Tonight’s post on creativity is another good example of having multiple options depending on what kind of story you want to tell.
Here we have a Special Forces team during Vietnam. Technically they’re SEALS, but like I’ve said before the pictures aren’t always literal. Anyway, one option we could go with is exploring who they are and what they did. There’s 9 guys there, so that’s 9 new characters who need history, personality, etc. Unless they’re going to figure in big time, they most likely wouldn’t need that much detail. Just a name and a character trait/flaw. I’d probably use last names only on most of them, i.e, Johnson, Davis, Smith, Hudson, etc.
This team could have then gone on to do big things together. Maybe once out of the war they stayed together and became their own mercenary team, with a specialty in jungle warfare. Maybe they became corrupt/rogue and are bad.
The idea I’m leaning towards is that this team handled a lot of top secret missions back in the day, most of which are still classified. After the war ended, they were all slowly transferred to other areas/teams/units so eventually none of them worked together anymore but they all stayed in touch secretly. Maybe because of something that happened out in the jungle with all of them. They swore a pact to keep it secret.
Maybe one of them then went on to work with Nick’s dad, Tony Walker after that and also knew Morgan Ramsey when he was just a rookie Green Beret and they all became good friends.
Eventually something has happened with this unit, and the guys are starting to turn up dead, accidental looking or on purpose. Maybe both. This friend then approaches Morgan for help, maybe he’s trying to track down his old teammates to warn them or maybe he just wants protection from who’s ever after him. Maybe it has to do with what happened in the jungle or maybe that’s a red herring and it’s related to something else entirely.
Lots of options where this could lead to. In order for this to really pop, I’d probably figure out what they did back in ‘Nam that could tie into something going on with Red Diamond now.
#FridayNightWriting #TheMercSeries #Ideas #ThinkingOutLoud
