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  • Livi Ryddle replied to the topic Sci-fi novella: How to write? in the forum Sci-fi Writers 5 years, 11 months ago

    @jenwriter17 *nods* Let me give you a summary of the plot real quick…

    MC lives in a country where every child, at birth, has some sensors and a receptor surgically implanted in his brain and shoulder, respectively. The point of this is to sense when the person is feeling a heightened level of emotion (very sad, very happy, etc.), and give the person a shock through the receptor. (The sensors are turned on when the child is about 8, or deemed old enough to have reasonable control over his emotions, so it’s not like there are three-month-old babies getting a shock every time they cry.) After a while, the sensors are turned off because the person’s brain has essentially rewired itself to not feel much emotion.

    The reasoning behind all this is rather simple; studies done by some scientists have shown that people who are very emotional have a greater chance to die early, so the officials decided that they’ll “Pavlov” the citizens to not be emotional, consequently lengthening their lifespans.

    The story starts by introducing MC, who, like everyone else, is essentially just a shell of a person without emotion. He’s had his sensors turned off for about five years. We learn about his job, who he is, etc. We learn that he’s maybe not quite as much of a “shell” as everyone else is, and we start to feel sorry for him because of some things he’s dealing with. At some point, he goes on a business trip overseas and meets this woman at whatever meeting he went to. They become friends, or at least as close to friends as you can be when one person has as much emotion and feelings as a cloudy winter sky.

    Then MC starts slowly “thawing”, and falls in love with the woman. But he starts getting sick. And the deeper in love he falls, the sicker he gets. (I don’t have this part completely plotted out yet.) He visits doctor after doctor, and they’re all stumped. One of the doctors tells him that he has something poisoning his blood. Finally, he realizes that it has to do with the sensors and the receptor. Even though the sensors have been off for five years, they still somehow managed to pick up on the steadily growing trickle of emotion, and sent a very weak signal to the receptor, which in turn didn’t have enough signal to give a shock, but stored the signals up. Then when the “memory” was filled up, the receptor started leaking some sort of acid or battery juice or whatever (I need to think about this a bit more, obviously.), slowly poisoning MC.

    And that’s where I’ve gotten so far. So my problem (if it is a problem) is, I need the readers to know everything in the first two paragraphs, right? Or are there some things there that they can find out later on?

    (That ended up being way longer than I intended lol my bad)

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