David Burton's What if? And Novel Writing Blog

This is a collection of WhatIf? story Ideas from previous posts. Many from Windhaven (a novel in progress) pages. Use them as you will. A shout out for where you got the idea would be appreciated, but not necessary. They are in no particular order, there are several different genres. Maybe someday I’ll separate the genres, but don’t hold your breath.

WhatIfs?

This is a new one-

Whatif a bird, say a Crow fell in love with a beautiful Parrot in a cage in a glassed-in patio? The other Crows laughed at him, but he was lovestruck and determined to rescue his love. He made a couple failed attempts by himself. The other Crows, seeing how determined he was, decided to help. They designed an elaborate plan and were surprised that he worked.

The parrot was ever grateful because she loved the Crow…. Or did she?

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

What If you had wanted to be a writer back in high school and collage. You took a lot of classes and wrote a lot of short stories during that time, some of the later ones pretty far out. You thought they were pretty good, but Life got in the way and you put those stories away.

Say eleven years later you happen on those stories. They’re in order, first story on top of the stack, each one dated. You read the first one, not bad, but familiar. Second one the same. You check the date. Shit. Exactly ten years from the story’s date that story happened to you – A car accident, but you met the love of your life. Second story, exactly ten years later your sister’s boyfriend beat her almost to death. Third, fourth, fifth – all happened ten years later. Then you get stories that haven’t happened – yet. Winning the lottery, an accident putting you in a wheelchair, a wife murdered. Can the stories be revised?

What if you were a kid – 10-12 – and you went for a day sail in the ocean with your father. A nasty squall knocks the boat over and your father falls overboard. You don’t have much experience, but you manage to get to your father. He’s only a few feet away when a huge hand reaches up from the depths, grabs him and takes him down. You watch him be dragged down and there’s nothing you can do.

You know what you saw. It influences your life. Grown up, you’re in a position to explore the ocean bottom in that spot. You go down and find…?

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What if vampires, satan3-reading witches, werewolves, etc. were real, but, for obvious reasons given human nature, they wanted to stay hidden from us mere mortals? As if they actually could over the centuries, A Discovery of Witches notwithstanding. What if you were the only one who knew about them? What would you do? Keep it very quiet? Yell it from the rooftops – and end up in the Looney Bin? Befriend them, use them for your own nefarious purposes? What If someone else found out about them and planned to use that knowledge exactly the opposite of you. Could, would, that precipitate a war that couldn’t be hidden from the merely human. Knowledge should be used with care.

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What If you were on a spaceship space ship2 and discovered a planet populated by vampires. Like us they cultivated there own animals for their food supply, and had never tasted human blood. Maybe after an accident one tasted your blood. Oh Yum! What would they do to you? What would you do? Dole out you blood for favors in return. Would they force you to give them directions to Earth? Would you sacrifice yourself to save Earth? Maybe figure out a clever way to save Earth and yourself. What kind of hero are you?

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What If a cave explorer disappeared while exploring the huge caves in Borneo’s Gunung caves 4 Mulu national park? Search parties were unable to find him, he was presumed dead. A couple weeks later he emerges and starts telling people that he met Gaia, Earth as a sentient being. He preached that Gaia was pissed off at what the people were doing to her. He was written off as a crackpot until he said an earthquake was coming – Right Now. And it did. Coincidence they said, until it happened again and again. Tornados appeared at his command. He gained followers and disciples and finally governments were forced to accept what he said and actually did what needed to be done. A happy ending for the Earth.

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What If a vampire vampire2 and a werewolf werewolf3 fell in love and had a baby? What would the kid be like? What if he/she had all the attributes of vamps and weres? They’d be unstoppable. Also a freak, possibly shunned by both sides. They might go off on their own, maybe to the light side, or dark, depending on how they were treated – Become the Night Wolf. Of course there comes a time for all superheroes when they have to choose to help those who wronged them, or leave them to their fate. Perhaps a human, also lonely and wronged, could help Night Wolf decide which side to choose.

