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finding the fox
I'm looking for a fox. A fictional fox, which is trickier, since it doesn't actually exist anywhere that I don't put it. . . .
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the wicked witch
Homer nods, and Terry Pratchett wonders why, in the fairy tale, the witch is always wicked. To which there are there are two answers.
The first is for the same reason that fairy tales always stop when the heroine's married -- They Don't.
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The first is for the same reason that fairy tales always stop when the heroine's married -- They Don't.
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memory
One of the things I find hardest to deal with in a story is memory loss.
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ah, nerves
You know when I finished the outline on my superhero story, I thought it was light on action and heavy on talk and philosophy, all things consider. Ah, well, it was based on a philosophical notion. . .
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Character Building
Lunacon is over and done, and I have safely returned. There have been Lunacons where I had to scrape ice off the car to escape, and Lunacons where the daffodils were in full bloom, but this Lunacon is one where there were green sprouts visible on Sunday that I knew weren't there on Friday.
Anyway, the first panel I went to was on Character Building.
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Anyway, the first panel I went to was on Character Building.
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adventures in alternate and otherwise historical fiction
Divorced, Beheaded, Survived has its elements that stir thoughts of historical fiction.
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with a book in her hand
Sometimes what you need is not a man coming through the door with a gun in his hand, but a girl with a book in hers.
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philosophically pondering philosophy
So I (finally!) nailed down a story idea that had been pestering me for years -- a nice abstract philosophical idea that finally gets endowed with characters who can dramatize it and bring it to life.
And to give them the situation to dramatize, we have the two villains of the piece, immensely powerful, immensely unconcerned with mere mortals, and having a history of being prone to philosophical experimentation -- metaphysics, epistemology, ethics. Which is why the characters in the story immediately (and correctly) guess that they are behind the current pickle. Which means that they need to have such experiments in their past.
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And to give them the situation to dramatize, we have the two villains of the piece, immensely powerful, immensely unconcerned with mere mortals, and having a history of being prone to philosophical experimentation -- metaphysics, epistemology, ethics. Which is why the characters in the story immediately (and correctly) guess that they are behind the current pickle. Which means that they need to have such experiments in their past.
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ah, love
Once read a passage where the writer claimed that the conflict of Aida would not have been a conflict for any man really in Radames's position: he could marry Amneris and keep Aida as his concubine -- problem solved!
Er. Eep.
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Er. Eep.
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figured that one out
Less than a week after I started to ponder the question, I have a definitive answer to the question of how to outline a fix-up-like novel.
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philosophical speculation on alternate non-deaths
One thing you can do in an alternate history is speculate about what would have happened if a character had lived longer, or died sooner.
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menacing mentors
That old chestnut, the mysterious hooded figure that arrives with the news of the quest. . . you know he's got a lot of potential for menace there.
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symmetry with characters
Back to the story -- one more time -- this time collapsing two characters into one because I suspect that one of them was the inspiration problem. . . .
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Drill Down Into Story Ideas
Many people ask authors where they get their idea . This panel asks: "How do you develop your ideas into stories?" We will take an idea or two and work on how we would turn it into a story."
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bittercon
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adventures after inspiration. . .
So, the outline hangs fire for weeks, while I busy myself with other outlines, and writing stories, and yet today I was thinking again about one of the characters in it. . . .
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Philosophizing in Fiction
Usually my muse starts with a moment, from which I have to build back and forth to the beginning and ending. Occasionally just back or forth. . . .which has its problems.
Then, there are the other times, where the idea is somewhat More Abstract. Sometimes purely aesthetic -- if you tweaked Romeo and Juliet so that the twosome realized their only chance lay in escaping the stupid city, could you make a comedy of it? -- sometimes delving into other philosophical matters -- would one of those "mirror universes" where morality is inverted really work? Which have their own problems, and I think they're the worse.
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Then, there are the other times, where the idea is somewhat More Abstract. Sometimes purely aesthetic -- if you tweaked Romeo and Juliet so that the twosome realized their only chance lay in escaping the stupid city, could you make a comedy of it? -- sometimes delving into other philosophical matters -- would one of those "mirror universes" where morality is inverted really work? Which have their own problems, and I think they're the worse.
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Mythic Time vs. What Really Happened
Malory and all the earlier romancers might cheerfully plop King Arthur in the High Middle Ages, and Howard Pyle might boldly describe the setting of Robin Hood as the land of fancy, but nowadays, just about any retelling of King Arthur or Robin Hood or what have you goes for the nitty-gritty realistic style (surreptiously idealized in certain aspects -- the pagans, for instance, would never recognize the religions).
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outlining characters
When plugging along in an outline, some characters need to be more developed that others.
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