Welcome to the Story Vault, a repository for some of the many story ideas I have floating around in my head. Now, throughout any given week, I probably come up with about five story concepts and every month I generate two or three actual plots. What follows, therefore, is not anywhere close to a full representation of said stories. This is good because most are trite, boring, clichéd, or almost exact copies of other books I’ve read. Basically, then, if I’ve thought about it enough to give it a working title, it probably shows up here in the list. Recording all of the thoughts would frankly take all day, as I would never stop, so don’t ask me to do as such. I mean, eventually, I would run out of easily accessible food, stop paying bills, most assuredly lose my job, get kicked out of my apartment, be forced to steal internet access from people with unprotected Wi-Fi (thank you, linksys), and ultimately die of exposure. Is that something you’d really want to be responsible for?
In all honesty, though, this is actually more for my convenience than anything else. I don’t want to forget about these stories – maybe that’s how they make it on the list: I like ‘em – and, as such, I record them here. If you don’t want to know the gist of a story, though, I’d recommend not reading these things. Some just say, “I don’t know… just liked the concept” but others may go into detail concerning key events in the story. I have no idea what these notes will contain, actually, so consider yourself warned.
If you’re still with us, then fantastic! The format of these things is rather loose, at best, as you’ll soon find out. Because I enjoy format, though, I decided to randomly bullet things out, as well as include a genre and estimate word count ticker at the beginning of each story. Genre is pretty self-explanatory, for the most part. The estimated word count indicates approximately how many words I think the story will have when I’m finally pleased with its length. This isn’t to say that these are set in stone; far from it, in fact. But these are sort of general marks that I’m going to attempt to shoot for. They’re indicators, if you’d like, of how much I’d either like to develop a story, or how much I think I can develop it. I’ll probably also through in a current word count item if I actually write some stuff down. The notes themselves are just that: notes. Or I suppose, more specifically, they’re initial thoughts I’ve had about the given story. Sometimes those involve talking about the plot, while others just involve me complaining about development issues. It’s all rather random, much like everything else here.
Whenever I think up something else, I’ll edit this list. Currently, the format of this blog doesn’t really allow me to easily announce this fact, but oh well. If you’re intrigued with what happens in my head, then check this thing on occasion. I’m trying to find some sort of website that operates like a blog but also has a Welcome page of sorts, i.e. somewhere I can put announcements and the like, and then you can navigate to the various posts. I don’t really know of such a thing, but I haven’t exactly looked into it all that much. Or I should say, I don’t know of such a free thing. They’re called “websites” but I don’t want to shell out any money, so yeah. If you know of such a magical creature, please let me know.
One last little thing of note here before I finish. This list is no indication of what I’m actually working on at any given time. The order, currently, is completely random and probably will remain so. An example: I could be typing out Story 3, developing Story 1 in my head, and adding notes on here for Stories 6, 7, and 8 all on the same day. Maybe I’ll eventually figure out an easy way to indicate what I’m working on, but this is not it. Random list of random thoughts. Got it? Good. In that case…
Enjoy!
Memoirs from the Squirrel Wars
§ Genre: Fable
§ Estimated Word Count: 50,000±
§ Follows the actions of Twig and the Cottontail Militia as they struggle against the National Squirrel Army during the Squirrel Wars. The setting is more than likely going to be a small Ohio farm, unless I need to relocate in order to include a particular animal native to a specific region. Things will start in medias res, which is practically a given now in modern literature (thanks a lot The Odyssey). “In late, out early” as they say. The story will either start at the very beginning – Twig first joining the Militia, Squirrels attacking, etc. – or in the middle of a major battle and flashback to earlier events. Like most everything with this story, I just don’t know yet.
§ Having trouble finding a proper voice for this story, as well as how to keep it interesting. The “animals talking” thing can only carry the story for so long.
The Man Who Makes the Clouds
§ Genre: Parable
§ Estimated Word Count: 5,000±
§ A parable of sorts describing the Man and how, well, he makes the Clouds. The story opens to a desert world devoid of most everything. People live in this desert; the “how” not being terribly important in a parable, obviously. The Man is responsible for bringing clouds – and thus rain – to the region. At first, this is fantastic: plants start to grow, water is no longer a precious resource, a decrease in violence over said water, etc. But soon, problems start to occur. Floods come and destroy homes, disputes form for various reasons concerning this new world, and soon the Man becomes the scapegoat for all of this. I haven’t decided on an ending yet. It’ll probably depend on how hopeful I am in humanity at the time of writing.
