I've had it on my mind for a while to write a book about the librarians at the library where I grew up, but have all libraries as branches of a secret government organization. I imagine I'll have it as a children's chapter book and make it full of lasers and gadgetry as well as fun references to my local library that will amuse the librarians when I give it to them.

My main problem now is that I have no foreseeable plot. I need a problem for them to encounter if the story is going to have any progress. Any thoughts?

The library is going to be closed down!

Or possibly one of their agents was kidnapped by the Evil Banker's League....

They can get their orders through those little raffles they do! I was thinking it was going to be something they were assigned though.

Hrm... Well, maybe they do raffles, but each raffle thing is actually assigned to them.

No, I mean their government contacts can put their assignments in the raffle bin. I don't know what their missions are though.

I'm a SciFi junkie, so my brain automatically goes to inter-dimensional kidnappings and stuff like that. However, I don't think that is what you are going for.
Maybe a bad guy is ransacking libraries, looking for clues that lead to a very old book (perhaps a Leonardo da Vinci book? He's always mysterious and interesting, and he made lots of cool gadgets...) and the library agents have to catch up and get one step ahead of of this bad guy and follow the clues so that they find the book first?
Perhaps a book about the notorious pirate, Black Beard, is stolen, because it contains clues to a treasure?
It may be that the library agency is working on some top secret project, and the learn that they have a mole who is leaking information to the rival bad-guy-agency?
The possibilities are endless with a Library Agency!

I think it will be some sort of kidnapping... but who shall be the victim?

A very old book, or a very young, very new librarian. XD

I think it's someone with a secret... An important bit of information...

An evil senator!

But why the library?

Maybe he wants to check out a book.

I don't think it was someone at the library... I think it was someone the library was sent to find... Someone with bookish secrets that relate to national and/or literary security.

*Watches this post with curiosity*

Maybe the victim is a writer who stumbled across a secret, but didn't know it, and put it in a book as a plot detail?

Maybe there are agents from two or more conflicting agencies. The first agent went there to check on a lead (which wasn't really there), but then other agencies found out about the first agent being there and sent their own agents. The whole thing just escalates out of control. As time goes on, there are more and more clues left in books and such and each of the agencies are trying to decipher the codes of the other agencies. So it turns into an awkward battle ground of the mind. All of the librarians are trying to out think all of the other librarians. They also plant false leads for each other to try to catch the other people.

Unfortunately, the most suspicious librarians are the ones that aren't actually agents, but the agents are all very suspicious of them thinking they are master spies because they appear so normal.

That might be a bit overdoing it for a children's chapter book, Andorin. I need to start off a bit more simply.

Ooooh. An author would be good... I need to decide what sort of secret they stumbled upon...

Okay...

What if the agents are there to protect something? Some sort of ancient thing. Sort of like that library in Indian Jones and The Last Crusade. Maybe it is some sort of mystical "first book ever" type thing.

I want it to be a bit more traditional spies than mystical. There will be some classical elements, but not really the secret society ones.

Okay... well the point of a brainstorm is to take the pieces of things you like and build off of them. You seem to be shooting down a lot of ideas. Maybe try morphing someone's idea into the context of what you are thinking for the story and see if it fits. If you write out the idea and it still doesn't fit, then move on.

You seemed to like this idea:

And you said this:

You also started out with:


Spies have to have some kind of an assigned mission. If they are always around the library, then there is something at the library worth finding or protecting. What is that thing in your mind? Is it the writer? Is it a book with a secret in the plot? If so, maybe a normal kid checked the book out without knowing and is put in danger. Or did the spies at the library kidnap the writer of the book of secretes so that they could figure out what s/he was writing? Or I guess the bad spies would kidnap the writer to figure out said secrete in said secrete book and the good spies would have to rescue the writer. Who is the hero of this story? Don't these sorts of books have young protagonists?

Another random idea: maybe a kid checks out a book about how to be a spy which is actually a recruiting tool for this organization. The librarians spy on this kid and test her/him to see if s/he will actually be good spy material.

