McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Novel Ideas

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IronKite:
- The Devil turns out to be a compassionate and sensitive being who, in a fit of pique, goes on strike because he can't stand the fact that all of humanity hates him.
- A tiny group of bedraggled aliens land on earth, against all intergalactic orders, to let humans know that hundreds of other races out there have known about us all along... it's just that they've developed immortality via a method that we can't use (being mostly water and all) and they thought this knowledge would be too cruel for us to bear.
- A small government funded group of scientists, who have made unthinkable advances when it comes to cloning and time travel, have been secretly yanking some of the greatest minds in history out of their native timeline and into the present, replacing them with exact copies right at the moment of their historical death.  Things go extremely poorly when they accidentally grab Lincoln's wife that fateful night at the theatre instead of Abe himself, and the mere appearance of a second Abe Lincoln is enough to thwart the assassination attempt.
- A group of frustrated fiction writers (heh) tired of constantly being rejected by publishers create their own publishing house as a bit of a gag.  They're surprised to receive an unsolicited manuscript one day, and reject it with strongly worded vehemence reminiscent of a certain American Idol judge, and have some fun being the rejectors instead of the rejectees.  However, their strongly worded replies garner them a certain reputation, and suddenly they find that not only is more material coming in, but some of the writer's names are beginning to look familiar.  ("Zomg!  This one's from Stephen King!  He's writing a sequel to 'IT'!"  "Holy crap!  What's it called?"  "He's calling it 'That'...")

...it's a start, neh?   ;)

Aaron

The Corvidian:
Write down your dreams.

Cooper:

--- Quote from: The Corvidian on July 23, 2008, 02:32:46 AM ---Write down your dreams.

--- End quote ---

That doesn't work for me.  I have precog dreams.

The Corvidian:
You can find all manner of ideas from eveyday life. I live near a railroad. I could come up with a dozen ideas from that.

Take a situation, say the power going out, and build a story from that. Power outages are good stuff to build a post-apocalyptic story around.

Do you have kids, or at least younger nieces and nephews? Write a story about how they find out that the Fair Folk aren't nice? Or maybe, on of them finds out that they have a magical talent?

You just have to look around.

OZ:
It's hard to know without knowing how your mind works. I like to start with strong characters then create a plot that shows off their strengths and weaknesses and/or if it's a coming of age story, how they got those strengths and weaknesses. Others start with a great plot then figure out what characters are needed to make it work. Some, especially in sci fi and fantasy, will even start with a unique setting then create characters and a plot to show the place off. Even though I like to start with characters, any time something makes me think of a unique setting or a good plot, I keep track of it as a place to put the characters I have. Do you have a preferred angle for coming up with an idea for a novel?

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