Okay, I just had a really cool idea for a semi- futuristic setting.

Picture what looks like a normal city. There's people everywhere hustling and bustling to get to and from work, kids playing catch with their moms and dads in what apparently qualifies as a park these days, and all the other usual city stuff. Take a closer look at the sidewalks, though. They're all covered in strange icon that look like swirling arrows or other things that don't seem to mean anything. Zoom in anywhere on the sidewalk and notice the person there, seeming to trace some kind of shape on the ground. First he traces a large rectangle, about as "street-long" as he is tall and about two feet into the sidewalk. Now he traces three circles roughly inside the space where he traced the rectangle and space equally apart. Nobody pays him any mind, obviously because he's crazy. He stomps the ground, again inside the imaginary rectangle, three times. By this point two people have stopped to watch him. Without warning a bench shaped object rises out of the ground, which the man and two bystanders sit down on begin chatting.

Now, find one of those strange arrow icons. There's a person there who seems to have just finished his soda. He swipes his foot in a circle right on top of it, causing a trash receptacle to rise out of the ground. He tosses his can in, double taps the ground with his foot, and the receptacle vanishes into the ground.

I think by now you've got the idea. What I'm imagining here is a city where the ground acts similarly to a touch pad, reacting to gestures performed by swiping and tracing it with your foot. These gestures can accomplish anything from making impromptu furniture to revealing trash cans hidden in the ground to building walls to escape muggings and other such things. Police may have an augmented version of this that overrides other people's gestures, obviously to aid in law enforcement.

The main problem is that I have no idea what to do with this setting. I know it has potential, but I feel like it needs a unique story to go with it.

 

Why spend all that time drawing a bench? Why not just have a bench there?

 

so basically the technology version of this

 

oh god not chalk zone

 

Because this way the bench can be virtually anywhere, any shape, and any size while keeping the sidewalk uncluttered while it's not in use.

Basically but not exactly. Imagine a touchscreen that can change between bumpy and smooth.

 

here's the plot:

A man uncreates the world with his demonic chalk
No seriously, the go to plot for any location like this is "bad guy in some way controls EVERYTHING AH OH NO"
or, alternatively, the government is evil and a ragtag bunch of misfits must take control of the city... literally.
What I'm getting at is you jsut wrote the sequel to Watch_Dogs

 

CHALK
CHALK
CHALK

 

Play Scribblenauts if you really want to have a go at this idea.

 

It was an awesome cartoon!

 

chalk just stopped looking like a real word to me.

 

Chalk Zone was my JAM, I always liked watching it whenever it came on.

I'm not too sure if I agree. Those are two overarching plotlines you can find in quite a number of things, but imo it matters on how you present those struggles and how that effects the plot. What if there is no government and the characters have to work to establish one themselves? What if being parapalegic was much more common in this society, and there was a biopolitical divide between parapalegics and those who could walk around freely?

You can have the same umbrella plot (e.g. Death Note & Code Geass*; "Morally questionable protagonist takes to changing the world as they see best"), but have very different ways of exploring it.

* acknowledging this could be a bad comparison, but it was the only thing that came to mind while I was typing this, lol

 

Writing a more original story like that takes more effort and won't be made into a four part trilogy of movies.

 

chalk zone was one of those shows i always avoided. something about it did not appeal to me at all.

 

Off with your head!