Again, most of these ideas are just spitballing, so you have to roll with it to see where you can take it. If it hits a dead end, that's fine. But sometimes I've found myself trying to implement an idea that I thought was going nowhere only to have a twist open up in my mind that made a bad idea completely brilliant. So try on a few of these idea hats before you put them back on the rack. It is a good exercise to force yourself to incorporate an idea you initially think won't fit. Maybe it's a bad hat but a great lampshade (i.e. you can use it elsewhere in your story).

Well, the library is essentially the headquarters for their divisions. They aren't protecting something in particular, they're just doing their day jobs. For one thing, no one suspects a librarian. For another, they tend to be the bookish sorts who are devoted to absorbing as many books as they can. Learning a wide variety of subjects, even from works of fiction, is important, so librarians---once they have physical training and understand the protocols---are up to all sorts of challenges where the usual soldiers and assassins might not be the right fit.

I also want it to be a lot like a traditional spy story, in a way. I want to have the established organization receiving an assignment as usual (no matter how fantastic it is, assignments have to have happened before), and going about their work as one would expect to see in a spy movie.

That sounds like it would be pretty fun! Will you reveal the spy stuff to the reader slowly, or will they be thrown into the mix pretty quickly?

So then your snag is in what the plot will be for the first book? Do you think you will go with a kidnapping? Where are you leaning right now?

Just thrown right in. Everyone knows spy stories. The twist is that they're librarians. It shouldn't be hard to immerse readers in that world.

I'm leaning toward the kidnapping of an author, but I can't think of a good reason why.

The why might be something the spies are trying to figure out as well. Some known villain kidnapped an author and the spies need to figure out why. I'll be thinking about reasons why an author would be the target of a kidnapping.

Thanks. I'm not sure if it will be something they'll know from the top, or if they'll have to figure it out yet.

*thinks of WWII when all the authors and artists and philosophers were exiled or killed* ... something like that?

Maybe not quite to that degree... I didn't know about that...

I think he accidentally stumbled upon a secret, but I don't know what it was... Something spy or government related.

What if the author was a spy. Maybe all librarians are secret agents, but some authors are also spies. The secret could just be a macguffin (a usb drive or some such) and the book the author left could lead to the macguffin.

Often in these sorts of stories, it doesn't matter what the secret is because the story of finding it is actually way more interesting.

Alternatively, the secret could be some form of the following:
-Information
-Evidence (possibly incriminating)
-A weapon
-A LOT of money (or the location there of)
-A plan to destroy the library or some other evil plot
-Some supernatural occurrence
-Some powerful object
-A plan to kill some leader or important person
-A plan to take over some important organization (the military?)

Those are just some of the ideas I've had. I hope one of them triggers a better idea in your head.

A macgufffin could work... Maybe it somehow got hidden in the e-book format of his upcoming bestseller.

If it is hidden in an e-book, then you could have some sort of hidden line of code that needs to be unlocked. Thus, the book is always available via a down load, but only someone with the key can unlock the macguffin. That might be what you were thinking, but it would explain the kidnapping of the author to unlock the code.

Possibly, but then who would know about it? I was wondering if someone put a bug or a virus in it somehow.

Something like this: the bad guys put the virus on the book. The author finds out about it and tries to stop it from happening. The bad guys kidnap the author to cover it up. The good guys have to save the author in order to gain some access to the book they would not have and thus stop the bad guys.

?

Well, his book isn't high profile enough for that, I don't think. I think he's somehow privy to some very sensitive information and puts it into the coding. I don't know if he realizes just how sensitive it is, or if he's just messing around. Anyway, then the wrong people get a hold of him.

Okay so

-Sensitive information is coded in the book
-Bad guys want the sensitive info
-Bad guys capture author
-Good guys have to save author and sensitive information
?

Maybe this author was asked to encode the information in a book that was going to be delivered to someone who needed the info (like the president or some important person). The author was just doing another job. The author wasn't told about the information in order to protect the author, but the whole cover was blown and the bad guys got him. Something like that? I'm starting to get confused about how simple vs complicated you want this to be. Is this like an old James Bond movie?

I'm not sure either. I'm getting the facts a piece at a time.

No, he seems to know what he had put there...

Why do the bad guys need this author guy? Is that the main thing we are figuring out?

Yes. I believe so. The author has some information... He doesn't realize how important it is. They come after him for it, but I think he still doesn't realize its importance.