Story Ideas

So. Insomnia strikes again. Want to write another chapter (just to have it written) but have story bunnies having their way with my ear holes. So... yeah... minor descriptions of several ideas I have and where I can go with them. I started this poll over at SB way back when, but got very little response or interest there. So now, let's see if this place is better for this sorta thing.

Mind you, one way or another, I intend to web-serialize these babies. The first two I expect to probably last around a year, the way I seem to write... maybe shorter, maybe longer. It's really hard to predict, I've discovered. I thought I'd be done with Amelia a while ago by now.


Anyway... comments, questions, suggestions (especially on how to approach publishing and maybe making money off this whole endeavor- I would not mind doing this sorta thing full time- writing is hard work, but it's hard work that I love) and whatever else you wanna throw at me.


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Path Magic: fans of Amelia's transhumanist themes will probably like this one. Focused mainly on a teenage girl's experiences with an ancient and often times disturbing culture of sorcerers, as she evolves from a complete newbie to an accomplished young magic user... although, to be clear, she'll NEVER be in the big leagues during the story. Knowledge is easy enough to acquire, if you can convince someone to share... power takes time.

The big problem? Basically the "elf" phenomena... when you're old enough, and powerful enough, you forget what it's like to be *human*. You're more your power than you are a person.

Which brings up how magic in the setting works (in small bits, gotta leave something for in story exposition)- Animism is a real thing in the setting, all things material or idea have spirits. Trees. Forests (although a forest is more a hybrid of every tree within it, as a human is a hybrid of every cell within it, more than the sum of its parts type stuff). Even your favorite baseball team has a legitimate "soul" of its own.

These spirits are not human, and never were human. They are alien, and each is different. The spirit of a fire is a very different thing, with very different behaviors, than the spirit of the matter it's consuming. Powerful mages? Start acting like the spirits they draw upon most often. And the more they act like those spirits, the easier it is for them to call upon them. Self feeding cycle. Things start to get *weird* when these powerful mages interact.

And the younger, weaker, and more human mages live in the shadow of these masters. Their inscrutable rules and politics influencing their 'children', as well as the usual personality conflicts of brilliantly gifted and driven individuals forced to compete with one another. DRAMA! ensues.


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Second Nature


Another modern magical setting. This time with faeries! Although the way fae work in this, there's plenty of variety. Fae have animalistic forms that in part define their nature. The "typical" faerie imagery are the "royal" type, born of the earliest forms of life. Insects. Where you get your "tinkerbell" type faeries. Then you move on to "lesser" courts. Fishlike fae tend to be the occultists. Amphibians usually fall in that group as well. Reptiles tend to be the scholars and historians. Birds the merchant castes.

Mammals are the commoner classes. The soldiers and the builders. Yes, this means you can have straight up "werewolves" from a "wolf fae warriors". Woo.

Fae who operate on earth bond with a mortal. This process is of varying significance depending on many factors, and usually is done with young children, most of whom eventually stop believing. The birth of the 'imaginary friend'. A rare few retain their potential into their teen years. These Gifted are important (for plot reasons).

Meet Shura and Micheal. Shura's a gremlin (technology and sabotage fae), based off a Sugar Glider. Micheal's a fairly typical geeky kid of sixteen. Who is in no way equipped to deal with a magical girl who has a five seater hoverjet that runs on the laughter of children. That she keeps in her pants.

.... It's a rather silly setting. It has its drama, but it's very "anime inspired" by its nature, with relatively flimsy (but at least acknowledged) excuses for how this setting can exist the way it does. What do you call it when you parody a genre that already doesn't take itself seriously in the slightest? And then make the story just ever so slightly too serious to call it a real parody?


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Then there's the Midara setting. Oh where do I start? Fantasy setting (instead of treating fantasy as a genre unto itself). I have a thousand years of history for this setting. Cataclysm. Rebuilding. Wars. Another freakin' cataclysm. More rebuilding. More wars. A third freakin' cataclysm (this planet has shit luck, seriously... its own fault for letting me create it...), some more rebuilding. And then finally a fourth cataclysm that would be the end of the series.

