![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethIt has been a Very Long Time since I made any stories. Very Long.
I'm lacking bunnies too.
My head has gone all empty and flat.
Part of the problem is I can see so many ways the stories I watch are going wrong but I can't point to one and say that one is doing it right. At best I could patchwork all my favourites to come up with something kinda sorta right. There is so much fail all over everything.
But mostly... I'm deeply dissatisfied with the stories where things are solved with a good being killed. I don't like the kind of fantasy with Good and Evil where Evil usually wears a mask and uses spiky weapons just so you know what to hate. I don't like, no: correction, I purely and passionately loathe the kind of story where all you need to know about the enemy is species. Stories that start with a kind of zero sum us or them approach are from the start buying in to the kind of mindset that makes a Dalek or the Master. There's a basic wrongness built in at a level way more structural than just who you cast to play the us or the them. If it comes down to fighting and dying and us and them then that's a whole lot of failure already.
But when I set out to write a different story, what do I end up with?
A whole lot of nothing.
I can imagine a Highlander style story pretty easy. Two people, two points of view, two swords, and in the end there can be only one. You've got a whole rhythm to the story, rising conflict, building up to the duel, and then somebody wins. I can do that story.
But if I start trying to write about the universe I see, the one where actually there's a whole lot of things trying to kill us and humans (or sentient life forms in general) don't need to get in on the act for there to be plenty danger, the one where cooperation is absolutely vital to survival and any death weakens us all... I don't actually know what to do with that story. I mean, the Highlander story has victory conditions. The actual true story has Still Aten't Ded as start, middle, and... more middle. What to do with that story?
So maybe it could be a trading story, like the Tradewinds games, where you have some stuff you have to get somewhere and the universe keeps trying to stop you. Or maybe it could be one of those genres I hear about where quite often there's no fight sequences and nobody dies. Comedy, or romance, or whatever. Or, and this is the most promising, maybe it's like crime drama and just accurately identifying the source of the problem is the resolution.
But I don't watch or listen or read stories that look like that. I pretty much watch the ones where something gets blown up or killed. So I pretty much only know how to write those. And when I try and do something different I get bored with it.
I could do treasure hunt stories. Maybe. Like on kid shows where there's 12 pieces of The Shiny Thing and they have to go get them all from different realms with a different fable built in.
Figuring out x different kinds of conflict to illustrate whatever your versions of the dangerous sins/ignorance/errors would be is very extra tricky, especially if you add a No Killing rule, or a Killing Makes Things Worse rule.
The stories I wander around in in my head aren't so much like ones I've read. The ones I don't write down even for fanfic. They're basically about wandering around in the margins of plots off whichever show I'm interested in at the time, pointing out where I think people are being stupid, collecting the interesting people together to do TEAMWORK and ignore the budget constraints that keep even starship crews down to a half dozen actual characters, and then having lots of babies with all the most interesting people.
... I'm sort of embarrassed about the having lots of babies side of the story. I mean, it makes perfectly logical sense, and I can set out the math of it all. Babies are good. More babies, more good. Healthy skillful well cared for babies with people who love them? biggest most good. Babies with (semi) immortal parents/adoptive parents/teachers? Cared for forever! Babies with even the skinniest chance of inheriting their father's ability to regenerate, or just his (un)aging pattern? Very big win! Arranging it so the gene donor actually wants and cares for the kids, and avoiding the possibility of them considering them rivals and eliminating them, is clearly optimal, plus mating with the Master is rather unlikely to be survivable, but still, chance of babies living for a thousand years? Master looking pretty good, albeit distant second to the one that keeps saving people's lives.
I think it was Andromeda where they had ... I can't spell it... they people who were all concerned with improving their race, their men kicked a lot of arse to demonstrate how fit they were, and their women had to choose who would make the best husband and father. And sometimes the best father was not the best husband, the functions weren't entirely hooked together. That makes sense, plenty good logic.
Plenty opportunities to be arses about disability or race or whateverthehell else, but only if they're not paying attention to all the possible advantages of diversity. Diverse responses is good.
How to write a story that would interest anyone other than me though? With a woman in the middle of it, or a group of women so they can have arguments, and their whole goal is to optimise the success of their procreation? It sounds so traditional and like women ignoring their careers for babies and all that rubbish. In my head I go around kicking arse to demonstrate to the appropriate persons that I'm worth the genetic investment. Because it's not like men only look for the pretty. ... Logically not like that. Story has other ideas. All that love at first sight business really messes things up.
