A Few Writing Ideas I've Been Pondering
I'm always generating ideas for writing. Often, I make a note of them. Here are, a few...
Pro-Global Warming. Other than temporary trouble along the coasts for some people for a little while, overall global warm would be good for humans. It would open up large land areas that are currently not useful. Global cooling is the really scary thing. It would also be good for vegetation. I haven't heard anyone else make this argument before. I thought it out from first principles. Can long-term weather patterns, climate, stay the same or does it have to change? Change. Would it be worse if it was warmer or colder? Colder. What would be bad if it was warmer? The coasts would rise. What would be better if it was warmer? More useable land area, more water, more vegetation.
The Moral Case for Meat Consumption. The more that I've learned, a lot through experience, about diet the more it seems to me that societies are healthier the more meat and fermented foods that they eat. Mikaila Peterson and Shawn Baker are really running away with the carnivore thing, which is good. Allan Savory has great info on how the correct farming of herds of animals is necessary to properly maintain grasslands and such. Now, the moral argument is needed.
Economics for Politicians. This just seems needed. It could be a useful primer to promote at local, state, and national Democratic and Republican conventions. Jeff's Razor would be a great tool to help them deal with understanding the path towards peace and prosperity, if they aren't too corrupted.
Corruption in America. Power attracts the worst people and corrupts the best people. That's the primary danger of centralization. Corruption has a tendency to be legalized and systematized. The Law by Frederic Bastiat is a great primer on that, but it is from the 1850s France. We could use some examples in the here and now to bring things home.
Hell: There and Back Again, or Dead, and Back Again. I just like this title. I did have a dream about a girl in a red desert with a black river running through it. That could be a story that goes with this title. There are other ways to go with it. It could be a society that through resentment, deceit, and corruption destroys itself, and then we see that juxtaposed with its opposite maybe.
A Primer on Grief. I have unique views on grief, but they work well. I've written about those in other posts, but it could make a nice little pamphlet that I think would help people.
The Philosophical Musings of Jeffrey Alexander Martin. I have a hard time focusing, but I like various subjects and could make some sort of compendium.
Literary Analysis, Commentary, and Interpretation. I have a unique view of literary interpretation and will eventually make a post on it. It could easily expand to fill at least a book.
Blank was Bored. This would be a mind-bending fairy-tale. The name being Blank means that anyone could see themselves in this position, they could easily project themselves into the story. I got this idea from The Adventures of Anybody by Richard Bandler. Then, the motivation is unique in that it starts with someone that is bored. Not someone with a great calling or anything. This is a more normal motivation to start with, for an actual person. It digs into the angst, ennui, existential vacuum, that is eating at many people and we would try to explore a way out of it.
Kneel. I have two storyline ideas here. They are both framed stories. One, you open with a man being told to kneel for an execution, then you flashback and see the story leading back to the execution. Two, you open with a man told to kneel for being knighted, then you flashback and see that he was sent on a trial by ordeal, maybe to stay execution or as a rite of passage, and come back to the knighting in the end.
Bedtime Bedtime Stories. These would be serialized frame stories, like my short story The City of Peace. They would be a person telling a kid a bedtime story, and each chapter is designed to be read as a bedtime story.
The Three Little Pigs - Retold, Untold, and Distold. This would be a retelling of the Three Little Pigs. Then there would be variations. The pigs as people. The pigs as groups, maybe armies. The houses as castles or forts. That kind of reminds me of the Aenead. The big bad wolf as protagonist. The entire story as a propaganda piece for pigs, or wolves. There are a lot of interesting ways that you could go with it.
A Phenomenological Exploration of Motivation. Motivation is quite a mystery to me, and maybe to everyone. The lived experience could be good to record and analyze.
The Execution. A framed story told from multiple perspectives overlapping the same time and about the same event.
The Heaven Trials. Getting into heaven requires passing a test. This could take many forms. Maybe it's a trial by ordeal rather than a looking back. Either way, your second life requires qualifications and those determine where you go, into hades and the fields of punishment, or to the empty plains of asphodel, or into elysium and with the heroes on the isles of the blessed. All of those settings could then be explored.
