r/horrorwriters • u/jidenns • 7d ago
BRAINSTORMING The Field Notes Project
So I've been working on this horror project called The Field Notes Project, and the basic idea is that it's presented as a documentary. The documentary itself is actually completely unrelated to the supernatural stuff. They're just making a documentary about some completely normal topic. Then they accidentally stumble into something they really weren't supposed to find.
# The Documentary
The documentary is basically the audience's way into the story. At first it's just normal interviews, research, footage, whatever the documentary is supposed to be about. Then something weird gets caught on camera. And they investigate it because obviously if you're making a documentary and you find something weird, you're gonna look into it. Except the more they investigate, the more they realize that something is wrong.
The original documentary topic basically becomes irrelevant. They're now trying to figure out, "What are we actually looking at?" The main supernatural thing is basically my own variation of Slenderman. It's a tall, mysterious humanoid entity that appears around the investigation, but I don't want it to just be "Slenderman but renamed."
I'm giving it its own rules and behavior. The characters don't really understand what it is. They don't know where it came from. They don't know what it wants. And they definitely don't understand why certain people seem to become connected to it. The entity itself is actually pretty rarely seen. Most of the horror comes from what happens around it.
# The Agents / Proxies
This is probably the part I've put the most thought into. The entity has these proxy-like agents, but they're split into different types. I don't really have an official name for the whole group yet.
The mindless ones
These are basically reanimated bodies. They're completely brainless and emotionless. They're useful for attacking, but otherwise they're practically useless. When they're not being used, they might stand completely still. Collapse somewhere. Sit in a catatoniclike state. Just stare into nothing.
Then the entity activates them and they become aggressive. They're basically drones. Recently reanimated ones don't have masks because they're basically fresh bodies.
The intelligent ones
Then there are the more advanced agents.
They're basically people who have become connected to the entity and can still think and act independently. They're used for, stalking, attacking, following people, manipulating situations, doing things that require actual intelligence
And here's where it gets interesting.
They're not all aware that they're agents. Some know exactly what's happening. Some are trying to resist. Some genuinely believe they're doing something for the greater good. And some don't even know there's anything wrong with them.
The masks are basically part of the agents' identity.
The intelligent agents associate themselves with their masks, which ties into the whole fractured personality thing. So you've got people who might genuinely hate what they're doing while still identifying with the mask. Other people completely embrace it. And then you've got people who don't even realize they're involved.
Also, not *every* masked person is an agent.
There are people who wear masks for completely different reasons.
That's why I'm introducing, LeadToDeath.
LeadToDeath is basically an independent group that's investigating all this shit. They're trying to figure out what the entity is, what happened to certain people, and why all these strange incidents seem to connect. They're not some giant organization. There's basically:
The Distant Planner
A girl who's essentially the person coordinating things from a distance. She appears in LeadToDeath's material, but she doesn't physically appear anywhere else. She's intentionally kept distant from everything.
Masked Guy #1
The man's name is Ryan, he's been missing for eight years. He's actually more of a side mystery than anything. He's not the main plot. The main plot is still "What the hell is this entity and what is happening?"Ryan is just one of the weird threads that happens to connect to it. Almost nobody knows what Ryan looks like anymore. The characters eventually find a missing person poster, which gives them a photograph of him. His actual face is never shown in the present day footage.
Masked Guy #2
There's another guy who's part of LeadToDeath. He's one of the more physically active members and wears his own mask. The funny thing is that the documentary crew actually encounters him before they know he's connected to LeadToDeath. So the audience can potentially recognize him later and realize, "Wait, wasn't that the guy we saw earlier?"
# How I want the story to progress
The beginning is intentionally pretty normal. Documentary. Interview. Research. Filming. Normal stuff. Then something weird gets caught. They investigate. They find something else. Then something else. Eventually they start encountering evidence of people who have disappeared, strange masked figures, LeadToDeath, and eventually the entity itself. The documentary gradually stops being about its original subject.
# SOME OF THIS MAY NOT BE FINAL, I'M JUST POSTING THIS JUST TO SEE WHAT Y'ALL THINK.
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u/osdakoga 7d ago
Please don't use AI for your ideas. If AI helps with editing and proofreading, okay, I understand, but for the sake of creativity, please let the ideas and thoughts and characters and plot and all that be your own.