Link to original post: [drupal=2749]This hand of mine is burning red![/drupal]
It's loud roar tells me to write something!
In all seriousness though, I made a blog a few months ago where I lamented my inability to write. I was having any ideas, school was kicking my butt, personal problems, etc. But since then, things have improved on every front. The semester is winding down and giving me more free time. Things have greatly improved in my personal life, and ideas are coming to me. I can literally feel the desire to write starting to burst out of my chest, in a good way.
I'm just having a hard time fully coalescing one idea. I get bits and pieces of interesting things that I can't exactly put together into a coherent idea: a child’s relationship with their mother; dragons; post-colonial issues; the sectional divide between the North and the South prior to the American Civil War (that one is a direct result of a fascinating class I'm taking this semester); fantasy elements I'd like to incorporate; the huge effect that Battlestar Galactica had on me in terms of what I expect from television and my subsequent (albeit only half-serious) desire to write something for television of that caliber; and hundreds, if not thousands, of other little fragments floating around in my head, looking for a home on paper.
Part of me wants to write something serious and "real-life", and a part of me wants to write something more sci-fi or fantasy based. I've always had a big internal struggle with that. As I've written in past blogs, my earliest memories of writing are writing Star Trek and Dragonball Z fanfics. For some reason, I associate that with my amateur status as a writer back then, and I can't help but feel that if I'm ever going to progress as a writer (and be taken seriously), I need to leave that "kiddie stuff" behind and write more in the vein of Hemingway or Faulkner or whatever. I know that's the wrong way to look at it, and I truly love sci-fi and fantasy. I suppose it's just my inner nerdom coming into conflict with my intellectual elitism (a very common trait among New Englanders): no matter how much I love the geek stuff, it's not "real" art, it's just genre stuff. And I know for a fact that I do not want to be identified as a genre writer.
It's a conflict that I must resolve before I can truly put my full efforts behind anything, no matter what I decide it to be. Ideally, I guess I would like to use sci-fi/fantasy settings to tell universal stories. And that's the point of sci-fi and fantasy anyway: to put social and moral issues in a setting that's just fantastic enough that people don't get offended by your message. Think about the episode of Star Trek where the aliens were half-black and half-white and they were at war with each other. That was obviously a shot at prejudice, but put in a setting where people would say, "Those aliens are stupid for hating someone based on what they look like!", instead of saying "I'm stupid for hating someone based on what they look like!" You can get an audience to say the former, but not the latter.
Anyway, these are a few ideas I've been kicking around for months, years even. Maybe putting them out on paper will help me to evaluate how serious I am about them.
1) Because I Love You re-write
A year ago, I wrote a short story entitled Because I Love You, and submitted it to Glimmer Train. I can look back on the story now and recognize what I did wrong. I conceived the story as being about how the main character deals with her unexpected pregnancy, but it became about the relationship between herself, her sisters and her mother. I think that it actually had the potential to become a really great story, but because I didn't approach it as a family drama from the beginning, the whole thing wound up being overlong and underdeveloped, at the same time. I mean, I used 6400 words and didn't make a point, because I wasn't sure what the point was until after I'd finished it. That's been a consistent problem for me. I start writing one story and end up with another when I'm done.
But I think that a story about how a young woman, on the brink of being a mother, deals with her own mother is a very good story, if only I can tell it the way it should be told. The thing that compels me the most to tackle this story again is that I sometimes find myself thinking about Rachel (the main character), and how she and her sisters are doing. Once you create a character, they become a real person, and they live outside of the story that you've put them in. I think about Rachel, and I want to visit her again, just to check in.
2) Children of Heaven, Version 1
A few years ago, I wrote a story about a half-dragon, half-human girl who gets caught between the two worlds. Nothing terribly original, but the story was supposed to be the beginning of a novel. I got about 10,000 words in and never finished it. That novel was going to be the beginning of an entire world, filled with many different characters and conflicts and followed over hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The inspiration for that was J.R.R. Tolkein's persistent world for the Lord of the Rings, and William Faulkner's creation of an entire imaginary southern county as the backdrop for the stories he wrote. The fantasy elements were derived from Fire Emblem; in fact, the whole thing really started as a Fire Emblem fan game that I still have extensive notes for. I wanted to move beyond the game though, and that's where the idea for an entire universe, told in short story and novel form, was born.
My big problem here is that while I like the idea (and I absolutely love dragons), I really have nothing original or interesting to say. An evil empire bent on conquering everything? Check. A half-breed character caught between two worlds? Check. Heroes of destiny, legendary items, dark forces and reluctant saviors? Check, check, check, check. I want to tell the story, but I want it to be a GOOD story, and not just "Jamil Ragland Retells the Same Fantasy Story You've Heard for the 10,000th Time." At some point I want to write a dragon story, but I'm going to need a better idea than the one I've been sitting on.
