Deciding on a plot point

I've been overhauling my novel Everyman's Memory for the sake of believability, among other things. Even though I haven't made it past the opening chapters yet, which needed the most work, I was thinking ahead and recalled a plot point that seemed contrived, over-the-top, unbelievable, virtually impossible, etc.

Now here's the plot point (laugh if you wish; bear in mind that this is one of the few remaining remnants of the first draft that I never bothered with, mainly because of the amount of work needed):

The antagonist finds a stray cat and a blood hound to use as his weapons. He paints the cat with blood collected from a newborn that he baby-napped soon after birth; he covered his tracks and destroyed anything that could trace this back to him and/or the newborn.

He sends this (regularly docile) cat after his targets. The targets take it in thinking that someone inflicted physical harm on it due to the blood.

He also releases a blood hound (with a collar sending wireless transmissions of the hound's location) to follow the cat closely through smell. The hound has been trained to stop in its tracks once it sees the cat and move no further. Once the hound has ceased movement he shocks the dog using the collar, making the dog loose a howl. This howl sends the cat into a wild frenzy not unlike a lion or tiger pouncing on its prey.

Finally, he has injected the cat with a fast acting virus/poison that only affects humans and is transmitted by the cat's saliva. This, I fear, is the most contrived part, as I imagine it's either highly unlikely or impossible. I know there are particular diseases that only affect a particular species of animal, but I took it more than a step further into the realm of ridiculous science fiction.

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P.S. If you have any particular ideas for reworking this to a state of believability, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Rarri said:

"He paints the cat with blood collected from a newborn that he baby-napped soon after birth"

Is this a newborn human? If so, personally, i'd run away from that idea as quickly as possible.

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Yes, a newborn human. He also goes about killing newborn humans painlessly to prevent them from living in such a dreadful world. One where the government mandates injections that mutate your genes to give you CIPA. Newborns get the injection upon birth.

I can imagine how people would be up in arms about that, though.

But I can't imagine why I got so wrapped up in writing during the first draft that fake blood didn't come to mind. *shakes head in disgrace*

Nevada said:

ONe more thing i just thought of while frying an egg (its lunchtime) why does the dog need to track the cat when you know where the cat is?

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The antagonist wants to remain out of the picture when the cat becomes the cat from Hell for obvious reasons, and being in the area during the murders would be especially incriminating. So would being seen dropping off a dog in the area of a murder that took place directly following a canine's howl.

And, thinking about this further, a contrived plot to kill his targets fits a guy with a notable mental imbalance. He's a schizophrenic that immediately identifies the voices he hears as God speaking to him. In the opening of the novel, when a horrible event ruins his faith and he wants to die, this psychological stressor makes him into the ultimate hospital drug seeker. Conversion disorder results, giving him chronic pain all over and he demands drugs for it with the ulterior motive of overdosing on them. So being a little contrived can work . . . except the plot point as it stands now is too contrived.

Kitty Pryde said:

I'm also really curious why, in your story, the government is going to the trouble of giving newborns a genetic disorder that will most likely kill them off in childhood. Why not, say, just kill them?

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The basis of the story is that the government is mandating this injection because they have the ludicrous idea that by removing pain from the equation, crime (and murder) rates will decrease.

One could find some rationale behind such a ploy to decrease crime rates, but everything in the story's meant to point to it being completely ineffective, and in many ways counter productive.

Additionally, there's an underlying moral/message that I could get into, but when it comes to things like that I tend to ramble.

Nevada said:

You realize that for practically all readers and agents, a book that deals with a psychopath killing newborn babies is an automatic ick no way, no how am I reading or representing this book? I mean, come on, the unspoken rule is never kill the dog. how do you think they're gonna feel about killing babies. Just throwing that out there.

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This novel began as a practice in experimentation for me, working with two first person present point of views, and since the initial draft it's been the equivalent of sending water through a Brita water purifier. Starting by establishing what is wanted and letting the junk fall by the wayside. Understand that this was written with no intent of submitting it for publishing, but over time I fell in love with aspects of it and came to the decision to try and make something worthwhile out of what was meant to be a one-off, what-the-hell sort of deal.