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What If? a large sailboat is out at sea, say crossing the Atlantic, with five crew aboard. One night, one is murdered. Everybody freaks out, blaming each other. One guy cooks a meal, adding a knockout ingredient. When the rest wake up they are chained in separate rooms. The Cook is determined to find the killer, using extreme methods. The captives determine that the cook is the killer. One of them manages to overpower the cook, accidently killing him. Great, but they are still chained and a storm and a rocky shore loom ahead. Oops! Now what? wrecked boat 3

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What If? there’s a spaceship(A)a long way from anywhere and some accident takes out all their communication and navigation systems. The engines work, but where to go? Eventually another ship(B) finds them and wants to steal their cargo etc.. But the crew of ship A are bad guys, too, and try to take over ship B. What If? a crewmember from each ship know each other and decide to take it all. Let the cat and mouse games begin.

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What If? you were a good guy, or gal (am I allowed to say that?) vampire. Okay–What If? you’re a good vamp being chased by bad vamps and mortals. You’re good but there’s a lot of them. They run you into the sea. You’re a vamp, you’re dead, you don’t have to breathe, you swim out thinking you’ll hang out for a day and sneak back to shore. But you run into an underwater habitat experiment and save a mortal from a shark attack. You are attracted to one of the divers and they are attracted to you. Then the bad guys find you and you have to save your new love and friends. Then maybe you and your new friends go after the bad guys.

What IF? An antique bookseller friend asked you to steal a book that supposedly would teach you real magic and was worth a small fortune. You manage to steal the book, but now real bad guys with real magic are after you. You try and read the book, but don’t understand it. You go to your friend. He’s dead, but his daughter can read it and the two of you become badass magicians and take down the baddies and live more or less happily ever after.

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What if a woman from the future shows up to prevent the assassination of a president. After the present president was killed the VP became a cruel and greedy dictator who destroyed the country’s democracy and forced millions into poverty, and became her father. Working with rebels they created a time machine to send her back. She teams up with an FBI agent who believes her. Together they are able to stop the assassination, meanwhile falling in love. The thing is, if the killing never happens, she never exists. Will she just disappear? How deep is their love of country compared to their love of each other?

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What if a male vampire and a female Immortal hooked up and fell in love? How would their story play out? Maybe the vamps hate the Immortal. They can’t kill her so what do they try? What if a male Immortal is obsessed with her? Would he team up with the vamps to do…? Maybe the couple would move away. Could they have a baby? Maybe adopt an abandoned/abused kid. Maybe the obsessed Immortal tracks them down, discovers the kid and forms a demented plan to make the woman fall for him.

Talk about love that will never die.

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What if a woman, Jane, sold her ability to change into any other woman to men, or women, who had a secret crush on another woman who they had no chance with. When the customer got tired of her, or got caught by their spouse, she changed back to herself. But WhatIf? She fell in love with her client and didn’t want to leave? How far would she go to stay around? If the guy went back to his wife, how sure could he be that it really was his wife and not Jane. If Jane, what happened to the wife? Or, in the course of her usual business she’d probably hear some secrets, what might she do with them?

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WhatIf? Two teenagers, Joe and Jane, meet at a boarding school at the start of Thanksgiving Holidays. Jane has no place to go and Joe has no place he wants to go. They decide to go to NYC for the break. They get a cheap hotel, separate beds, and have a good time for two days.

One morning they discover by the next room’s door, a new baby wrapped in bloody towels. The door is unlocked, inside they discover the horrible bloody body of a teenage girl, who obviously died in childbirth. They of course call the police and eventually are interviewed on TV.

Back in their room a man barges in wanting to know where ‘it’ is, and why did they take it. They haven’t a clue what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t believe them. He punches Joe, knocking him down then grabs Jane by the neck hits her, holds a knife to her. Joe smacks him hard with a lamp. He doesn’t get up, ever. They go through a more rigorous time with the police. His dad hires a lawyer. Eventually they are allowed to leave. They get on a train to Philadelphia. His dad waits at the station, but they never show up.

Where are they, and what is ‘it?’

??? ‘It’ – Proof that the father of the baby is the father and he wants to care of him/her, but his family doesn’t want that.

