Category Archives: Story Ideas

Back to the idea tank

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thought_bubbleSo Sunday I meant to call dad and outline (Title Withheld) some more. But Woman’s Best Friend still wasn’t finished, and the last three scenes took me pretty much all weekend to write.

The best laid plans of mice and men, right?

(Sorry dad. We’ll catch up soon, promise.)

I’ve already performed a significant edit on Woman’s Best Friend, and overall I was pretty satisfied. I’ve incorporated most of your feedback in some form or another; even those things I was unsure how to fix, I modified slightly, hopefully making the text even clearer than before.

But I was pleasantly surprised, usually my first full readthrough of a finished draft nets me hundreds of corrections. This time there simply weren’t that many things I wanted to change, even including all the fixes already emailed to me.  I’m sure more will come after you’ve read the full story.

Right now I feel kinda like after achieving a major goal at work or in an online game. I was so focused on this one thing, all of a sudden I have the same level of energy, but don’t know where to direct it. I think tonight I will take a stab at outlining (Title Withheld) so that I can bring dad something more concrete when I do call him.

Finishing a short story is so satisfying, though (especially compared to plugging away on a novel), I’d like to put another under my belt in the next few weeks.

Of all the story ideas I mentioned previously, the one that’s most appealing to me at the moment is the one about the dragon thief. I’m picturing Gone in 60 Seconds meets … well, if there had ever been any good movies with dragons, I’d name one here, but there really haven’t been. Really. Not one.

Another idea I had awhile back was a colony planet thousands of years in the future is isolated. There’s no galactic empire or anything, or if there is, these guys aren’t included. Anyway, sometime before the current residents lived, there was a war out in space, and this planet was targeted for destruction. Only the war is over now, and the evil people who were in power on the planet have been defeated by internal coup, their regime toppled. Problem is, there’s still a giant “blow up a planet” missile headed for this planet at nearly the speed of light. Although it’s still billions of miles away, it’s obviously still a concern as it will arrive in a couple of months and destroy the (now innocent) inhabitants.

Another idea I had way back was for the kind of alien invasion nobody ever does: Tiny aliens, the size of gnats or smaller. They don’t attack us physically (obviously) but instead work on ways to control our brains. But they don’t just target world leaders to wipe out the planet…for some reason, the people they target were people who 1. nobody liked (jerks) or 2. nobody really knew (loners). This behavior, while not exactly friendly, is difficult to be construed as outright hostility, since there seems to be some rhyme and reason to the choice of targets, but what?

Well, I did give a pretty serious edit to Woman’s Best Friend and it’s late. Think I’ll call it a night and mull over what to work on next tomorrow at work.

(By the way, don’t forget to vote if you haven’t yet.)

I'm a big fan of forums, and I've already installed phpBB3. Should I add forums to the site? (They would be for many additional topics besides just the blog.)

  • Yes. I love forums they would increase the discussion and participation here. (50%, 2 Votes)
  • Comments are a sufficient way for your readers to communicate and participate. (50%, 2 Votes)

Total Voters: 4

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The votes are in…

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golden-retriever…all two of them. (I’m not even sure if the 2nd comment was a ‘vote’, strictly speaking.)

Nevertheless, any input is better than no input at all, and someday when I’m a bestseller, I can say thanks to all of my fans…both of them!

If you can’t already tell from the progress bar on the right, I’ve begun additional work on Woman’s Best Friend and am already well underway.

Evenings spent in 2009:

Jason’s Writing Career: 1

World of Wacraft: 0

EDIT: No, the dog isn’t mine. There’s a golden retriever in the story, hence the mascot of this post.

The Continent of Lost Ideas

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foggy_valley2Some people believe that coming up with ideas for stories is the hard part. I disagree. In fact, I have ideas for new stories several times a day.

The hard part is taking the idea for a story and molding it into some meaningful presentation. There’s a big difference between, “He finds an evil ring of power” and The Lord of The Rings.

