Allegorical bunnies
May. 7th, 2012 03:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI've been bouncing ideas around for the summer writing project.
I'll be reading for my dissertation, but since that involves reading about Doctor Who, it will be reading I've happily done other summers also.
So I'm trying to decide, finish last summer's novel, or start a new script?
I'd have to get up to speed on last summer's novel again. I haven't thought about it much since college restarted. I know I liked it while I was thinking it up, but *shrugs* if it's any good for reals. Also it's more than 50K words of first draft. And about a quarter of the way through the plot.
A script has an upper limit on size, so in theory I can finish it in a single summer.
Except I have enough bunny for the whole season, so, not so much with the finishing.
Also I'm not sure it's all scripts. I started doing short stories for some of the characters and there's interesting bits that work that way too.
I was thinking about where the other stargates lead. The other stone circles which are clearly not stargates, I mean, since stargates are probably trademarked or whatever. I know a bit about some of the places because my characters are from them. If there's a guy who habitually wears serious camo and carries organic grenades, you can extrapolate some about what his home is like. And decide to send your characters there last, when they've levelled up some. But mostly I haven't thought about much except the lost city.
You can spend a very long while exploring a single city. Especially a city full of every monster ever.
The city was going to be snowflake shaped, with the circles at the edges and center of the snowflake. Implication being they have a minimum safe distance so there's a simplest pattern to put them in. So I end up with 7 circles.
Dante's hell doesn't have 7 circles, it has 9, but if you leave out Limbo and the bit with the Heretics that could work. (hmmm, there's the other circle way outside the city that leads to our planet, maybe we can be Limbo.) Except the Heretics are all shut in boxes for believing wrong things, which kind of greatly resembles the Lost City, except for the being on fire. The Lost City is frozen in. The circle for traitors is the frozen one. So we have a sort of mashed frozen-boxed heretic-traitor circle as the first place they discover. And the circle in the center can be the one that leads completely away from the planet, like exit past the big bitey one.
So then one of the other circles is all about the violence, and home of grenade guy. He's a mellow guy, because he chews his mellow all the time. I've had vague thoughts about combat amped reflexes and a whole civ that bioengineered themselves that way and needs the mellow just to interact like normal social apes. Our guy would be overly mellow most of the time, like total stoner dude, but if he doesn't get his happy chews for the day, he's this totally different guy, and really really twitchy.
If I decide the other circles lead to other deadly sins or circles of hell or represent bits of the 7 deadly sins or whatever, the plot bunnies get really simpled up. Instant invention, just add characters.
Buuuuut... is simple good, when you're inventing foreign cultures? I'm kind of thinking not.
Yet so tempting.
I'll be reading for my dissertation, but since that involves reading about Doctor Who, it will be reading I've happily done other summers also.
So I'm trying to decide, finish last summer's novel, or start a new script?
I'd have to get up to speed on last summer's novel again. I haven't thought about it much since college restarted. I know I liked it while I was thinking it up, but *shrugs* if it's any good for reals. Also it's more than 50K words of first draft. And about a quarter of the way through the plot.
A script has an upper limit on size, so in theory I can finish it in a single summer.
Except I have enough bunny for the whole season, so, not so much with the finishing.
Also I'm not sure it's all scripts. I started doing short stories for some of the characters and there's interesting bits that work that way too.
I was thinking about where the other stargates lead. The other stone circles which are clearly not stargates, I mean, since stargates are probably trademarked or whatever. I know a bit about some of the places because my characters are from them. If there's a guy who habitually wears serious camo and carries organic grenades, you can extrapolate some about what his home is like. And decide to send your characters there last, when they've levelled up some. But mostly I haven't thought about much except the lost city.
You can spend a very long while exploring a single city. Especially a city full of every monster ever.
The city was going to be snowflake shaped, with the circles at the edges and center of the snowflake. Implication being they have a minimum safe distance so there's a simplest pattern to put them in. So I end up with 7 circles.
Dante's hell doesn't have 7 circles, it has 9, but if you leave out Limbo and the bit with the Heretics that could work. (hmmm, there's the other circle way outside the city that leads to our planet, maybe we can be Limbo.) Except the Heretics are all shut in boxes for believing wrong things, which kind of greatly resembles the Lost City, except for the being on fire. The Lost City is frozen in. The circle for traitors is the frozen one. So we have a sort of mashed frozen-boxed heretic-traitor circle as the first place they discover. And the circle in the center can be the one that leads completely away from the planet, like exit past the big bitey one.
So then one of the other circles is all about the violence, and home of grenade guy. He's a mellow guy, because he chews his mellow all the time. I've had vague thoughts about combat amped reflexes and a whole civ that bioengineered themselves that way and needs the mellow just to interact like normal social apes. Our guy would be overly mellow most of the time, like total stoner dude, but if he doesn't get his happy chews for the day, he's this totally different guy, and really really twitchy.
If I decide the other circles lead to other deadly sins or circles of hell or represent bits of the 7 deadly sins or whatever, the plot bunnies get really simpled up. Instant invention, just add characters.
Buuuuut... is simple good, when you're inventing foreign cultures? I'm kind of thinking not.
Yet so tempting.