The Least of All Monsters
Oct. 21st, 2012 07:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynLast night, I had the urge to re-read a story that I never got around to writing.
...
Don't you hate when that happens?
The working title was "The Least of All Monsters", and I worked on the setting and the backstory for a week or two in December 2006. It is the first and only story idea that I've ever used wiki-style organization for the notes. (I ultimately used Wikidpad for it, but I also have some notes in an OpenOffice word doc that do not entirely overlap. I don't know what's up with that.) I may have given myself world-builder's disease on the project, because I got a bunch of setting history and backstory written and never figured out how to write the story. I have some tantalizing notes for it. Two of the characters remain so vivid in my head that I really want to read about them. If only, y'know, I'd written something.
But I think the real reason I never wrote the story isn't world-builder's disease or laziness, per se, but that I had characters and a theme in mind, but not a plot. I have the vision of the major characters and the what interests me about the way they interact with each other and with their world, but I never figured out -- and I still don't know -- what happens. I can't figure out how they get from plot point A to plot point B, and I don't know what plot point C even is.
Also, the setting is grimly depressing. Two of the three protagonists are pretty much horrible people, and the setting is stuffed with people who are even worse so that the protagonists look sympathetic by comparison. This is so not my kind of book, to read or to write. I'd have to find a way for protagonist #3 (the one who is not a horrible person) to triumph somehow, to make her world into a better place and to get the other protagonists to act like decent people. And honestly, with everything stacked against her, it seems much more likely that she'd be corrupted than that they'd be saved. I guess that makes for a good "against the odds" story, if only I could figure out how to make it work.
...
Or I could go back to any of the other unfinished stories I have lying around that are much closer to completion and much less problematic in both content and plotting.
...
*sigh*
...
Don't you hate when that happens?
The working title was "The Least of All Monsters", and I worked on the setting and the backstory for a week or two in December 2006. It is the first and only story idea that I've ever used wiki-style organization for the notes. (I ultimately used Wikidpad for it, but I also have some notes in an OpenOffice word doc that do not entirely overlap. I don't know what's up with that.) I may have given myself world-builder's disease on the project, because I got a bunch of setting history and backstory written and never figured out how to write the story. I have some tantalizing notes for it. Two of the characters remain so vivid in my head that I really want to read about them. If only, y'know, I'd written something.
But I think the real reason I never wrote the story isn't world-builder's disease or laziness, per se, but that I had characters and a theme in mind, but not a plot. I have the vision of the major characters and the what interests me about the way they interact with each other and with their world, but I never figured out -- and I still don't know -- what happens. I can't figure out how they get from plot point A to plot point B, and I don't know what plot point C even is.
Also, the setting is grimly depressing. Two of the three protagonists are pretty much horrible people, and the setting is stuffed with people who are even worse so that the protagonists look sympathetic by comparison. This is so not my kind of book, to read or to write. I'd have to find a way for protagonist #3 (the one who is not a horrible person) to triumph somehow, to make her world into a better place and to get the other protagonists to act like decent people. And honestly, with everything stacked against her, it seems much more likely that she'd be corrupted than that they'd be saved. I guess that makes for a good "against the odds" story, if only I could figure out how to make it work.
...
Or I could go back to any of the other unfinished stories I have lying around that are much closer to completion and much less problematic in both content and plotting.
...
*sigh*
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-22 02:29 am (UTC)And then actually writing it out. And dialogue *shudders*
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Date: 2012-10-22 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-22 03:29 pm (UTC)*feels guilty for neglecting so many of mine*
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Date: 2012-10-23 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-22 05:10 am (UTC)Still waiting for the finish to the sequel for Silver Scales. };)
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Date: 2012-10-22 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-22 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-22 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 01:14 pm (UTC)You'll feel like writing again sometime soonish, I'm sure.