I feel that the conflict needs to be visceral and have a potential to grow. It could start with a simple corrective action, but build up from there to a threat to their whole ability to time travel. If it hinges on Dave being in his timeline, BINGO! Your conflict now has stages. Now, how does Dave feel about that? Does he want to contaminate the past with others time-travelling? Is he loathing to give up all the hard work he put into transplanting himself in 1960s, where he doesn’t have to deal with his baby brother and his achievements or milking him? Just work through this in terms of how they are on cross-purposes, and there you have it. A strong, growing conflict from the first little seed (Dave is annoyed by Vincent and runs back in time to murder him) to an existential struggle with the time-travelling class he himself created who hates their privileges’ to be revoked. Is Vincent also in cahoots with the time travelers because he now understands that Dave could mess him up? This sort of thing.
Basically, in this story unlike the others, you have enough to work with.
Good news! My Watty mentee after she edited her first chapter with my suggestions passed Nick’s trial with flying colors. I guess I know how to do it on other people’s materials at least. It’s just mine that are the problem. Come on, I can fix my own issues, right?
It reminds me of vanilla starts to games !instead of the alternates (like we’ve done with fan patches of Skyrim). Improving a “more traditional start” is far easier than a “non-standard start”.
I’m happy for your mentee and for you for being a great mentor. I think we learn when we teach so with time you might be able to fix your own stuff too. I think that’s harder because you’re too close to your own work.
Nick finally gave me a review of mine and brought up a few good points, no solutions, just issues.
I made a note of his feedback for the future. Maybe ideas will come to me one day. Here’s to hope.
David wants to go back in time before Vicente exists and ends up in 1966
He meets people from the Clockers and figures out he’s in Angel Falls
David ends up getting a job and living a bit and enjoys it
He finds his ‘book’ and realizes that some of the events are off
He has to go back to the Clockers Commission and he checks the files
He realizes that some of the Clockers are changing history with their time travel
He tracks down the Clockers who are messing up time the most and he bumps into a version of himself, from the future, fighting for Bush at the Commission and he tells him about all the messed up things that have happened since the 1960s through his “family”
David asks about Vicente and realizes that Vicente is dead Although Vicente annoys him, David starts to feel regret and he wants to fix the timeline and the chaos around it
After more digging, he realizes that he has to kill the Dissenters of the Clockers Commission (the ones who messed up the timeline) but he doesn’t realize that he’s a part of it and that some of the Commission were sent to kill him too
David then realizes that the only way to not die is to reset the timeline, but he does back to the 1960s and is comfortable there
If he is comfortable, then he can’t fix time or bring back Vicente and more chaos will ensue
He needs to figure out how to reset everything without upsetting the timeline too much before history becomes too messed up
maybe NOBODY DIES in 1st. Make it really big stake. However, that alternative to the stake is now to shallow. Just comfortable? It gotta be more… is there something in the 1966 that makes it his staying there very, very important? Or is losing this altered timeline and squishing Dissent is contrary to his nature? Does he feel people should be able to mess with history because history SHOULD be corrected for the best? Is saving Vincent worth giving up on, I dunno, correcting humankind’s course (probably make it a limited reach for time travel, like 200 years or so?)
the two points that follow are too vague at the moment. You need a strong finale where Dave commits to one course of actions, the obstacles he overcomes and a finale that is the reason you wrote this story in the first place. What did Dave learn? That blood is not water and he loves Vincente despite his drawbacks and that’s far more important than big stuff/theoretical fate of the humanity? Or, on the opposite, that duty requires sacrifice? Whatever he decides, I suggest a huge, satisfying finale for it with the final win and the lesson learned.
Basically, finish with a BANG! Work throughout the story toward that.
I was gonna add more to that. Have it be something like:
He needs to figure out how to reset everything without upsetting the timeline too much before history becomes too messed up.
After some research, David realizes that he has to go to a place outside San Diego where there is a closed portal that only he can open, near the border to reset the timeline, but he doesn’t want to go because things are going well for him, for once and he likes living in the 1960s compared to the 1990s before.
The Clockers is becoming more chaotic and more people are Dissenting. History is becoming more messed up. He doesn’t want to leave the life he’s made behind, but the history-changing events are starting to affect his own timeline in a bad way.
The leader of the Dissenters wants to cause more chaos and travel through more timezones, but David still doesn’t want to stop him because he doesn’t want to lose this timeline, even if Vicente dies (?)
