What is your "WHAT IF?"

That sounds pretty cool. I don't work that way myself. I start with the first word and go from there. No what ifs for me.

What if nothing was as it seemed...

Yeah, pretty vague. But I'm a vague kinda gal! And horrible grammar-wise.

I did write a book using a "what if" idea from an existing story and just changed it making it more unique. Of course, I only have the first draft to this story so it needs to be edited, which I started and decided to take a break from it to write other books. Glad I did, cause those two books were the ones that were published lol.

What if....Superman's planet wasn't destroyed and he was asked to return home after he was just told he wasn't from Earth......

Of course, the MC is a female in my story. She comes to Earth in the same manner and is raised by her human family, not knowing who she really is. After a death in the family, she is told, which is where the story begins. Backstory is revealed as she is being told who she is and where she came from. Then she learns that she is the "Queen" of her people and must return home to save them from people who are trying to destroy her birth place. I call it Adventures Thru Time and Space right now but the title might change later. I did research for this book because I wanted the planet to be similar to Earth so I read a book about fictional planets and writing. Can't remember the title of the book cause it was years ago when I read it lol. I took the important notes and have them stored away with the hand-written story. I don't write like that now, it all goes straight to the computer lol. I will eventually get back to it but right now the characters aren't bugging me about it so they'll wait lol.

Amber

What would happen if a college student got drunk and slept with a werewolf?

One of my WiP (thats on hold for now) was:

What if having two different colored eyes gave you the ability to see different things with each?

or something to that effect.

My YA novel: What if Tipper Gore got her way.
Cue the maniacal laughter.

I don't recall either of my novels starting with a what if?

What if a bunch of high school students freaked out and started killing each other?

Like Heathers on acid.

What if a president is cheated by his cabinet and looses contact with reality while his sencond man his controling the whole thing

Mine didn't start out as what if either but here's mine:


What if the harpies weren't so intrinsically bitchy as the Greeks want us to think?

I did a blog entry about this a couple of weeks ago - I use the "what ifs" when I'm stuck, not to start. But whatever works is good!

Danger Jane said:

What if the harpies weren't so intrinsically bitchy as the Greeks want us to think?

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I like this idea so much! I want to read more about the Harpies anyway...

My first one started with two what ifs:

What if Luck was a person, a family trait. Not in the way that this guy would always find the four leaf clover, but that, if he walked through the park, the people he passed would all find one.

And, what if a small community ran their luck out of town?

Hmm cool . . . I'll give it a shot.

What if an average middle school teacher actually was the heir to a huge pirate fortune?

I guess that's the best I can come up with for now, though it's interesting how my MC doesn't come into it! lol!

"What if novels didn't have goofy what if concepts, but instead were populated by deeply imagined, rich, fully detailed characters who work their way through difficult internal and external crises whose resolution conflict with each other?"

dclary said:

"What if novels didn't have goofy what if novels, but instead were populated by deeply imagined, rich, fully detailed characters who work their way through difficult internal and external crises whose resolution conflict with each other?"

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It just doesn't fly with the avatar. Get a new one while any shred of credibility still exists.

What if A ship carrying seeds and eggs from Earth, a Noah's Ark ship, was damaged and half its cargo was exposed to radiation, so they divided the stocks when they found a suitable planet and put a force field between them?

I don't know if mine started out as a what-if. At least subconsciously, I guess. And if nothing else, there's a what-if I can dig out of it later.

So...

Replica's Shadow - What if God really did punish an angel and his descendants 77 times over? (I'd have to dig out an old Bible to be sure it says this somewhere, but I do remember reading something like, "Your children and your children's children will be punished, 77 times over..." or something. Now I'll have to find it. XD)

The Goud Experiment - What if we pulled out of Iraq now, too early? What if the human race was going extinct from the subsequent terrorist attacks and radiation effects? What if some mad scientist had a way to save it? And then of course, I took the route that interested me most--not the scientist's story, but that of one of his experiments. XD

Whisper - What if I took vampyres and made them original and interesting again? What if I, for once, didn't write a love story, be it between vampyres or Michael and a Mary-Sue? (This started off/was inspired by a fanfiction idea back when I was a fan of Michael Jackson, so part of the inspiration was to write something other than a crappy "horror" story Thriller take off or an MJ/Mary-Sue crappy romance XD.) Also, this is one of the original "What if the guys weren't manly-men masculine or tall-dark-handsome types or similar masculine stereotypes?" (For the most part, they're feminine, loving, and emotional, or at the very least feminine/pretty looking)

Dollhouse - What if humans were made out to be living dolls for others? What if someone was collecting these? What kind of psychological effects would all that have, what kind of goals would that give them, what would they be like?

Oriel - These days, it kind of started its final turn of evolution with "What if I changed this from this horrible, elemental-magic-prophesied-one-mary-sue-packed abomination to a gripping, dramatic, meaningful, worth-while story?" Then other things, like "What if Bavol was a hermaphrodite?" (when I made that decision, it was *cue his entire psychological make up and whole-life experience and that thing that explains the previously unexplained* XD), "What if they didn't have any special, magic, elemental powers?", "What if Bavol wasn't uber-special, just...messy?" and so on.

Other what-ifs have been "what if someone knows how they die, and have to try to prevent it?", "what if the answer to the fate-versus-free-will debate is 'both'?", "What if someone went crazy and dreamed about this horrible thing every time he slept, but lost the line between waking and dream world and thought it was happening over and over again...?", and "What if a little boy goes crazy--like his mom--and is forever stuck in a mental state of a 5-ish year old girl?"

No "what if's" for my stories. My newest WIP came to me in almost a complete package with MC and his backstory, and the story arc itself. I'm adding secondary characters and fleshing out the details, but the meat of the story just...appeared.

For my others, it was evolutions of other ideas I had that were incomplete to begin with.

I only do What If's to entertain myself while people-watching. Like What If a Yak wandered in here and ordered a double tall soy latte with extra foam? or What If that guy in the glasses suddenly melted. Would someone clean him up, or would we all step over him and pretend we didn't notice? or What If Bill Gates walked into the next press conference wearing a black lace teddy?

My stories come out of a character idea or situation that I'm curious about. Unless you consider: What If I were to write a story that finally gets sold - as a What If

What if a woman, who had been tracing her family tree, discovered her husband was her adopted half brother?

Kate Thornton said:

I like this idea so much! I want to read more about the Harpies anyway...

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Well you know you can read about them in uh my upcoming novel which is uh coming out tomorrow with uh a really big publishing house in New York. And in London.

Mine are very simplified, but I always start with "What if's" and go from there.

What if a former Klansman raised his son to be the American version of Hitler? (that was the first in a long line of "what if's" for Schoolhouse Five.)

What if a married woman who doesn't want kids gets pregnant? (in other words, my worst nightmare. Like a kid becoming Hitler wasn't bad enough...no really, THIS is my worst nightmare.)

What if three friends stuck together from high school to college to professional lives until one day, they realized they never really liked each other in the first place?

I have so many more ideas rolling around in my head, but I'm trying to keep them quiet while I finish revising Schoolhouse Five.