Eternal Return. Mircea Eliade has some interesting views about his idea of the eternal return and that present religious rituals bring us into a special spiritual time. This is perfect for portal fantasy with a frame story from the present, or from a historical setting.
Ben Franklin, Lovecraft, and Zoroaster. Ben Franklin had really weird religious views. I think it would be interesting to examine them next to the ideas of H. P. Lovecraft and various traditions from Zoroastrianism. I would like to throw Mithra in there too, but I think that would have to be its own thing.
The Killmore Girls. Like The Gillmore Girls, but somehow killing is involved. Maybe supernatural fantasy of some sort, maybe not.
The Exotic Animal Trade. If you took fantasy animals and set them in our everday world then the normal political and economic pressures would do interesting things. Look at the rhino. They keep being poached and are dying off. They only slightly legalized the farming and breeding of rhinos and the poaching went down and the population started going up. Then, the illegalized it again and the poaching went back up and the population is going down again. Politics is killing off the rhinos, and the protectionists are doing the most to kill off the rhinos even while they spill their silly, but very harmful, lies. This would happen with dragons and such too. It would be interesting to explore.
For the Greater Good. A vampire that struggles with justifying the suffering and death he causes but is able to deal with it not by separating himself into a separate group to disengage the moral question, but by thinking of it as a means to and end. This means that he has to do more good than harm to try to stop his moral torment. He must compensate for death with life to balance the scales of justice. He could save lives as a doctor, or make money in business and donate it. It would be interesting, as would all exploration of moral disengagement like Albert Bandura talks about.
The Life Trade. In a world where a life can be traded for a life, which does happen in various ways pretty often (think of people that used to pay someone to do their soldiering for them, or non-voluntary organ donations), there might be a legit market and a black market. It would get crazy if you had someway of trading life force directly.
Souls as Things. If souls were things then they could be stolen, traded, rented, damaged, repaired, switched, etc.
The Magic Stones. If certain stones were magic that you could activate by swallowing them then that might be a fun, or not, magic system.
Flower Alchemy. I had a student that liked studying flowers. For some reason the names of flowers just don't stick in my mind, but I did think that they almost seem magical. They have crazy scientific names, and they are symbols with magical properties already assigned to them. What if there were a world where there was no magic, except for the magic in flowers, which could be extracted and used in a scientific way through chemistry and alchemy?
Wood Sygaldry. What if sygaldry, basically magical runes, were only effective in wood? The type and age of wood would be important. Maybe coatings, treatments, and burning would do interesting things.
The Succubus Memoirs. The epistolary, books in the form of letters and journals, works of Dracula and Frankenstein are classics. I think this should be done for werewolves too, and could be done for succubi as well.
Ghost Life. People are terrified of death. What if you could live forever, as a ghost? But, you had to do special magical things during your life. That could be an interesting adventure, trying to become a ghost.
Earth Attacks. There are a lot of stories about earth being invaded, but it would make just as much sense if more stories were about earth invading other planets.
Tiny Alien Invaders. Why do aliens all have to be our size? Maybe they are tiny. Maybe the only way to fight them is with micro and nano-bots that go inside of our veins and arteries. Then we can set epic battles with aliens in our bloodstream. Maybe human pilots control them. It seems fun.
All humanoids as genetically modified humans - dwarves, elves, gremlins, goblins, fairies, gnomes, trolls, giants, etc. dragons, griffins, etc. as genetically modified as well. Lost technology?
Story in a story. Story with a moral, story using story with a moral, story of story using story with a moral, etc. Like Russian dolls.
Freelance Epic-Quester for Hire. A medieval fantasy setting where a guy hires himself out for classic epic quests like rescuing a fair-maiden from a tower, for fighting a dragon in its lair. This seems like it lends itself perfectly to Terry Pratchett like humor, although I'm not sure if I can pull that off.