And I do realize that killing newborns is a general no-go, and yet I don't know how I'd go about filling that hole in the plot.

Also, the antagonist is deluded enough by the voices to think that this is euthanasia and that these newborns automatically become angels in Heaven because the world was given no chance to corrupt them. When things lead to him being aligned directly with the man he considers to have a screw loose, he has a change of heart. It's only a minor change of heart, however. He continues to stand behind the general idea that started this all - that a life without pain is no life to live - and just moderately changes his means of fixing that problem as the novel goes on.

I'll end my rambling there for now . . . I'll ramble some more if discussion necessitates it. There are numerous underlying messages in the story I could expound on . . .

P.S. The dog mentioned in the OP is killed (out of self defense) too . . .

KittyPryde said:

I dunno, I'm not trying to attack your story, but you did ask us about plausibility. This seems like an idiot plot. Click the link! Creating a society without pain is an interesting conceit for science fiction. The idea of inducing handicaps is an interesting one, too, a la 'Harrison Bergeron' by Kurt Vonnegut. But CIPA? A disease where it is practically a GIVEN that the kids will chew their own tongues off, suffer corneal ulcerations, skin infections, heat stroke, deep bone infections, and amputations? The COST of medical care alone and burden on medicare and the medical establishment alone would bring the society to its knees! Not to mention most people not surviving to reproductive maturity would cripple society as well. I can't imagine any society, even a sinister one, deciding this was a good idea. For the 'bizaare dystopia' story to work (like 1984, Brave New World, Logan's Run, etc), there has to be a certain amount of plausibility, and I'm not sure this idea has it.

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One thing I have yet to note is that, in the novel's time span, the government is just implementing this strategy in the small town of Grafton, Vermont, which I've taken liberties with in the portrayal, as it is years in the future (unsurprisingly, given it's majorly a dystopian novel).

Now, here's an idea I just tinkered with now to rework this. Seeing as it's in its early stages, the government uses the standard injection on the town members that are grown, believing they can handle the side effects of CIPA, while they test out new versions of the formula on the newborns, though possibly not all of them.

I would tinker around further, but I don't want to keep my dormmate up with my typing, and I need some sleep myself.

*shameless bump*

Kate Thornton said:

Also, in Vermont especially, but everywhere else in the US, too - we are the government. It only gets away with icky stuff for so long before we make it change.

I would set dystopian disease stories in a mythical place, but I don't think this plot has legs. You're a creative guy - come up with a different idea..!

We can always brainstorm with you.

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Like I said, this is only Grafton, Vermont by name and ideal (the quaint small town), with many liberties taken. So it could easily be replaced with somewhere entirely make-believe with little loss of effect. I just wanted a specific setting to have in mind for my "second draft" (it was more along the lines of draft 1.5). So, are you saying the entire novel's plot is shoddy and has no legs? If so, I'd have to respectfully disagree. Though the novel's heavily character driven, and the relationship between the first main character and his mother is the back bone of the novel, and what made me feel it had enough potential to work toward getting it published.

nevada said:

I gotta agree with Kate on this one. I don't think this thing has legs. If you like the relationship between the guy and his mother, then take that and transplant it into a situation that does make sense. If you can't do that, write something new, using elements of the relationship that you like the best. Don't become one of those guys who works on a novel for 20 yrs trying to make it work when it never does and never will work. Don't waste your talent that way.

Just my two cents.

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Talent? And here I was thinking I was just a talentless, ambitious hack. But, in all seriousness, anytime I look at a first draft of mine, I am disheartened and wonder, "Why bother," because idiocy, such as contrived things like what I mentioned in the OP, ends up running rampant in them.

I'm curious. Why exactly do you two not think it has legs? Both of you seem to consider it completely dead in the water, and I'm just not seeing that, so I'd like to try and see things from your point of view.

