Need help.

[TheStrangeWeirdo]

I'm a bit on the fence, trying to decide between scrapping my new book, The Carrow Chronicles (there is a link in my sig) and an idea that has been germinating in my mind for quite a while. I haven't worked out the details for the second 'book' so I'm trying to decide if I should stay with my first book or scrap it and do the post-apocalyptic idea.

Here's the general over-view, guys.

So, basically, Andrew is your average Joe. He's pretty good at soccer, and does well in English, Science, Maths and his electives (he's in grade 9 - highschool in Australia). The only thing 'out of the ordinary' is that he practises archery at a local club.

Not much is gonna be done with Andrew in school, because the main focus is a post-apocalyptic world.
So Andrew is down in the bomb shelter/basement, getting away from his annoying little brother, who then closes the trapdoor and puts a brick on it to stop Andrew getting out. A nuclear bomb hits, causing mass destruction and mutation in survivors (both human and animals).

I'm going to cover his 6-12 months of surviving with a chapter or so, showing him becoming a little vain and merciless, because he's become used to getting what he wants (since no one is around to argue) and doing what it takes to get it.

Later, Andrew will find out that almost everywhere has been bombed, save for some country farms and suburbs which each countries' enemies decided wasn't important enough to bomb. Now, I'm going to mesh in mythology as well. Basically a blend of all the world's mythology, like Egypt, Greek/Roman, Norse, that sort of thing, and Andrew is a demi-god (or blessed by one of the gods, granting him powers) of Apollo or Mars/Ares/Odin (I'm pretty much combining them).

He then is demanded by Mars/Ares/Odin, who is the leader/king of the gods, to destroy an evil menace which made one of the country's leaders bomb another country, causing a chain of events to destroy everything, and has to fight the monster's minions, which are the surviving human and animals which have become mutated.

He sets out and along his journey meets a girl, who he fights with over resources. Instead of killing each other, they decide to join forces. Romance blossoms, the girl gets pregnant and Andrew sets out to kill the creature.

Here, I'm unsure whether to leave it off at that with Andrew killing the monster, because I think I could do a sequel with Andrew's son setting out to find his father, using his father's journal to give him some clues.
Really need some advice as to how I should finish it off.

Option 1: Andrew kills the monster, the end, no more books.
Option 2: Andrew kills the monster but doesn't return to the girl for an unknown reason (prompting his child to come and find him)
Option 3: Andrew is either killed or wounded badly fighting the monster, so his son ends up having to do it.
Option 4: Help me come up with a different ending.

Please leave reasons for why you want a certain option, and what would be your second choice.
P.S. If option 2 or 3 happens (or Andrew's son has to find his father for whatever reason) then the first book will be set in first-person, like Andrew's journal which his son will use. It will also have to be unknown if Andrew killed the monster or not, but I could do a third-person epilogue.

[Phenora]

Your story, book, or whatever you personally call it, sounds interesting, though a bit odd. Just not used to the idea of mythology/post-apocolyptic mix. Anyway, I will not vote for one, because a few of the options interest me. Continuing this with a sequel would be a good idea, in my opinion, so long as you can get a good story going for it, which I doubt will be a problem. But here's what I'm thinking.

Options 2 and 3 sound good for a second part. Though I think option 3 would be better, and his injury could be something to do with his face that has caused him to become blind, either in one or both eyes. It might be better if he's not dead, but whichever you would prefer.

I could also suggest something for option 4. Say this beast was the creation of someone, or someone was simply fascinated by Andrew's powers and abilities. They capture him and hold him prisoner. When he does not return home, after some time, his son sets out to find him or something that might be a clue to why he never came home. He finds something to do with the captors and sets out to find them. Maybe the captors know he's coming, somehow, and watch his progress or make his father watch all his near death moments and such. The rest, would of course, be up to you, but I just felt like throwing this out there.

[TheStrangeWeirdo]

Well, I must say I very like the idea of Andrew being captured, as well as him being blind.
I didn't really like the idea of him being dead, I just thought it'd be a major twist for readers.

Edit: >:l
Two people voted but didn't leave their reasoning. Well, the person who chose option 5 didn't need to leave their reasoning, but the other person did!

[TheStrangeWeirdo]

Bump. Come on guys, don't just vote, I want your opinions and reasoning! >:l

Btw, Phenora, I know it's a weird mix.
I like my stories to be different, out of the ordinary. I also just wanted to introduce mythology, as I have a huge passion for it, and I was having trouble coming up with an antagonist/problem (that the protagonist has to solve), so mythology provided me with that.
This was the first story that was wholly unique. Like, it isn't fan-fiction or anything.

[Nerruse]

First, why not write both stories? You could outline this one while you work on Carrow or vice versa. Second, what if none of the story options in the poll are appealing? Depending on how the story turns out, maybe he dies in order to kill the monster/menace/thing. Maybe something makes him turn away from his journey, forcing his son to take up the quest when he's old enough. Maybe he gets corrupted by the menace and becomes the new threat and then his lover has to kill him to protect herself and her child, or he kills her and his son strikes out on a quest for revenge later. Maybe he kills them both and ends up on a path of redemption.

