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[putablanca]

Hello. Pretty new here, especially to this particular corner of the site. I've been turning over a few story ideas in my head but I think that I have a particularly interesting story kernel that's a little bit rough at the moment.

The basic setup is that at some point the grandfather, or great-grandfather, of this family made a fortune. Right now I'm thinking a lithium or cobalt mine because those are used in a lot of different electronics. So subsequent generations of the family are all more or less trust fund kids who need the company not to go bust so that they can continue to live their lavish lifestyles. Their trust funds add up to controlling interest in the company. Our story would start with this group meeting at the family estate to discuss what's going on with the company, and the possibility of a hostile takeover bid being considered by several outside interests. For this to happen at least one member of the family would have to throw in with at least one of the outside interests trying to launch a takeover bid. The person or persons who sold out would make a lot of money, but the rest of the family would probably lose significantly. Naturally they are all scandalized at the idea of a member of the family selling out the rest, but in the backs of their minds they all are considering what the risk would be if one of the others sold them out first. This is a fairly elaborate set up, but it gives me a lot of potential characters and situations to write around. Some character ideas that I have in mind:

-Obligatory Paris Hilton reference
-The responsible cousin
-The family black sheep
-The family member who is secretly in debt up to their eyeballs
-The unwitting person who married into the family recently
-Tech entrepreneur (possible antagonist)
-Rival mining magnate (possible antagonist)
-Corporate raider (possible antagonist)

The story would probably be driven by a fair amount of black comedy as they alternate between thinking about selling each other out and trying to stop the others from selling each other out first. The plot would gradually expand out to the competing takeover bids. It would probably wind up in the non-con section of the site since it revolves around what these people might be willing to do in order to avoid losing everything.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Multidimensional, complex, bags of potential. What’s not to like?

Think Who shot JR?

 

[Hypoxia]

IIRC lithium and cobalt were not worth much until fairly recently, so their family mining interests must have been elsewhere to have multi-generational streams of trust-fund kids. I recommend that you pick a starting point for the family wealth; see what was valuable then, and still is.

Maybe think of a shipping / marketing dynasty; I based a tale on a version of the Phelps-Dodge empire. For fun, try fictionalizing a line of tobacco barons.

 

[sirhugs]

It needs a funeral of a family patriarch or matriarch.

 

[CuttingEdge]

If a person wanted too, they could write the story like the Canterbury Tales.

In that book it starts out with a group of people walking along a road, and then they take turns telling a tall tale. As the book goes on, each chapter is a new story.

A writer here could do likewise wit a sexual twist.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

IIRC lithium and cobalt were not worth much until fairly recently, so their family mining interests must have been elsewhere to have multi-generational streams of trust-fund kids. I recommend that you pick a starting point for the family wealth; see what was valuable then, and still is.

Maybe think of a shipping / marketing dynasty; I based a tale on a version of the Phelps-Dodge empire. For fun, try fictionalizing a line of tobacco barons.

Point well taken, but the family wealth being generally based in mining and oil still would work. Oil is of course the antiChrist for many.

Another possibility. Rare earth metals are interesting from a moral/economic basis. They're absolutely critical for electrical motors and generators. Think electric cars and wind power - EVs and wind farms are like candy to those wanting to save the plant. But, from what I've heard, mining them is an ecological nightmare. There are scenes out of Mongolia, for instance, that look like communist East Germany on steroids. Mongolia is, of course, a long way away.

One last interesting thing is that something like 85% of the world's supply is now controlled by Beijing - think through the implications of that.

"Next item on the Board agenda. We want to go green by increasing our investment tranche in EVs and wind generation. This will permit us to reduce our investments in oil, thus helping with climate change. It will, of course, result an increased demand for rare earth elements, creating a jump in very serious ecological damage someplace else and supporting a really nasty tyranny. Are there any comments?"

P.S. Looking at that, I see it might be taken by some as a political comment, a stance on whatever. It ain't. Cards are dealt and it's up to everybody how they wish to play them.

 

[putablanca]

I'm checking into minerals commonly found alongside lithium to see if I can fill the potential plot hole of lithium only becoming valuable recently. I remember reading offhand that most of the palladium mined in Canada is found in nickel deposits so I could do something similar as a work around.

Jumping between different POVs from chapter to chapter is definitely something that I plan to do, but jumping back in time and then to the present would probably be a trick I'd only pull a few times, probably for the sake of setting up a reveal. The funeral of the family patriarch/matriarch could make for a nice set piece.

I hadn't considered throwing in a geopolitical subplot since the story potential is already pretty rich, but it could happen.

 

[LupusDei]

Lithium extraction ponds (Chile, Atacama):
https://www.mining-journal.com/w-im...ca89c4ca14a/3/SQMchileLithiumWEB-1680x600.jpg

THE COBALT PIPELINE
Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops

Want the family be old money in mining industry, let the principal starting metal to have been copper. It's so absurdly common (fun fact, as much as 9% of copper consumption is recycled metal and it's estimated that 75% of all copper produced since 1900 is in use), but electronics of any kind aren't really thinkable without, and it had steady increased in value through time. Also, copper mining often has interesting byproducts, heavy metals, some of with are just as, if not more critical for technology, such as lead, zinc, nickel, molybdenum, and cobalt (and conversely, copper can be byproduct in production of those). No lithium though, you would have to branch in that separately somehow if there's any need/interest to ever elaborate.

Some of the largest open excavations in the world are done for copper:

The Bingham Canyon Mine, Utah
https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/17/03/1484660154-bingham-mine-5-10-03.jpg

Over 100 years old, the world's largest copper mine includes a 2.5-mile-wide pit in the Oquirrh Mountains southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. Considered the largest man-made excavation, the mine dips nearly three-quarters of a mile down and covers 1,900 acres. First started in 1906, the mine is still open

It isn't without fresh conflict today, for example: Sacred Apache land 'on death row' in standoff with foreign mining titans