How about a story where you have the Marty McFly/Doc Brown scenario of Western Union delivering a message to you from the 1800s, from you. The message gives a list of things to put in a replica wagon and a place to be at a certain date and time. It is the date that the past you disappeared. They went back with only what they had on them and now want to correct that.
I feel like that would just result in a new timeline where Letter Receiving You ends up super prepared but Letter Writing You doesn't get anything out of it but the satisfaction of having done a solid for his alternate self.
Of course, from LRY's point of view there'd be no way to know that. He's just going on with his new life. You'd need to throw in a scene of LWY waiting for his life to change. And waiting. And waiting.
I feel like that would just result in a new timeline where Letter Receiving You ends up super prepared but Letter Writing You doesn't get anything out of it but the satisfaction of having done a solid for his alternate self.
Of course, from LRY's point of view there'd be no way to know that. He's just going on with his new life. You'd need to throw in a scene of LWY waiting for his life to change. And waiting. And waiting.
Or LRY rather than showing up prepared manages to avoid the trip to the past and LWY fades away into nothing, his existence vanishing.
I feel like that would just result in a new timeline where Letter Receiving You ends up super prepared but Letter Writing You doesn't get anything out of it but the satisfaction of having done a solid for his alternate self.
More importantly, that's considered 'self-referential' (aka. breaking the '3rd wall' of fiction by speaking directly to your readers, rather than developing the story in a normal, slowly developed method so readers can comprehend and appreciate how things are developing over time.
In essence, it breaks most storytelling standards, and rarely, if ever, actually helps a story.
Personally, I prefer Grey Wolf's VOAT variant, where the time travels eventually discover one another and only then reflect on precisely how things seeming unfolded, only to lead them into guessing who, or what, engineered their story (though it's an open-ended, never-to-be resolved question, it's still great storytelling!).
The split timeline is like Mayhem in a Pill, except the messenger has no idea what will happen. What I need is a ghostwriter to take my idea and flesh it out with a combination of ideas. See, I started thinking more on the subject and came up with loading the wagon with modern replica weapons, reloading equipment, prospecting equipment, and the Biff Tannen special, a book on sites where gold was discovered. An encyclopedia of prospecting as it were. Plus, maybe a company of his friends who travel with him. To make it interesting, he has enough time to gather just the basics before the critical date. Maybe he raids a gun store just before the time to leave so he can circumnavigate the waiting periods or other red tape he attracted by adding his friends...
What I need is a ghostwriter to take my idea and flesh it out with a combination of ideas.
Sorry, but that's just not how these things operate.
Writing is a VERY personal enterprise. Even the best authors would make more, on a per-hour-profit basis) working at McDonalds, as it typically takes months/years/decades to write a novel/saga/series. In order to justify that much effort, no author will ever 'write someone else's story', unless they really are a hack without any ideas of their own and just looking to add a few bucks while working in another writing capacity.
Instead, authors look to put their own slant on otherwise common stories, 'telling their own' tales, if you will. Asking to dictate how an author tells a story for a few measily bucks won't get much of a response (though many DO include promising kinks in their more erotic ventures, but in those cases, the author still writes the story in their terms rather than simply paraphrasing someone who just walked in from off the street who has a 'better idea' how to write without ever putting in the work required to actually become an accomplished author.
No offense, but you're more likely to offend that way than you are to win any converts. There IS money to be made being a ghost writer, but ONLY is the person you're ghost writing for is famous enough they can guarantee sales across the board. And you, sire, don't quite warrant that kind of dedication!
However, like a lot of authors, I do stop by her on occassion, not looking for story but seeking ideas that I can use in my other stories. So, we'll often incorporate story idea, but won't accept being dictated to about how we express ourselves. It's really not personal, it's just how authors approach writing. But the days when you could encourage a struggling Parisian author to write porn for a dollar a page are long gone. Now even if we write things the rest of the publishing world wouldn't consider, it's no bar to publishing whatever the hell we feel like!
@stitchescl
What I need is a ghostwriter to take my idea and flesh it out with a combination of ideas.
Sorry, but that's just not how these things operate.
There are writers out there that do that sort of work.
Most celebrity/politician autobiographies/memoirs are ghost written.
There are also fiction authors out there that do commission work, if you know where to look.
You just aren't likely to find one here.
ETA: I worked with an author who did commission work for a bit before I started writing here. It was not cheap. And that was with the commission author retaining the copyright on the work. If you want to own the copyright after, expect the cost for a novel length work to be in the $thousands, if not even higher.
I lost contact with that author (she vanished because her pseudonym was compromised), and that was the trigger for me to take a crack at writing myself.
I have 4 stories that I 'started' on here, under 4 different pen names. I marked them as complete before they went to inactive because that bugged me, I also decided writing might not be for me, except as a personal collection. It is why I started posting story ideas, I want to read them, but don't have the patience to write. My anxiety gets to the point of pain if I don't keep up with what I think my pace should be.I stopped writing the stories when my time between chapters wasn't justifying the length that I did post.
What if you wrote for yourself with no commitment to post unless and until the story is finished and you are satisfied with it enough to let it go out into the world?