...Yeah, I tend to like the darker paths.

The problem with planning the ending now is that you don't always know for sure what's going to happen along the way. I'd suggest just write it as it comes and see where the road takes you. If you don't like how it turns out, it can always be edited later.

[TheStrangeWeirdo]

Well, yes, that's kinda what I meant. It was essentially the question of, "should I do ____ or ____ first?"
That is, of course, why I put the fourth one - help me come up with a different ending.
Oh, I love the darker paths. ^-^

I like to plan out my stories so I don't have to do it later.

[Lily153]

Good Job!

[lillies]

(Chose Option four. here is my idea)

Andrew fights the monster and throughout the fight he earns the monsters respect. The monster grudgingly admits to itself that Andrew is a worthy opponent. Andrew thinks the same about the monster. Before either on can kill the other the god/s get fearful that Andrew has gotten too strong and now poses a threat to them, so they send him to some unknown place where he can see what goes on with his family but is unable to do anything. The monster really wants to finish its fight with Andrew so it finds Andrews love/mate and tells her what happened.

In the second book, during the quest to find Andrew the son and the monsters become friends because of the paral and danger they both faced together. The god/s make the son and the monster fight. They promise that if the son wins the fight the god/s will "think" about setting Andrew free from the otherworldly place. Andrew sees everything and gets mad at the god/s and demands to be released. The god/s get angry at Andrew for being as insolint as to think he comands the gods, so they......

(im thinking they either)
1) make the father and son fight but the two outwit or the god/s and escape.
2) erase the fathers memory of his love/mate and the fact that he has a son the tells the son he has X amount of time to make his father remember or the memory loss will be perminent.
(Sorry about the open ended choice at the end)

[tanglefire1000]

Looks like a really interesting story!
I quite like the idea of a sequel, but that might just be because I am a book fanatic
But, seriously, I think the boy saving his father is really cool

[TheStrangeWeirdo]

Thanks Lily and Tangle.

Yea, I love sequels as well, but sometimes I find (and I know others confirm this) that sometimes the author should have just left the series where it was and not written sequels.
I know sometimes that the series has to go on, due to loose ends (like Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games - she stated that she knew the Capitol wouldn't have left Katniss to grow old in the Victor's Village and that it couldn't have ended with her doing that, but even so I felt myself liking the next two following books less than the first), but I still feel that they should've just left it there.

So that's why I'd like to determine if people would like a sequel, or if they'd rather that it just ended.

@Lillies - I love how your idea is original, because I'm a big fan of originality, and pushing the boundaries as well as using scenes that are largely unlike anything I've (and hopefully most people) have read before, though I see a few flaws, sadly.
Apart from it just not appealing to my sense of writing & creativity, I feel that the monster I create is going to be a lot more demonic and wouldn't even give Andrew a chance. It might grudgingly respect him, but it'd still be a slave to its instincts, contempt for all life and its master.
As for Andrew, he might've made peace with the monster (if it offered) in the early days, but by the end of the story, he'll be a lot more cruel and cynical than he was before. Surviving on his own for the most part, seeing 'friends' he met along his journey die horribly and many other factors would toughen him up considerably and since I love making my 'heroes' really dark and cynical, I find it hard to believe he'd make peace with the monster.

As for the second book sequence, Andrew will probably either be grateful to the gods for blessing him (or siring him) and while he may resent them (though they'll explain everything to him when they meet up) for the things they allowed, I just don't think he'd actively fight against them. To him, they'd just seem the lesser of two evils, if in fact they were bad and/or he resented them.
While I do like the idea of Andrew and his son outwitting the gods, I just feel that it'd make him too powerful (the gods govern various spheres of power, like wisdom, so it'd either take incredible luck or incredible intelligence for him to outwit him, as well as for him to survive the future encounters that he would have to have with them - since they're gods).
As for the second part, that doesn't appeal to me much.
Sorry, they were good ideas, they just had some flaws (like not fitting with Andrew or the monster) and just not appealing to me.

Currently, I think I'm going to go with Nerruse's idea.

Forgot to address this in your post, Nerruse.

what if none of the story options in the poll are appealing? Depending on how the story turns out, maybe he dies in order to kill the monster/menace/thing. Maybe something makes him turn away from his journey, forcing his son to take up the quest when he's old enough. Maybe he gets corrupted by the menace and becomes the new threat and then his lover has to kill him to protect herself and her child, or he kills her and his son strikes out on a quest for revenge later. Maybe he kills them both and ends up on a path of redemption.

All of those are covered in the options.
1st is option 2.
2nd is option 3.
3rd is option 3.
Because they were so vague, I asked for reasoning, and if you wanted you could've elaborated on the idea.