New ideas on the dead horse part deux

Looking back at my current ideas that were posted in the last entry, a few of them tie into each other rather well and that may be the start of something new. Not sure if this is the start a new mold to work with, but time will tell I guess.

My intent now is to put together a believable storyline from this. Mass scale weapons, a project that would take some time (weeks, months etc.) to put together would allow the 'good guys' time to figure out the mystery of the story. In the original writing, the Alpha project is deciphered in record time, an impossible feat given it was twenty five years in the making. Conventional wisdom would say, it would take twenty five years for them to reset it and recode it. But given that no one is interested in twenty five years of garbage, something has to give.

At this impasse, I'm looking at something that may take a few months to work. Even a few weeks if we want to push the envelop: In the example of the original storyline - they took the alpha project and had it reverse engineered to begin the book. If I could expand that out and make it over the course of the book, culminating into the final showdown and make it so they have to race the clock to stop a genocide.

On the stopping the genocide, this is where the General Aramov having second thoughts idea comes in. Despite being a madman for the most part, I believe at that point - humanity/soldier in him would come forth and he could not bring himself to slaughter so many innocent people. He is then killed by subordinates, most likely Mark.

Speaking of Mark, since we're on the topic of him: His role in this entire ordeal. We know he's a genocidal, psychopathic, maniac that has no qualms about death. His presence in the story does cause a lot of stress and works on the psych of his kid brother, Travi. He is the epitome of a force truly evil, while Trav acts as the yang to his yin, the just and righteous side of the spectrum. He would have no second thoughts about killing Aramov, and would gladly launch the genocide against humanity without any regrets. A perfect bad guy, and the perfect way to climax a mass scaled weapon.

Now, the team in which that is opposed to all this is of course Travi's team within SOCA, but now that has me thinking about a lot of the organizational structure of the agency. When most people think agency, they think like CIA, FBI, NSA, ATF etc. In that mold of thinking, special forces are thrown out the window and we say hello to the Turks for instance. Keeping with that line of thought, we can look into partnerships between characters, such as Travi and Allison working together as field agents in a similar mold to the likes of Chris and Jill, Leon and Helena etc.

On the matter of SOCA, does it even still exist? Or do I think up a new one, or just return to real life counterparts? This is working my head a bit because I'm not sure what purpose SOCA would serve except as a private intelligence and investigation agency. Keeping with that, we know that the likes of Leon are Secret Service agents that are also dispatched on covert and top secret missions. How does this bleed together with my thought process and what I want to do? This is what is bugging me. And in that mold of thinking, they are less suited for out and out combat (though that can still be arranged), and the story would become a detective story. Besides, it's rarely ever field agents that go on to stop genocides, its the special forces. The agencies just put together the intelligence for the operation. This presents a problem.

So, if I go with the partnered teams - it would behoove me to look at smaller scale stuff like local troubles, or maybe at different storylines. Does it have to follow Travi exclusively? Hmm...

Okay, now we're at new territory of thinking in multiple storylines that may intersect intermediately. This would allow me use of the chapter nameplates more freely and also open the story up from the inside. The idea of multiple stories interacting with one another over the course of a main storyline has merits in that I can always use extra characters. In a cliched attempt, we're looking at three separate stories being told perhaps: One from a behind the scenes, intelligence protection agency, one from the frontlines, and one from the inside, like a resistance. But, that main question on all that, is of course: What are they intelling, fighting and resisting?

By the end of this entry, I have moved no further than I was before I started it. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
Au Revoir.