A few days ago, there was a thread on this subforum talking about one user's idea for a BeamNG YouTube series. The user in question was quite obviously underage, the conversation quickly latched on to that fact, and the thread was subsequently deleted and the user banned. If you know the thread I'm talking about, please respect that I am not here to restart that particular thread/convo/shitshow. I said my piece there, but then I spent a perhaps worrying amount of time thinking critically about the story that they were looking to tell. So even though that thread is gone, I'mma say some words, dammit! (see below) In the interest of hopefully making this thread out to be something more constructive, I'm going to leave this first post as broadly-applicable as possible: this forum has resources aplenty. It has resources for learning texture and skin creation. It has resources for level design and 3d modelling. It has resources for Jbeam and programming. But it doesn't have any resources for creative writing. Now, it's a car game. Almost nobody needs to write anything, and I'm fully expecting this thread will die on the vine for that very reason. But, between YouTube series, RP posts, mod lore, and scenarios, there are plenty of works of creative writing that are being produced, but precious few resources to pull structure or ideas from, at least as far as this website is concerned. So: share ideas for stories that you want to tell, or ask questions about ideas you've had, and we can talk shop about them! Can be BeamNG-related, but doesn't have to be. As always, please be respectful, don't take others' work, and if somebody refuses to make changes to their story to address your feedback, remember that only they know their particular vision. --- Post updated --- Okay? Okay, good. Now, rant time: Spoiler: Rant Time! So, in this aforementioned thread, user @FoxieKnoxie (now banned) proposed a YouTube story about a ghost car in Johnson Valley. Their full pitch, paraphrased from memory since the Wayback Machine doesn't have any snapshots from that day and filtered though a more confident creative voice, goes as follows: A ghostly apparition of a Bruckell Bastion has been haunting Johnson Valley recently. A detective travels there to investigate this ghost car that's been running people off the road. Just after arriving, he is immediately attacked by the ghost car, but manages to survive: a rarity, as he is only the third person to survive such an encounter. The next night, another family is tragically run off the road, and the detective must gather his resolve to stop the chaos. ...so, it's not exactly an instant classic. Quick reminder that even though @FoxieKnoxie was underage and was well-positioned to create something cringy, this is still their idea. It belongs to them. Now, the story was doomed from the start, and the whole thread basically shook out to the OP wanting other people to volunteer to make their YT series for them, but I just couldn't shake the idea that their story wasn't simply bad. It was worse than bad: it was almost good. A ghost car is a silly idea IRL, but it's not an inherently invalid topic for a work of fiction. It does, however, need a few tweaks, which I've categorized below: Spoiler: The Detective Having a detective as a main/point-of-view character is a no-brainer. It allows you to introduce and fully break down the main character's world from the perspective of somebody who would, logically, be asking lots of questions with the intention of receiving solid answers. It's a good vehicle for exposition that still makes sense in-universe. The only issue with the back-of-the-napkin pitch above is that no real detective would ever investigate a 'ghost car.' The paranormal is not an expected, known, factually dependable thing. That isn't to say that if the ghost of a car started creating trouble IRL, nobody would investigate it (they would), but they certainly wouldn't be expecting to come face-to-face with an actual ghost. Now, this is fiction. Maybe, in-universe, there's an X-Files-esque 'Federal Department of Weird Shit' that would absolutely go ham on some paranormal nonsense, but that might actually be less interesting than having a no-nonsense cop look into a nothing burger of a case, only to trip, and find himself woefully out of his depth against a foe he can't even begin to comprehend. Another plausible idea is the detective being a private investigator. PI's don't need probable cause to look into something, they just need somebody to pay them. That could also be a fun source of tension, in the event the PI was hired anonymously: who am I working for? And what do they want? The thing about stories is, you need events. Things need to happen. Not just in the literal, tactile, 'X happens to Y' kind of way you might see from a soulless action franchise, but if your character and their status quo is the same before and after what is supposed to be a serious event, you probably need to reevaluate. And what better way to do so, than to start with a character who is not ready for what's about to happen? Spoiler: The Ghost So, from a literary perspective, ghosts are pretty much one of two things: Humans who have lived a whole life, or a part of a whole life, before dying. Usually in tragic, shocking circumstances or with unfinished business (i.e. get revenge, provide for family, etc) and are therefore stuck in our mortal plane, or Otherwordly entities from parts unknown, who are not and have never been, physically or otherwise, human. Overlaps with other paranormal stuff like demons. Now, in a horror story, both can be equally potent, but generally #2 is scarier (fear of the unknown etc, etc), while #1 is more narratively interesting. Which is good, because IMO, no demon, born in times before time itself and biding its time in the ether for millenia untold is gonna pop outta the ground and spontaneously decide to start going Death Proof on some randos. Cars are a distinctly human thing, so, yes, #1 it is. Now, the bigger issues are that of power and motivation. To the former, a ghost that can just up and kill groups of people, traveling at speed, at will and completely reliably, is frankly a little too OP. The common consensus is that ghosts aren't real, so if they are, they are strange, foreign creatures whose ability to communicate with, coerce, or harm the living is imperfect, not something that can be done on a whim. People traveling down the road in the middle of the night might report seeing headlights out of the corner of their eyes, or in the distance, only for the headlights to vanish up close. And yes, motivation. Attacking—and, yes, killing—large groups of people seemingly at random doesn't seem like a meaningfully motivated character. Sure, maybe this is the ghost of someone truly evil, but I have a better idea: make this the ghost of someone who has been wronged. Maybe by someone in their community, or hell, maybe even their whole community? I mean, you have a detective as your main character for God's sake! Do something with that! Maybe the key to placating this ghost is to deliver justice to the people who wronged the ghost in life, or brought about its demise. Spoiler: The Car This one's simple: the Bruckell Bastion is too new. It's big, bulky, aggressive, and threatening, but it's just simply too new. I don't want to get into the weeds (anymore than I already have), but older things carry more mystery, more narrative weight, and more presence than things that are newer. It's not an exact measure, but I'd feel fundamentally less afraid of a ghost car if it was manufactured in the same span of time as Despacito. My vote would be for the Grand Marshall. Spoiler: The Escalation And, yes, this one. This, more than anything else, was probably the biggest hitch in the story that gives away the overt youth of its writer. 'The ghost car can kill people' is not bad, but you can't spring that one on us in the prologue. The most impactful thing a character, organization, monster, etc. can do in a story is kill someone, so if you're starting from that point, how exactly do you go up from there? You've ultimately got one arrow in your quiver, and now that you've used it, you've got nothing left to raise the stakes. The issue with a story that escalates way too quickly is that once it has, it can't do it again. In the unlikely event that @FoxieKnoxie is still here, lurking among us, and in the even more unlikely event that they randomly think to click on this thread, and in the far, far more unlikely event that they're actually willing to receive feedback and put it into action, I can only hope I've given them a little bit to think about, when and if they consider making their YT series. Or making somebody else do it, IDFK.
