Hmm, the least dubious of these options seems to be life, hurt, individuality. Can I do anything with these? Will it be anything I _want_ to do? Is this experiment meaningful, since I never write from word prompts when I create a synopsis for a story? Well I'll attempt it because I want other people to attempt experiments and surveys when I post them, and the results will probably be interesting no matter what prompt we start from.

How do life, hurt, and individuality fit together? Well, hurt is often caused by individuality (people not fitting in) Life is an ongoing process of personal growth, which increases individuality, and if you never get hurt, you're probably not really living. Risk. (taking a drink of water, debating whether to eat a piece of chocolate, deciding to reserve it as a reward for writing more. I love the shiny foils on candies, it was very accurate when I used to have that sticker that said "easily distracted by bright shiny objects".) Focus!

Having recently received the criticism that my stories are all the same, even though there is a good reason for this I would feel silly if I outlined a story where individuality=alternate sexuality, hurt=social rejection, and life=beginning and nurturing a romantic relationship. Besides that would probably defeat the purpose of the experiment. (I am normally this aware of the purpose of a piece of writing I am creating, so it's a part of the process, not a contaminant.) Er, anyway outlining a story built on that formula would defeat the purpose of the experimant because I don't have to think about it anymore, I've done it often enough that it's automatic, so there wouldn't be any process to document. (Bet this will be longer than Boolean's when it's done, I'm a very chatty writer, which is funny since IRL I'm a quiet listener and never have anything to say (literary divice=exaggeration to strengthen a rhetorical point by making a dark grey area black).

So, if I don't do that, what _else_ can I do with life, hurt, and individuality. Ooh, I had that story idea a while ago about the unicorn. See, a unicorn's memories/personality are stored in its horn (don't ask why, it's magic). An adult female unicorn dies at the foot of a small cliff, and after a few years just the bones are left. Then an overconfidant teenage male unicorn jumps incautiously off the cliff and sticks himself on the skeleton's horn, so now he is really confused to have all the female unicorns memories... (argh, that's about gender and sexuality again, isn't it? >.< ) Maybe it's impossible to write a story about the intersection of life and individuality without hitting sexuality. Maybe I should switch to choice C: environment, science, new, except I hate that word environment... (Some indian women and children are barbecuing outside) Well, I only hate all the stupid connotations the word is burdened with, so I should forget them and reinterpret the word. I like it's connotation as a psychological term, like "learning environment".

Okay, let's write about a new learning environment, and make it a science fiction story. Not new once, that's too simple and uses up it's interest too quickly; let's write about a learning environment that is perpetually new. Maybe I'll just use all 6 words, and Boolean can interpret it as whichever prompt he wants, probably A since choosing C might invalidate my first 3 paragraphs. (Reminds me of Akazukin Cha Cha, which I was watching last night, about 3 kids with individual=different abilities who struggle against a new enemy every episode while attending magic school. This is a cheesy example, but may be a good place to extract useful elements for building my story from, so I'll keep it in mind. But first I'll go get more water and chocolate, or maybe a bagel because that's a bit healthier...)

(10 minutes later) Often I would put some music on while doing this, but in between creating the story idea and documenting everything I'm thinking, I don't think I have any brainpower to spare.

So, a learning environment that is constantly new. One time I dreamed about being a student in a military school space station *cough*ender's game*cough* where the corridors and their contents shifted around constantly to train the students to be "ready for anything". As a student, my biggest worry was that I would get separated from the other student I had a crush on (lol back to romance again - it's like the magnetic north pole of my mind). I never developed this dream as a story, but I have played with some other sceience-fiction-school-story ideas, including a comic villain school idea (like the inverse of Cha Cha, the student villains are the main characters and they fight new stupid but frustratingly lucky good guys every few episodes, with other episodes in between showing the students learning funny villain stuff in class, since I always thing school stories don't have enough of this.) The more serious school story ideas I worked on were a Harry-Potter inspired one with doglike aliens and Dominion Academy, an 80s sf military academy one built aroung the idea of training not single students, but teams/families of students called dominion teams (romance again). [insert my surface memories about these previous projects here]. Really, (Maslow's Hierarchy) there're only three strong motivations life can be about: fighting for survival, being driven by ambition/greed/revenge, and wanting to end loneliness. Since I don't care for fighting or the hurried/adrenaline feeling associated with being driven, is it any wonder everything I write is about romance? (thinking, looking out the window, listening to the noises the washing machine is making...)

