But I'm posting this one publicly, so let's see what happens.
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| Van Gogh's Trees and Undergrowth, just because it's a fave |
Because I find myself sympathizing with older characters, as I'm getting older, and their trials and tribulations trying to steer a bunch of starry-eyed youngsters toward saving the world. No wonder they die halfway through. It's exhaustion, I'm telling you.
2. Fables from an invented world
That highly stylized voice, the mythic characters... but not our fairy tales. I want to write the stories that the main character of Disciple is going to tell her baby at bedtime. I got a name, the other day: the Red Hunter of the Winter Wood.
3. Aliens
It may sound odd given my love of science fiction, but something in my gut balks at creating aliens. They're so often used as stand-ins for the monster under the bed, for other human beings, or for deities... I want to coax my gut into telling me what it wants in an alien race, and write a story with them.
4. High hermetic magic
This may be a side-effect of playing White Wolf's World of Darkness system back in the day, but for me "hermetic" magic is that massively organized, anal-retentive down to the microscopic detail, putting science to shame with its rigor, brand of magic. My gut has always said that scientific rigor should be applicable to a magic system, and I'd like to give it free rein.
5. Utopia
You know what would be tough to write? Utopia. And I don't mean a crust of utopia maintained by some horrible dystopic mechanism that the characters will fall into. That's been done, and done well. I mean an honest-to-God clean-livin' utopia. What would the conflict be?
That's a long shot, but hey. You won't improve your aim if you only shoot at things in arm's reach.
What's on your to-write list?
4 comments:
Nice list. That is the problem with Utopia--what would the conflict be? One of the issues with Star Trek if I'm not mistaken...
As for me, I'd just like to finish something.
Yup I would read those. Any of them. I think the conflict for the Utopian would be that it's not in human nature to be happy ALL the time. You can't please everyone. No matter what type of Society you set up. Unless you give everyone a lobotomy.
I agree, it seems to be contrary to human nature to be happy all the time. Knowing how amazingly petty people can get, I can't help thinking that in a real utopia people would turn into nasty little sticklers -- and one could write something about that, and it might end up looking like those comedy-of-error novels set in certain historical periods of high society, which are, in their way, a sort of utopia... the sort supported by a vast dystopic system of poverty.
Well, that was a rambly sentence :) They happen when my brain gets burbly.
I love the idea of the fantasy from the mentor's POV. We're always riding along with the hero, but what kind of pressure must the mentor go through? The worry?
And why do the aliens have to be the monster under the bed? I'm working on a YA now where the aliens are actually the protectors of earth. :) That's the big one on my to-do list. I've got 45K, I just need to finish it!
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