I'm not sure how I'm going to make this work, I need the protaganist to live with her parents in a cottage with a H.H.Holmes inspired maze under their Hous. The protaganist realises how wrong her families eating habits are when her mother cooks one of her sisters (dark I know). She and her other siblings try to contact the police but their parents stop them and put them in the maze downstairs. They are then slowly killed and eaten one by one as they get lost further and further into the maze. I'm not sure how I should kill off each character (there are quite a few) or how they are put into the maze ( do they wake up there, are they blindfolded and taken deep into the maze) or how their parents stop them form telling the police. Help?
This is really dark, but ok…
Since the parents probably are kind of violent since they are cannibals, they shouldn’t have too much trouble with physically forcing the kids into the maze, wich is a possibility of getting them into the maze. They could say it is for their own good.
Also, is there some kind of like hunger crisis to make the parents cook the sister, or are they just crazy? Cause normaly a parent wouldn’t really want to cook their own kids even if they were cannibals, so maybe some craziness combined with a hunger crisis were they have no food and haven’t eaten in a really long time?
Is there a murderer or some kind of monsters down in the maze? Or is it the parents that are somehow like maybe slowly go insane because of guilt of what they did to the sister and then kill of the rest of the siblings?
The kids could be forced into the maze, but not very far into it. Then they could stay by the closed exit and try to get out, but eventually realizing that the only possible way of survival is trying to go deeper into the maze and find another exit.
This idea is really dark tho, but these are my thoughts on it. I hope it helps!
It really does help! To answer some of your questions yes the parents are definitely crazy, or at least the mother is and there is a kind of crisis I guess, as I was thinking that for some reason it is getting really hard to get "food" so that would be part of the reason they did it. An odd detail I have is that the children are literally called boy/girl in different languages. the protagonist is called Mädchen or maddie for short, which is girl in German. this is because they didn't want to get too attached to the kids, just in case times got hard.
An idea I had was that the mother is really clever and the maze ( in the style of H.H.Holmes ) is a maze that only she knows her way through so the children would have to try away from the mother while they tried to figure their way out.
I really like the idea of having them stay close to the exit they first came through before realising they have to find a different exit deeper in the maze. I was thinking of maybe having the mother catch them by the exit and capturing one of the kids.
I understand this idea is super dark and I really appreciate your help :)
I’m glad I could help!
The idea with the names is really good and creative, actually. A possible plot twist came to my mind… what if one of the kids has a normal name, and that sibling is like kind of ”the chosen one” that the parents actually kind of cared for more or less, and that the siblings while making their way through the maze somehow realizes what their names actually mean. Then, when one of the kids have a normal name, the others could start to not really trust them, thinking that they are allied to the mother, making them leave that sibling behind to survive on their own. And maybe the mom could somehow contact that kid and try to like make a deal with them that if they lead the other kids to her she will spare their life or something…? And then that kid has to find the others and convince them to thrust him or her. Or… you could make it even darker and make that kid go evil. It could be like the oldest sibling who has the normal name, and then when he or she is forced to leave, the youngest kids in the group would start to miss them and the older ones doesn’t really know what to do because they relied on the oldest kid to help and guide them or something.
I don’t know, it’s just an idea.
I don’t really know that much about this H.H. Holmes, so it would be great if you could explain the idea of the maze in some other way so that I get what you mean… I just know that he was, like, a serial killer or something like that.
Also, in which country does this happen? And are the kids going to all die in the maze or will some of them actually survive? If they do survive, will they contact the police? And in that case, will the police be able to catch the mom, or…? How many siblings will there be?
Now that I’ve got used to the weird parts (no offense) of the story I really like the plot, and I think it would make a really cool book! I really hope that you write it!
I really love that plot twist idea you’ve had and I might use that when I’m writing.
H.H.Holmes was a serial killer that had a hotel built like a maze. It was super dysfunctional with doors without doorways and staircases leading to no where. The idea was that it was too hard for prisoners to find an exit as the hotel was just so weird. There would be hidden trapdoors that could lead you to secret passages and rooms, some of these rooms had no entrance or exit other than the trapdoors and chutes so the prisoner would be trapped until Holmes found them and killed them. It was called his murder castle. It’s really horrible and that why I think it could make the chase so intense.
I was thinking that the mother wouldn’t be caught by the police but the children would turn her in, careful not to mention the fact that they too had been cannibals and they would seal off the maze and try live normal lives.
Also, I was wanting to have quick a few kids
1.the protagonist
- A pair of twins
- The one with a normal name
- The one that the mother kills and feeds to the family(the reason the kids rebel)
- A kid that is secretly vegetarian (the most level headed of the bunch as they don’t have the side effects of eating human flesh)
- And an adult sibling that is lired into the maze rather than forced (do the children have a legal guardian once the mother is gone.
So that’s about 7 children I need to start thinking about making profiles for.
And don’t worry, I know the idea is weird and dark so I won’t take any offence :)
I really appreciate the help and I think I’ll start writing it soon now I have it fleshed out a bit more!
P.s I just realised how weird it sounds to use “fleshed” while writing about this topic but oh well lol
Haha that sounds awesome! And although that hotel still seems creepy I agree with you that it would make an amazing setting for a story. Is the maze going to have actuall rooms and buildings underground or will it be more like walls made of dirt and cave-ish kind of rooms?
Also, have you read Thursday’s Child by Sonya Hartnett? Or Percy Jackson and The Olympians - The Battle of The Labyrinth by Rick Riordan? Although they are not at all the same as your idea when it comes to the plot, I still think some parts of it could be good inspiration for the maze. The labyrinth in Percy Jackson has some traps and secret rooms in it even though those are more of the weapons-coming-out-of-the-wall kind of things. In Thursday’s Child one of the kids kind of runs away by digging a net of tunnels that in the end turn into some kind of maze underneath their house.
You were talking about side effects of eating human flesh… do you mean psychological effects or will there be any physical effects like illness and nausea?
I haven’t read those books but I shall put them on my books to read list :)
I was thinking of having a mix of proper rooms and cave like chambers, like maybe some of the rooms you can’t escape will be made of dirt, perhaps to give the characters a chance (I don’t then all to die).
I wanted the charecters to have phycological and physical symptoms like the twins as an example, I wanted to have a scene where one is crying uncontrollable and the other is laughing uncontrollably, both for no reason. Maddie (the protagonist) is bordering on obese as a result of her eating habits. All of them except a couple, will have lower IQ’s and won’t be the most athletic. This will make it harder for them in the maze. I will was thinking of having a scene where the adult sibling starts vomiting in the morning and thinks they are
pregnant, they are going to go get a preganancy test when the children find their dead sister and try contact the police. That’s why she has to be lured into the maze instead of forced.
