Okay, here's my problem: I start writing my undergraduate thesis in a week, or very near to it. (We call it something different at my uni, but,
quintasentally, it's a final thesis.) Since I'm a creative writing major, the deal is that I have to write either a series of short stories, poems, or
a novel. I've settled on the novel. But I can't settle on an idea. I need your opinions on these ideas I do have. Badly.
Option 1:
Calander is a young teenager (13) who has an overactive imagination. He dreams of being a knight, a mage, a bard, anything than what he really is: the bastard son of a serf who works as an underscullion in the castle kitchens of the baron. He lost is mother as at and he never knew his father (neither did is mother for more than an hour, some claim) and really doesn't have any prospects except staying an underscullion for the rest of his life. That is, until the baron's son is injured on a hunting trip. (Sound stereotypical so far? Just wait.) Cal is sent to the man's tent with supplies the priest tending him requested from the kitchen. To take the his mind off of what he's doing, the priest tells Cal to talk to the baron's son (who is, mind you, in early twenties). Though the conversation is awkward for poor Cal, the son requests that he stays after the priest has left.
So he stays until later that night when the baron's son (who, up to that point has been hitting on Cal all evening) tries to rape him.
Cal escapes and the son does manage to chase him (though how I haven't figured out yet), until a knight ride out of the forest on one of the ugliest horses in existance and kills the baron's son. The knight very nearly kills Cal too, but changes his mind at the last minute and rides off with him alive instead. When the knight has calmed down a bit, he introduces himself as Sir Lexius, the only knight of the Wizard of Rosenthorn. Though he refuses to accept Cal as his squire, he takes him along anyway.
Along the way, Cal discovers that what he thought was an overactive imagineation are visions of the future wrapped in metaphors. He has the potential to be a very powerful seer. Sir Lex (after a brief adventure with an enchantress) brings him back to Rosenthorn, the wizard, the castle staff (two trolls and a mule named Thorn), and a long streach of lessons and training ahead of him.
But Cal is always getting dragged away from his studies by Lex, who eventally does take him as a squire, and Cal begins to learn some really, story-stopping secrets about Lex and about himself.
Option 2:
The Applecore Project was yet another attempt shipping people using cyrogenics. Offically, it failed, but, unoffically, it is still being used to "store" the terminally ill, criminals (so there is none of that moral debate on the death sentence), the unwanted, and anyone with enough money to pay for having someone else/themselves frozen. Elizabeth Gecks and her best friend, a insectoid alien I have yet to think of a name for, are navigators on one of the transport ships for the Applecore Project, but when the project offically ends, they leave to set up on their own.
Now, three years later, with a ship (a scrapyard salvage called The Unity), an obnoxious junkyard mechanic, a humanish mercinary who is so tightly bonded to his parastic symbiote that neither of them can distinush between the other any longer, a doctor who (to be frank) is a foot long slug who manipulates things and moves around by hair-fine, web-like protrusions, the two ladies seem to be doing fine. Fine, that is, until someone from the Applecore Project wants anyone, who might potentially know anything about where the people were stored, to be stored themselves. Soon with the Applecore Project gunning for their hides as well as mobsters, planetary leaders, and religious fundamentalists, Gecks and her friend have to find out who is really behind all this and kill them before they end up dead. Or cyrogentically frozen. Or handed over to their families to be used as breeding stock. Or forced to recall the locations of some of the Applecore Project's bases. Or...
You get the idea.
Both have their up points and down point which I've weighed and reweighed. Option one has more material gathered on it, option two has a more cohesive storyline, etc, etc. I'm just looking for opinions here, because if I get anything published, ever, this may be it.
Option 1:
Calander is a young teenager (13) who has an overactive imagination. He dreams of being a knight, a mage, a bard, anything than what he really is: the bastard son of a serf who works as an underscullion in the castle kitchens of the baron. He lost is mother as at and he never knew his father (neither did is mother for more than an hour, some claim) and really doesn't have any prospects except staying an underscullion for the rest of his life. That is, until the baron's son is injured on a hunting trip. (Sound stereotypical so far? Just wait.) Cal is sent to the man's tent with supplies the priest tending him requested from the kitchen. To take the his mind off of what he's doing, the priest tells Cal to talk to the baron's son (who is, mind you, in early twenties). Though the conversation is awkward for poor Cal, the son requests that he stays after the priest has left.
So he stays until later that night when the baron's son (who, up to that point has been hitting on Cal all evening) tries to rape him.
Cal escapes and the son does manage to chase him (though how I haven't figured out yet), until a knight ride out of the forest on one of the ugliest horses in existance and kills the baron's son. The knight very nearly kills Cal too, but changes his mind at the last minute and rides off with him alive instead. When the knight has calmed down a bit, he introduces himself as Sir Lexius, the only knight of the Wizard of Rosenthorn. Though he refuses to accept Cal as his squire, he takes him along anyway.
Along the way, Cal discovers that what he thought was an overactive imagineation are visions of the future wrapped in metaphors. He has the potential to be a very powerful seer. Sir Lex (after a brief adventure with an enchantress) brings him back to Rosenthorn, the wizard, the castle staff (two trolls and a mule named Thorn), and a long streach of lessons and training ahead of him.
But Cal is always getting dragged away from his studies by Lex, who eventally does take him as a squire, and Cal begins to learn some really, story-stopping secrets about Lex and about himself.
Option 2:
The Applecore Project was yet another attempt shipping people using cyrogenics. Offically, it failed, but, unoffically, it is still being used to "store" the terminally ill, criminals (so there is none of that moral debate on the death sentence), the unwanted, and anyone with enough money to pay for having someone else/themselves frozen. Elizabeth Gecks and her best friend, a insectoid alien I have yet to think of a name for, are navigators on one of the transport ships for the Applecore Project, but when the project offically ends, they leave to set up on their own.
Now, three years later, with a ship (a scrapyard salvage called The Unity), an obnoxious junkyard mechanic, a humanish mercinary who is so tightly bonded to his parastic symbiote that neither of them can distinush between the other any longer, a doctor who (to be frank) is a foot long slug who manipulates things and moves around by hair-fine, web-like protrusions, the two ladies seem to be doing fine. Fine, that is, until someone from the Applecore Project wants anyone, who might potentially know anything about where the people were stored, to be stored themselves. Soon with the Applecore Project gunning for their hides as well as mobsters, planetary leaders, and religious fundamentalists, Gecks and her friend have to find out who is really behind all this and kill them before they end up dead. Or cyrogentically frozen. Or handed over to their families to be used as breeding stock. Or forced to recall the locations of some of the Applecore Project's bases. Or...
You get the idea.
Both have their up points and down point which I've weighed and reweighed. Option one has more material gathered on it, option two has a more cohesive storyline, etc, etc. I'm just looking for opinions here, because if I get anything published, ever, this may be it.