The Blood Bank. A government licensed blood bank for vampires. Maybe there's a monopoly on it, and of course there is all of the government corruption involved.
The Oppressed. The vamps are oppressed and don't have rights because they aren't humans. They are hunted for sport. They have no representation or recourse.
Witch Hunting. Some motive like in John Wick where it justifies blind rage and massive amounts of killing.
A Werewolf Pelt. It just seems like a werewolf pelt would have special properties and that some sort of story could be built around it.
Blood Nutrition. Vampires would go on fad diets too. There could be a whole industry around it.
Choose your own adventure gothic, romance, erotica.
Alternating perspectives in each chapter between two protagonists that have a colliding narrative, maybe they meet and have to kill each other or something.
The Demon Committee. A board meeting of demons, maybe of a college. Maybe it's just a recording of the minutes and is epistolary. Maybe frame it as a report to someone else.
Trophy Hunter. A trophy hunter of fantasy creatures. Special fangs and pelts and such. Maybe it started as revenge, then it was freelance, then it was a career. Maybe from an apprentices point of view.
I also think it would be a cool idea to include the origin stories for books in the books. Sometimes this is done, but I've never seen one I thought was too long. Maybe a how to read this book section too. Maybe an index and glossary in a novel as well.
Venom. Vampire venom is like a drug to humans. This would cause it to be treated like a drug. There would be laws around it, a black market, overdoses, etc. Maybe there is a mutual drive satisfaction between humans and vampires like bodily contact and sex are for humans. An addiction causes a positive affect if present and a negative affect if absent. The venom would, so it would be addicting.
Eye Gazing. It seems like the power of direct eye contact should have its own magic and its own story.
Predator and Prey. Stories examining humans as both predators and prey.
It seems like there should be an ideal way to train writing. Maybe you need a training ground. Maybe the retelling and retelling with variations of different fairy-tales could work. You could change the voice, the point of view, the tense, the structure, the genre, etc., all while still working with the same story. Cinderella is a great example. I believe the story goes back for several thousand years in various forms and originates from somewhere in Asia. I helped a student of mine write a different version of it, Kinderello. I wrote a post about it. You could do Cinderella as a cowgirl, a ballet dancer, a fashion model, etc.
Writing Prompts. I think I could be good at coming up with writing prompts. I could include prompts, and also how to come up with your own by pulling from history and such, which I've written a post about before.
Robert Louis Stevenson for Writers. Stevenson has great advice for writers, and he's quite an inspiring life story, and his stories have great origin stories. This could be a good book in itself.
Japanese Unit 731. I'm not sure I'm actually interested in writing this one, it might be too disturbing for me. It's a historical thing. Be careful if you want to look into it.
Biblical Archetypes. The bible has some great stories that were refined over very long periods of time. Cain and Able, David and Goliath, etc. Change characters and settings and you would still have the great structure and meaning of the stories, just connecting with more people in more ways.
Ancient Archetypes. Romulus and Remus, the 12 labors of Hercules. You could change and adjust these stories to infinity and beyond.
The Origins of Werewolves. Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a wolf, as the first werewolves. The slaying of Remus is the first time that Romulus turns.
Cast Down. The first vampire is actually a cast down angel.
Lilith. Adam's first wife as the first vampire, or witch maybe.
The Mark of Cain. Maybe the mark of Cain is vampirism.
Show don't tell reversal. An entire story that avoids showing and focuses just on telling from a narrators voice.
Crossbreed. Fantasy crossbreeding that leads to species that are like mules. They live, but they can't breed. This brings all sorts of existential crisis, and that leads to other things. They are natural rogues and outcasts.
The City of Under. The underworld as a city with different parts. Hell is between streets x and y, sometimes people try to move around. The neighborhood boundaries have issues and such.
The Bipolar God. There is a god named Luck that is bipolar and wreaks havoc on humans lives.
Layers of Motive. Kids stories that show narratively embodied motives. You can layer a story. A person is just going to get milk. A person is going to get milk to feed to their hungry baby. A person is going to get milk to feed to their hungry baby, because his wife just died. Then you can see how the motive determines what kind of obstacles a person can overcome.
