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Tag: Story Ideas
Calling on readers
I had an awesome idea for a magic system over the Christmas break. But…I’m not sure I want to post it publicly. I know I said in an earlier post that I didn’t believe in hording good ideas…but I don’t know about this one. Not with just anyone.
At the same time, I don’t want to keep this idea locked in my mind. I’ve found that when I share my ideas with my friends, they help me to see it from an angle I haven’t considered. That’s a necessary part of the idea phase, IMO–bouncing ideas off of friends.
So I’m going to try something new: password protected posts. If I’ve got something I only want to share with friends, I’ll put a password field on the post. Email me at onelowerlight at gmail dot com and I’ll send you the password…probably.
It feels kind of weird, keeping people away from reading things on my blog. If you’re a regular reader and someone I know from real life (you know who you are), chances are pretty good (as in: 100%) that I’ll give you the password if you ask. And I’ll trust you not to share it, though if you do, I obviously can’t stop you. I just want to be able to keep the random googlers from having access to everything.
So if you’re a friend of mine and see a password field on one of the posts, don’t think that I’m trying to exclude you! The opposite is true–it means I want your feedback twice as much. So please read and let me know what you think!
School is kicking my trash
It’s true. This is what my wordcount spreadsheet currently looks like:
Note that the seven day totals are dropping consistently. If I want to finish this novel before World Fantasy, I’m going to have to keep that number above 7,800…not including the work on Genesis Earth 4.0.
Something tells me that’s going to be very hard.
This week was particularly busy. I had a research proposal presentation for my capstone class–that was stressful–plus a writeup of the presentation. Thankfully, the full written proposal isn’t due for a couple of weeks.
Besides that, I’ve been working my two TA jobs and doing a buttload of readings and summaries for my other classes. Ugh.
The cool thing, though, is that when it’s my office hours and the students aren’t coming, I can get paid for reading Aeschylus, Plato, Sophocles, and all those other awesome Greek writers. The Libation Bearers was surprisingly good. I’d like to read The Furies, but I’ve got to read Plato’s Apology in order to keep up with the class. Still, the Apology is good stuff, too.
Reminds me: today, I went kayaking on Utah lake with the wilderness writing class. While I was there, I had this story idea: what if the Greek civilization had developed in Alaska instead of Aegea? And then I realized that it already happened: the Norse.
With school and work consistently kicking my butt, the only time I have to write EVER is between 10pm and 12pm. Every day this week (except for one time, when I drove a girl home), I’ve been in the Harold B Lee library until closing time, when the music starts to play. Every day, I come home exhausted. And then I get up the next day at 7am to get ready for class. Something tells me this isn’t sustainable.
Still, I think the worst times in the semester are at the beginning and the end. In the beginning, you’re still in the summer mentality, so the work beats you up until you get used to it. In the last half, everything gets so insane with exams and term papers that you can barely keep your head above the water no matter what you do. I’m adjusting slowly, but adjusting.
I’ll keep up with the writing as best I can, but Genesis Earth is going to be my top priority when I start that. In the meantime, I’ll just try to finish Bringing Stella Home by plugging away and catching up on the weekends.
In the meantime, I’ve got some great ideas for my next big project. Come November, I’m going to have a lot of fun.
🙂
Refocusing
If you’re a regular of this blog, you may have noticed that I took off the statusbar for Ashes of the Starry Sea 2.2. I’ve decided to discontinue that project for the foreseeable future, while I work on Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home.
It’s not that I think that Ashes doesn’t have potential, or that I can’t rewrite it. It’s just that I don’t want something good to keep me from doing my best.
Ashes, in its first incarnation, was very much a practice novel. It has potential, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get it publishable. In the meantime, I’ve got two other novels that are much better–much more workable. I don’t want them to be any worse because I’ve diverted too much attention toward something else.
When I wrote Ashes two years ago, I cringed at the thought that this was going to be just a practice novel. It was my magnum opus, the best thing I’d ever written! Well, since then, I’ve written a lot of other stuff that is much better. I’m able to let this baby sit on the back burner while I polish the better stuff.
(baby…back burner…okay, disturbing image)
In unrelated news, I had an AWESOME story idea today at Leading Edge!
