Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Challenge PLOT BUNNY ALERT!

I’ve been battling for a very long time against this infernal animal. I wanted to put it in the back burner till I felt ready to do it justice myself, but it’s been eating at me out of house and brain until I had to capitulate and put it up for adoption.

Lois Lane, at forty, has it all. After more than ten years of marriage, she’s madly in love with her husband, she has beautiful children and a lovely home. She’s slowly reconciling with her parents. Her career is at an all-time high with her Pulitzer prize as well as being a best selling novelist. The happy, whole, maternal and carefree Lois Lane here is vastly different from the one we know.
Until she’s the target of an assassination attempt which, though it fails, leaves her in a coma for three months and she wakes up with no memory of the past fourteen years. Worse, given the record of her previous head traumas, the doctors think it’s unlikely her memory will ever return to her fully.
For Lois, it’s a Rip Van Winkle nightmare. She’s married to a man she last remembers as a wet-behind-the-ears rookie reporter who was foisted on her by Perry a few months ago. She’s apparently turned into her worst nightmare: a soccer mom. Her children are a responsibility which terrifies and confuses her, but which she can’t shy away from as they obviously need her to be a mother to them. She has strangers from all walks of life who know her better than she knows herself, and claim to be her friends. Her father is back in her life. Jimmy Olsen is a veteran foreign correspondent with more experience as a journalist than she remembers having. Her entire world has become a terrifyingly idyllic place to live in. She has a lifetime to start over from scratch.
And worst of all, everyone expects her to take the place of the woman she never knew she could have become, and who she knows she will never again be.
The only familiar aspect of her life seems to be that someone is still trying to kill her for reasons she has no clue about.
And why is her husband being so secretive?
Her investigation begins to implicate a conspiracy of international proportions, which leads her to a secret underground organization called Westgate. And the key to finding out how she is involved in all of this lies in tracking down it’s ring leader; an elusive figure known simply as - Madame.

Okay, so now that I’ve done the teaser trailer, is there anybody out there willing to write the actual story? I have it nearly all mapped out but writing fiction is not my forte.
Note: I ran into a seemingly abandoned WIP called Future Perfect a few weeks ago that had an uncanny resemblance to my story, although the implication in that was that Lois had journeyed through time. This is not the case in my premise, it’s a bit more Bourne Identity than that, and I assure you this premise was conceived of months before I’d read it. I suppose that great minds think alike!

Hasini, this would be *SOOOO* good. I am dying to read it already. Unfortunately I don't have it in me to write it, but we've got some authors around here who could really do justice to your idea (and you know who you are!).

Hasini has another fabulous idea!

Andreia

What do you mean, Lisa?

Btw, thanks for the enthusiasm.

OMG Hasini! Someone has to write this! It's a terribly fascinating idea! Your teaser was brilliant, and I had to say this line really, really struck me:

And then, of course, I died laughing at this:

I hope you or someone's able to write this!!

Sara

I would really love to see this. It sounds brilliant. I know there are stories somewhat similar to it floating around but nothint to this scale and nothing with this take on it. I would give it a read. ^_~

I meant there are some authors who would really excel at this, but I didn't want to put them on the spot by naming them.

Jenni Debbage's 'The Forgotten' deals with this premise (and a lot more ) - only it's Clark who has the amnesia. He's about the same age as Hasini is proposing, he and Lois have children, etc.

c.

Not really. I've read "The Forgotten", (LOVED it!) but what I'm thinking about is completely different. It's not just about having amnesia, really, the plot centers on being surrounded by ones you whom loved and trusted the most, in another life you don't remember, and being able to trust nobody. It's a bit of a whodunit thriller, really, with a lot of angst. Think Bourne Identity.
Also, it's imperative that it's Lois centric.
I think it's really unfair that the gods should inflict fully-formed plot bunnies like this on a person who so obviously can't write them.

Sounds like a great story idea. A few years ago, I actually read about a woman in a similar circumstances. She required brain surgery and when she woke up, she had no memory of the past 20 years.

That's okay. You're a wonderful muse, Hasini. (Think FB).

Actually it sounds like Hasini has more to go on this time. With Faustian all she gave me was "buddy sex" and the premise that maybe it wouldn't go as smoothly as they hoped.

I wonder. I don't know much about retrograde amnesia, but it seems usually, the only things people forget are personal stuff, stuff that they experienced, rather than the names of presidents and how to work a computer. So would that mean that Lois would know how to operate a cell phone in 2007, as cell phones hadn't really caught on in 1993 (the year she last remembers living in), esp not ones with the sorts of features we have today?

It's an interesting premise - I did a bit of very superficial research on this topic for a fic I wrote a fic a few years ago, and I gather it really depends on the part(s) of the brain that are damaged. Maybe there are some folcs out there whose RL experience in biology, psychology, health care could help with the brain chemistry bits?

The other thing is the trust issue - you'd have to find a plausible explanation for why Lois would feel she couldn't trust anyone.

Wayne Gretsky's father suffered a stroke which left him with amnesia - as far as I know he never did recover his memories of his personal life. What he did retain, though, is the skill sets he had. A lack of trust of those around him doesn't seem to have been an issue at all, though, in his case.

c.

Oh my. All the ingredients of my very favourite plot themes. I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. I've been known to watch episodes of TV shows I normally detest if that's the plot of the week. I've always been fascinated by the notion of suddenly not being able to trust the people you should be able to absolutely.

Someone write this! Quick!

LabRat

It's cause there's a lot of things going on that nobody is quite sure how to tell her how about, so everybody is holding things back from her, especially Clark.
And as for the other reason...well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?

I think, generally, having lost your entire life and memory of it would just make you naturally suspicious anyway. Not to mention a little paranoid. You suddenly have no reference points of your own, you're entirely at the mercy of what other people tell you about yourself, about your history, about your relationships, about who you are and what kind of person you are and have been.