Asteroid egg. An asteroid hits a school. It turns out that it's a dragon egg.
The Chosen Fae. What if fairy creatures are not separate? What if they are chosen and then modified by the current fairy creatures?
The Fall of the Dragon. If dragons did exist then man would have conquered it, farmed it, enslaved it, extincted it. This devolution process might be interesting.
Moral Engagement. The eight ways to reverse the moral disengagement talked about by Albert Bandura.
Champion for Hire. A guy that fights as a champion, someone chosen for trials by combat by the accused, for anyone that will pay him the right amount.
The Analysis of Cain and Able. I think just writing an analysis of this story would be interesting. It's so short, but has so much to say.
Demons and Angels. It flips back and forth from life in a demonarchy and an angelarchy. Maybe the systems aren't that different.
Demonologist. He studies demons. That would lead him into all sorts of interesting stuff.
Angelologist. It would be just as adventurous to study angels up close and in person.
There are a few ideas at least.
I've written three fictional pieces that I like so far.
"The City of Peace" - A future history science fiction utopia/dystopia action adventure in a framed story of a father telling his son a story about the child's grandfather. That was a crazy sentence.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/08/the-xprize-writing-contest-part-5-of-5.html
"The Birth of Hanniba'al" - A dark, somewhat alternative, historical origin story for the Carthage General Hannibal.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/11/write-michigan-short-story-contest-part_30.html
"Matt's Eyes" - Don't read this if you don't like horror stories.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2018/11/a-flash-of-horror-part-4-of-4.html
Here are three of my most popular posts.
"The Making of a Great First Line in Fiction"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/12/the-making-of-great-first-line-in.html
"A Letter to My Niece in 2034"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/12/a-letter-to-my-niece-in-2034.html
"The Most Important Question in Philosophy - Part 4 of 4"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/11/the-most-important-question-in.html
You can find more of what I'm doing here: http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com
You can support this page at https://www.patreon.com/JeffreyAlexanderMartin
Pro-Global Warming. Other than temporary trouble along the coasts for some people for a little while, overall global warm would be good for humans. It would open up large land areas that are currently not useful. Global cooling is the really scary thing. It would also be good for vegetation. I haven't heard anyone else make this argument before. I thought it out from first principles. Can long-term weather patterns, climate, stay the same or does it have to change? Change. Would it be worse if it was warmer or colder? Colder. What would be bad if it was warmer? The coasts would rise. What would be better if it was warmer? More useable land area, more water, more vegetation.
The Moral Case for Meat Consumption. The more that I've learned, a lot through experience, about diet the more it seems to me that societies are healthier the more meat and fermented foods that they eat. Mikaila Peterson and Shawn Baker are really running away with the carnivore thing, which is good. Allan Savory has great info on how the correct farming of herds of animals is necessary to properly maintain grasslands and such. Now, the moral argument is needed.
Economics for Politicians. This just seems needed. It could be a useful primer to promote at local, state, and national Democratic and Republican conventions. Jeff's Razor would be a great tool to help them deal with understanding the path towards peace and prosperity, if they aren't too corrupted.
Corruption in America. Power attracts the worst people and corrupts the best people. That's the primary danger of centralization. Corruption has a tendency to be legalized and systematized. The Law by Frederic Bastiat is a great primer on that, but it is from the 1850s France. We could use some examples in the here and now to bring things home.
Hell: There and Back Again, or Dead, and Back Again. I just like this title. I did have a dream about a girl in a red desert with a black river running through it. That could be a story that goes with this title. There are other ways to go with it. It could be a society that through resentment, deceit, and corruption destroys itself, and then we see that juxtaposed with its opposite maybe.
A Primer on Grief. I have unique views on grief, but they work well. I've written about those in other posts, but it could make a nice little pamphlet that I think would help people.