Or – Proof of the father, but he does not want that to get out.

Or – she stole money/secrets/something, or knows where it is, and somebody wants it back.

Or – ?

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WHAT IF there’s an air leak on a spaceship. The crew can not find it. The air refresher unit has been incapacitated. The Captain notices that one crew member, their technical engineer, is not searching. Just sitting, smiling.

“You’ll never find it,” he says.

So the crew has to figure out why he did it and where he might create the leak with only a few hours to do it.

Turns out his wife left him, took his money and kids. On the ship he felt underappreciated and nobody liked him. He was pretty much of an asshole.

What If, back in the time when it was a big deal for a young woman of means, especially lesser means, to come out to society, one girl, Harriet, did not want all that pomp and circumstance. At that time a girl’s first priority was to marry well, preferably up. Harriet did not want to marry somebody chosen by her parents or society, she was too smart for that.

A large amount of money, jewels, gold, coin was stolen from the Queen. Harriet took it upon herself to find the thieves and money. Well most of the money. Surely a finders fee was appropriate. The Queen was dazed and amazed. And Harriet’s secret career as a Queen’s spy or Private Detective was born.

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What If you are kidnapped and buried in a makeshift coffin with air and some water like on TV. You’re freaking out. You’re even more freaked out when something digs through the bottom and takes you down. When you finish really freaking out and find yourself safe you realize the entities (you chose what they are, worm people, insect people, mutant moles, demons, bogeymen, corporeal or ethereal) are not going to eat you but need your help to save them from, you choose, (oil drillers, miners, archeologists, natural damage caused by Global Warming, or other underground creatures.)

You find that you can do that, and then you do. As a reward they give you a bunch of colored stones suspiciously like rubies, emeralds, or sapphires. They also help you catch the kidnappers and let them feel what it’s like in very close quarters.

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What if you and a partner are doing a space walk for routine maintenance on a good sized space ship, though with a small crew. A small meteorite swarm hits the ship. Your partner is killed, much of the ship is disabled, many of the crew are dead. Only one can move about, but her legs are useless. Worst for you is the airlock is damaged. You can’t return that way. The one crew you can talk to reminds you of an emergency airlock a long way forward on the other side of the ship with no handholds or tether points.

You take your partner’s tether and let him float away. With two tethers you can almost make it, but not quite. You stretch it out. Another swarm cuts the line, but gouges the ship’s skin allowing you a handhold. From there it’s 15 meters of free floating to safety, if meteors or fear don’t get to you first. And if the inside crew can make it to the airlock to open it.

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WhatIf? a woman, possibly with a questionable past, died. She is in Limbo, waiting to find out where she’s going, when a demon takes a shine to her and kidnaps her and takes her down into Hell? Not being a poor me type of woman she fights and gets away from the demon, but she’s still in Hell. She has no choice but to venture into Hell proper to find a way out. She wanders through the different sections, sometimes she has to fight her way through, sometimes she gets a helping hand from a Soul Retriever (some blatant promotion there,) sometimes she’s able to help a soul. Eventually she makes it out of Hell in a dramatic way.

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WhatIf you are trapped in a high-rise building, being pursued by a ghost, demon, monster, your ex? Are there other people in the building, or is it strangely unoccupied? Through flashbacks you come to realize that whatever is after you has a reason to be after you. What did you do in the past to warrant such a pursuit? And what will it take to survive, if you do – if you deserve to?

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What If you were exploring unexplored territory and you came over a rugged mountain summit and saw a flat plain bounded by another mountain range two miles across? The plain was uniformly flat, covered with tall grass. Except for a big tree, a huge tree, a build a two bedroom, one bath, kitchen and deck tree house sized tree. Of course you’d go investigate, even though from high up the mountain the ground seemed to undulate. Probably an optical illusion caused by the wind on the grass.

It’s two miles to the tree, but only four of your party of eight make it close, alive. And somehow you can’t run away, only toward. And when you get close you can’t help but climb a hundred feet up the rough bark and enter what looks like a knot hole. Depending how resourceful you are depends on what happens inside and if anybody gets out.

