Plot ideas
Sep. 17th, 2012 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesI miss doing NaNoWriMo. I'd like to do it again, even if I'm supposed to be writing my $@)&%( thesis. So I'm going to brainstorm story ideas. Because I'm a lot better at worldbuilding than plotting sometimes.
The Season-born World: I was going to do this one for NaNo some time ago, but didn't.
So, basic premise is a world every 19 years changes seasons overnight. Suddenly you go from 80 degree (F) summers to 50 degree autumns and it stays like that for years, complete with color-changing trees and plants that grow comfortably in these conditions. This also affects the animals and people: for instance, humans born in the winter look almost yeti-like, regardless of what their parents were.
Normally the Winterborn and Summerborn humans trade, which also includes shipping off pregnant women so their kids will be around people who can take care of them (and not be totally miserable in a season they weren't born for). But the Autumnborn and Springborn humans look pretty similar, so they figured out they could avoid having off-season kids and ignore the rest of the world.
Anyway, the plot skeleton is that the matriarch of a Middleborn (Autumn and Spring) family is pretty damn close to menopause and hasn't yet had a kid to pass things on to. (It's a matrilineal society.) She's worried about this and pushes things too close, and suddenly she has a boatload of stigma and a pregnancy that she'll have to give up for adoption. This world also has a Springborn kid who's the daughter of Winterborn people and her dealing with living in a culture where blood family is everything but her birth-parents being from a culture where family is much more a cohort of your peers and a cohort of elders, and no one knows their parents.
So, that's a plot, I guess, but I don't really know where it goes.
I wrote a short story in this world here. (and a post here) None of these characters, just a meditation on aging.
Other ideas:
• Suddenly a chunk of the population of a patriarchal society wakes up at the opposite sex because magic. I'd want this to be social fiction with stuff about how bits of sex and gender can both be defining (ask any trans* or non-binary person) and arbitrary (gender roles).
• An alien ship that is minimally crewed and pretty much exists to develop a biosphere from scratch lands in the Antarctic. I have a short story idea about the discovery (and a team originally put together to hunt meteorites trying to dissuade various governments from either blowing it up or trying to capture any crew and technology and generally start an international incident (at least). Also going with this discussion on a first contact where both we and the aliens make each other sick and the biospheres are generally hostile to one another.
• Ecological magic. This one's a bit like the season born story, in that environment changes people, but more this one is about mages that shape the environment, and wars fought by imposing a worldview on someone. Like an undersea civilization will not only flood islands, but turn the people into mermaids and the animals and plants into things that can live comfortably there.
• A YA novel about magic that can find the best possible spouse for you, and a society whose nobility and upper classes uses it. About the only plot idea I have is that somehow the magic brings in a teenaged girl from Earth and she has to deal with the idea that destined love in a fantasy kingdom full of magic and sparkles and stuff isn't all it's cracked up to be. With a possible twist that the magic was more honing in on 'we need these people from these worlds to protect against a threat' rather than anything like love. (Also working with the idea that the magic is het-only since the idea of marriage is shaped by 'can help conceive and raise your heirs', but tends to pair gay and trans people together (and there's not much stigma against lovers as long as they can't mess with the succession and don't cause drama).
The Season-born World: I was going to do this one for NaNo some time ago, but didn't.
So, basic premise is a world every 19 years changes seasons overnight. Suddenly you go from 80 degree (F) summers to 50 degree autumns and it stays like that for years, complete with color-changing trees and plants that grow comfortably in these conditions. This also affects the animals and people: for instance, humans born in the winter look almost yeti-like, regardless of what their parents were.
Normally the Winterborn and Summerborn humans trade, which also includes shipping off pregnant women so their kids will be around people who can take care of them (and not be totally miserable in a season they weren't born for). But the Autumnborn and Springborn humans look pretty similar, so they figured out they could avoid having off-season kids and ignore the rest of the world.
Anyway, the plot skeleton is that the matriarch of a Middleborn (Autumn and Spring) family is pretty damn close to menopause and hasn't yet had a kid to pass things on to. (It's a matrilineal society.) She's worried about this and pushes things too close, and suddenly she has a boatload of stigma and a pregnancy that she'll have to give up for adoption. This world also has a Springborn kid who's the daughter of Winterborn people and her dealing with living in a culture where blood family is everything but her birth-parents being from a culture where family is much more a cohort of your peers and a cohort of elders, and no one knows their parents.
So, that's a plot, I guess, but I don't really know where it goes.
I wrote a short story in this world here. (and a post here) None of these characters, just a meditation on aging.
Other ideas:
• Suddenly a chunk of the population of a patriarchal society wakes up at the opposite sex because magic. I'd want this to be social fiction with stuff about how bits of sex and gender can both be defining (ask any trans* or non-binary person) and arbitrary (gender roles).
• An alien ship that is minimally crewed and pretty much exists to develop a biosphere from scratch lands in the Antarctic. I have a short story idea about the discovery (and a team originally put together to hunt meteorites trying to dissuade various governments from either blowing it up or trying to capture any crew and technology and generally start an international incident (at least). Also going with this discussion on a first contact where both we and the aliens make each other sick and the biospheres are generally hostile to one another.
• Ecological magic. This one's a bit like the season born story, in that environment changes people, but more this one is about mages that shape the environment, and wars fought by imposing a worldview on someone. Like an undersea civilization will not only flood islands, but turn the people into mermaids and the animals and plants into things that can live comfortably there.
• A YA novel about magic that can find the best possible spouse for you, and a society whose nobility and upper classes uses it. About the only plot idea I have is that somehow the magic brings in a teenaged girl from Earth and she has to deal with the idea that destined love in a fantasy kingdom full of magic and sparkles and stuff isn't all it's cracked up to be. With a possible twist that the magic was more honing in on 'we need these people from these worlds to protect against a threat' rather than anything like love. (Also working with the idea that the magic is het-only since the idea of marriage is shaped by 'can help conceive and raise your heirs', but tends to pair gay and trans people together (and there's not much stigma against lovers as long as they can't mess with the succession and don't cause drama).
