Feedback on story idea + title help?

[barbsart]

Hi! I've been working on a story idea and its characters for my first "proper" webcomic for a while now. I really want to plan this out well, as knowing myself I get stuck after a few pages if I don't have anything planned. I'd like some feedback on the ideas I have so far, and I'd really appreciate any ideas for the story and definitely for its title, as I don't have any yet!

Here's the summary of the story's beginning that I've written out so far:

Finn Hawkins is an 18-year-old latino boy who lives in the town called Hourglass Lake. It's the year 1991, and Finn is sitting by the lakeside, listening to music on his walkman.
Suddenly, a blinking light in the lakeside forest catches Finn's attention. He puts his headphones around his neck, stands up and walks towards the light.
The light results into coming from a spaceship that's buried under the lake. Finn gets curious and heads into the ship to explore, and stumbles upon a room with some kind of incubator in the middle. It contains a lot of alien larvae. Finn accidentally activates one of the incubator pods and the larva attacks him.
The larva clasps itself to Finn's brain in some way and takes control over his body. 25 years pass and Hourglass Lake has grown to be somewhat of a small city. Finn's "possessed" body now lives in the forgotten attic of a small apartment. His body hasn't aged. When a young witch named Olive moves into the apartment, she discovers Finn in the attic and tries to banish the alien from his mind. She succeeds partly, as Finn gets control over his mind and body again but it's only temporary.
The story continues with Finn struggling to wrap his head around all the developments that happened in the last 25 years, and worrying about the alien that's still stuck to his brain and can take over his body again at any minute when Olive's spell wears off.

I'm mainly still struggling with figuring out the basic storyline of the rest of the story. I do know I want the alien possessing Finn's body to be the antagonist along with the rest of its species. Main things I still have to figure out about that is what exactly their motive is and more details on their species.
I want the story to have a kind of magic vs aliens thing going on. There's also a witch society (which Olive used to be part of) that's struggling with conflicts between modern and traditional ways of magic. (Olive being from the modern side, and I'm thinking of giving her a half-sister from the traditional side who's help they're going to need).
I also want Finn to be trapped inside his own mind when the alien takes control, and when the boy takes back control he can still hear the alien after a while and it also bothers him in his dreams. I want the alien to be a kind of metaphor for anxiety disorder, constantly messing with his thoughts and making him worry and doubt about everything.

Main inspirations for the story are the games Oxenfree and Night in the Woods and the series Stranger Things and Riverdale

Here are the character designs I have so far!

(Finn is still white in these, I changed his race to latino)

[Hel]

I think this idea sounds so interesting! It's unique and holds a lot of promise.

The only things I would say are get your world building done before you start the story (you need to understand these aliens and the witches as well as your characters completely or there are going to be a lot of plot holes) and give Finn a motive to go walking toward the light and climbing into the spaceship. I don't buy that curiosity alone would lead someone to put themselves in danger like that. Does he have no sense of fear? Give him a compelling reason to go to the light and enter the spaceship, or else change the circumstances of him coming into contact with the aliens.

I'm looking forward to reading this when you post it. : ) Good luck!

[barbsart]

Thank you so much! I'll definitely plan out all those things before starting!

[barbsart]

bump! (no idea if that's a thing on this forums but i'll just see if it is lol)

[joannekwan]

Sounds like an interesting story but I agree with the motivation point brought up earlier. If I saw lights in the woods I would hide! Maybe he thinks it's like a cool kids party and he goes to investigate that? And if I saw an unidentified ship, I'd high-tail it out of there!

A bit of a disconnect there I think, you say the lights are from the woods but that the ship is buried under the lake. How do the two connect?

And on another note, had you not said he was Latino, I wouldn't have guessed it? Unless his European descendant parents lived and had him in a Latin American country or he was adopted (I'm going by his name here). Like I find it unlikely for parents who actively speak Spanish to name their kid Finn as "fin" translates to "end," unless they have a sadistic sense of humor or reeaaallly want to assimilate.

[barbsart]

Thank you for the feedback!

A bit of a disconnect there I think, you say the lights are from the woods but that the ship is buried under the lake. How do the two connect?

The idea I had was that the ship is mostly covered by the lake but part of it is under the forest, and that's where the entrance is.