So, that establishes what I have done, such that I can disassemble it and use the building blocks to make this new story. But what do I _want_ to do now? Well, normal schools are boring, so I need students who have psychic, magic, or unusual biological powers, so I can write about the students acquiring new powers and practicing them and making humorous mistakes. If I'm going to be introducing new worldbuilding it's best to have an outsider or n00b as the main character(s) so they start out equally ignorant as the audience and then everyone can learn about the worldbuilding together as the story progresses. So, we want (a) main character(s) with a newly activated/discovered power or aptitude for power. (Aww, cute! Out in the yard a dad is rocking a daughter in his arms. Yay families. ^_^ Glances at what I have written - oh yeah, way longer than Boolean's and I don't even have any characters yet, lol.)

And we need a worldbuilding reason that it is feasable to create a constantly-changing environment, and a motivation for some school administration or other character(s) to especially want the students to be "ready for anything". So perhaps some kind of external threat that evolves rapidly and requires the individual combatants to make snap decisions.. yuck, now I'm thinking invading aliens vs. students in mechas. :P Quick, scratch that idea out before it pollutes my brain. Next option is 'wizard duels', which are generally one-on-one and require quick, creative strategy. But this is supposed to be a science fiction setting. What's a science fiction version of wizard duels? (An evil little voice whispers: "Mechas, duh." I smack it with a mallet and tell it to shut up.) Cyberspace duels? Nah, that's too freeform, strategy is the most interesting when there are a variety of non-alterable playing fields and obstacles you have to work with. Gladiatorial duels for the entertainment of the peons? That has the problem of implying that the duelists are always in danger of being fired and having to find a new job in the real world. Similarly military duels imply that there is a chance the duelists will be killed.

(These 'locical' paragraph breaks don't at all match the pattern of progress and pauses in my thinking.) Well, how about a meritocracy where you have to excel in combat to earn rank and privelage? But how would that fit with teams/families rather than being every man for himself? Maybe there is some prerequesite (biological?) for being a leader of a family, such that only about 20% of the population can be one. That would be good, because I could use a version of my Nakago/Ravennin/born leader character, and a looks-like-a-leader-but-chooses-to-be-a-follower character, and a submissive born follower, etc. So, what would qualify someone to be a leader? Size? That's simple and rather rigid. Personality/hormonal balance/multiple genders? Used these all before, with both the dogaliens (who were color-coded by personality/hormone balance and became a gender appropriate to their personality at puberty) and the Alphas and Betas in my novel idea. :/ I don't believe in fate, so I refuse on general principle to use 'children marked by destiny' with a birthmark or other magical omen. An inhereted trait would be arbitrary/unfair and not work with the idea of a meritocracy. Maybe just personal choice - there are only so many leader 'slots' in a generation and you have to be really determined to choose to compete for one. But there has to be some opportunity cost, something that traps leadership candidates into striving for this once they declare themselves, or else they could always just change their minds, which isn't dramatic at all...

In any case, the plot will naturally be about a leader-candidate, his rivals, his followers, and the struggle toward and finally achievement of the family/team's rank. This is a clear pattern which naturally ought to be populate with certain character types - from this point on it's just a matter of deciding all the details. Phew, I'm done! o.O; ^_^

Quote:Original post by boolean
Sns, wow that was awesome. Thanks for taking the time do that. It's really interesting to see how you use the romance side in your writing, and how genders and sexuality are big parts of your stories. When you try to come up with a story outside this theme, it almost seems like the struggle is not so much coming up with a good story, but not trying to return to these themes. That was my impression anyway. If you compare your style of writing to my 'just avoid the clichés and build a story around that' style of writing, it can already be seen how different the process people go through is.

You're welcome. :) Looking back over what I wrote, I am wincing at the zillions of typos, but oh well, stream-of-consciousness typing doesn't give one time to edit. I agree with that assessment that even if I set out to do something else, I end up back at romance and sexuality - I just see them as some of the unavoidable foundations of life in a society, and I would feel like I was making something incomplete and unrealistic if I completely left them out when designing a culture. Plus character psychology and relationships are my favorite thing to write about, and romances are one of the most important types of relationship, and an opportunity to show the characters going through a range of vivid and interesting emotions (lust, loneliness, anxiety, joy, fury, despair).