The Philosophical Musings of Jeffrey Alexander Martin. I have a hard time focusing, but I like various subjects and could make some sort of compendium.
Literary Analysis, Commentary, and Interpretation. I have a unique view of literary interpretation and will eventually make a post on it. It could easily expand to fill at least a book.
Blank was Bored. This would be a mind-bending fairy-tale. The name being Blank means that anyone could see themselves in this position, they could easily project themselves into the story. I got this idea from The Adventures of Anybody by Richard Bandler. Then, the motivation is unique in that it starts with someone that is bored. Not someone with a great calling or anything. This is a more normal motivation to start with, for an actual person. It digs into the angst, ennui, existential vacuum, that is eating at many people and we would try to explore a way out of it.
Kneel. I have two storyline ideas here. They are both framed stories. One, you open with a man being told to kneel for an execution, then you flashback and see the story leading back to the execution. Two, you open with a man told to kneel for being knighted, then you flashback and see that he was sent on a trial by ordeal, maybe to stay execution or as a rite of passage, and come back to the knighting in the end.
Bedtime Bedtime Stories. These would be serialized frame stories, like my short story The City of Peace. They would be a person telling a kid a bedtime story, and each chapter is designed to be read as a bedtime story.
The Three Little Pigs - Retold, Untold, and Distold. This would be a retelling of the Three Little Pigs. Then there would be variations. The pigs as people. The pigs as groups, maybe armies. The houses as castles or forts. That kind of reminds me of the Aenead. The big bad wolf as protagonist. The entire story as a propaganda piece for pigs, or wolves. There are a lot of interesting ways that you could go with it.
A Phenomenological Exploration of Motivation. Motivation is quite a mystery to me, and maybe to everyone. The lived experience could be good to record and analyze.
The Execution. A framed story told from multiple perspectives overlapping the same time and about the same event.
The Heaven Trials. Getting into heaven requires passing a test. This could take many forms. Maybe it's a trial by ordeal rather than a looking back. Either way, your second life requires qualifications and those determine where you go, into hades and the fields of punishment, or to the empty plains of asphodel, or into elysium and with the heroes on the isles of the blessed. All of those settings could then be explored.
Eternal Return. Mircea Eliade has some interesting views about his idea of the eternal return and that present religious rituals bring us into a special spiritual time. This is perfect for portal fantasy with a frame story from the present, or from a historical setting.
Ben Franklin, Lovecraft, and Zoroaster. Ben Franklin had really weird religious views. I think it would be interesting to examine them next to the ideas of H. P. Lovecraft and various traditions from Zoroastrianism. I would like to throw Mithra in there too, but I think that would have to be its own thing.
The Killmore Girls. Like The Gillmore Girls, but somehow killing is involved. Maybe supernatural fantasy of some sort, maybe not.
The Exotic Animal Trade. If you took fantasy animals and set them in our everday world then the normal political and economic pressures would do interesting things. Look at the rhino. They keep being poached and are dying off. They only slightly legalized the farming and breeding of rhinos and the poaching went down and the population started going up. Then, the illegalized it again and the poaching went back up and the population is going down again. Politics is killing off the rhinos, and the protectionists are doing the most to kill off the rhinos even while they spill their silly, but very harmful, lies. This would happen with dragons and such too. It would be interesting to explore.
For the Greater Good. A vampire that struggles with justifying the suffering and death he causes but is able to deal with it not by separating himself into a separate group to disengage the moral question, but by thinking of it as a means to and end. This means that he has to do more good than harm to try to stop his moral torment. He must compensate for death with life to balance the scales of justice. He could save lives as a doctor, or make money in business and donate it. It would be interesting, as would all exploration of moral disengagement like Albert Bandura talks about.
The Life Trade. In a world where a life can be traded for a life, which does happen in various ways pretty often (think of people that used to pay someone to do their soldiering for them, or non-voluntary organ donations), there might be a legit market and a black market. It would get crazy if you had someway of trading life force directly.
Souls as Things. If souls were things then they could be stolen, traded, rented, damaged, repaired, switched, etc.