Ever read the Illiad or the Odyssey? Didn’t you think that the Greek gods were just so petty, with their stupid feuds and their dumb wagers? Did it disturb you how they toyed around with humanity, ruining people’s lives just for sport?
Well, imagine this: an ancient Greek Van Helsing who slays gods instead of vampires!
Yeah, man! That’s gotta make for some interesting story material right there! The godslayer…the man who dares to challenge fate and takes up arms against the forces of the universe, slaying the immortals, overpowering the omnipotent, and outwitting the omniscient. Sounds like…like Richard Dawkins meets Sparticus. =P
Anyway, that’s the idea. What’s your take on it?
Goal shift for Ashes
These past few weeks, I’ve been killing myself trying to write Ashes of the Starry Sea. I’ve made some good progress, as you can see on the sidebar. Today I broke 200 pages. Not too bad.
However, the pace has just been killing me. 4k words per day is something I can do…but 4k words per day on the same project? It’s burning me out.
What’s more, to keep up the pace, I’ll have to put all my other projects completely on hold for the month of July. That, or write MORE than 4k per day, which would be excruciatingly painful.
So I looked at my calendar tonight and figured that if I pushed back my self-imposed deadline for Ashes to the weekend before school starts, I can cut my daily wordcount in that book in half. 2k per day in Ashes–not bad. That I can do.
What’s more, with the other 2k, I’ll have enough room to work on my other projects, Genesis Earth 3.0 and Bringing Stella Home 2.0. I’m starting to get really excited for those, very motivated. For Bringing Stella Home, I’m practically chomping at the bit. I want to make that story shine!
Inshallah, juggling two projects at a time will be helpful, not harmful. During the school year, when I was juggling work, school, and writing, it didn’t work. Now, however, with writing the only major obligation, I’m hoping that two projects will help keep my creative mind fresh, if that makes sense. When I get burned out on Ashes at 2pm, I can switch to Genesis Earth and work on something that excites me. When I get burned out on that at 9pm, I’ll be excited about Ashes again. Etc etc.
Besides, if I want to be a professional writer, project juggling is an important skill I’ll need to learn. Inshallah, I’ll get it to work this time.
Wow! If all goes according to plan, I’ll have all three novels finished and polished before school starts at the end of August! July to write Genesis Earth 3.0, August to write Bringing Stella Home 2.0, and both months to finish Ashes of the Stary Sea 2.1. Yeah!
In other news, Charlie finished Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson and reviewed it on her blog. I was also reading Warbreaker, but about 200 pages in found that it just wasn’t working for me. I’ll probably finish it someday, but for now, it’s on hold.
I hate to say anything bad about it, since Brandon has been something of a mentor to me (and his Mistborn books are some of the best fantasy that I’ve read!), but I shared many of Charlie’s complaints with the book.
The biggest thing, however, was the way he fell into long, frequent info dumps about the world. Every time, I felt that it stopped the action and jolted me out of the story, like reading a college textbook. The world was okay, but the way he presented it just didn’t work for me.
That, and the way the characters acted. When Siri got carted off near the beginning to be the wife of the God king, the fact that she hardly showed any fear or anxiety about have sex with the guy just threw me out. She was just like “oh, well,” and was nervous about everything else EXCEPT for the sex part. From then on, I had believability issues with her character.
Finally, let me just say that when I write my steampunk flower novel, I want to make one of the characters a Circassian janissary. I just think it would be really cool to put a Circassian in the book, as either a good guy or a bad guy (or, more likely, a grey-area guy). If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out the video below:
something
So…I figure it’s been a week and I should probably post something on this blog.
Wow.
Well, work is underway on Ashes of the Starry Sea, and I’m starting to have a love-hate relationship with it. Most writers say you first novel isn’t that good, and you just need to get it out of your system so you can write the real stuff.
Well, this is my first finished novel…but it’s not my first novel attempt. My first novel attempt was in 8th grade, and I am happy to report that it no longer exists. Anywhere. No, seriously, I lost (or destroyed) it after my mission, and I am perfectly happy with that.