I'm looking forward to reading everyone's responses, especially the people who are good at creating plot ideas because I could use some insight into methods of doing that. I also like the fact that this exercise will give us a window of insight into the other forum members' personalities and writing goals. :)

Boolean, I read yours after I wrote mine (so as not to bias myself), and one thing I am curious about is, why did you pick option B? How do you feel about each of those 3 words, what do they make you think of? I do think it is very cool the way 'home' ended up being inside the main character's head, where the cop is - I think this would make a nicely suspenseful story with a good dramatic twist at the end, I can easily imagine finding a story like this in a published short story collection. :) Would you say suspense is one of your priorities in designing a story?

Quote:Original post by boolean
Whenever I write anything, I absolutely hate to conform to any standard, as doing this usually leads to creating predictable story lines - something I strive to avoid. I look at it the same as a joke you might read on the internet or see in a skit. The truly funny ones are the ones where you did not expect the ending, where you think you know where it is heading, but the writer knows that most people will assume that if event A happens, then event B happens, then as per usual event C will happen. The jokes work well when it turns out that event X actually ends up happening.

Surprise/incongruity humor is probably the most dramatic and popular type of humor, but I just wanted to point out that there are other types of humor: ironic, anticipation, and repetition.

Ironic humor involves opposites - Character A expects that X is going on, while you the reader or Character B knows that really X is the least likely think to be going on or the opposite of what is actually going on.

Characteristic humor involves surprising individual instances that, in hindsight, were predictable from a character or the world's personality or habitual behavior. These are things like the poor character who always has a raincloud over his head, raining on just him. He gets an umbrella... and it starts raining _inside_ the umbrella, on just him. All the other characters are suffering from a drought - this character is suffering from getting hit by lightning bolts because his storm turned into a dry electrical storm. Also, think about the coyote and the roadrunner. You know how it's going to end - the coyote will get beaten within an inch of his life and the roadrunner will go "meep meep" laughing at the coyote's misery and run off. It's not surprising at all - but it's funny anyway.

Repetition humor is the "Oh no, not again!" kind. Seeing the same event occur 3 or more times builds up suspense about when it will end, or when it will strike again, or exactly what form it will take this kind. I mentioned Akazukin Cha Cha above - this series has lots of repetition humor. For example, when Cha Cha tries to do magic, 95% of the time she will get a pun of what she asked for (like a moose instead of chocolate mousse) which will then chase her around and destroy buildings until someone else makes it dissapear. You can also have a character with a wrong belief (often ignorance of a secret identity or paranoia), which always results in that character reacting to things off at right angles to the other characters. Or you can simply have a character always use the same phrase, which your audience will start mimicking, and you can reinforce the humor by having the other characters in the story get sick of the phrase and start ignoring it/talking over top of it/parodying it, etc.

So personally I don't focus on avoiding cliches because in the right instance a cliche can be a powerful, almost Pavlovian way to get a desired response from the reader, and many readers have a cliche or archetype they love and will buy all books/games they see which have it; this is why RPGs very often include one enemy who is a cactus, one who is a zombie, one who is a penguin, and one who is almost too cute to fight, so that when players stumble across this in the game they go, "Yay, my favorite!"

Quote:
As such, in my writing I try to keep the reader on their toes as much as possible. Every time they assume something is a standard affair (for example, boy falling in love with girl) I try to head in the complete opposite direction (girl falls in love with a computer program, aka the AI Love story I started for Genjix and his RPG). If someone takes over the world, I want to make sure that the person reading it is thinking ‘I never even thought of that reason for doing it before’. I mean, this might the same way everyone writes, I don't know. The other thing I always strive to do is to keep the reader thinking after they have read the story. I want them trying to figure out all the intricacies 24 hours a day, thinking ‘I wonder if he really meant this when he said that’, or ‘maybe this section was all a metaphor for that section’, giving them moral issues to stew over for weeks. Even though it might sound silly, if I ever had a best seller, I want forums flooded with people picking the book apart trying to get to the real story, something that those who take the book on face value will never notice (big surprise, my favourite director is David Lynch [smile]).

Of course, I make no reservations that any of this is actually working for me [grin]

Gene Wolfe. My roommate loves this author for _exactly_ the reasons you have listed - his writing is unpredictable, with mysterious happenings, scenes of questionable reality, and events that somehow comment on other events, but you're not sure quite how. His fans do nutty stuff to try to analyze it including numerology, lol. So if you're not already a Wolfe fan, you should check out either his serious masterwork, the Urth of the New Sun series, or his comic masterwork Free Live Free. :)