And on another note, had you not said he was Latino, I wouldn't have guessed it? Unless his European descendant parents lived and had him in a Latin American country or he was adopted (I'm going by his name here). Like I find it unlikely for parents who actively speak Spanish to name their kid Finn as "fin" translates to "end," unless they have a sadistic sense of humor or reeaaallly want to assimilate.

Lol I hadn't thought about this at all! I came up with his name before deciding his race, so that's why. Having him be adopted could be interesting, maybe his biological parents had something to do with the aliens in a way? (Just brainstorming here haha)

[joannekwan]

Gotcha! That's a large ship then!

And that would be interesting to tie his birth parents in with that somehow! Then it could add depth to the aliens side other than they were there and now one of them is in his brain. Oooh! Maybe part of his genetic makeup made him drawn to the ship!

[barbsart]

Holy shit that's a really good idea, I'm definitely going to brainstorm about that while working tomorrow! Thank you!

[joannekwan]

No prob! Glad to help~

[Rosso]

Nice starting concept. Have you seen or heard of Parasyte: Maxime? my memory is a bit fuzzy, but it's something you can get a lot of inspiration from. imo the motivations of the "aliens" there made them objectively benign once humans understood their situation, but some would argue otherwise...

you should try capitalizing on the odd mix of scifi (the aliens) and fantasy (the witches) of your story.
the aliens' motivation could be tied into the witch society somehow?

i'm no expert on mental illness, but use that anxiety allegory to your advantage whenever you're stuck. anxiety cannot just magically go away, but we can learn to cope/live with it/contain it. what could average-Joe Finn ever do to overcome this invasive, malicious alien? what if overcoming the alien "taking over" is a state of mind? people tend to feel less anxious when in their comfort zone, and i see he got a gameboy on his shirt + playing a game. what if a temporary solution to "stay in control" is by engaging himself in an activity he's quite fond of? whenever he feels something creeping inside, he pulls out his gaming device. but just like real anxiety, sometimes things work, sometimes it's just so overwhelming to overcome with such simple methods...

I'd advice you to first focus all your thought on Finn and the alien first. list down possible motivations, problems, solution, end goal etc. motivations do not always need to be so grand and complicated: aliens wanna thrive on planet earth? accidental crashing, and finn was their first chance to find a host body? they were looking for something stolen from them? it's actually all the witches' fault?

for each of those potential motivations/problems, list down multiple solutions. the more ridiculous they are, the better! cross out obvious solutions, and give the more ridiculous ones a little thought. you'll find yourself eventually having a clear vision for the direction your story will take : )

again, if you can handle body horror in anime, i highly advise you to give Parasyte a watch! and sorry if my thoughts are all over the place ^^;; i find it a bit hard to properly organize my thoughts haha...

good luck!

[barbsart]

Thank you for all the feedback!!

I've never heard of Parasyte (Not that big of an anime fan) but it looks pretty awesome! Not entirely sure if it's something for me but I might try watching it for inspiration, thanks!

And you're definitely right about the mental illness part. I've had generalized anxiety disorder for about 8 years now and have learned to live with it but it was very hard to deal with in the beginning. I really want to bring back elements of my experiences with the disorder in the story. Like how much the alien takes control of Finn's life before he seeks help. Everything you said are definitely things that I want to experiment with in the story!

I'll try using your advice on focusing on Finn and the alien first and listing all those ideas down! Thanks for taking the time to comment, it helps a lot

[mileshonor]

Hi! The premise sounds like it could be really fun! I like where it is headed, but make sure to develop some idea of where you want your story to go. I don't mean that you should have every event planned out, cuz that makes comic-making less fun (in my opinion), but just get a basic idea of what major plot points might pop up in the future. That's important not only because it gives you some sort of security, but it also will help with your writing if you know where you are headed so you can make a more cohesive story and maybe throw in a little foreshadowing. Hope that helps!!

• Best of luck, Honor Miles

[barbsart]

Thank you! I'm planning on making some sort of timeline with all the major plot points in it, then getting more and more into detail (Though I'm only going to write out the details for the first part, because as you said, it's more fun to not have everything planned out yet).

[barbsart]

Thanks for all the feedback guys, it's helping a lot!

[Rocatex]

you should make the alien want/long for something such as returning home, and have olive sustain him with her magic, but she has to move away or something like that. also, you could add communication with the alien and a deeper reason as to why it´s there.