My second novel attempt was in ninth grade, and I still have a copy of it, though I haven’t looked at it in a while. Somewhere around page one hundred (single spaced) I realized that the story wasn’t going anywhere, and I got all angsty and depressed about it. Then, midway through tenth grade, I realized that the problems were fixable, and stopped being angsty and depressed.
And then I got bored and moved onto other things.
For the next two years, I started all sorts of projects but never really got anywhere with them. This was when I came up with my “great golden idea” that I wanted to hide from the world until I had the skill to turn it into my masterpiece.
I’ll tell you what the idea was right now: a high school kid learns how to control his dreams and realizes that the dream world is just as “real” as the waking world. An amazonian dream mage named Lachoneus takes him on as his apprentice and he saves the world from demons while struggling to turn his dream-world relationship with his hs crush into a reality in the waking world.
It’s got potential, but if this is the best idea I ever come up with, I’m going to be very disappointed. Fortunately, I kept writing through this phase.
My next project that got past page ten happened my senior year. I created an island fantasy world with a Greek aesthetic and started what I thought was a character study on my sister. If she ever read it, she probably wouldn’t see any similarities between Sareli and herself, but she was kind of distant from all of us in those years.
Then my mission happened. Not much time for writing there, but even so, I had this one idea that was so good that I spent a handful of p-days in my second area writing it out longhand. It was supposed to be this incredbly poignant allegory based around Lehi’s dream. I got about two chapters in it before things got too busy for me.
When I came home, I picked up a story that I’d started before the mission and got pretty far with it…word-wise, at least. The pre-mission version was based on this game I used to play with my Zaks building blocks. When I got back, I renamed it Planet New America and envisioned it as Jesus’ second coming as experienced by American colonists on another planet, under Chinese occupation.
Sound pretty bad? Yeah…about 60k words in I realized it had no plot and put it on the “back burner.” I haven’t picked it up since.
Sophomore year went by, and I wrote a short story and an undeveloped novel that I thought was a short story. Decision LZ150207 was the short story, and it’s getting published!!! in The Leading Edge. I signed the contract yesterday (woot!). The Clearest Vision was the undersized novel, and…it was pretty bad. Cheesy, sentimental, poorly written–but some of the ideas were cool. Too bad it probably isn’t marketable.
Then, in the summer of 2007, I decided I was going to start another novel! This one was going to be…<drumroll please> a Final Fantasy 6 fanfic (huh?!). Thankfully, I had a much more original idea in gestation, and Aneeka convinced me to run with it.
Thus began the rough draft version of Ashes of the Starry Sea, my first finished novel and my current primary project.
So, yeah, they say to throw out your first novel…but I wrote at least five significant partial drafts before I got to Ashes. I think that’s enough to justify my assessment that this story’s going potential. I still worry about it, though…I’m only in chapter 4 and I’m already struggling with the same angsty doubts that don’t usually hit until about halfway through.
The other day, though, I sent out my first three chapters to Charlie, who read them at work and gave me her assessment. I thought that the main character, Ian, was weak and boring, that the first chapter didn’t have enough of a hook, that it took too long to get into the action, etc. To my surprise, this is what she said:
Charlie: “Charlie is the coolest person I know”
say it.
me: charlie is the coolest person I know
Charlie: thank you.
me: because she read my first three chapters
Charlie: I just sent them to you
me: oh, nice
Charlie: 😀
me: they kick my other characters’ trash?
Charlie: yes
me: really?
how so?
Charlie: I like them
I can see their dinstinct characteristics very well
they’re developed subtly and efficiently
me: yeah?
Ian isn’t boring?
Charlie: no
I like him more than michael
me: ???
how?
Charlie: because he has definite character
me: he does?
Charlie: I totally understand how he thinks and his motivations after three chapters
yeah. He’s a passive weenie of a guy, but I like him
me: he’s a passive weenie and he isn’t boring?
Charlie: nope
I like him
me: you like him even though he’s a pansy?
Charlie: yeah
I like him because he’s a pansy
me: really?
huh
I don’t understand
Charlie: I’m sorry?
