Which of these ideas should I use?

[Lord_Of_Change 9]

Which of these five ideas would you most like me to use for an original novel? I don't know whether to post this in User Fiction or Off-Topic, so if it's in the wrong place move it.

The Counterfactual Invasion
A fascist America - at approximately our technology level - from an alternate universe invades our world in a desperate search for resources. Can humanity defeat the invaders?

The Stars and the Eagle
It is the year 2086, and the future is a nightmare. The USA, now named Columbia, has turned into a poor, fascist and kleptocratic dystopia (think one of the Arab states pre-2011, crossed with Fascist Italy) that has conquered Canada and Central America. Stefani Teliosa, a young girl, is recruited into a resistance organisation - little does anyone know, she will have a key role in the restoration of freedom and democracy.

And Hell Followed With Him (nothing to do with Stuart's [REDACTED] stories)
It is the year 1081 Anno Domini, and the world is in the Middle Ages. Suddenly, the forces of a place that can only be described as Hell invade Earth. All mankind has going for it is faith and courage, but can those things, petty as they may seem, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Invasion 2011
An alien race invades Earth in the year 2011 in a bid to colonise the planet. What they don't know is that humanity is almost as advanced as them. Can humanity survive against or defeat the alien invaders, or is planet Earth going to become just another conquest?

Zeitgeist
In 1948, Nazi Germany won World War Two with the aid of dark magic, beginning a cold war between it and an Anglo-American Alliance. Now the year is 1986 and the Nazis are undergoing troubles. A pair of US Secret Agents are sent to help resistance against the Nazis - however, unbeknownst to all, their actions will precipitate the downfall of the regime.

[Darth Tanner]

The Counterfactual Invasion

How are they a threat if their facing off against the whole world with less resources than current USA.

The Stars and the Eagle

Again how can a failing USA invade Canada and Central America? Why hasn’t the rest of the world kicked the shit out of America for its aggression, Canada is a full commonwealth and NATO member. And why the hell call it Columbia?

Invasion 2011

How are the aliens getting here if their only just a bit more advanced than us? Also how the hell are they dealing with us seeing as we doubtlessly have superior numbers?

Zeitgeist

What stops their economy collapsing or the military knocking off Hitler? What happened to Japan? Does the ‘dark magic’ stop Berlin becoming a smoking slightly radioactive crater?

Go with the And Hell Followed With Him story, it could be interesting and everyone likes knights fighting monstrous demons.

[LaCroix]

And Hell Followed With Him (nothing to do with Stuart's [REDACTED] stories)
It is the year 1081 Anno Domini, and the world is in the Middle Ages. Suddenly, the forces of a place that can only be described as Hell invade Earth. All mankind has going for it is faith and courage, but can those things, petty as they may seem, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

You mean the time when towns were inhabited by dozens to a hundred, cities by low thousand people, who were on average younger than 15 (lot's of children), and half of the rest female or elderly? The time when you started an apprenticeship at the ripe age of 6 or 7, and were a fully taught journeyman at the age of 14? Or simply worked at the farm from the age 7 up? And usually married, already, or soon after?

The time when armies were measured in dozens competent fighters with a couple hundred peasant who were handed a spear and told where the pointy end goes? Where no high-speed communications, relatively easy to use high-damage weapons exist? Where a fighter needed personal skill to fight well?

These people would be overrun by demons that are only half as bad as the sources claim, and if someone got out to warn the next town, they'd only barricade in the next church and pray to the lord to save them. Maybe with the men standing outside with forks&axes, to die first.

It would be a rather one-sided thing without divine intervention, and in that case, it would be a angels and demons fight, humans watch from a safe distance thing.


I could see the invasion 2011 thing working, if you have aliens at a bit more than our tech (since there isn't much more you can do in many areas we know), but with a bit more understanding in energy generation - like, fusion of pure H2O as a standard tech - The earth would be invaluable for that alone. (Maybe make it so that they can't use irradiated water, so they don't just use nukes.)
Also, they have some viable FTL that barely runs off that power source.

Thus, you can give them high-powered energy weapons, propulsion much more efficient than ours (good for huge flying Tankskys of whatever configuration you want, or even mechanized armorsuits), maybe even some funky tech that works on some strange side-effects of their FTL tech. (Maybe a high-tech ecm fields/point-defense that nullify homing mechanisms, etc, making our smart weapons dumb.)

They would be a strong enemy, but someone you could fight due to sheer numbers, but also someone whose tech we could understand and adapt to our uses, if we manage to capture some of them and have some time to play with them while we throw men and material into the grinder to keep them at bay until we are ready.

[Darth Tanner]

The time when armies were measured in dozens competent fighters with a couple hundred peasant

The battle of Dyrrhachium which happened in 1081 had over 40,000 men in it. It's not the dark ages any more by this time although I believe it would perhaps be more interesting later on say 1400s.

And what sources are you using for demons? As its fictional he can make them as strong/weak or numerous as plot required.

[LaCroix]

The battle of Dyrrhachium which happened in 1081 had over 40,000 men in it.

And was prepared by a general conscription that started in 1078...
The Norman fleet of 150 ships including 60 horse transports set off towards the Byzantine Empire at the end of May 1081. The army numbered 30,000 men, backed up by 1,300 Norman knights.

30000 men total, 1300 professional fighters. And that was all that southern Sicily could field in three years of dedicated preparation.

With the two naval battles while arriving and the claimed 10000 soldiers and 500 knights dead due to disease during the siege, there were only ~20000 left for the battle.

The Byzantine side was about as numerous, and that was due to the fact that in the time between May(landing) and October(battle), they pulled together every armed man they could muster - to the extent of letting Asia Minor be overrun by the Turks - to counter that force.

Of those 20000 men, about half were mercenaries and troops donated by the Seljuk Sultanate. Of the rest, about half were conscripts. So we can say that 10-15000 men would be all standing troops a nation like Byzantine could field, if they had half a year to pull them together, and train them.

[Mayabird]

#3 and #5 seem like the least bad choices, but honestly, I'm not enthused at all about any of the options for a novel.

Why does it have to be novel length anyway? Would you even have enough material for a novel? A short story or even novella would be perfectly fine and actually would be far superior than pages and pages of background on the internal politicking of hell and verbal vomit like that. Demons are besieging Constantinople - battle, go! The end! We don't need to know the rest; in fact, I'd prefer not to both for personal reasons and because it'll more than likely be boring and stupid.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, that's true.

Writing a novel-length story is hard, quite a bit harder than writing something shorter. The odds of you getting bored and not finishing are high. The odds of you starting to inject boring material that people don't really care about are high.

So making the novel really work is a challenge, and it may be better for your development to try and make a working short story or two with one or two interesting characters out of your Wow My Idea Is AWESOME story.

Better that than to plot out some elaborate behemoth with a dozen flat cardboard characters and fifty thousand words of boring exposition.

[ThomasP]

An adept author could go to town with any of those concepts and make an interesting story of out it.

Then again, an adept author is going to come at a novel-length story with more than Mike Tyson's Punch-Out as a premise and source of dramatic tension. If you're after a match-up, I think Hitler with the Ark would be the best choice just because, well, it sounds the least worn-out and groan-inducing of your choices, but I don't hold out any high hopes for Mac vs. Bald Bull as ever producing interesting fiction.

[Mayabird]

Now of course, if these things aren't going to be super serious DRAMATIC works of HIGH ART with NEEDLESS CAPITALIZATION and are going to be comedies (with optional needless capitalization), go for it. Comedies don't have to make much sense at all and I at least have a terrible enough sense of humor that I'll still laugh at a good enough fart joke.