Damn, I just can’t keep to deadlines, can I?

Was rather busy yesterday with university “homework”, so I forgot to do this weeks writing entry as planned – still,there’s always a second chance! Anyhoo…

When you’re feeling uninspired with your own plots and pitches, remind yourself that just about any inkling of an idea can be turned into an engaging story with enough effort. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was an absolute bestseller, subverting the usual twee conventions of Austen with undead horrors and glorious gore! Hell, wasn’t the City of Bones, a legend among YA fantasy, founded on a rather dubious Weasley fanfiction? No, I’m not joking – look it up. Even classical literature is not exempt from silly prompts. James Joyce’s Ulysses is a mere day in Dublin drawn out like some exotic and bizarre epic. Kafka too thrived on the weird. What’s stopping you?

I know it sounds rich me coming up with plotlines – for the past four months I’ve only worked on one story. Mind, Noumenal is not exempt from bizarre inspirations – I got the idea for it from crossover fanfiction! Did you know that three of the longest pieces of writing ever made were fanfiction?

• The subspace Emissary’s World Conquest (Super Smash Bros fanfiction – already a crossover): Over 4 Million words.
• Ambience, a fleet symphony (Kancolle fanfiction): Over 4.5 Million words.
• Loud house revamped (Exactly what it says on the tin): 31 Million and still counting!

Each one of these corkers dwarves the longest classics: Proust’s big boy “Remembrance of things past” (1,267,069 words). Are they worth the read? Well, even if you’re into deranged, plodding narratives, they can be overwhelming. Yet this is where I found the idea for Noumenal. Let’s hope to god it isn’t as drawn out as any of these!

The psuedo-crossover nature of Noumenal has also required me to consider populating my narrative with “fake fiction” – creating clear basis for the unusual incidents and characters who will accost Peter Stout and co on their Journey. Thus, I’ve adapted a kind of prompt exercise I learned recently in a university seminar, which I’ll explain to you shortly! To make full use of it, one must learn to embrace the stupid, and dig for ideas among the trash.

“Toffee codger” method – Embracing the inane.

Now that’s a title you’re unlikely to forget. It all started, as many of my ideas do, with my brother.

Some three years ago, my brother was getting a taste for DND and wanted to run a campaign of his own. It was all grand idea for set pieces – sculpted hillsides embossed with faces, a ridge of smouldering coal built upon a giants spine and eldritch tombs dotted about. There was one problem, however – he couldn’t think of a satisfying antagonist. Being a low-level campaign, he was cautious to exceed the capabilities of potential pcs, but that did restrict the grandiosity of his designs. So he struggled. A necromancer felt too routine. A rock-giant might explain the carvings on the hillside, but it didn’t feel special enough to constitute the BBEG. He was stuck.

So he set me down to brainstorm some ideas, and I will confess that I wasn’t really into the whole thing. We freewrote for fifteen minutes, but my attempt at serious fantasy designs with an unengaged brain was hopeless. When we had done, he asked me what I’d done.

“Nothing worth saying.”

“You’ve written something.” He said. “Read it, even if it’s tosh.” Tosh, you say? I’d give him tosh! A rather bitter attempt at humour sparked something…odd in my subconscious. I didn’t read what I’d written, but winged the entire thing. The first thing I suggested?

“Howabout the Toffee Codger?” Something clicked. “Like…an evil Willy Wonka who captures kids and forces them to make candy?”

“Ben.” coughed my brother frankly, “Are you taking the mic. That’s a stupid idea.” It was a stupid idea…but I wanted to take it further. I asked him to hear me out.

“What if he’s some kind of krampus who abducts spoilt children?What if he crystalises his victims in solid toffee like Amber and displays them like sculptures around his lair? Hey, maybe he’s got dentures made of rubies!” Bit by bit, I won my brother over, and he was scribbling things down as he laughed. What followed were many more ideas so stupid that no DM before had ever thought of them, but with a little work turned into something extremely charming. Since then, the campaign never saw fruition, but whenever I suggested another controversially odd idea for a project, I asked him to remember the glory of the Toffee Codger.

This is not really original advice. You’ve heard the stock phrase “So stupid, it might work!” and seen how many contemporary classics were shunned by historical publishers for being too unorthodox. However, I have rather inconsiderately made it my creative mantra – if I want to avoid cliches, if I want to make something a reader won’t forget, I need to be stupid.

Let’s put this to practise. Here’s another example of a stupid story idea:

Bogeymen are menaced by a serial killer.

• Your stereotypical family of dorky monsters. They haunt a house purely to scare the wits out of children for fun, whilst holding no intention of actually harming anyone. If anything, their purpose is to discourage people from exploring the manor, as it’s conceiling some dangerous secrets.
• Unfortunately, they are taught real terror when a child outright seeks refuge their after escaping abduction from a serial killer…who knows where their victim is hiding and, as an adult, does not fear the night.
• Another subversion – The kid discovers the secret…and is possessed by a being vile enough to match the murderer! The killer flees in terror, but returns with a mob to slay the “abomination” of the manor. Thus the dilemma – how do the bogeymen stop innocents led by a sadistic monster from being massacred by a traumatised child turned nightmare?

Not the cleanest idea, I must say. A bit cliche – corrupted innocence is absolute slop, even to someone who doesn’t read much horror. Still, it’s one hell of an idea!

Here are some more stupid prompts I can think of off the top of my head:

• Americans invade a stranded alien fleet.
• A soap character becomes self aware. (E.g. Peter Stout!)
• A man chokes to death on a bible.
• Soap as an alien currency.
• The creation story as told by cattle.
• An insectoid civilisation develops in the ancient remains of a peanut butter jar.
• Molemen steal an entire library.

Well, that’s enough of that for a day. Anyone want to suggest some stupid ideas to transform into works of art? Hope you have a good week in the meantime – Next chapter of Noumenal is still set to release next sunday!