I like that you don’t have a complacent protagonist
me: Ian isn’t complicated?
sorry for all the questions
I’m just trying to understand
Charlie: no
me: so you like him because you get him
Charlie: that’s part of it, yeah
me: but if he’s weak and doesn’t start being proactive for very long, you’re going to stop liking him
is that right?
Charlie: I am expecting him to grow, yes
me: ah, so it’s the potential for growth that hooks you
Charlie: yeah
Like any first novel, Ashes of the Starry Sea has some serious plot issues, against which I’m currently banging my head. However, despite the voices inside and outside of my head, it’s probably got potential. Now I just need to convince myself of that. Hopefully, as the story progresses, the story itself will do the convincing. And you know what? If I shut up and listen to it, it just might do that.
Was Jane Austen a man?
Okay, okay, don’t worry, I know the answer to this question. But in five hundred or a thousand years, will people be so certain?
We question the true authorship of Shakespeare’s works. Some of us even question whether Jesus Christ was a real human being, or just a fiction that some religious group invented. Five hundred years from now, what’s not to say that people will be questioning whether Jane Austen really wrote her own books–or whether she even existed at all?
I had this idea while I was doing a copy edit with The Leading Edge (apparently, if you help them with their slushpile consistently enough, you get roped into the higher level stuff like copy edits, substantive edits, and even get a position with some authority–eventually). We were taking a quick break and I was chatting with some of the other editors about story ideas, and somehow out of the conversation this idea spawned. Good heavens.
I think it’s an awesome idea, but I know for sure that I don’t have the chops to pull it off. I haven’t read enough Austen to really develop a taste or a love for her work, or even really an understanding of it. If someone else with much more knowledge and love of Austen could pull it off, I’d definitely like to see it. If you think that’s you, feel free to “steal” my idea and run with it.
If I personally were going to write it, I’d extrapolate a crazy middle-far future world that basically resembles our own, with a few key cultural and economic shifts, and focus on the question of her gender. I’d think of some awesome reason why these futuristic people specifically question whether it was a man who wrote her books and pattern the debate off of the kinds of debates we have about the authorship of Shakespeare’s works. The characters in the story would probably be literary elites who are WAY WAY worked up over this question–the kind of people who go to war over this stuff. From there, I would make it a comedy of the sexes, and use the story as a way to examine, in a humorous, upbeat way, some of the timeless differences between men and women.
But that’s just how I’d do it. Maybe you have a better idea. If you do write something like this (or know of something similar), please let me know, because I want to read it!
Dreaming up steampunkery
I had the coolest dream last night.
I dreamed that I was in some kind of a steampunk/regency universe–basically, everyone dressed up like the Victorian era and fought with fencing sabers. I was contracted to go and fight the phantom of the opera, who for some reason was holed up in the JFSB (except, it wasn’t exactly the JFSB, just somewhat analogous). The phantom had a whole bunch of cronies and thugs, and I had to fight them in order to get to him. Unfortunately, I lost, and his thugs disarmed me and took me prisoner.
Just then, my wife (future wife–I’m not married or engaged right now) came in to rescue me. The dream panned out so that I was seeing it from her perspective (previously, it had been a sort of detached 3rd person). She snuck up on the guy guarding the door and stabbed him in the back with a dagger. Leaving him to die, she jumped into the JFSB where I was (you know the part underneath the big glass facade, three stories below the English department, where the spiral stairs are…except there were no spiral stairs in the dream, just some old dirty couches), and started this awesome swordfight. She cut down a couple of guys, then attacked the guard holding me captive–and killed him by thrusting her sword through his throat.
It was pretty cool. 😛 Totally reminded me of Vin from Mistborn. What a woman!
When I woke up from the dream, I wanted to go write some steampunk. If/whenever I get around to writing a steampunk novel, I definitely want a strong female character who can do that kind of stuff. Through the throat. What a way to go! Suffocate on your own blood while your opponent walks away, leaving you to die. It’s bad enough getting stabbed in the stomach, but the throat–that takes style. And improvisation. Cool.
Yet another story idea
Ok, here is a cool one that came to me the other day.
