After his son is shot in a drive-by, a gangster must use his crippled werewolf abilities to kill the vengeful vampire who has been attacking his gang.
Categories: Fantasy
16 reviews
The combination of gangs, wearwolfs and vampires sounds interesting. It sounds like you want to take the paradigm established in the Twilight movies and put it into a Boys in the Hood setting.
I think the stakes need to be made higher, my try:
After his son is shot in a drive-by, a gangster must use his weakened wearwilf powers to kill the vengful vampire in charge of the rival gang.
If the antagonist is on his own he sounds more crazy than dangerous, but if he has a posse behind him he sounds more dangerous than crazy.
I think that making a gang of werewolves vs a gang of vampires is just the premise of a number of other movies. It is just a CGI fest while I am writing a much more personal story set in an urban world. Besides, I wouldn't really see the point of a pack of werewolves or vampires entrenching themselves in an urban landscape like that. Rather than being a gangster setting with a touch of magic, it becomes a magical setting with some urban combat thrown in.
In other words, putting too much magic into a story like this takes away the 'magic' of the story.
Putting a whole pack of werewolves into it takes away from the story, which is pretty simple. One woman trying to get vengeance, and one man trying to protect everything he has left. While the gangs are used by both sides, they are put to the fairly quickly as the two powerhouses battle it out.
And in response to "For this genre, I submit that ideally, the inciting incident should establish ? or at least tip a reader off ? what kind of world or character the story is about."
It does. It's about a gangster, it just happens to have some magic thrown in.
Thanks for your input. I will review this thread again and see if I can find any suggestions to include.
Oh, since you said " I see nothing in the inciting incident that incorporates what is unique to either werewolves or vampires. ?It's standard-issue drive-by shooting. ?Not revenge by an involuntary ?blood donation? ? but by a bullet."
I thought you thought the inciting incident should be the turning of his son.
I often find myself doing that for my own stories. I try to map and explain everything so it makes sense and then eventually I just realize, "It a fantasy, he can do magic. That's that."
Even if she can stay well hidden, that's still 8+ hours where she can't act and the protagonist can. He could slaughter the whole rival gang, taking away her resources. There's just too much he could do. She is quite a bit weaker than other vampires, she gives up some of the strength, speed, etc, in order to be able to operate in the day. There are also other things which affect her because of how new of a vampire she is. But I play pretty fast and loose with the established conventions. I see most of them as suggestions, not rules. I use them or ignore them depending on how convenient they are for my story. For example, most werewolves aren't beholden to moon in order to shape-shift. With a little practice they can do it at will. That has little to do with this story but it will be applied in the sequel I'm planning.
Sure, his senses aren't as good as they were when he was at full strength, but he still is quite adept at tracking, using his enhanced senses and the mundane methods he's picked up over the years of hunting prey.