Gathering of the Figments

So I’ve been having the hardest time starting off a story lately. I’ve had ideas but I can’t seem to get them off the ground so this post will involve a few stories I’d like your opinion on.

First is the wonderfully titled, Possible Idea:

This is a Science Fiction. You may have read some stuff I posted on Chatzy about this one. Anywho. This story is centered around two twin girls, Sun and Luna. They’re the first set of twins to be born in hundreds of years and to keep them safe their parents keep their birth a secret. They’re born on the spaceship their parents have been hiding on, with the help of the ship’s captain.

Now this is the part I’m unsure on. The fact that Sun and Luna are twins will play a big role in the plot of the story. Therefore when the bad guy find outs that Sun and Luna are twins he plans to kidnap them, because he needs them for his dastardly plans. But in his haste he messes up and only gets Sun.

Now the prologue starts off with the twins being born. Now should they be children when Sun in kidnapped or teens/adults?

Cause if they’re children, after a few chapters I’ll skip ahead in years again to where Sun has been missing many years and Luna has been hiding but always searching for her sister.

But if they’re teens/adults then Luna goes searching for her right away because she is old enough to.

Which do you think would work better story wise?

And this second story idea came out of NO where, it was crazy. This one is titled, Ardent Mirage, which I have made my siggy for:

This is also Science Fiction. Lila Lilian Linley is one of the most popular celebrities in the world, everyone knows her name, she has a massive house, countless maids, and more money than she knows what to do with. The problem is that there is no such person as Lila Lilian Linley. Lila was created by Mirage when she was put into suspended animation. She was given the opportunity to create the world she wanted to see while she was in suspended animation and she made Lila’s world.

Mirage was put into Suspended Animation as she had an incurable disease, and upon the world finding a cure she would be woken. And obviously she is woken at some point when the cure for her disease is found.

Now, would it be strange starting out the story as Lila? To establish Lila’s life? I mean she won’t be a big part of the story, for a while Mirage has a hard time separating herself from Lila and sometimes finds herself thinking she is Lila but eventually that goes away. Or should I start off with some type of prologue where Mirage is being put in Suspended Animation then go into Lila’s world or start off with the people who work at the Suspended Animation place monitoring all the people they have? Or a completely different idea? What are your thoughts?

Any thoughts you have on one, or either, of these would be much appreciated.

1) I think adult would work better. As teens she would be able to let the hatred grow longer, but I personally always prefer one time jump in a novel rather than two.
2) I love the idea of starting out as Lila. Then people begin to know her as a character, and you can surprise them when Lila turns out to be non-existent.
Keep in mind on both of these pieces of advice, I tend to write horror and have a love of a little mystery, so that's the angle I'm coming from.

1) I think they should be younger, that makes for more conflict, in that Sun might remember something from her childhood, and might always feel that there is something that she has lost, but she doesn't know what it is, and she half thinks that it is part of her dreams. Then when Luna finds her, it might be a revelation... Then again, she might fight it, she might *want* to think that bad guy is her family/master/whatever, because it's all she has ever known, so she feels comfortable with it...

Also, if you have the pregnancy/them being born as the prologue, that hardly counts as two time jumps... A prologue is meant to be a different here/now than the rest of the story, it is setting it up, giving us information that we need. Then it is just a matter of having the one time jump within the novel...

2)I think it would work better within Lila's world, as geebles said, get us attached to her, and then twist it around when we find out she isn't real... But at the same time, maybe you could throw in some identity crisis for Lila. Maybe she has vague memories, maybe she gets bad deja vu, maybe she is just the typical teen/young adult who doesn't know where she is going with her life, and if this is what she plans to do forever... Maybe that could come across as a youngster in the spotlight, who is unsure of themselves, then we find out it is actually because she ISN'T herself...

I dunno, hope that helps.

I'm thinking maybe you should do something like Sun is kidnapped when they're children, and they try to go out and find her, but they don't, and give up. Then years later, when she's a teen, Luna gets a random message thingy somehow from Sun and she goes to go find her because she like...misses her and stuff. That's genius! ^^

I have gotten quite a few pages in and decided to go for them being young when Sun is kidnapped.

I dunno for sure how things will go from there.

The only thing I know is that Luna will stay in hiding so that the bad guy can't find her and take her but she never truly stops looking for Sun.

Sun sending Luna a message does give me an idea.

Btw, HI, Hawky! Tis good to have you back!

And thanks to all of you for your thoughts! They were very helpful. ^^

I'm also going to have Ardent Mirage start out in Lila's POV but I haven't worked a whole lot on it since I'm doing it for FigNo.