3) Children of Heaven, Version 2
This is the most recent of the ideas, and it's the one that was inspired by Battlestar Galactica. The basic setup is that humans have colonized an alien world that's already inhabited, and the story takes off from there. Once again, been there, done that. But movies and other media that have tackled this subject (Battle for Terra, the upcoming Avatar, etc.) usually focus on the battle for the planet, or resistence or whatever. That would be in my story as well, but only as a part of the whole. In this story, this planet has been colonized for generations, and the story begins when the colonized peoples (let's call them counter-humans, for simplicity's sake) are ready to revolt. All of this would happen at the beginning. Like BSG, where the annihilation of humanity happens in the first hour of the show, and the story is about the aftermath. That's how I would want this story to be. The beginning would show colonization so that the audience knows exactly what the counter-humans are up against, but the main focus of the story is on post-colonial effects and rebuilding the counter-human society.
I've envisioned this as a television show, but that's only wishful thinking (once again, influenced by BSG). I don't know the first thing about writing scripts or production or anything like that, so while in a "world's perfect" dream this would be a TV show, I'm not wedded to the idea for practicality's sake. What form it would take (a series of short stories, a novel) isn't clear to me, but I'm still developing the idea. I imagine humanity, with very advanced technology and a 19th-century attitude towards indegenous peoples, colonizing a planet with people not unlike Native Americans. Basically, it would be Manifest Destiny in a sci-fi setting, minus the slavery (possibly; I think adding slavery to it makes it far too complicated and destroys the colonial/post-colonial commentary, but if I can find a way to make it work, I'm not opposed to the idea). We're there for economic gain, but we're also going to "civilize the heathens".
Like I said, there would be some fighting, and of course the rebellion would occur, but once again that would only be the beginning. Some of the themes I've thought of tackling are how much contact do the counter-humans maintain with Earth, the former colonial power (think about Great Britain and India's relationship today); do the counter-humans go back to the "old ways" when the humans leave or rebuild their society based on human civilization; how does religion play into subjugating a conquered people and do the conquered people maintain their faith after colonization is over (think the relationship between slave masters, slaves and Christianity, and how Christianity is still a critical part of the African American community today. Assume there is a God and that Christianity is the true way to reach Him. Does it de-legitimize the "true path" because the religion was forced on a people?); how do counter-humans who actually benefitted from colonization react to the end of it, and how are they treated by other less fortunate counter-humans; how do counter-humans even begin to get along with each other and work together?
There are tons of things to discuss and areas to go into, and I think that this story has the greatest potential to be something special, but by the same token it will also be the most difficult to produce, by far.
Anyway, this has already gone on much longer than I thought it would. Just getting some things out, trying to calm the loud roar that tells me to grasp victory!
It's loud roar tells me to write something!
In all seriousness though, I made a blog a few months ago where I lamented my inability to write. I was having any ideas, school was kicking my butt, personal problems, etc. But since then, things have improved on every front. The semester is winding down and giving me more free time. Things have greatly improved in my personal life, and ideas are coming to me. I can literally feel the desire to write starting to burst out of my chest, in a good way.
I'm just having a hard time fully coalescing one idea. I get bits and pieces of interesting things that I can't exactly put together into a coherent idea: a child’s relationship with their mother; dragons; post-colonial issues; the sectional divide between the North and the South prior to the American Civil War (that one is a direct result of a fascinating class I'm taking this semester); fantasy elements I'd like to incorporate; the huge effect that Battlestar Galactica had on me in terms of what I expect from television and my subsequent (albeit only half-serious) desire to write something for television of that caliber; and hundreds, if not thousands, of other little fragments floating around in my head, looking for a home on paper.
Part of me wants to write something serious and "real-life", and a part of me wants to write something more sci-fi or fantasy based. I've always had a big internal struggle with that. As I've written in past blogs, my earliest memories of writing are writing Star Trek and Dragonball Z fanfics. For some reason, I associate that with my amateur status as a writer back then, and I can't help but feel that if I'm ever going to progress as a writer (and be taken seriously), I need to leave that "kiddie stuff" behind and write more in the vein of Hemingway or Faulkner or whatever. I know that's the wrong way to look at it, and I truly love sci-fi and fantasy. I suppose it's just my inner nerdom coming into conflict with my intellectual elitism (a very common trait among New Englanders): no matter how much I love the geek stuff, it's not "real" art, it's just genre stuff. And I know for a fact that I do not want to be identified as a genre writer.
It's a conflict that I must resolve before I can truly put my full efforts behind anything, no matter what I decide it to be. Ideally, I guess I would like to use sci-fi/fantasy settings to tell universal stories. And that's the point of sci-fi and fantasy anyway: to put social and moral issues in a setting that's just fantastic enough that people don't get offended by your message. Think about the episode of Star Trek where the aliens were half-black and half-white and they were at war with each other. That was obviously a shot at prejudice, but put in a setting where people would say, "Those aliens are stupid for hating someone based on what they look like!", instead of saying "I'm stupid for hating someone based on what they look like!" You can get an audience to say the former, but not the latter.
Anyway, these are a few ideas I've been kicking around for months, years even. Maybe putting them out on paper will help me to evaluate how serious I am about them.
