Getting Creative Again

All this wasted time

I've wasted a lot of time on Dramatica, and although it has good points, it's led me down some horrendous dead-ends.  During that time I've no actually been doing any new writing on the story, apart from a few sketches which I will probably have to throw away now. 

I've been doing my new story theory system for just a couple of posts and already it's prompted me to do some of that actual creative thinking stuff.  You know, actual writing.  The thing I'm supposed to be doing, and that writing model systems are supposed to be helping me with? 

So for almost the first time in this blog, I'm going to have to make something up on the hoof.  Be afraid.


Story Hooks

Whenever I write an initial sketch of a story such as Fiend, I try to leave little hooks in the narrative so that I can come back later and fill in the gaps.  Sometimes these gaps are never filled, but most of the time it gives me a way to stitch together what I've written in the early stages with what I come up with later.

In the Fiend storyline, I have deliberately left some 'mysteries' to serve as hooks for me to use later when I've worked out a suitable plot.  Now is that time.  Let's see the hooks.

Hook 1: Why was Fiend locked in the church?  And How?
Hook 2: Who did Jake kill, and why?
Hook 3: What happened to his parents?
Hook 4: What is Fiend all about, what does he want, who is he?
Hook 5: Where is the police or authorities in all this?
Hook 6: How did they defeat him before?
Hook 7: How do they defeat him this time that is different?

And because we've done some work on threads and themes, we now have a couple of new hooks:

Hook 8: Why do the older ones not tell Jake the truth?
Hook 9: What terrible thing was done to defeat Fiend last time?

Let's look at the hooks one by one. 


Hook 1 : Why was Fiend locked in the church?  And How?

Fiend is locked in a church and can't get out.  So is someone feeding him, taking out his waste, giving him medication?  Sounds unlikely.  And why can't an able-bodied full-grown man break out of such a prison with such a long period unsupervised?  And he starts off as an old, sick man, but by the end of the story he is young, vigorous and almost invincible?  And there's the timeline... he was already an adult twenty years previously, but he seems the same now.

You know what I'm saying.  Fiend has to be immortal.  But is he a scientific immortal, or a supernatural immortal?  Even though our characters may now know his nature, we need to know.  This will change the genre of the book.


Supernormal or Supernatural?

A scientific immortal could be someone who has undergone some sort of transformation, eaten something or exposed to something which has stopped cell degeneration.  Or he could be a different species of human from an earlier time who has survived through the ages, all his contemporaries having been wiped out by humans.  Or perhaps even an alien, a shape-shifter.  But he is a normal part of the universe and must obey the normal rules of physics.  In other words, an immortal based on science fiction.

A supernatural immortal is something akin to my original idea of a vampire.  A beast which doesn't obey the rules of our world because he is not of this world, he is one of the demons from the various pantheons of world religion.  He can utilise magic and arcane powers to achieve what he wants. But he operates in a world of rules, and can be defeated by certain things, hexes, potions, magic which can be used against him.  In other words, an immortal based on the supernatural.

But which one?  You know, I quite liked the idea that we weren't sure.  Although I need to know, I don't think the reader needs to know until quite close to the end.  There is something to be gained from the characters fearing his is supernatural rather than supernormal.  And my normal aversion for cheesy horror and liking for scientific rationality veers me towards the science fiction monster.

Fiend is an immortal being, one of a dwindling few of a race of humans who have existed throughout time, creating chaos where they go.  Our characters don't know this, though some may eventually find out, as will the reader.  Many of them start to fear him as a supernatural being, but they are wrong.

If you're scoffing at the idea of an immortal being, consider the unusual case of turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish, which alternates between its adult and juvenile forms, apparently forever, as far as science can tell.  It can happen in the natural world.  In fact, I might even use this snippet in the book.

[Story Note]  turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish


Locked away

So why and how was he locked away?  The why is obvious.  He had been out before, and he had caused chaos in much the same way as he does in the present day story, in fact if the hints from the theme threads are correct, he was even more destructive then.   Someone locked him away.

Why a church?  Well this related to the fact that the people defeating him may have thought him a supernatural being, a demon who needed to be put in a church to contain him. 

So he can be trapped by some means, perhaps if starved of a certain type of nutrient, his strength saps, even if he does not die.  He was poisoned, dragged into the ante-chamber of the church, and left.  When he awoke, he was already weakened by lack of the nutrient, and never recovered. his strength enough to escape.  Sounds reasonable.  The person must have found out the weakness, and got close enough to use the poison.  That's a story worth knowing!

[Story Note] the backstory of the who and how of Fiend's original incarceration in the Church


The Answer to Hook 1?

Why was Fiend locked in the church?  And How?
Fiend, an immortal form of human, was poisoned and dragged there by someone as yet unknown.  That person probably did not know that Fiend needed a certain nutrient to be strong, instead believing that the power of the church would hold a supernatural being.  That person poisoned him or otherwise incapacitated him, and dragged him to the church and locked them in an ante chamber.  Fiend exists in a twilight of weakness, eating insects and rodents and drinking rainwater to survive.

This raises a couple of new hooks.

Hook 10:  What happened to the minister and the church to make it abandoned?
Hook 11: What nutrient is it, and what is it found it?


That'll do for this post

It actually feels good to be creating stuff again, Dramatica got me involved in the depths of its own mythology that I'd almost lost sight of what it is I'm supposed to be working on - the actual creation of a plot.