I absolutely love what you are doing here, and may have to try this crowd-sourcing idea sometime. How very clever!! I love the replies you are getting as well. There are some really interesting directions you can take with this story.
The dramatic tension at the beginning of the first chapter is spectacular. I guess I wouldn't advocate killing off the dad, as he is a remarkable character that we love to hate, and I would like to see that relationship played out. You can continue to build tension in future chapters if he remains alive.
What if the hole next swallows up Zoe and the sheep and they end up in an abandoned mine? They spend a week or more living on sheep until they can find their way out and Marcus has to face his father, with a lot of cuts and scrapes, fewer sheep and a (possibly pregnant) girlfriend?
I'm dying to know what it is about her that makes her known mostly as her father's daughter. What is the stigma there? Maybe it takes a few chapters to get to it. You can build on that. Is her father still alive? Is there some ancient feud between the two fathers?
Another really intriguing aspect of the story is that it's modern day, obviously (cell phones), but there's something off about it that as a reader I really want to learn about. Is it in a time when the economy has collapsed? The farming community is worth exploring. Perhaps they have had to subsist by trade as currency has no value any longer. What are the other farms and ranches in the area doing to survive? If there really is an abandoned mine beneath the cave, what was mined there, and is it something that could turn everything around for the community? Or maybe there is some terrible ancient secret as to why the mine was abandoned. It could be something supernatural, or something horrific that happened and that was covered up.
You have a terrific imagination and a wonderful writing style. I look forward to seeing where you go with this!
Thank you for your kind words @jayna. I'm glad you liked it! I want to thank you especially for pointing this out:
And thank you for your proposal! You make some very interesting suggestions and you've given me much food for thought! However, some of them span the length of many chapters and the thing is that the story is written on chapter to chapter basis. None of us can predict what will happen in Chapter 3, let alone further than that. Hopefully, though, there will be some continuity to the whole story!
But I like very much the questions you pose. And I would very much like to find out the answers to them myself! So, I'll keep them in mind as the story progresses.
Thank you again for your contribution!
You're welcome, and sorry for not following the rules very well. I got thinking about how I could help you shape the best story, and lost track of the fact that we were just supposed to come up with chapter 2. What can I say? Your story got me all riled up!
Hahaha! Well, thank you! And you can be sure that it happens to me all the time. Thinking way ahead in the story of the one or the other possible outcome.
But it's not about the "rules". It's just that we don't know what will happen in the next chapter and even more on the one after that! It could go in any possible direction, so these question might very well remain unanswered.
On the other hand, they might intrigue other users as well, and make them try to take the story in this direction. Who knows? But that's the beauty of it, right? 😀