.... I could spend the next two decades on this setting before its conclusion. And that's without any new inspiration.

The options available for the "first book" are as follows, in chronological order.

Monsters: A story focused on the restoration of a war torn nation against the chaos beyond, in the aftermath of the first cataclysm. Very politicky by nature. Meet Malchael and Eris, who are entirely horrible people and clearly the antagonists, even if much of the story focuses on them. No. Seriously. It's a romance story between a necromancer and what passes for a demon in the setting. My readers who enjoy Amelia's WAFF moments... will probably feel horribly conflicted...

Void Goddess: This one focuses on the second Cataclysm. Meet Sira and Kesh, childhood friends and on again/off again lovers who rediscover an ancient sorcery. Also, the phrase "Undead Dragon God" might come up at some point in this story.

Reclamation: The story of the rise of an empire. Again, fairly political story. This one focuses on Tyr, Azes and Lynd, a pair of brothers (and a sister) who establish themselves and try to bring peace and civilization to a world greatly lacking in both.

Karana: The story follows Dusk, a young demihuman trying to achieve freedom for her people in the midst of a brutal war between two foreign empires that spend most of their efforts fighting in her homeland instead of theirs.

Heritage: More a companion prequel to Paradox than its own keystone story. Meet Rana, a young woman whose ancestry gives her unusual and unwanted powers and responsibilities. Celeste, her best friend. And Ral, a street urchin who aids her in her rebellion against hundreds of years of tradition.

Paradox: Meet Ada- a princess on a diplomatic mission. And Arakash, her guardian. Her enslaved quasi-incubus guardian who's quite displeased with the whole chain of events. There is travel and adventure and collecting the usual cast of misfits. Because why not?

Echoes: The companion sequel to Paradox. This one explores the aftermath of Paradox and sets the stage for Dust and a couple as-yet-unnamed ideas that aren't yet established.

Dust: This one's not an option for the starter story. Meet Elruin, a child with frightening powers and a troubled mind, in her misadventures. Mister Clackybones, her faithful undead steed. And a sadistic ghost with a mysterious past and that does its best to protect her.

Memories: This story follows an amnesiac, his servitude to a powerful lord, and the many secrets of his past. Pushes into "psych thriller, fantasy setting". Not doing this as a starter, either. But it's definitely a story that deserves told eventually.

 

Interesting premise. Would this one be set in the modern day? If so, then it would be interesting to see how "younger" spirits act. Is the Internet all one spirit, or many separate ones? Are there are car spirits? Are train spirits more bull-like, connected to each train rushing down lines, or more spider-like, being the sum of a given railway network. It would be interesting to see this set in a urban area for parts, showing exactly how dangerous or not modern spirits are.

This one sounds really interesting, especially with the levels of fae derived from the ages of life. In terms of the "Serious versus funny" slider, you seem to be doing a good job with in Amelia, and I would mainly say don't explain something by "Rule of Funny" that you don't want to stay around as a story element. Sounds really interesting, and I would totally want to read this.

In terms of the "fae are animalistic", that sounds like it could be really interesting where it intersects with fae playing out their "animal nature" and/or the way that the ancient fae are insectoid. Are there dinosaur fae? Because that would be really fun.

First off, this sounds amazing, and you've got it amazingly planned out. And I will totally wait for a midnight release for any of these, even before they become popular enough for midnight releases.
Second, some questions:
1. Do you have an idea of what happens for at least a century before Monsters? If so, that might be a good place to start.
2. Is the empire from Reclamation one of the two warring empires in Karana? If not, is that empire otherwise present in the later book?
3. When does the Third Cataclysm happen? If it happens between the beginning of Karana and the beginning of Heritage, then I would say that Heritage sounds like a good starting point, immersing people in a world that already has been disrupted more than once, and is getting back on its feet. If not, then maybe start with Monsters or Reclamation.

This sounds like a fascinating, rich fantasy setting. Monsters , Reclamation, or Heritage seem to be the strongest starting points. Although, if there is a major shift in magic, technology, or use of either between books, then the first book after that change would make a good starting point as well. This all sounds really interesting, and I eagerly look forward to reading any of it.

