Unused story ideas you can use

[catalog]

Over the years I've written out a few half baked ideas for things that have never gone anywhere. I put a few of them into the zine smog that I've flogged a few copies of / given away / swapped for other zines.

Here's one from there.

A writer of some sort, a poet or someone, a critic or a commentator, someone like that, is being interviewed by a TV crew in their house,
their house being rather barren, like a shed, maybe out in the country, but cosy, and all sorts of big stuff gets said in the interview, like take-
downs of people, or clarifications, and then you as a viewer, or as an audience, a reader or whatever, you see the bits that are not included, or you see the bits they talk about afterwards or in between, like you see how constructed the construction is, and then the smog comes down, and the thing twists, something violent happens.

I have a lot of fragments of specific scenes, like this, rather than entire stories that have been worked out, or ideas that could be said to be complete stories.

 

[IdleRich]

Do you know this play called Noises Off? I never seen it, but people say it's good and the concept sounds vaguely similar

The Dream of Scipio (novel) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[catalog]

I've heard of noises off, but never read it or seen it performed, I don't think. That link is the same one as you posted for wash BTW 😁

 

[catalog]

It would be quite funny to just post the same respinse to 20 people in a row and no one notices

 

[IdleRich]

Oh bollocks soz

 

[shakahislop]

I had the idea of an art installation which is just twenty unlocked phones with all the previous owner's stuff still on them

 

[IdleRich]

Well technically I'm asking for stories not art exhibitions, but that could be the start of a story, must be lots of ways a phone can lead someone into an adventure.

 

[IdleRich]

Phone call from a dead man like in Seconds, but there must be all kinds of modern updates on that now...

 

[IdleRich]

I do find those Rackham pics kinda creepy... not intentionally so I feel.

There is an illustrator from Denmark called Kay Neilsen that I like... and there is another illustrator whose name I'm struggling to remember that to my mind makes up the third part of a triumvirate with Nielsen and Rackham... hmmm

Anyway, here are some random pics from Kay Nielsen, I dunno how well known he is, but his pictures are incredible - proper art nouveau stuff that seems more like Beardsley or Dore than pics to stick beside a story for children. I'm on the verge of saying that they are wasted on children which would of course be incredibly foolish - thinking back on it stories were probably the best thing in the world for me up to a certain age and magical pictures beside them can only have made them better.

I suppose that what I am saying is that there is a lot more to Nielsen's stuff than to Rackham's work which, at least in the UK (unsurprisingly I suppose) seems to be much more famous and highly regarded. But does anyone know another children's illustrator in a similar style whose name I can't recall just now?


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The other illustrator I was trying to remember was some guy called Dulac





Very beautiful I think...

 

[IdleRich]

Can't sleep... started thinking about a story I almost bothered writing...

It's a kinda noir type thing set in alternative 50s California. The protagonist is a sort of private detective who has taken lucrative semi-retirement to work as body guard/fixer keeping the playboy son of some local politician out of trouble.

At the start he gets called to this guy's new house in some swanky new development in the desert. Guy has a dead girl there in his swimming pool and at first our hero assumes it was some sort of od, don't wanna get involved. But eventually he discovers body was there before he moved in, clears him

More weird stuff happens and it turns out there was some team of scientists, an off-shoot of Manhattan Project working in some bunker in the desert. Seems their food was contaminated by radiation... loads of them died and the rest went crazy, seeing mad visions etc they formed a death cult worshipping the bomb and they believe it will soon cleanse the earth wiping out the impure. a vision told them that the only place that will be safe is the posh new development - and that only if they sacrifice people at certain points in the foundations and hide the bodies there.

This cult is all fucked up and they dress like metal paco Rabanne angels, have weird orgies drinking radioactive poison and kidnapping new recruits, chaining them up in bunkers and forcing them to drink radioactive hallucinogens... those that survive join them.

And Detective figures it all out and stops it somehow, haven't really thought about how, maybe turns up in other books dressing cool and talking smart like a scifi Philip Marlowe.

 

[catalog]

Half sunset Boulevard, don't know what the other half is

 

[IdleRich]

What I described?