When chaos starts to ensue, and it starts to affect the people around him, including his dog and girlfriend, he decides that if he has a strong enough bond with them prior to going back in time and resetting things, he will find them both in another timeline. It’s also the only way to get Vicente back.
David decides after some thinking to go to San Diego. The Dissidents catch a drift of this, and they follow him to San Diego with loaded guns and try to kill him.
David has to fight off the Dissidents one by one, and re-open the portal using both his knowledge and his powers. Eventually, he opens it up and he goes inside the portal and out to the other side to reset everything. He gets Vicente back and realizes that he loves him (even if he is annoying) and vows never to let him get killed again.
His dog and girlfriend appear beside him, but his dog is a White German Shepherd and not a Standard colored one. His girlfriend has red hair and green eyes. He thinks that something is off, but it ends on a cliffhanger?
Maybe this could work better? He has overcome an obstacle, and the finale seems to have taught him that family is important, and the reason why he went through the portal?
Do not reduce the stakes by this consideration. He makes a sacrifice. Then your last bit with a ghostly manifestation pays off as a cliffhanger ending in a wtf is going on here? way.
So, if your ultimate conclusion is that he loves his brother and changes his mind, now espousing a conservative outlook on history, look at your outline again, flesh out both conflicts, internal and external, and firm up Dave as a character at the start. You already have a rebel in his initial concept, as in a neurosurgeon who decided to be a DJ, who doubts family values, and keep working until it all logically builds up from the initial “I can’t stand Vincent any more, I wish he was never born!” spark of the conflict.
And, oh! Is his girlfriend a Dissenter? Becomes a Dissenter?
Anyway, go for it. You have great bones here, so work your writing muscles. Make sure conflicts are front and center and you have an original, snappy fiction. Just don’t let it loose the beat by opening pressure relief valves.
Okay, so I ended up with Trapped by the Mafia set to Free on Radish, and I feel better that way. I’d hate to take it off Wattpad. This means, I’ll start releasing the episodes tomorrow… wow. Plus refreshing Wattpad copy with edited chapters. I hope someone reads it and it creates interest in Raised by the Mafia.
Yes, he makes a sacrifice for the life the had to save his brother. And to fix history, and then at the end he’s like wtf, I did all this and it’s STILL NOT FIXED!? and that can either be the open ending/carry onto part 2.
Yeah, so it starts in 1996 and then David can’t take Vicente anymore, so he creates a blast, and goes back in time before he was born? And that kicks the plot off? That could be the prolog or first few chapters?
Maybe she secretly is one. And that gets revealed in part two, hence why she changed?
No prologue. Okay, I’m terrible Chapter 1 writer, but my instinct is to start with a scream echoing Freddy Mercury’s line “Mama, I don’t want to die, but I wish I’d never been born at all…” only in relationship to his brother.
While they are arguing, it gives you an option to quickly immerse us into their differences. Vincent is mooching, Vincent is despising Dave for abandoning neurosurgery, giving him a duality of first being oppressed by the ‘perfect’ big brother all his life, but now ironically missing the perfect brother who was so easily guilt-tripped into giving him money. And Dave’s reaction to it all, defending his right to happiness and rebellion against society’s norms. On the other hand, he’s terribly uncomfortable with how Vincent dig at his insecurities, guilt, imposter syndrome. He wishes Vincent never existed to always hold up a mirror for him. If Dave was the only child, he would have done so many things differently, better… was a better man.
Once that cry of the heart happens, time for Dave to travel to 1966.
And then your ending becomes a natural mirror image of this scene. Dave learned to love the man he is through undergoing the change in the story/events. Proud of himself. And he acknowledges that he could never been this man if his brother didn’t exist.
Nick had nothing to say about my summary until I goaded him toward finding something to talk about, which in retrospect wasn’t the best way to gain productive insights. He admitted so himself that it’s a bit speculative to offer insights on the ending of a book one hasn’t read based on a summary alone.
I am just hoping I’m closing on chapter 1 that might hook people other than Nick. I am pretty much convinced that nothing I’ll ever write stands a chance to hook him. Hence my drive toward writing the damn 10 chapters so I can start workshopping/clubbing the living daylight out of this story.
See, I believe in the story. Just not the chapter 1.
I’m not even going to bother submitting mine to jolly St. Nick. I don’t think it would be a productive exercise, although it might let me cash out on the informal bet I have with one of my writing buddies where we’re predicting what he would say if he were to give a review. I could buy myself, with how expensive things have gotten these days, exactly one coffee with the winnings.
Thanks for your help. I’m gonna try the 27 chapters/3 Act structure with the important points added in.