So I’ve had a new story idea simmering away in my mind for a couple of days. It stems from a few writing exercises I’ve done in the past, and it strikes me as the kind of project that I could really leave indefinitely and just come back to when the mood arises to add to it, rather than it being a constant and continuous process towards getting published.
The concept is quite simple – action. It’s commonly said to me that one of my strengths as a writer is the ability to write interesting and engaging action scenes, and they’re usually the ones that I have the most fun writing. A lot of the reason I end up putting aside or giving up certain story ideas is simply because I get bogged down trying to link the various interesting scenes together with necessary but comparatively bland scenes. In the end, it just becomes a chore to write… or if it doesn’t, I just don’t enjoy writing the stories and trying to get those particular scenes perfect constantly. It’s something I’m getting better with, but really? I’m turning to stories that either have less between the interesting scenes, or I just change things around so the scenes are consistently interesting. Harder to do, but it seems to be working – The Organization and What Fiction Doesn’t Tell You are the recent results of that. But I’d still like to try and push it further.
I pictured a scene where a young woman wakes up in a desert with no recollection of how she got there and several patches in her memory dealing with her short term situation. Moments later, a guy surfing on the back of a dragon proceeds to unleash crazy magic power in an attempt to kill her, and so she needs to fight back. I want it to be over the top and jacked up to 11. I want it to be the equivalent of watching Sucker Punch and 300 at the same time, only condensed down into written form. And since a lot of the impact of action movies such as those is the full combination of visual and aural input, that’ll be quite a challenge to accomplish… but that’s the challenge I set out to make. How far can I push written action scenes? Can I make a story composed of increasingly over the top and out there situations like that?
That’s not to say there won’t be any plot or character interaction and dynamism. When I say “interesting” scenes, there are plenty that don’t have actual “action” that are still more than interesting, and those will still be present in this story. But I intend to fly into this with nothing but the pictures I have in my head and just wing the entire story from start to finish. If I find a particular moment to be uninteresting, I’ll throw something in there to spice it up. I’ll try and take refuge in audacity if I must. It’ll just be a total experiment to see how much I can do it and if such a story turns out to be interesting and exciting to both write and read.
A lot of my inspiration comes from the series The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher. Pretty much anyone who has spoken to me in the last couple of months would have heard me recommend them, but here it is again – these books are fantastic and you should read them as soon as you can. Part of what I love about the series, however, is that it all just seems to flow so wonderfully. There’s practically no wasted space – every story bounds from event to event in short order, all the details that are picked up end up being explained or utilised well, and it never feels like it gets slow or winds down in any way, shape, or form. It’s brilliant, and it’s easily my current motivation and inspiration for continuing the urban fantasy genre stories that I have been as of late. That’s the kind of feel I’m trying to achieve with this new project.
It’s not something I’m going to work on immediately, mind. But I’m not letting this one get too far from me and intend to give it a shot soon. How about you guys? Do you think I could pull something like this off? I’d love to hear your thoughts, but either way, look out for this project in the coming months.
Write it. Do it. Anything with dragons is an automatic plus. ~
Well, I’m still working out that part. I mean, if I start the very first scene in the story with a dragon of some description, the sense of progression gets all out of whack and it becomes seriously hard to upsize it from there, you know? Still, I’ll see what I can do.
But if it’s me, dragons will be there SOMEWHERE. We all know it.
As long as it all makes sense in the end, I’d love to see this happen. This is what revision is for.
Naturally. The first draft is just to see if I can pull it off, and following drafts are making the action more coherent and tying it all together.
Ahh, I see. The link between this idea and type of universe we were talking about is kind of vague, but it’s definitely there. A universe not so much about stories, but the clashing of personalities. Action, in a world where anything is possible. Pure fantasy.
I would love to see you do something like this.
I wouldn’t want the link to be TOO identical, obviously. It needs my own take on the situation, and I probably wouldn’t handle the original concept as well as it does. But this is some spin on that whole ideal that I can try and work with.
Well, that’s the thing. Unless you specifically plan to write this story with a Shinto motif, I’d be willing to bet that nobody would see any connection whatsoever. A surprising amount of creativity is needed to form these types of universes, and simply doing your own take this kind of story will change so much.