 

Apologies for my lack of eloquence. I want all of these. Each of them is something that I can super easily see you doing really well.

I want Path Magic first. Probably because I'm a fan of the whole transhumanism thing. I also enjoy reading about alien aliens.

Second Nature pushes my crack fic loving buttons while still promising intelligent writing. It nearly beats out Path Magic.

I want the Midara Cycle last largely so I can read the other two first. I am suddenly reminded of Brandon Sanderson's publishing cycle though. I still want at least one of the others first. I suspect the setting would make the most sense if told in chronological order. I also suspect that Monsters will have much of what I love about Riley.

I am very much not in the habit of paying for my entertainment. I am poor. Hence my primarily reading fanfiction. I am willing to make an exception for you. I imagine that your writing style would not work very well with the standard donation incentive model unless you were to, say, combine it with my above thoughts on Sanderson's publishing cycle and make incentive chapters for (I assume this is the longest) the Midara Cycle be early releases of (eg) Path Magic. This would be weird for anyone not coming in to it without knowledge of the reasoning. This may cause problems because mode switching is hard.

 

I was thinking of using a Patreon (or similar system- research is a thing I will do before committing) based incentive... something like, say, a dollar a week (or a 30 buck year long subscription) which would essentially be "story early access" so you can read it before it goes into the public eyes (scheduled at midnight)- and since I intend the chapters to be similar to Amelia as a daily thing, though longer and certainly not twice a day, because they'd be longer... so there'd probably be a backlog of four or five chapters at any given time that are waiting for their chance to be made public.

Couldn't hurt to figure out a way to do a "private forum" for said supporters to hang around, chat, chat with me (not unlike how it works in Amelia already). Only clearly larger, like what's done in the Giant in the Playground or Goblins forums.

But that might be more hassle and cost than I realize, seeing as I know exactly shit and jack about how forums actually work. I might have to ask the guys in charge around here about that, since they seem like not complete asshats and could likely give advice.

Either way "early preview" mode should be a more than a reasonable incentive for most, I would hope. And that can't be much extra work at all.

 

Frankly, of these three options, the only one I've seen you do well and interestingly is the one with transhumanist themes.

You're a fairly good writer, so you'd probably do well at the others as well, but...

Frankly, There's not enough good transhumanist sci-fi. Its not a super popular genre, but it feels even less popular lately.

So yeah, I'm voting for the first one.

 

Yeah, what Tordg said. Also, sorry if my post was too many questions; when I like something / someone / someplace I start asking questions to try and tease out more about the object of my interest. I would totally pay a Patreon, I'm already paying one for Joe England's webcomic Zebra Girl, and that's slowed down production to a trickle.

 

I love big worldbuilding. Midara!

 

Hey, I liked your questions. I also suspect TanaNari would be of the opinion that more questions are better because market research and stuff.

 

Completely modern world.

Yes. Both. In the same way a forest is many spirits of the trees and animals. And also a single spirit that is the whole of all the lesser spirits.

There are spirits for every grain of sand. Those are just very uninteresting spirits. Car spirits are more interesting.

Dragons.

I do, but I feel that era is better served in flashback and legend.

Spoilers

Honestly, with the Paradox trilogy, I think it better to what Star Wars did. Where the second part of the story (Paradox itself) goes first. Then releasing the Heritage as a prequel companion piece.

Spoilers.

Oh, no, feel free to ask. I just don't hit this thread as often as I probably should.

 

So is grain of sand scale the lowest level of spirit? Or do they go down to mite/cell/virus/molecule/atom/proton/quark/plank scale?

 

Then it sounds like a wonderfully original and well-developed story in the animism sub-genre. Something that I've never seen before in modern fantasy. Good on you.

Ah, English, you're so frustrating sometimes. What I meant to say was that as long as you have history for about a century before Monsters begins, then I think that Monsters might be a good place to start, versus if you didn't have any idea what happened before that book it would make sense to start with one of the later books. Either way though, you should definitely write one of the other concept-worlds before the Midara Cycle.

