11th Hour [Modern-day][Kinetic Novel][Sci-fi]

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Ezmar
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11th Hour [Modern-day][Kinetic Novel][Sci-fi]

#1 Post by Ezmar »

Hey there. This still feels a little bit premature, but I'm over a year and 130k words in, so I guess I could officially say this is in development.

11th Hour

11th Hour (name subject to change) is a pet project I've had floating around as a concept in one form or another for the past 5 years. In the last few years, it suddenly made a number of steps closer to an actual idea, so last fall, I started writing up a script draft. Since then, as I mentioned above, I've made a lot more progress than I expected, and I'm 8 chapters and 130,000 words into this story. What is it? Well, let me give a little hook.

The Hook:

A group of college students chasing rumors for an article about campus ghost stories stumble upon an old lab underneath the school, the site of government research shut down 17 years before. They soon find themselves at the heart of an unfolding conspiracy that slowly begins to close around them.

Okay, maybe that's a bit generic, but hey, I want to keep the hook pithy. And I'm a huge advocate of letting the reader experience the story themselves if they want to. If you'd like more detail, the crux of the story revolves around a sequence of time loops, a la Groundhog Day, where the mysteries of the research, the conspiracy behind them, and the truth behind everything lie just out of reach in an elusive, unobtainable future. Before you ask, yes, I did take a lot of inspiration from Steins;Gate, which will likely be apparent to anyone who's read it. I have taken great care to avoid aping it too much if it's not necessary, but I can't deny its influence. As the tags in the post title might suggest, the story is linear, without any significant branches. There's one choice that leads to an "either-or" scene, which joins back up after the scene, and one that changes some minor dialogue. There's also a multiple-choice system I use a bit earlier on, but both of these elements have been dropped as I continue writing, since I've decided to prioritize getting the story written than getting bogged down in little mechanical details. I may scrap those elements entirely if I can't work more in to the rest of the story, but time will tell. By and large, the story as it stands is almost entirely linear.

The story as a whole deals primarily with themes of loss, acceptance, and the importance of human connection. While speaking to these themes may be a tad hypocritical of me, as I haven't engaged in friendship for years, I used to do so regularly, so I'm confident in my ability to recall those happier days of mine, or at least well enough to write the story. The main cast consists of 5 characters (in order of first appearance):
  • Nicholas "Nick" Stendahl: 2nd year English student. Nick is a fairly easygoing type of person, though he does have a bit of a perfectionist streak. Quiet almost to a fault around strangers, he’s often sarcastic and pokes fun at his friends. In addition to his “activities” in the “Detective Club”, he’s also recently become a writer for the university newspaper. He’s socially withdrawn, troubled by his memories of a girl he once knew…
  • Mordecai “Kai” Ellison: 2nd year art student. Eccentric and outgoing, Kai is the self-proclaimed leader of the university's unofficial Detective Club. Despite his aspirations, he’s not particularly successful at any of his attempts at sleuthing, but he’s content with merely pretending. Strangely charismatic, he can take almost any situation and come out of it with some measure of success. He’s a member of the track and field team, though he’s only an average athlete.
  • Melinda “Mel” Sommerville: 2nd year computer science student. Shy, but friendly, Mel and Nick have known each other since middle school, and she calls him by his old nickname “Niko”. While she was nearly mute when she and Nick first met, she's since broken out of her shell and established a sort of introverted confidence. She, along with Nick and Kai, make up the Detective Club, though Mel is also a member of the university’s robotics club. She’s concerned about Nick and how isolated he’s made himself from others.
  • Laura Winter: 1st year physics student. Projecting an aura of competence, Laura tries not to wear her emotions on her sleeve. She’s not entirely successful, however, and is prone to blushing when flustered or embarrassed. A brilliant and gifted girl, she's taking graduate level theoretical physics in addition to her undergraduate studies, and is also a skilled drummer. She turns to the detective club to help her search for information about a particular rumor.
  • Dr. Rachel Ellison: A respected research scientist in her late 20s, and Kai’s older sister. Nearly as eccentric as her brother, Rachel ticks the "genius" box as well. While Kai has a knack for things just breaking his way, Rachel has an uncanny ability to "make arrangements" for almost anything she might need. A graduate of the university, Rachel has been invited back to continue her research at the university, and is also acting professor for a number of graduate-level courses. Laura is one of her students, which is how Laura learns of the detective club.
"But wait!" I hear you say. "What proof can you offer that this is actually a real project and not just a concept?" Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I can offer proof, and that proof is rather substantial. The bad news is that many of you are going to be disappointed and probably walk away at this point because none of the proof takes the form of art, which, as we all know, is pretty much the only thing people care about when deciding if they're interested in an in-progress work or not. But believe me when I say that if I tried to do the art myself, it would end in hilarious, kindergarten-style disaster.

What I can offer is a link to the entire work-in-progress script, courtesy of a Google Drive folder. That's right, read the entire thing without the benefit of sound, visuals, or presentation as a game! In all honesty, I'm eager to get volunteers to sample it, and let me know what needs work, or what isn't working the way I want it to. I'm not a very seasoned writer, so any feedback helps, as long as it's not so harsh as to crush my fragile writer's ego. In addition, while I can't draw, I'm a semi-professional musician, and I plan on composing the soundtrack myself. To that end, I have four sample songs, some in more completed states than others. Links to both of these assets will be available below:


The Future

So how will this materialize moving forward? That depends on a number of factors. Once the draft of the entire script is finished, I'll begin looking into finding people to form some kind of dev team. I may throw together a demo with placeholder art assets, but at the very least I will need one other person who knows how to draw before I can make anything I'm proud to call "finished". Until that point, I'm focusing on just making progress one step at a time. I don't know if I'd be able to make it commercial or not, but those are concerns for farther down the line. I'll probably drop in to give updates as my schedule allows, since I'm still working on this entirely in my free time.

Anyway, hopefully this doesn't offend the sensibilities of this forum too much, and I'm happy to answer any lingering questions or hear any kind of feedback you have on the writing. What works, what doesn't, what could be explained better, what makes me look like a talentless hack, stuff like that. I'm all ears.

Thanks, all. Cheers!

-Ezmar
Last edited by Ezmar on Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
Ezmar
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Posts: 47
Joined: Thu Dec 21, 2017 9:23 am
Projects: 11th Hour [Working Title]
Soundcloud: Ezmar
Contact:

Re: 11th Hour [Modern-day][Kinetic Novel][Sci-fi]

#2 Post by Ezmar »

Contrary to what many may have assumed, this is not a dead project. Chapter 9's script has been completed. Slow and steady, as they say.

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Piper
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Re: 11th Hour [Modern-day][Kinetic Novel][Sci-fi]

#3 Post by Piper »

Sounds like a really cool premise! I wish you the best of luck in finishing your script. ^^

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