The Magic Stones. If certain stones were magic that you could activate by swallowing them then that might be a fun, or not, magic system.
Flower Alchemy. I had a student that liked studying flowers. For some reason the names of flowers just don't stick in my mind, but I did think that they almost seem magical. They have crazy scientific names, and they are symbols with magical properties already assigned to them. What if there were a world where there was no magic, except for the magic in flowers, which could be extracted and used in a scientific way through chemistry and alchemy?
Wood Sygaldry. What if sygaldry, basically magical runes, were only effective in wood? The type and age of wood would be important. Maybe coatings, treatments, and burning would do interesting things.
The Succubus Memoirs. The epistolary, books in the form of letters and journals, works of Dracula and Frankenstein are classics. I think this should be done for werewolves too, and could be done for succubi as well.
Ghost Life. People are terrified of death. What if you could live forever, as a ghost? But, you had to do special magical things during your life. That could be an interesting adventure, trying to become a ghost.
Earth Attacks. There are a lot of stories about earth being invaded, but it would make just as much sense if more stories were about earth invading other planets.
Tiny Alien Invaders. Why do aliens all have to be our size? Maybe they are tiny. Maybe the only way to fight them is with micro and nano-bots that go inside of our veins and arteries. Then we can set epic battles with aliens in our bloodstream. Maybe human pilots control them. It seems fun.
All humanoids as genetically modified humans - dwarves, elves, gremlins, goblins, fairies, gnomes, trolls, giants, etc. dragons, griffins, etc. as genetically modified as well. Lost technology?
Story in a story. Story with a moral, story using story with a moral, story of story using story with a moral, etc. Like Russian dolls.
Freelance Epic-Quester for Hire. A medieval fantasy setting where a guy hires himself out for classic epic quests like rescuing a fair-maiden from a tower, for fighting a dragon in its lair. This seems like it lends itself perfectly to Terry Pratchett like humor, although I'm not sure if I can pull that off.
The Blood Bank. A government licensed blood bank for vampires. Maybe there's a monopoly on it, and of course there is all of the government corruption involved.
The Oppressed. The vamps are oppressed and don't have rights because they aren't humans. They are hunted for sport. They have no representation or recourse.
Witch Hunting. Some motive like in John Wick where it justifies blind rage and massive amounts of killing.
A Werewolf Pelt. It just seems like a werewolf pelt would have special properties and that some sort of story could be built around it.
Blood Nutrition. Vampires would go on fad diets too. There could be a whole industry around it.
Choose your own adventure gothic, romance, erotica.
Alternating perspectives in each chapter between two protagonists that have a colliding narrative, maybe they meet and have to kill each other or something.
The Demon Committee. A board meeting of demons, maybe of a college. Maybe it's just a recording of the minutes and is epistolary. Maybe frame it as a report to someone else.
Trophy Hunter. A trophy hunter of fantasy creatures. Special fangs and pelts and such. Maybe it started as revenge, then it was freelance, then it was a career. Maybe from an apprentices point of view.
I also think it would be a cool idea to include the origin stories for books in the books. Sometimes this is done, but I've never seen one I thought was too long. Maybe a how to read this book section too. Maybe an index and glossary in a novel as well.
Venom. Vampire venom is like a drug to humans. This would cause it to be treated like a drug. There would be laws around it, a black market, overdoses, etc. Maybe there is a mutual drive satisfaction between humans and vampires like bodily contact and sex are for humans. An addiction causes a positive affect if present and a negative affect if absent. The venom would, so it would be addicting.
Eye Gazing. It seems like the power of direct eye contact should have its own magic and its own story.
Predator and Prey. Stories examining humans as both predators and prey.
It seems like there should be an ideal way to train writing. Maybe you need a training ground. Maybe the retelling and retelling with variations of different fairy-tales could work. You could change the voice, the point of view, the tense, the structure, the genre, etc., all while still working with the same story. Cinderella is a great example. I believe the story goes back for several thousand years in various forms and originates from somewhere in Asia. I helped a student of mine write a different version of it, Kinderello. I wrote a post about it. You could do Cinderella as a cowgirl, a ballet dancer, a fashion model, etc.