One of the time traveling cliches is that of someone going back in time to kill off some infamous world leader in his/her infancy, thus changing the course of history and averting a major disaster (or causing an even bigger one). It’s a common what if scenario: what if someone went back in time and killed Hitler? (Red Alert) What if someone went back in time and supplied the Confederacy with AK-47s? (The Guns of the South)
Well, here’s my take on it: what if time traveling agents have ALWAYS been going back in time, trying to fix up problems like this? What if history is one long story of the screw ups of a bunch of secret agents trying to alter things, trying to get it right, trying to get to some kind of utopia?
Of course, by altering history, they alter their own futures, making it impossible to go back to the future from which they came. Which means that they would have to go forward, see how it worked out, then go back again to make another change, take out another horrible world leader, then go forward again, etc etc.
If that’s the case, perhaps our universe is actually one of the “rough drafts” that this agency has been working on. Perhaps our universe is so screwed up because the agency hasn’t yet made all of the changes they want to make…not in this timeline, anyway.
In order for this to work, the people of this agency would have to all travel together, since leaving someone behind before going back to make alterations would mean leaving that person behind in a timeline that could never be reached again. From this, two things follow: 1) the time travelers would have to have some kind of a really cool ship, on which they all live and travel, and 2) they would be completely autonomous from any kind of government or other institution limited to one particular timeline.
This raises a number of ethical questions. Is it wrong to go back and alter the course of history in this way? Do the people in the original timeline cease to exist, or do they continue to exist in a parallel universe? If you take the latter view, how does that alter the ethics of changing things? You’re not really screwing people over–they still exist, just in an invisible parallel universe. And you’re trying to make the world a better place, too. But, then again…you’re basically playing god with history, and that sounds pretty unethical.
My idea for incorporating this into a story is this: a regular guy from our time bumps into these time travelers and gets sucked into their little plot to build a utopia. He has to struggle with getting taken out of his world, never to return (or never to return to it quite the way it was). There could possibly be a love story of some kind, especially if these are steampunk time travelers (perhaps that would explain why the 20th century was more spectacularly screwed up than any other–the time travelers started in the 1800s and are more concerned about their era than after their era. But then, there are also divisions and disagreements among the time travelers, with some getting fed up and discouraged with the whole thing, others (possibly the leader) with megalomania, and others who are beginning to have doubts about the morality of their undertaking.
Pretty cool, neh? Now, back to doing homework… 😛
Apocalyptic story idea
Ok, here’s another crazy story idea.
When I was really young, I used to hang upside down off the edge of the bed and look up at the ceiling, trying to imagine what it would be like if the ceiling were the floor and the floor were the ceiling. You should try it sometime–it really changes the landscape of your house. I think there was a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip on this same concept, too.
So, here’s the idea. It’s a little wacky, but here goes. What if everyone, all over the world, suddenly fell UP instead of falling DOWN? Not objects, or animals, or anything else–just people.
Imagine where you are sitting right now. Look up. What would it be like if all of a sudden you fell down–or, rather, up? Would it hurt? How much? Would you die? Would you be able to grab onto something? What would it be like once you stood up and found yourself on the ceiling?
Then, imagine the change to the landscape! Imagine the change to the WORLD! Instead of sky, there’d be nothing but ground overhead, and a giant, bottomless blue abyss beneath! Would you be able to leave the building you’re in? If you were in your car, what would you do? If you were in your car, and you got into an accident, what would you do?
Imagine all those people, walking around outside in the city streets, or walking around campus the moment the apocalypse hits, and BAM! They’re all falling skyward! How crazy would that be? How tragic!
What would you do after you’d realized what happened? Would you be able to get around? If you had access to a car, probably–just lie down on the ceiling and drive upside down, I suppose. But then again, what about the accelerator pedal? How would you reach it? You’d have to rig something up–it would be difficult.
And what if you were trapped in a building with no way out? What if your car were parked outside somewhere? How would you survive? Where would you get food? What would you do once that ran out? How would you contact people? Would you even make it?
What if the ceiling weren’t strong enough to support your weight? What if you fell through it? What if you were with someone who fell through a weak part in the ceiling? What would happen?
You get the idea. It’s a pretty wacky idea, but think about it–if it happened, it really WOULD be apocalyptic! Crazy!