Good Plot ideas and Inspiration?

[mimithewitch_]

Hi, I'm writing a character who has a family who is a affiliated with dark magic. In the first book, A (Lilith) meets B (Juniper) and C (Astrid) in an arena battle which is set up as a monthly battle between 4 schools:
Aetheria's Haven Academy (specializes in the general stuff and basic witchcraft)

Fallen Wings Academy - Lilith's school (specializes in the dark arts, necromancy, opening your third eye, dreams, nightmares, blood magic, and bone magic, and the arkane)

Ember's Oak Academy - Juniper's School (specializes in healing magic, elemental (air, water, earth, light, and fire) magic, and floral magic, and herbology, and sun magic)

Whispering Sky Academy - Astrid's school (specializes in time magic, space magic, time and space divination, astrology, astronomy, and ancestral magic and heredity)
It is discovered that Astrid has a secret: that she has retrograde amnesia and cannot remember her parents. so they travel to the Astrylus, the city dedicated to time and space magic paved with constellations. Only to find out the memory keeper was doing this to her. which caused Lilith to use dark magic to stop them, which is forbidden but it saved Astrid's life.
I have scenes for the next book. However, I might need some help because the story for Lilith's secret starts in the future (starting with her being imprisoned for treason (using forbidden magic), but then flashes back to the past. Plot ideas?

 

[ColGray]

Hey, welcome to Chrons!

I both kind of got lost in the descriptions and I'm not sure I followed the plot of your current/finished/WIP book (?) or the stakes for anyone.

Here is my TLDR redux of what you wrote above:

3 students attend different schools and get to know each other over school sporting events. One has amnesia about her parents and they find out someone is causing her amnesia, confront them (?) and one friend uses forbidden magic to save the amnesiac's life.

How do the arena battles figure into the plot? Do they? Will they continue to factor in? Does the story revolve around the arena battles or the schools or both? One POV? Multi POV?

Overall, the central question is: What story are you trying to tell? What is the plot arc? What are the character arcs? What themes and ideas are you exploring?

Answer that, and you should see the natural conflicts and the plot should fall into place

 

[hvoad]

So, I have several questions that might help or not:

1. I'm curious why Lilith does it. It seems like a very high-stake thing to do because the consequence is that she goes to prison. I think there are multiple ways you can go about this:

- I'd love to read how Astrid and Lilith became friends when they're supposed to battle it out. That sounds like something you can put an emotional twist on and make it really impactful. If the price is prison, I think you'll have to really convince the readers that they really care about one another.​

- Or Lilith could just be a hot-head. She comes from the school of the dark arts, so I think you can use that to say something general about those in the dark arts. It is their tendency to do "bad" things, for example. Or the dark force is so enticing it is a constant battle not to do "bad" things (in this scenario, the dark force is an actual entity so you can do loads of fun things with it, and maybe add that every time you do this "bad" thing, it's at a personal cost which makes it really fun to watch them struggle).​

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2. So what's up with the memory keeper? Is dark magic the only way to stop him? Why does he have it out for Astrid?

3. How are her parents relevant to the plot that we're making Astrid forget them?