Instead of being all about killing people it's all about finding ways to be immortal, combine genes and skillsets and persons into teams that can protect and educate and generally raise kids to be better off than their parents.
Except for, in my embarrassing story, I get bored about the time the babies exist and find appropriate babysitters and go off to do more adventures and find the next good babyfather.
I have whole chapters of brain story that are about how hard it is to find babysitters when sometimes Daleks blow up your living room, or that are about the Doctor babysitting, or the Brigadier getting his uniform chewed on by a teething baby.
Stories with babies in are not usually on TV because babies are a bit difficult to film. And then they take a very long time to be any different, so the story remains find-babysitter, feed baby, clothe baby, answer weird child questions. For years. Maybe comedies and soaps do that a lot, but F&SF doesn't. The fast forward button for Connor seemed to think it was skipping to the good bits. But I watch children's TV shows and kids are the good bits in them because they are actual characters and not just The Problem for the adults, so there's ways to be interesting with kids of several ages.
Except usually the stories in my head go from 'baby! cute!' to 'boarding school / packed off with their acting parent, phew!' without spending much time on actual child interactions.
Babies are cute in small doses, and then someone takes them home and makes them stop crying and stuff.
ANYway... I have all these stories in my head, but they aren't exactly episode shaped, they wander around a lot, and even if I split it up so every couple is a different woman as well as a different man there's a whole lot of common theme and marysueing. Because, you know, brain stories that wander around being interesting while you're trying to sleep. Not exactly known for structure.
I think a story that is about trying to get babies, even if it's a clearly F&SF setting, is a genre I don't actually know of. One that probably exists already somewhere. That I would be bad at.
But I'm fed up with stories that think killing is a useful thing. It's the opposite of useful. Make more life is the useful.
So now I'm trying to think how such stories could work.
... not simples.
I'm lacking bunnies too.
My head has gone all empty and flat.
Part of the problem is I can see so many ways the stories I watch are going wrong but I can't point to one and say that one is doing it right. At best I could patchwork all my favourites to come up with something kinda sorta right. There is so much fail all over everything.
But mostly... I'm deeply dissatisfied with the stories where things are solved with a good being killed. I don't like the kind of fantasy with Good and Evil where Evil usually wears a mask and uses spiky weapons just so you know what to hate. I don't like, no: correction, I purely and passionately loathe the kind of story where all you need to know about the enemy is species. Stories that start with a kind of zero sum us or them approach are from the start buying in to the kind of mindset that makes a Dalek or the Master. There's a basic wrongness built in at a level way more structural than just who you cast to play the us or the them. If it comes down to fighting and dying and us and them then that's a whole lot of failure already.
But when I set out to write a different story, what do I end up with?
A whole lot of nothing.
I can imagine a Highlander style story pretty easy. Two people, two points of view, two swords, and in the end there can be only one. You've got a whole rhythm to the story, rising conflict, building up to the duel, and then somebody wins. I can do that story.
But if I start trying to write about the universe I see, the one where actually there's a whole lot of things trying to kill us and humans (or sentient life forms in general) don't need to get in on the act for there to be plenty danger, the one where cooperation is absolutely vital to survival and any death weakens us all... I don't actually know what to do with that story. I mean, the Highlander story has victory conditions. The actual true story has Still Aten't Ded as start, middle, and... more middle. What to do with that story?
So maybe it could be a trading story, like the Tradewinds games, where you have some stuff you have to get somewhere and the universe keeps trying to stop you. Or maybe it could be one of those genres I hear about where quite often there's no fight sequences and nobody dies. Comedy, or romance, or whatever. Or, and this is the most promising, maybe it's like crime drama and just accurately identifying the source of the problem is the resolution.
But I don't watch or listen or read stories that look like that. I pretty much watch the ones where something gets blown up or killed. So I pretty much only know how to write those. And when I try and do something different I get bored with it.
I could do treasure hunt stories. Maybe. Like on kid shows where there's 12 pieces of The Shiny Thing and they have to go get them all from different realms with a different fable built in.
Figuring out x different kinds of conflict to illustrate whatever your versions of the dangerous sins/ignorance/errors would be is very extra tricky, especially if you add a No Killing rule, or a Killing Makes Things Worse rule.
