writing thoughts

[redbird]

I suspect part of my problem is that I'm not sure how to get my characters--most of whom I do like--to a place that I'd want to be, or that I think they would want to be. (Okay, romance and NRE can do a lot for anyone's opinion of the world, so my main characters could wind up content despite it all.) This idea was sparked by pameladean mentioning that when they created Liavek, it had to be a place they would want to live.

My characters are sitting in New York City in October 2001. Depending on how the plot turns, they're likely to be doing something of an alternate universe, but it's departing from a recent here and now. And I'm sitting in New York City in March 2003, and not sure how to rewind the film and set them on a different turning. In one sense, okay, it's an alien contact novel, and that would have to change things--but in what ways and how? Shall I try wish-fulfillment and have the aliens kidnap Bush and Cheney and implant chips in them that make them nicer people, or something? And what would happen if those guys did have major changes of heart--whether genuine crisis of conscience, or effects of a stroke, or such?

Maybe I should set this aside and set something well in the past, or far enough in the future that I don't have to worry that the headlines will make it obsolete in annoying ways before I finish the first draft.

I feel like rambling about Neanderthals, who lived in our homes before us but don't seem to have been our ancestors. But that's laboring under the multi-ton shadow of all of Jean Auel's bestsellers. Oh, well, if I can write a romantic plot between intelligent adults after Pride and Prejudice, Auel shouldn't be a problem.

Comments

[almeda.livejournal.com]

You could always have Something Nasty and alien-related happen before Sept. that causes the world to go on high alert preemptively.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Or you could have the aliens take the human POV characters away at relativistic speeds and return six months/fifty years later. You have to decide if it's secret history or alternate history or what.

As for Neanderthals, it isn't just Jean Auel, there have been some quite good things, but you didn't let that put you off writing a first contact story!

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

My character has just looked up & down the avenue to check the skyline, reassured herself that all is well with the world, and hustled on with her very strange day.

As you might imagine, I've been stuck there for a while.

Neanderthals. *What* a good idea.

Or maybe a story set on pre-moon Earth.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

sympathies. *hug*

My excessively ambitious magnum opus is set in 1998; it was set there when I started writing in in 95/96, I played a little with Y2K stuff, but there is no way it can be set any later, all those people would be completely different people in a world with the value of future we have now from who they are in that story; this is annoying, as it is the kind of novel that is usually set in an unspecified day-after-tomorrow, and I'm not sure if this will affect it's sellability. But then, goodness knows when if ever I'll be able to finish the thing, so it's not the end of the world.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Yes it is!

(Footnote: It's a novel about Armageddon.)