Help with Story Writing?

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I need a little help to come up with an idea for my story. I don't want you to come up with the idea, just suggestions on how I myself can come up with one.

I've created an entire world full of characters, who rely heavily upon each other to run their town. I wanted a story to introduce as many of them as possible, and show how they need each other to survive.

My one idea was having a newcomer speak about the town and how he came to live there - but this isn't much of a 'story' as it is a long introduction. Another idea was having one of the townsfolk not be able to do their job and the whole place fall apart, but as there are so many characters and this book will be introducing them, also telling a story focusing on just one of them AND including them all AND making it interesting is too much.

I've been brainstorming for weeks but am just stumped by this. Please help if you can?

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A natural disaster, such as earthquake or tornado, or a fire. Maybe an airliner crashes in the heart of the town. A demented military man puts a missile in the town square. A gang of anti government types take over the whole town and stand off the government.

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@DragonflyDreams,

Maybe the newcomer could be the narrator. The story, of course, wouldn't just focus on him. In fact, the story could focus on other people. That's how Great Gatsby is. While the narrator would relate his own exploits in the first person, he could still describe interactions among other people in the third person.

Dialogue is a way to include a lot of people without having direct access to all their thoughts.

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How about a nasty bug that puts people out of action for a few days? If people can't get to work there's a knock on effect.

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Everyone pulls together after a fire destroys the home of the oldest person in town.

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@DragonflyDreams,

You be the narrator, it's your town from your perspective.

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@perennialloner,

Thank you very much! I so far had the new comer doing the introduction, but I think it's going to just be a story about him meeting all of the different characters and each one teaching him a different lesson about friendship/team work etc through rhymes. Thanks for your help Smile

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@DragonflyDreams,

Drag, as an erstwhile writer I transmit the best of luck. I only wish a2k wasn't so beckonin' of free time

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@DragonflyDreams,

Quote:

I think it's going to just be a story about him meeting all of the different characters and each one teaching him a different lesson about friendship/team work etc through rhymes

Success to some such excellent sport, at last a novel comprised compleatly of clerihew.

When DragonflyDreams
Said, "I know not what but that it seems
That what I'm messin'
With are a life's worth of lesson".

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@DragonflyDreams,

I am not but it almost sounds like the first book in the Harry Potter books. Read that book and see if you see any comparisons between your book and J. K. Rowlings.

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@ekename,

Kind of like 'Our Town'.

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@markg,

Change of plot. There is neither rhyme nor reason to Simtown, as it's imprisoned creator goes from one multi-media interactivity to the next , meeting the inmates, while desperately seeking to escape its suburban tentacles. Oh, the horror.

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@DragonflyDreams,

You could probably write something along the lines of having the whole town function only because of computers and suddenly a particular bolt of electricity marks an end to electricity in the town, isolating them from everybody else and how they are searching for a way of going to the nearest town to seek help but until then they are struggling to live with each other and being dependent.

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