 

[IdleRich]

Another one... or a general theme, I'm interested in books about cultures that have decayed and lost their wisdom etc

So on that theme I had this idea of a city or country or something which has an outpost maybe at a mountain pass or something, the only approach from some nearby wilderness. So as the outpost is manned and the pass is guarded then the city/country is guarded. And there are at least two ways of writing it from there...

1. The outpost is staffed by these kinda AI robot type things programmed to guard the pass and protect the city. But basically they lose contact with the city and they slowly degenerate over the centuries until they are going through the motions without knowing why. And you don't know whether the city is still there any more or what. I guess someone tries to cross the pass and that sets off a chain of events that reveals what's going on

2. Same but instead of robots it's people and their descendants guarding it in perpetuity, but over the generations they forget what's going on and the rules they follow have become a misunderstood religion etc

 

[sufi]

Another one... or a general theme, I'm interested in books about cultures that have decayed and lost their wisdom etc

So on that theme I had this idea of a city or country or something which has an outpost maybe at a mountain pass or something, the only approach from some nearby wilderness. So as the outpost is manned and the pass is guarded then the city/country is guarded. And there are at least two ways of writing it from there...

1. The outpost is staffed by these kinda AI robot type things programmed to guard the pass and protect the city. But basically they lose contact with the city and they slowly degenerate over the centuries until they are going through the motions without knowing why. And you don't know whether the city is still there any more or what. I guess someone tries to cross the pass and that sets off a chain of events that reveals what's going on

2. Same but instead of robots it's people and their descendants guarding it in perpetuity, but over the generations they forget what's going on and the rules they follow have become a misunderstood religion etc

Neal Stephenson - Anathem

The personal website of author Neal Stephenson, unless it's been hacked.

nealstephenson.com

&

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

?

 

[catalog]

What I described?

it feels like it exists, but i don't know it, the other half i mean

 

[sufi]

Neal Stephenson - Anathem

The personal website of author Neal Stephenson, unless it's been hacked.

nealstephenson.com

&

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

?

though th ewiki page for anathem doesnt sound that much like what i remember tbh, maybe i didnt finish it 🥱

 

[IdleRich]

Or related sort of, a future in which humans advanced to a stage where they can, in fact have, transferred their consciousness to a network of huve minds... which has kinda degenerated over time leaving ignorant multiple-minds bound up together.

I didn't really have a plot for this one, I just want to sort of figure out how to write the experience of a joint consciousness like that. I feel people have sort of done it before but never satisfactorily to my mind.

 

[IdleRich]

Neal Stephenson - Anathem

The personal website of author Neal Stephenson, unless it's been hacked.

nealstephenson.com

&

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

?

It's weird, I saw a puff piece about the Canticle one yesterday but didn't read it. I'm assuming they are similar themes?

I think in sci-fi or fantasy a sort of decayed world is a particular branch right? Like often the reader can recognize the remnants of a civilisation from the mystified descriptions of the characters - a clue that their world is a post-apocalyptic version of ours.

Will have a look at those links anyhow thank you

 

[sufi]

Or related sort of, a future in which humans advanced to a stage where they can, in fact have, transferred their consciousness to a network of huve minds... which has kinda degenerated over time leaving ignorant multiple-minds bound up together.

I didn't really have a plot for this one, I just want to sort of figure out how to write the experience of a joint consciousness like that. I feel people have sort of done it before but never satisfactorily to my mind.

you can combine that with this genius concept

tbh my theory is that dreams are non-verbal commandments from outerspace about how we should pilot the planet towards our sci-fi destiny, mostly we forget them, but we still play out their script mindlessly and ineptly
aphantasists are immune of course

 

[IdleRich]

it feels like it exists, but i don't know it, the other half i mean

So you're saying there is a story - which you can't remember right now - that if you kinda spliced it together with Sunset Boulevard you would get the idea I put above?

I don't really see the SB link, I think it sounds more like Janes Ellroy or Raymond Chandler meets Alan Moore. I'm not saying it would be as good as that, just that reading back that's where I ahem borrowed the ideas from.