1) Because I Love You re-write
A year ago, I wrote a short story entitled Because I Love You, and submitted it to Glimmer Train. I can look back on the story now and recognize what I did wrong. I conceived the story as being about how the main character deals with her unexpected pregnancy, but it became about the relationship between herself, her sisters and her mother. I think that it actually had the potential to become a really great story, but because I didn't approach it as a family drama from the beginning, the whole thing wound up being overlong and underdeveloped, at the same time. I mean, I used 6400 words and didn't make a point, because I wasn't sure what the point was until after I'd finished it. That's been a consistent problem for me. I start writing one story and end up with another when I'm done.
But I think that a story about how a young woman, on the brink of being a mother, deals with her own mother is a very good story, if only I can tell it the way it should be told. The thing that compels me the most to tackle this story again is that I sometimes find myself thinking about Rachel (the main character), and how she and her sisters are doing. Once you create a character, they become a real person, and they live outside of the story that you've put them in. I think about Rachel, and I want to visit her again, just to check in.
2) Children of Heaven, Version 1
A few years ago, I wrote a story about a half-dragon, half-human girl who gets caught between the two worlds. Nothing terribly original, but the story was supposed to be the beginning of a novel. I got about 10,000 words in and never finished it. That novel was going to be the beginning of an entire world, filled with many different characters and conflicts and followed over hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The inspiration for that was J.R.R. Tolkein's persistent world for the Lord of the Rings, and William Faulkner's creation of an entire imaginary southern county as the backdrop for the stories he wrote. The fantasy elements were derived from Fire Emblem; in fact, the whole thing really started as a Fire Emblem fan game that I still have extensive notes for. I wanted to move beyond the game though, and that's where the idea for an entire universe, told in short story and novel form, was born.
My big problem here is that while I like the idea (and I absolutely love dragons), I really have nothing original or interesting to say. An evil empire bent on conquering everything? Check. A half-breed character caught between two worlds? Check. Heroes of destiny, legendary items, dark forces and reluctant saviors? Check, check, check, check. I want to tell the story, but I want it to be a GOOD story, and not just "Jamil Ragland Retells the Same Fantasy Story You've Heard for the 10,000th Time." At some point I want to write a dragon story, but I'm going to need a better idea than the one I've been sitting on.
3) Children of Heaven, Version 2
This is the most recent of the ideas, and it's the one that was inspired by Battlestar Galactica. The basic setup is that humans have colonized an alien world that's already inhabited, and the story takes off from there. Once again, been there, done that. But movies and other media that have tackled this subject (Battle for Terra, the upcoming Avatar, etc.) usually focus on the battle for the planet, or resistence or whatever. That would be in my story as well, but only as a part of the whole. In this story, this planet has been colonized for generations, and the story begins when the colonized peoples (let's call them counter-humans, for simplicity's sake) are ready to revolt. All of this would happen at the beginning. Like BSG, where the annihilation of humanity happens in the first hour of the show, and the story is about the aftermath. That's how I would want this story to be. The beginning would show colonization so that the audience knows exactly what the counter-humans are up against, but the main focus of the story is on post-colonial effects and rebuilding the counter-human society.
I've envisioned this as a television show, but that's only wishful thinking (once again, influenced by BSG). I don't know the first thing about writing scripts or production or anything like that, so while in a "world's perfect" dream this would be a TV show, I'm not wedded to the idea for practicality's sake. What form it would take (a series of short stories, a novel) isn't clear to me, but I'm still developing the idea. I imagine humanity, with very advanced technology and a 19th-century attitude towards indegenous peoples, colonizing a planet with people not unlike Native Americans. Basically, it would be Manifest Destiny in a sci-fi setting, minus the slavery (possibly; I think adding slavery to it makes it far too complicated and destroys the colonial/post-colonial commentary, but if I can find a way to make it work, I'm not opposed to the idea). We're there for economic gain, but we're also going to "civilize the heathens".
Like I said, there would be some fighting, and of course the rebellion would occur, but once again that would only be the beginning. Some of the themes I've thought of tackling are how much contact do the counter-humans maintain with Earth, the former colonial power (think about Great Britain and India's relationship today); do the counter-humans go back to the "old ways" when the humans leave or rebuild their society based on human civilization; how does religion play into subjugating a conquered people and do the conquered people maintain their faith after colonization is over (think the relationship between slave masters, slaves and Christianity, and how Christianity is still a critical part of the African American community today. Assume there is a God and that Christianity is the true way to reach Him. Does it de-legitimize the "true path" because the religion was forced on a people?); how do counter-humans who actually benefitted from colonization react to the end of it, and how are they treated by other less fortunate counter-humans; how do counter-humans even begin to get along with each other and work together?
There are tons of things to discuss and areas to go into, and I think that this story has the greatest potential to be something special, but by the same token it will also be the most difficult to produce, by far.
Anyway, this has already gone on much longer than I thought it would. Just getting some things out, trying to calm the loud roar that tells me to grasp victory!