What If you are a vampire and you do something to piss of your Vamp family? They don’t want to be nice to you and cut off your head and be done it. Instead they take you out to sea, tie an anchor too heavy to swim with to your leg and throw you over into a deep channel between shore and an island. Half an hour later you hit bottom. It’s dark even for your vamp eyes, but there is light down there.

Now what? You have two things going for you. You are familiar with the currents and tides in that area, and you are not the first vamp sent to a watery eternity. If you could find others, maybe you could help each other get to shore — and get revenge.

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WhatIf your partner stole all the company money and you were blamed for it, your wife left you, your kids hated you and your friends shunned you? You decided to kill yourself by jumping off a bridge. You do and you die. Your body drifts to shore and you wake up. Disorientated, you wander into a bad part of town. For no particular reason some locals beat the crap out of you and you die with a knife in your gut. You wake up. What the hell is happening? You have no money so you rob a store. The cops shoot you. You wake up in the morgue. Now you’re getting it. Escaping, you find a quiet place to sit and think, about revenge for all the wrongs, perceived or real, on your mind.

WhatIf you and a couple friends steal millions of dollars from a drug cartel. You keep 2-3 million for yourselves and want to donate the rest to charities. But you can’t walk in a hand them 100K in cash. That sort of thing raises questions. You think you’re clever and try to clean the money. But you’re not. Now the cartel killers, the police and the FBI are after you. What do you do? Where do you go? What do you become?

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What if you were a digital genius type with an idea for a commercial website? You spend hours, days coding. While reviewing you work you come to some sections of code you don’t remember writing. But you’re tired, in a hurry and you skip over it. You launch. While checking it’s as you wanted you come across a section that looks like a tunnel, or a wormhole.

You click and suddenly you are looking at the bridge of a spaceship. Think Star Trek. You figure out it’s real. You’re watching a real future ship, and you can interact with it. The crew doesn’t know you’re there, but they feel you, think of you as a Ghost in the Ship. There’s a war going on.

The ship is hit and you’re the only one who can save it. The Ghost Hero!

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What if a Werewolf lived in a small town surrounded by plenty of forest to run around in when necessary? Nobody knows what he is, but he’s a well known lawyer. He has a client, a woman, charged with murder. Right away he’s attracted to her and believes she’s innocent. Using his werewolf powers he investigates, easily finding another suspect.

Too easy. He asks a cop friend to check out the evidence he found. The cop finds different facts. The lawyer does some research and consults with other werewolves with Witch connections. He secretly meets with a Witch who casts a spell over him. When he visits his client he discovers she is a witch and has bewitched him, and others, and she is guilty. She becomes enraged, tries to kill him with her considerable power. The other witch’s spell protects him. She tries to escape. The cop is ready to stop her, but only slows her down. Outside two witches, cops, who have been searching for her stop her and take her away after making sure nobody remembers what happened.

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What If when a particular person was killed her soul would jump to the nearest person, the person who killed her. She wouldn’t have outright control of the new body, just varying levels of influence. Just enough make the killer step in front of a bus or jump off a roof. She’s been doing it for a long time, met some nasty people and some good people. She now picked the way the bad ones died, so she’d be close to a good person, who she might influence for good. But there’s one very bad killer, maybe he murdered a friend, and she searches for him, so he will kill her, and then she can punish him. What If there was a detective on is trail, too? Or, on her trail?

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What If a woman reports that her boyfriend is missing. An officer is sent to get information. It turns out that the boyfriend is a ghost. She says he comes and goes through a closet. The officer likes the woman, though he thinks she’s a bit nuts. He looks in the closet, nothing weird. He steps in – and finds himself in a netherworld of ghosts and spirits.

He’s freaked out, but intrigued. The officer’s brother died a year ago, but he always felt that the brother was still around, wanting to tell him something. So, on his own he does some research and reenters the closet, searching for the boyfriend, who in life had his own secrets, and his brother. The woman goes in with him and turns out not to be so nuts during their netherworld adventure.

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