I’ve met hundreds of people who aren’t writers, but have ideas for a novel or a movie. (Sometimes they want me to write the story and then split the credit 50/50 if it’s wildly successful.) I’ve also been asked whether I’m afraid of anyone stealing my ideas.

/scoff

It takes more than a really good idea to write a bestseller or blockbuster. A lot more. No, the only intellectual property concern I have is for full text completed works. Besides which, there’s nothing new under the sun and every idea you can imagine has been done to death. It’s how the story is told which makes a good read.

I’ve lost thousands of ideas in that gap between idea and story. If I don’t have something down on paper (literal or digital), the concept is eventually lost. (This has happened with musical compositions as well as story ideas, which makes me sadder because those are rarer.)

Perhaps these lost ideas wander the earth and congregate in some far off mystical place. Hopefully I’ll be able to visit eventually and get some of those ideas back.

But in the meanwhile, the blog seems like an appropriate place to share my ideas. First, I can create a record of them, and someday when I’m bored and looking through old posts, or just want to work something but don’t know what, I can call up all the posts of story ideas and see what tickles my fancy.

It also will allow feedback from you if one of these suddenly appeals to you.

Two ideas that I want to get down immediately have both come from dreams. (Dreams are a superb and source of raw ideas, but they have a poor story structure; again, the hard part comes in the craft.)

  • Post-apocalyptic search for his life-mate
    • There has been a major catyclism; war, natural disaster, whatever. Whatever it was destroyed whole cities and ruptured the fabric of society. In the midst of this chaos, our hero has taken leadership over a small band of people and helped them survive. But he was seperated from his lover before the disaster. Once he has decided that his ragtag band can now survive without his leadership, he prepares to depart. “Where are you going?” they ask. “To find _______.” (The name of his true love.) “That’s crazy!” they protest. “She must have died! Even IF she survived the initial disaster, there’s no way she can survive the current aftermath of (insert other dangers, radiation, wild animals, bandits, confused attack robots). And even IF she survives it, there’s no way YOU’LL survive (current dangers) and even IF she survives AND you survive…you’ll never find her.” He responds, “Well, I have to try,” and leaves anyway.

 

  • The dragon thief
    • In this particular world, there’s a fantasy airforce of sorts, dragonriders who make up an elite corps of soldiers like modern Airborne Rangers or something. The protagonist of this story isn’t one of these soldiers, but he is a daredevil thrillseeker. He decides to steal one of their dragons right out from under them. The modern equivalent would be a mobster trying to steal a jet out from under the airforce. This is even further complicated by the fact that in the story, the jet (dragon) actually has loyalties to its rightful owners.

What to write first?

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decisionI may (or may not) be a skilled writer. But I’m an expert procrastinator, there’s no doubt about it.

As a result, it’s been a couple of months since I last devoted significant time to the four projects whose progress we shall track here. And I’m not quite sure which one I want to dive into first.

Actually the fourth is exempt from this decision; it’s the priority project at all times. And since you don’t know what it is yet, you can’t vote for it anyhow.

But which of the other three projects tickles your interest?

  • Woman’s Best Friend
    • Alone in the Colorado countryside while her husband is away on business, Naomi becomes perplexed and concerned when her dog Jessie seems increasingly convinced of some imminent threat behind the house, particularly in the coldest hours of the night.
  • Manifest Destiny
    • Two men and two women awaken in a small room with no memories, and no clues to their identities or purposes. Their only possessions are numbered jumpsuits.
  • Echoes of Prophesy
    • This is the sequel to Shadows of Prophesy. It begins after Torell’s death, whereupon Marana finds herself pregnant without explanation, the use of magic has been stripped from all who practice it, and the Empire of Tartania is in chaos after the war.

These synopses are very brief, but if one of them prompts a question, that’s a good sign that something about it is interesting enough to make you want to know a little more. And if you want to know more…that’s going to make me want to tell you. Savvy?