Now that's just splitting hair-spirits. Spirits probably are another dimension of life/matter, so in the same way that individual grains of sand have mass, color, and texture, yet we cannot easily quantify those with a single grain, so it is true for spirits.
Or at least that's my guess.

 

Much smaller than a dust particle can't be sensed on an individual level- mages, even powerful ones, aren't all knowing. But since light and darkness both have their own spirits, and there are spirits of love and hate. Spirits of disease. Spirits of inspiration. A mage's senses won't let them detect, say, a .001% concentration of CO, but if you bring it up to a 1%, then they'll *know* the air's spiritual nature is toxic. They won't automatically know it's carbon monoxide that's causing the problem- although they can probably puzzle it out.

At some point you just say "fuck it, there's a spirit for everything". The more scientifically oriented mages have various pet unified field theories where they guess that, at some point, there's no distinction between body and soul. But for *practical* purposes... no, there are no atomic level spirits. They can't interact, they can't be interacted with. Only once a large enough mass of them gather can they form a spirit large enough to be perceived or influence the world.

World of Darkness.

Maybe. My fear is that its tone is very different from most of the others. So... yeah... that's a fear that I'll collect a fanbase that won't like any of my other stuff.

 

You haven't read Pact, then?

I like this kind of reasoning. It makes a lot of sense, and fits in with our history, imo.

Ah, yeah, that can be an issue. Sometimes it can really work out well, though. Jim Butcher did it, for instance. If they like you enough, many will at least try to reach across the aisle, so to speak.

 

How easy is it to use a mages nature against them? Because in a setting like this I can see it being possible for a weaker mage to completely curb stomp a stronger mage because they did their homework (within reason of course, water guns being the bane of fire mages everywhere would be just silly)

 

Yeah I phrased that poorly. I assumed that there was a limit on practical detectability at around the border of macro/microscopic (after all, why should magesense be more sensitive than any of our other senses?). What I was trying to ask was, independent of IC knowledge, 'how basic do spirits get?'. That said, your explanation gave my WAY more than I was expecting, so I'll call it a win. I'll assume 'at least quark level' with ~80% confidence.

Hmmm...I'm probably reading something wrong, but I'm not really seeing anything in the description that I wouldn't expect to see/isn't already seen in most of your other stuff. If it is that much of a difference, then change my vote to Void Goddess; I've found that there needs to be 0, 1, or 'built around the concept' numbers of out of order works or things tend to fail.

 

Don't know if this is a necro, but damn. Midara sounds like a cross between the best bits of Pratchett and the Silmarillion, so pretty much anything from there I would back. Path Magic also sounds fun - I love interesting magic systems, and with proper payment for your power too. Also don't know if it would work for you, but maybe try writing a couple of super short stories in these universes - it's often quite hard to squeeze prose out no matter how many good ideas you've had for the damn thing! Easing in with a couple of short stories often lets you get a grip on things, especially if (like I tend to) you end up massively changing the fundamental rules of the universe as you write.

All in all I'd have to put my vote down for Midara (Monsters), with a secondary for Midara (Reclamation). Seriously hope that you write these at some point, and if you do you let us know about it.

 

Monsters starts with a main character who's very much an unrepentant evil bastard. One of the earliest (chronological) scenes will involve him using a human being as raw materials.

The advantage of Midara is that, with a few exceptions, the stories are separated by centuries and/or continents. Same universe, but little room for direct interaction between stories. Indirect, sure. A nation that lasts a thousand years will be able to feature in multiple stories... some stories will generate legends that carry down to stories. But little of it's direct.

Thanks. Hopefully less wordy than the silmarillion, sadly won't be as fun as Pratchett.

Actually, the "script" to Paradox is already written. It was originally intended to be a JRPG style video game. Long story short, that didn't happen.

 

Best of both worlds then.

Pity to hear that - I've had some similar issues with my magnum opus (named Helix) that has transitioned from trilogy to book to play to film over the course of its life - and I've never written more than a single scene that I actually want to keep. It's become enough of a running joke for me that my first tattoo was a reference to one of the few lines I've actually kept from the first draft.