I can't decide what I want to write about this year. I keep thinking I have an idea, but then I toss it aside for something newer and shinier.
But! One person's trash is another's treasure and all that. Also we need to give people something to do, here. So.
I was thinking maybe we should have a thread for "putting aside" ideas. See something you like? Take it! There's plenty to go around. Have awesome ideas that don't quite fit into your novel - like that talking space gorilla that clashes with your Viking ship setting? Put them here and see if someone else is able to run with it!
My first deposits to the drop box:
A character whose dreams are actually happening, but just in another time or place (like the distant past). After a while, they somehow realize these dreams are "really happening," and set off to research them.
A cheese-tastic high school reunion for some class of 199X, but for some inexplicable reason, with an 80's theme.
----------
50,522 / 50,000
Oct 11, 2009 - 15 38
I'm undecided as well, but haven't yet tossed anything aside. I'll cheerfully snatch up discarded ideas on this thread, however.
32,229 / 50,000
Oct 11, 2009 - 17 13
No no, no one can have your idea, Josh.
Considering it was going to be part of mine. -.-
*sigh!* back to the drawing board again...
40,064 / 50,000
Oct 11, 2009 - 17 22
I am willing to share the bare bones of the assignment I'm expanding...
Sometime in the future, someone develops a machine that accurately predicts how you will die. How does this affect the society of the future? Insurance rates? Auto accidents? The paradoxes of time viewing (which are very similar to time travel) leave endless room for this subject.
The Machine of Death was actually an open call for short story submissions for a compilation several years ago (that they are apparently never going to finish) and mine wasn't chosen for a very good reason: it sucked. Trying to keep it short killed my story before it even got off the ground and subsequent rewrites only made a tangled hash of it. But it's fun, and some of it was good enough that my brother-in-law is obsessed with some of the imagery and insisted I finish. So I will (maybe...the outlining is lacking an ending...everyone dies?)
Also, if you're looking for ideas, try "The Writer's Book of Matches" which has a lot of short ideas, single sentences, overhead conversations that could fire up an entire novel (or a collection of shorts).
----------"The system gives you just enough to make you think that you see change. Then it sings you right to sleep and screws you just the same." - Ani DiFranco
11,038 / 50,000
Oct 12, 2009 - 06 11
Ooo...I have no idea what I am writing this year. That's a first for me. I may have to get out my "Writer's Book of Matches" which I do have, somewhere. I remember one of the ideas in that book was a man finds a girl's diary. I should bring it to the next meeting if people are struggling (like me).
----------"Remember, remember
the fifth of November
because you should be
at 8335 words."
52,111 / 50,000
Oct 20, 2009 - 06 52
This past weekend I watched the Japanese version of Pulse and I was reminded that once upon a time I was going to write a novel that fixed everything that I found wrong with the American remake. And now I can't shake that idea!
Clearly I just have to stop watching television/movies, stop reading, and stop playing video games.