had the skill to write them.

Like I said, discouraged.

Leaving Upper Matecombe Key

I finished one of my favorite chapters today. Now onto another chapter I hope I really enjoy, this one titled Florida Bay.

My main character and his love interest are swimming to the base of a bridge. The islands on the ends of it have been washed out. Our love interest believes the 78 mile swim to Key West is pointless. She thinks all the islands are washed away, including Key West. Our main character reassures her it's not really 78 miles. That's if they swim to the city center.

Spoiler: They only swim 42 miles. They see dolphins, a shark, are pulled under by the undertow, have to jump 30 feet into two feet of water, dive into houses underwater to get Doritos and Coke, and get blistering sunburns. And comas, they get comas too.

Q is A

You'd think summarizing sixty thousand words in three short paragraphs would be easy.

It doesn't seem to be.

When a poor slob like myself finishes their manuscript, they send query letters out to agents who deal in post-apocalyptic teen gore-romance, or whatever. Those three paragraphs are what lead that letter.

Dear Mr. Johnnie Rico

Boy and dog have bad times in the apocalypse. Girls are cool.

Girls and boys and dogs have no fun in the apocalypse. I'm hungry. That cannibal is looking at me funny.

Boy and girl say, "Hey, half of us are dead and we're still hungry." Mean man says, "Go swim 90 miles."

Drinking Hotsauce is complete at 344, 000 words and is completely unpublishable.

I lover yer blawg. Thank you for your consideration,

pathetic house ape

But the trick is making it actually good. I've fished it around. We'll see what my critters say.