The stories I wander around in in my head aren't so much like ones I've read. The ones I don't write down even for fanfic. They're basically about wandering around in the margins of plots off whichever show I'm interested in at the time, pointing out where I think people are being stupid, collecting the interesting people together to do TEAMWORK and ignore the budget constraints that keep even starship crews down to a half dozen actual characters, and then having lots of babies with all the most interesting people.
... I'm sort of embarrassed about the having lots of babies side of the story. I mean, it makes perfectly logical sense, and I can set out the math of it all. Babies are good. More babies, more good. Healthy skillful well cared for babies with people who love them? biggest most good. Babies with (semi) immortal parents/adoptive parents/teachers? Cared for forever! Babies with even the skinniest chance of inheriting their father's ability to regenerate, or just his (un)aging pattern? Very big win! Arranging it so the gene donor actually wants and cares for the kids, and avoiding the possibility of them considering them rivals and eliminating them, is clearly optimal, plus mating with the Master is rather unlikely to be survivable, but still, chance of babies living for a thousand years? Master looking pretty good, albeit distant second to the one that keeps saving people's lives.
I think it was Andromeda where they had ... I can't spell it... they people who were all concerned with improving their race, their men kicked a lot of arse to demonstrate how fit they were, and their women had to choose who would make the best husband and father. And sometimes the best father was not the best husband, the functions weren't entirely hooked together. That makes sense, plenty good logic.
Plenty opportunities to be arses about disability or race or whateverthehell else, but only if they're not paying attention to all the possible advantages of diversity. Diverse responses is good.
How to write a story that would interest anyone other than me though? With a woman in the middle of it, or a group of women so they can have arguments, and their whole goal is to optimise the success of their procreation? It sounds so traditional and like women ignoring their careers for babies and all that rubbish. In my head I go around kicking arse to demonstrate to the appropriate persons that I'm worth the genetic investment. Because it's not like men only look for the pretty. ... Logically not like that. Story has other ideas. All that love at first sight business really messes things up.
Instead of being all about killing people it's all about finding ways to be immortal, combine genes and skillsets and persons into teams that can protect and educate and generally raise kids to be better off than their parents.
Except for, in my embarrassing story, I get bored about the time the babies exist and find appropriate babysitters and go off to do more adventures and find the next good babyfather.
I have whole chapters of brain story that are about how hard it is to find babysitters when sometimes Daleks blow up your living room, or that are about the Doctor babysitting, or the Brigadier getting his uniform chewed on by a teething baby.
Stories with babies in are not usually on TV because babies are a bit difficult to film. And then they take a very long time to be any different, so the story remains find-babysitter, feed baby, clothe baby, answer weird child questions. For years. Maybe comedies and soaps do that a lot, but F&SF doesn't. The fast forward button for Connor seemed to think it was skipping to the good bits. But I watch children's TV shows and kids are the good bits in them because they are actual characters and not just The Problem for the adults, so there's ways to be interesting with kids of several ages.
Except usually the stories in my head go from 'baby! cute!' to 'boarding school / packed off with their acting parent, phew!' without spending much time on actual child interactions.
Babies are cute in small doses, and then someone takes them home and makes them stop crying and stuff.
ANYway... I have all these stories in my head, but they aren't exactly episode shaped, they wander around a lot, and even if I split it up so every couple is a different woman as well as a different man there's a whole lot of common theme and marysueing. Because, you know, brain stories that wander around being interesting while you're trying to sleep. Not exactly known for structure.
I think a story that is about trying to get babies, even if it's a clearly F&SF setting, is a genre I don't actually know of. One that probably exists already somewhere. That I would be bad at.
But I'm fed up with stories that think killing is a useful thing. It's the opposite of useful. Make more life is the useful.
So now I'm trying to think how such stories could work.
... not simples.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-24 10:11 pm (UTC)There are so many discarded half-thought-up books I never wrote....
Want bunnies?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-29 11:18 pm (UTC)I like things like romantic comedies. I like stories to be about process & not just objective, but it's also true that you can go in more different directions by the end if it's not just Person A fighting Person B to the death (or Faction A fighting Faction B to the death).
Years ago I read an essay on the problem with a lot of sci-fi being Smite the Monster, & how limited that was for a genre that was supposed to be about invention & imagination. It may have been the same essay that pointed out that not all stories are really about Conflict.