Heavenfall
§ Genre: Fantasy
§ Estimated Word Count: 150,000±
§ This story involves the return of a malevolent group of extra-planar beings to the world. They are actually a splinter group of beings that – before their first appearance – were revered as gods by most. The Good beings (High Ones) and the Bad beings (Vile) got into a fight. Simple enough. However, the Vile lost and were cast out into the Void, the space in which planes exist. But since they’re both crafty and evil, they figured out how to form themselves a sort of quasi-plane fueled by other real ones. So they sort of floated about, siphoning off various worlds, which involved physical invasion, slave-capturing, sacrificing innocents as quasi-plane fuel; the works. However, the Vile (and High Ones, for that matter) are too sparkly (i.e. of a foreign physical form) and can’t directly enter most planes lest they sunder them to immaterial. So they have these servants we’ll call Angels and Demons for now because it’s easy. Well the Angels get in the habit of going to an invaded plane and helping out or sometimes actually beating the Vile there and setting up a defense of sorts. This is exactly what happens on the Prime Material Plane (PMP; obviously can’t rip off D&D here, but it’s a good filler). The Heaven Scouts (name comes from an old forum RP I was on; it’ll be changed along with all other names) were formed and their sole purpose was to watch out for the Vile and their tricky demons. One of these Scouts was Nathan (Nathan? Sure, why not?). He and his friend were pretty good at what they did, which was killing evil and whatnot. Unfortunately, during the invasion of the PMP, Nathan’s friend got turned. Then Nathan gets captured and turned forcibly. Anyway, he turns into this hybrid death dealing machine. Eventually he “sees the light”, so to speak, and aids in banishing the Vile from the PMP. But because he’s tainted with evil, the High Ones sort of disown him. And obviously he can’t go back to the Vile because he was rather rude to them. Oh, and he’s immortal. (All of this is back story, but may get its own book eventually.)
Fast forward a couple hundred years. The religion that worshipped the High Ones is pretty much a shell of its former self. The war showed that they weren’t Gods, per se. In general, actually, things aren’t in too great a shape. Let’s say near the end of the Dark Ages, for a reference point. Anyway, Nathan has been wandering around all this time, basically trying to get by and stop evil. He’s no superhero but he’s trying to do the best he can with what he’s got. Eventually, he starts to feel the evil in him churn and he realizes that it’s the Vile getting closer to the PMP again, which is bad. So he starts Galdalfing it, gathering people and trying to prepare them for the coming invasion. Most people have other problems, but eventually stuff starts to come together. Then the invasion, fighting, nifty Holy-esque magic, etc. ensues. And fun was had by all. That’s enough synopsis development for now; spent too much time on the back-story. I don’t actually have that much for this story, I guess dreamt up a lengthy back-story, which does nobody any good, really, without a primary story to tag it onto.
The Cyndalian Prophecy
§ Genre: Fantasy
§ Estimated Word Count: 150,000± (?)
§ Yet another attempt at fantasy. I guess I just can’t get away from it, huh? It’s probably because it’s a fairly easy genre to work in. I mean, you just make up whatever you want, be a little clever in how you implement it, and there you go. But this is not a treatise on fantasy; this is supposed to be story notes and the like.
§ There really isn’t much in the way of a story developed for this one, actually. Its entirety comes from this idea: what if the mystical prophecy of the ages is wrong? The Hero would go about following the prophecy, guided by the wise, bearded mentor only to find out that… it doesn’t work! I think it would be fun to just run with your typical fantasy standards: prophecy, mentor, and rags-to-riches hero and then just smash all of it somewhere through the story. Maybe the mentor got the wrong guy. Maybe the reclusive prophet that developed the cryptic writings was just a nut. Or maybe the hero simply didn’t work quickly enough and missed his chance. I suppose it would be a story about finding your own path and solving your own problems after that point. Whoa, would that make the story didactic?
§ Oh, and “Cyndalian” is just a name I made up (obviously) on the spot to have a title. Is the land called Cyndal? Was the prophecy written by someone named Cyndalia? No clue; just thought it had a nice ring to it. It’s bound to change before actual story development takes place.
