I was talking to Bucky just yesterday, and yeah, we've both got that gene that lets us come up with stories on the spot. Wacky, zany, fun stories, and the ability to tie them in a neat bow.
But MAN, I just can't write a story that I want to for the life of me. Like, I can sit and pound out words, but the words make me dread the time that I'll have to go back and read through it all. I'm worried my trained editor's eye will be a little too judgmental on my own stuff!
But just yesterday, I picked up a little game, a one-player rpg where you draw cards from a deck, and they determine what your little adventurer encounters, where they are, what they find, and you write a journal about it. And I LOVE it. Because there's no plot, there's just Remi, wandering around a magical continent and meeting all kinds of people that, thanks to that aforementioned quirk, are all too easy to populate. I can create a character from nothing and make them unique, and then, with the next draw of cards, they'll be in the rear view!
It's the sort of skill that I have enjoyed, and I wish it could easily translate into the full-on books that I want to someday write.
One thing I have a fun time coming up with, are what I call concepts. Things that make a scene interesting on their face, even if the words (my words especially) fail to live up to all the interesting things I feel like I have to say.
So, for example, a concept for one scene is: A man finds a snooper going through his stuff, and he captures him. But he recognizes that this snooper is someone he promised an old friend to give an artifact to. So, he's got the strange situation where he's hostile towards the intruder, but at the end, he has to be like, "Oh yeah, and your dad told me to give you this."
Or, an overarching concept of the book is: The main character has a handful of superpowers; however, her ultimate goal is to get rid of these superpowers. So, instead of her getting stronger as the forces of badness mount against her, she's actively getting weaker; I guess someone needs to grow in ways other than her raw power, huh?
I love writing, and I love reading. And it feels good when I produce something that I feel is just halfway passable. The Adventurer journal is boatloads of fun!
Here are my boys making silly faces!