Writing Prompts. I think I could be good at coming up with writing prompts. I could include prompts, and also how to come up with your own by pulling from history and such, which I've written a post about before.
Robert Louis Stevenson for Writers. Stevenson has great advice for writers, and he's quite an inspiring life story, and his stories have great origin stories. This could be a good book in itself.
Japanese Unit 731. I'm not sure I'm actually interested in writing this one, it might be too disturbing for me. It's a historical thing. Be careful if you want to look into it.
Biblical Archetypes. The bible has some great stories that were refined over very long periods of time. Cain and Able, David and Goliath, etc. Change characters and settings and you would still have the great structure and meaning of the stories, just connecting with more people in more ways.
Ancient Archetypes. Romulus and Remus, the 12 labors of Hercules. You could change and adjust these stories to infinity and beyond.
The Origins of Werewolves. Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a wolf, as the first werewolves. The slaying of Remus is the first time that Romulus turns.
Cast Down. The first vampire is actually a cast down angel.
Lilith. Adam's first wife as the first vampire, or witch maybe.
The Mark of Cain. Maybe the mark of Cain is vampirism.
Show don't tell reversal. An entire story that avoids showing and focuses just on telling from a narrators voice.
Crossbreed. Fantasy crossbreeding that leads to species that are like mules. They live, but they can't breed. This brings all sorts of existential crisis, and that leads to other things. They are natural rogues and outcasts.
The City of Under. The underworld as a city with different parts. Hell is between streets x and y, sometimes people try to move around. The neighborhood boundaries have issues and such.
The Bipolar God. There is a god named Luck that is bipolar and wreaks havoc on humans lives.
Layers of Motive. Kids stories that show narratively embodied motives. You can layer a story. A person is just going to get milk. A person is going to get milk to feed to their hungry baby. A person is going to get milk to feed to their hungry baby, because his wife just died. Then you can see how the motive determines what kind of obstacles a person can overcome.
Asteroid egg. An asteroid hits a school. It turns out that it's a dragon egg.
The Chosen Fae. What if fairy creatures are not separate? What if they are chosen and then modified by the current fairy creatures?
The Fall of the Dragon. If dragons did exist then man would have conquered it, farmed it, enslaved it, extincted it. This devolution process might be interesting.
Moral Engagement. The eight ways to reverse the moral disengagement talked about by Albert Bandura.
Champion for Hire. A guy that fights as a champion, someone chosen for trials by combat by the accused, for anyone that will pay him the right amount.
The Analysis of Cain and Able. I think just writing an analysis of this story would be interesting. It's so short, but has so much to say.
Demons and Angels. It flips back and forth from life in a demonarchy and an angelarchy. Maybe the systems aren't that different.
Demonologist. He studies demons. That would lead him into all sorts of interesting stuff.
Angelologist. It would be just as adventurous to study angels up close and in person.
There are a few ideas at least.
________________________________________________
I've written three fictional pieces that I like so far.
"The City of Peace" - A future history science fiction utopia/dystopia action adventure in a framed story of a father telling his son a story about the child's grandfather. That was a crazy sentence.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/08/the-xprize-writing-contest-part-5-of-5.html
"The Birth of Hanniba'al" - A dark, somewhat alternative, historical origin story for the Carthage General Hannibal.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/11/write-michigan-short-story-contest-part_30.html
"Matt's Eyes" - Don't read this if you don't like horror stories.
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2018/11/a-flash-of-horror-part-4-of-4.html
Here are three of my most popular posts.
"The Making of a Great First Line in Fiction"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/12/the-making-of-great-first-line-in.html
"A Letter to My Niece in 2034"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/12/a-letter-to-my-niece-in-2034.html
"The Most Important Question in Philosophy - Part 4 of 4"
http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2017/11/the-most-important-question-in.html
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