Underbush
§ Genre: Steampunk
§ Estimated Word Count: 150,000±
§ Current Word Count: 56,286
§ This story is almost complete in its “first rough draft” form. Final word count in this form will probably come in at around 70,000±. This, however, is more like a somewhat hefty outline. Once it is completed, I’ll go through it, figure out which ideas I liked the best, which I hated, pick scenes to include, which to ditch, which to expand and which to cut down, etc. etc. First and foremost, after fine-tuning the story, will be the task of expanding things. As I said, she’ll come in at around 70,000 words at the end, but the estimated final word count of the finished book is 150,000. So I’m basically looking to double the length of the thing, which really shouldn’t be that hard to do. I just need to come up with an ending that doesn’t make me disgusted in my own lack of creativity…
§ And I need an actual bloody title for the thing. Underbush just really isn’t doing it for me, especially since they don’t actually spend all that much time under a bush. Unless, of course, that’s one of the things I change.
The Room
§ Genre: Fiction
§ Estimated Word Count: 5,000± or 30,000±
§ The Room is a short story idea that was born from a dream I had about a year ago. As such, the story takes place in the dream world of the main character. It takes place in – imagine that – the room, which at first is this pristine, barren room with a single chair. Eventually, though, a lady appears in the room with him. Taken aback at first, he starts to like her and they slowly become friends. As each night comes and the dream starts again, the room slowly fills up with stuff. Eventually, he realizes that he’s in love with this girl – who, it turns out, is represented in the real world as a person he’s been pining over and yet has done nothing about. The story ends, I guess, when he decides to step things into reality and ask her out.
§ I’m extremely intrigued with a dream world and have a number of ideas that take place there. There’s a chance I’ll splice The Room into another idea I had, in which a guy meets a girl in a dream and falls in love. Unlike The Room, however, this involves a detailed fantasy world that’s quite expansive. They dream each night of this world and each other and things are groovy until… things aren’t. A big bad guy or something – I don’t know – comes and takes the girl away. Swallowing his fear, the man sets out to rescue her, only to have his alarm wake him up. Things start to spiral out of control as he attempts to sleep as much as he can so that he can be in the world, rescuing the girl. Obviously this causes problems in the real world, but anyway. Eventually he saves her (He has to, right? Otherwise the story is really depressing and nobody wants that) and all returns to normal in the dream world. The next day, he bumps into the woman while at, say, a coffee shop. All this time, he had no idea that she was actually real – or that the dreams were completely real, for that matter – and by her expression, she didn’t either. As the proverbial curtains begin to close, they sheepishly introduce themselves to one another and sit down to have an interesting chat.
§ Pretty easy to see how I could merge The Room story into the other, right? We’ll see if that’s what happens; I think I could make it work.
§ Genre: Fiction
§ Estimated Word Count: 50,000±
§ The Book of Simon probably won’t be the actual name of the book. I just liked the television show The Book of Daniel and how they worked the religion thing into the title, so I copied it. Currently, this is a story inspired by The Book of Job (typing the word “book” a lot in this note). Or more specifically, that’s where the inspiration started. As always, I’m probably going to wander very far from the original idea. It’s what I do. Also, I put an estimated word count at 50,000± just because I started that format and wanted to stick to it, but honestly I have no idea how long this thing will be. I’m just intrigued with following a man through his life and how he reacts to stuff. I have never really attempted straight fiction before and I thought it would be interesting to try. And since I have no experience, I decided maybe emulating a story already in existence would help, i.e. Job. Will it have overly religious tones? Probably not, though they’ll definitely slip in there; especially if I stick to the Job reference. Just don’t expect a conversation about wrangling leviathans and the like. Like most everything else on this list, The Book of Simon is just a basic idea. No real plot developed at this point.
Awakenings: The Descendant Lore
§ Genre: Fantasy
§ Estimated Word Count: 150,000±
§ Ah, my first attempt at NaNoWriMo. I’ve already developed a lot on this story – which is chronicled elsewhere – and I don’t want to repeat it here. Like almost every idea I’ve ever had, this tale is rather generic and stereotypical but I still want to finish it. For one, it’s the first story that I actually got into, word count-wise. For another, it’s one of the few story ideas that I possess that actually has a beginning, middle, and end; at least in my head. And for yet another, I think finishing this story would be good practice in pacing, viewpoint development, voice, etc. Since I have the story pretty much down, juvenile as it is, I’d have more brain-time to dedicate to the aforementioned items. I’ve never had any compunction about abandoning ideas – to the continual disappointment of some – but this one has remained persistent. So someday I shall reward it for its stalwart nature and finish it.
© 2009, Zachary Wolfe
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