Kitty, I read the Wiki, and understood your point, which is why I started working on modifying the plot so as to take it out of the realm of the idiot plot and put it in the realm of plausibility.

Through the early stages of work on this novel, I left all the background on how this all came about by the wayside so I could get the meat of the story out of the way, then beef it up with the common sense portion, if you will. Here're the ideas spawned by my own brainstorming sessions (from day one, however, I've tried to weave together a believable background for the plot, but left it to sit unimplemented until I was certain it'd function properly):

"Administering" CIPA to grown adults comes into being as a plausible deterrent to crime to the nation's government through a study using inmates in high security prisons. A rehabilitation was carried out using drugs to numb the senses of the inmates in a manner partially reminiscent of Brave New World's sepa, except the results are not as notable and it's not the ultimate upper of all drugs.

Many of these men get out of jail early on good behavior and their rehabilitation continues once out. What results is an unbelievably low rate of recidivism; what the government chooses to turn a blind eye to is the fact that these men can't stand to live being so numb, like many soldiers returning from war who find themselves detached and desensitized. Society finds nothing at fault with this end result, seeing as the upstanding members of it thought these convicts were deserving of the death penalty, or some sort of punishment greater than what they were dealt.

Genetic research leads to a pinpointing of the gene that causes CIPA, and from there the scientists work toward harnessing the powers of what the government sees as nature's version of their rehabilitation of the criminals while the government aids them by pouring money into the program.

At first, this is tested on the convicts whose deaths would be mainly passed over by society, such as Death Row inmates and inmates in high security prisons or solitary. Slowly, but surely, the government moves down the levels of criminals and finally decides to implement it on small scale in a small town on adults to gauge the effect before mandating it nationwide.

Murder rates plummet initially, while suicide rates go on the upswing. Yet the suicides are glossed over as accidental and/or expected in such a small town where human interaction is so limited.

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ATTENTION: This part I'm still rather unsure about, and it is just my preliminary tinkering with the part of the plot you have issue with to give it some level of plausibility.

Pleased with what they deem a success, the government does behind-closed-doors testing on unwanted children, such as those that have been foster children for years without finding a home, and are now too old for adoption or children found more or less discarded. The testing is done with newer versions of the injection meant to counteract the side effects of CIPA and the subjects are the older children. All the while, the government returns to its testing on convicts to ensure that each version of the injection is safe enough to test on children.

P.S. A potential plot point I am considering is having lies leak to the press that the government is testing on newborns, disguising the injections as one of the many regular shots children get, and this will result in the second narrator concocting his murderous plan that I already mentioned. However, it won't get past the planning stages because the alignment of the aforementioned crazed man with his cause makes him think otherwise.

Nevada said:

I just hope it's not 20 yrs from now and . . .

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Oh, it won't be. I have the first draft of another novel festering before I go back at it for editing/rewriting as well as the beginnings of another novel that I put on the backburner due to me feeling it was a bit too ambitious for myself at the time and multiple novel ideas ready to go, including one that came to me in a dream on the night of Christmas Eve, like a Christmas present to myself from my subconscious, and I am liking its possibilities. This has just become a sticking point for me. See below for why.

Nevada said:

I know thats pretty harsh to say, but I always want people to tell me the unvarnished truth about my writing, so i tend to do the same with everyone else.

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As do I. I've just been working with this premise for about two years, and no ideas for a complete restruturing come to mind immediately, so I'm clinging on for dear life hoping I can salvage what I've put so much time into.

And my sister told me that her fiance wants to read the novel I told him about, which just so happens to be this one. She told me to bring it to the wedding . . . in April~! Gah . . .

nevada said:

If a writer needs someone to hold his hand and say, thats nice dear, that writer should go see his mother. (not you, any writer in general).

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The only time I had my parents read some of my work, they railed it . . .

P.S. The inmates aren't given CIPA. Normal, everyday drugs are used to numb/sedate them. Potentially as a means of getting a particular rowdy, and potentially violent, inmate under control without the use of force.

I just wanted to clarify that because I don't want to seem completely desperate and/or a major dunce. Heh.