For someone as cynical and suspicious as Lois, who in her earliest incarnation wasn't the most trusting person to begin with, I can easily see why she would find this disorientating and hard to accept.

LabRat

Oh, I totally agree, LabRat.

I would try to say something about psychological issues (I used to work with psychiatric patients), but since I haven't been sleeping well and have obviously been not typing quite right (never mind), I'd probably end up not making any sense.

Oh my goodness. This would definitely be a must-read for me!

As for coming up with a whole plot without being able to write--that's how "Darkest Dreams" started out for me. I set it out as a challenge, but eventually just decided to tackle it myself, though I had no writing experience whatsoever. Why don't you give it a try? I think you'd surprise yourself on what you can do! You came up with it on your own, after all.

<looks around hopefully for someone to accept the challenge>

SmirkyRaven

Well, as for not having written a fic before, well neither had Margaret Mitchell before Gone With the Wind. Although you shouldn't try and emulate in the fact that she never wrote anything after, either. We'd come after you with pitch forks!
But I CAN'T write...

I'll start learning the medical stuff about psychiatry and neurology in spring ( April, precisely.) I've got no pratical experience like Classicalla, but I'll be glad to help, if you think that you need the knowledge of a medical student.

I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to write this myself, but the offer is certainly appreciated! If I do, (write it) I'll probably need all the help I can get!

I'm sure you can do it, Lady Mirth. Perhaps you should just start doing it. It's only than that you'll see if you can or can't do it. Trust me, I know that people can do more than they expect. I mean, who would believe that it's possible to learn 1100 words in one week. ( I didn't believe that I could do that but I did)

Whoa!
Why on earth did you want to learn 1100 words in a week?

Who told you I want???? I had to. Okay, it was me who decided to go to university and study medicine. I can tell you, for the second week in university this was a pretty rough welcome.

You are a brave, brave woman!

And so are you, just jump into the cold water and find out what you are capable of. What anyone of us would write is probably going to disappoint you, because it's not your Lois and Clark they use. That's something I learnt on this boards. I had written a bit of fanfic years ago. It was bad, because I was a teenager and whatever writing skills I have were still developing. I gave up writing fanfic, because I was limited to characters that I didn't create.

Now I know that Lois and Clark might already have a certain character and you have to stick to it to write a (more or less) believable story. But they are your characters as well. Some parts of their personality is your interpretation of them. And that's different with every author.

So try to write and then send your story to a beta-reader. He or she can help you to develop your skills. You'll be surprised how much you can learn in a short time. I don't speak English on a daily basis and I had barely written an English sentence for three years before I started writing on these boards. And now I don't have to look up so much words when I'm writing, and the number of my mistakes is getting smaller.

Come on, Lady Mirth, give it a try.

Yes, Hasini, only you will know all the aspects of the story you want put in. I'm sure you've thought of some lines that would work well in the story or some events that should be included. Write what you've already thought of and see what happens.

This sounds like an interesting story to me. I hope you, Lady Mirth, or somebody writes it.

I'd say give it a shot, Lady Mirth. I mean, what bakasi said is right on. Like I said, DD started as a fic challenge, and even though Dandello wrote an amazing fic on it, it didn't go in the direction I was thinking about (as you can tell, 110000+ words into Darkest Dreams) and it just wasn't *mine*. Trust me when I say it really is satisfying to get out there and say, "This is MY fic. MINE. And people read it, and like it. It is MINE!" It's a major ego-booster, I promise! Nevertheless, I'm certainly not going anywhere for some time, so don't be afraid for lack of angst from this quarter for a while longer, at least.

As for the pitch forks...you guys come after me with them anyway, so it's kind of an idle threat.

<yawns>

Good night!

SmirkyRaven

We could bring out DJ's chainsaws.

After all this encouragement, I suppose I'd feel pretty small if I didn't at least try .
But no promises though. I might post a stand alone vignette first, just to get my feet wet.
But until then, the offer still stands!

OH! This sounds like such a smashing idea! I don't have anything helpful to add and I can't write, but I will be there to read it!

All right.

Yay! I am glad you decided to give this a shot, I will definately be watching for it. It sounds like a great premise.

Kate

Don't believe a single word she says on that account. There were whole sentences and even a couple of paragraphs in the first two parts of Faustian that Hasini flat out wrote. I even asked her if she wanted to co-author on the story but she pulled that "oh, I can't really write" routine on me. I've sometimes wondered how much better the story could have been if she hadn't disappeared on me. <giggles> Yeah, it is like that sometimes, isn't it? I just wish the feeling lasted longer.

C'mon, Hasini, just write it already! I, for one, have faith in you. You absolutely can write.

Hi Woody.

Are you referring to these?





You have my vote Hasini. Try the pool - I think you'll find the water quite warm. <g>

-- DJ

I had to look up the term plot bunny. I'm happy to know now what it is and man is it a cute term.

I've posted a very rough first draft up on my LJ. <points at homepage icon> Feel free to comment, if you like.

It probably won't make the MBs for another couple of weeks, though. Assuming I find a beta reader. <stares around, meaningfully>

OMG! DJ's unleashed the chainsaws! This is coercion! I'm calling the UN! <cowers under desk>



I noticed you'd left them in and did bit of sqeeing in glee! Thanks, Sue!


I was afrad I was trying to turn it into a cross between PG Wodehouse and Harlequin Mills and Boon. (The rejected pile!) I really didn't mean to write that stuff for you, they were meant to be suggestions. Personally, I don't think FB suffered any. You and your fantastic betas obviously did the best job possible!
It's very sweet that you think that though!

I'll just have to take it on your authority then! <g>