I just finished two books and am still in the edit process for
one. Now is the time in the cycle to start something new. Have you ever wanted
to see inside the head of a writer as he develops a story idea from scratch?
It’s a process I refer to a random sequencing. The only comparisons I can use
are outlining an invisible person using a ping pong ball in a tornado or
panning for gold in a canoe. In days of listening to music and musing, I get maybe one
nugget. It takes at least three compatible puzzle pieces to make a novel.
Directing the process is worse than herding cats. I want my muse to develop my
budding story “Behind the Walls of Sleep.” Before I can write past the fifth
chapter, I need to finish building the world. From experience, this can take
six to eight weeks, with no guarantee of outcome. The last time I tried to
finish this story, the idea for “Jezebel’s Ladder” intruded.
Day 1
I try to develop the mechanics of the dream world. I get two
single-spaced pages about rules for goblins. Wizards treat them like trash but
they’re really important lesser faerie. To keep them from tunneling into your
stronghold, there are four methods: stone slabs, renewing magic wards daily,
pockets of nightmare in your basement, or hiring a dim goblin to be your
janitor—he’ll keep the others out with goblin hospitality rules.
Day 2
Flesh in the dream world is the same as spirit here. I talk
with a zen master character about what the dirt in Astra is made of. He says
the same thing as here: crushed mountains, dead things, manure, insects, worms,
and microorganisms you can’t see. These all have analogues in the dream world.
What’s the bottom layer? Adam or a giant turtle. I Google fairy rings as gates
and boundaries. Today is only one page of notes. This is frustrating so I concentrate on the details about
the goblins. I decide they could be Japanese bakemono.
Day 3
I look into bakemono and feel a resonance for the part where
they are yokai who can transform. In this case, the one in the tavern in town
is a giant rat. Oni with an iron club is also an interesting concept I’d like
to use--similar to double Varja. I research Shintoism next. The barriers between the mundane and sacred
space are the most interesting.
Day 4
I decide that my fantasy stories don’t sell nearly as well
as my science fiction. I have NO idea whether I can pull of YA literature and
have been advised to stick to my strengths by colleagues. Okay. Let’s try to
direct the muse to a well-constructed science fiction world where I can
establish a series. My first two ideas only cover half a page and they are
superhero driven. Those don’t sell well, and they are more fantasy. The third
starts interestingly enough with the recent destructive “asteroid” in Russia being an
emissary from another world—one of their royals. Common enough, but in this
story, we kill him pretty quickly. Scientists gleefully examining his craft and
body for new technology discover a signal being transmitted. A fugitive from
the galactic empire on Earth tells us that this is the destruct button. We just
declared war on the empire. Our only hope is to send out two missions: one to
hide the seeds of our race in the galaxy hub, and the other to a prison world
on the edge of the blight. If we can convince the royal imprisoned there to
help us before the fleet crosses the blight, we have a slim chance. Either way,
it will be a war against species extermination. Only a small minority of humans
have the mutation that can survive the imperfect jump drive we cobble together
on hollowed asteroids of our own. Some volunteer, but mutations with ANY
criminal record are drafted by the UN to fight for us. Lots of exploration and
meeting odd aliens. This space opera also verges on comic book. I did similar
things for role playing campaigns—not mainstream enough.
Day 5
I run with the genetic idea. I also like the idea of
one-word titles to sum up the concept. The core McGuffin in the series will be
a technique, available to any billion-dollar mega-corporation or government, to
splice specific minor progressive DNA changes onto an embryo. They have very
little idea what we’re doing, but it works through trial and error. The company
that discovers a key sequence gets to copyright it for 50 years. Monsanto does
this with plants now, and there are companies trying to do it with adult DNA of
people they’ve tested. There have been a number of stories about trying to make
the smartest/strongest person, but this will be about the wild west era before
it is mainstream. Think of the race for the gene sequences to make newborns
immune to AIDs or cancer. The effects can only be realized in the next
generation. Since children have no rights, the parents have to sign the
agreements. In exchange, the children are cared for in communal daycares
(crèches). The desirable ones are educated for free and given limited use of
their own DNA in exchange for corporate loyalty. Think of people like
iphones—locked into one carrier, useless for any other vendor or if you fail to
make regular payments. Governments like this arrangement because it lowers
crime rates and population growth while raising taxes. It will need to be set
somewhere with lax human rights and big problems. 3D printers should also feature
prominently in this world.
Let’s explore what we can do with this groundwork and one
interesting word.
Broken
This story is about a boy who was part of a batch of 100
trying to achieve a specific mix. The indicator of splicing success (glowing
skin patch, eye color, etc) didn’t manifest, and he’s literally stamped as a
reject. He’s raised in a crèche with 20 other rejects, many of whom don’t live
long because the trait they are hunting is on a very narrow isthmus. His own
mother refuses to visit him when she finds out he’s a reject. Instead, he bonds
to one of the nannies and is the only one of his class to reach eighteen alive.
He can solve genius level problems but takes longer than genius time. He’s a
further disappointment and washes out of the scholarship program. From there,
he signs an extension of his “mineral rights” to the company in exchange for
college. At age 30, he still looks 20 and wants to date. To have access to his
own reproductive organs, he has to get the device implanted in him “unlocked”.
The corporate rights expired but they still refuse to release him. He has to
find a lawyer to take his case for free/cheap. A woman with a maternal streak
and bio-rights issues of her own takes the case. Perhaps he reminds her of a
politician or philosopher long dead. Once she unlocks him, they have a brief
affair, and as payment she collects her offspring with desired traits. Back at
the corporate labs they discover he not only lived longer than all the rejects,
but he lived longer than all the members of the near success group. Since he
was never completely sequenced and his samples were discarded with forfeit of
rights, the company is now hunting him. In the end, the lawyer claims first
rights to his DNA sequence. Consider right of first refusal in contract.
Senescence
This is a beautiful word referring to the propensity for the
next generation cell copy to degrade just a little. It causes aging and
eventually mutation and death. This is our built-in self-destruct mechanism as
a species. What if someone constructed a DNA sequence that copied true—it would
be the next best thing to immortality.
Selfie
The ultimate in self-gratification—a photo of yourself taken
by you. Cloning is illegal, but if you find someone close enough, you can
print-slice a very close image. This is ideal for organ transplants and more
often: young blood. Getting regular infusions of blood and marrow from your
younger self can help a person live twenty to forty years longer. Of course,
they younger you might have something to say about his process...especially if
there are coldblooded as you are.
Chimera
In a rare genetic condition, non-identical twins in the womb
fuse into one person—a chimera. These two sets of DNA can compliment each other
or fight. The dynamic system is fluid and ever changing.
Automata
Conway’s
Game of Life evolves as DNA computers become a reality. Viruses and bacteria
join the model in our systems. The human body solves colds and infections every
year. Complex problems can be cracked by setting up a person to live the problem
to its conclusion. Not all problems are solvable in 70 years and sometimes the
experiment is disrupted by external factors. Touching other humans changes the
equations and microorganisms are exchanged. What happens when someone “solves”
a big problem? We have to bring the answer back to the lab.
Next Step
Ideas won’t stop gushing. Now I need to do the hard work and
build this world a layer at a time. Instead, last night, I get a dream about a whole new
fantasy magic system where sound is the source of creation. Tuning forks,
fairies, and angels feature. One character explains to me that angels were
formed when God said “Let there be light”—resonance effects and wave
interference patterns, standing waves and superstrings. Wait... change the channel
back one!
