I'm looking for a serious co-writer for a novel I'm writing. It centers around very dark topics/themes, so there's a warning in advance. I need somebody who is serious about writing and can contribute a lot to the story by helping with the writing style, plot, ideas, scenes, etc. Co-writer must be able to compromise.
Reply to this thread or message me privately if you're interested!
Your username always makes me so hungry. If you're looking for someone I'm willing. I have to let you know there will be some days that I can't work on it. However, I can do it at least 4 days out of the week.
That's fine, there are some days I won't be available either because of work and school. What are you willing to help out with, and what do you think your strengths are when it comes to writing?
Well, it depends on what you need. I really like pointing out plot holes and inconsistencies. I don't know why, but I tend to do it for books and movies a lot. You said that you are planning on doing a dark theme, which is something I love. I guess you can call me demented, I like stories that have a darker undertone and overall theme. In my own story I'm having a whole section dedicated to cannibalism and will be adding in torture scenes. I have actually gotten a lot of complements on the darker toned stories that I have wrote for various classes.
I'm definitely going to need help with plot, so that's good, and I'm glad you like writing about dark things too. The novel is very serious though. It's about a relationship that starts out innocent but slowly becomes abusive. It involves mentions of suicide, mental illness, violence, sexual coercion, and a school shooting. However, I would like to include a lot of happy/calm scenes to balance out the book, that way I can balance it out a little bit.
I actually lived through a lot of that stuff. I'm also a Psych major so I can get a hold of really good sources on different mental illnesses. My mother was abused for a really long time, I was abused in different ways. It wouldn't be hard to pull from personal experiences.
That's good. I haven't gone through this sort of thing, and I'm still in high school, so writing this is going to be difficult for me.
Well, I'm more than willing to help out. I've had experience with stalkers too (my ex friend broke into my apartment recently) which would be interesting to add to the story if you are going extremely abusive.
Do you have the plot ready?
Not really. It's an idea that I started to develop a few weeks ago. I'd also like to keep the plot flexible, just getting the very basics down and leaving the rest to be determined as we're writing.
This is the idea I have so far
A high school boy named Julian meets a mentally ill girl named Pandora. The relationship starts out innocent and sweet until Pandora becomes extremely possessive over Julian, and shows violent tendencies. He eventually breaks up with her, causing her to snap and make plans to shoot up the school. At the end of the book, Julian finds out about her plans and tries to stop her, but fails.
I love the twist. I was expecting an abusive guy. This is actually going to be really fun. Okay, so how do you want to work on this? On here, email, google docs? A mix of all of them?
A mix of all of them would be good, since I can't access email or google docs while I'm at school (like right now). When would you like to start, and how?
Okay. Since it's your story do you want to set up the universe? Then we can move on to the characters.
Yeah, it's modern day so it should be pretty easy.
Also, are you comfortable with LGBT? Because I was hoping I could make the main character bisexual.
Also, what's your email? I'll need to to add you as a contributor on notebook
Yeah, that's fine with me. I'm assuming its Julian? If Pandora was to find out about it, it could fuel her jealousy. She would try even harder to seclude him from his friends because she would worry about both sides trying to get with him. Every friendship he had would be questioned at some point.
That's really good, I like that. Should we have her find out about his sexuality before/during their relationship to fuel her jealousy like you said, or find out after (Julian comes out/flirts with another guy, and she tries to break him away from his friends)
Him flirting with another guy while in a relationship with her might hurt his likability. That is, if they haven't had a good reason to hate her yet. We want the readers to be on his side. I would say during the relationship would be better than before. Maybe at some point she goes through his old stuff and find hints of it? A former boyfriend, certain pictures that a straight boy wouldn't necessarily have, an undelivered letter to a guy, an online blog where he talked about it, someone at school throwing it up in his face… It really depends on how he feels about his sexuality. If he tries to hide it, if he doesn't deem it important, if he's embarrassed by it, if he's in danger because of it, if people already know about it and he never really thought about discussing it with her.
Sorry, I'm getting a bit carried away with it. lol
No this is good, I like this. It helps me think about the story more. And I didn't mean he would flirt while in a relationship, I meant after they broke up.
As for how he feels about his sexuality, he's embarrassed by it, at least at the beginning of the book, and he's afraid to come out for quite a while.
Oh, that makes sense. Exposing his sexuality before and after has his perks.
If his sexuality gets exposed during, it can make her more jealous and more controlling.
Afterward, can make her start questioning herself (Do I look like a guy?) and get angry with him for leaving her or "leading her on."
One thing that both of them have is her ability to "out" him. She could tell everyone in order to ensure others seclude him. It would be a backwards attempt to make him only have her. (I know its kind of confusing, but for some reason abusive people think that making you look bad to others will make you want to be with them.) She could also threaten to do it if he doesn't get back together with her.
It's not confusing, a friend I had did those sorts of things, where she would make me look bad so that everyone would leave me and I'd go back to her.
I like the idea of her threatening to out him if he didn't get back with him. Kinda gives me another idea too, but it might not work.
I had that friend. I'm really small and she flat out told me that I was "too skinny to be attractive" in front of a bunch of guys. One of them really told her off though. Then she got upset because I didn't take up for her.
Anyway, any ideas that you have we can probably make work.
Yeah, friends like that suck.
And I had the idea that Julian could start to develop feelings for a close friend (I want to give him some really nice friends, just so he has some people to lean on when things get rough and the story isn't too dark. That's part of what I meant by balancing it out) and they start to flirt with each other a little bit after Julian breaks up with Pandora. Pandora sees this, decides to threaten to out him, and Julian decides to get back together with her because he's afraid of losing his friends (especially the one he likes). This raises suspicion, and his friends finally start to figure out that Pandora has been genuinely abusing Julian.
What do you think?
I like that a lot. It gives a pretty good outline for how the story will go.
Since his friends are going to be really caring and supportive, it might be a good idea to have one or two of them not really like Pandora from the start. There is always someone who just knows that something is wrong. As for balancing it out. We can make him think he's moved on and is happy with the new person and then suddenly he starts getting phone calls or messages from Pandora. Fake social media profile following and adding him, her contacting his family members, watching him, contacting his friends, etc. Things that just make you annoyed and uncomfortable.
One thing that happened with my personal situation was that the girl got a new boyfriend and then would harass my man with phone calls and then she would tell her boyfriend that she was the one being harassed. Just to start fights.
Yeah, that would work really well.
I don't really have any other ideas at the moment, so do you want me to share the universe and some empty character templates to get the worldbuilding started? (I'll need the email you used for this account to allow you to edit anything, unless you want to make the characters/universe and share it with me)