Thursday, January 28, 2021

Writing Update for end of January

 It's not quite the end of the month but I decided to post an end of the month wrap-up.


New Year's resolution:  write a story a week.  This month I've written five.  So far so good.


413 I Swear

414 Collateral Damage

415 I, Gardener

416 Maid Ex Machina

417 Infinte Dogo


Sometimes I feel like, for every story I finish, I begin 2 or 3 more.  This is literally true for I, Gardener because I conceived it as part of a trilogy of stories.  Why a trilogy?  Three just seems like a nice round number for so many situations.  I wrote the story The Emancipation of Philip Dos last year.  In this story, we end with Annie Two, Grandpa's computer A.I., assuming control of a robotic Nazi assassin.  They call her Annie 3-D.  Then a bit later I wrote Wilfred 2.0, in which Grandpa Anarchy got a robotic butler.


Then I wrote Miss Trinity, in which I proposed a whole series of robotic aids and helpers, all of them variations on Annie Two, Grandpa's computer A.I.  (And I should note here, these three stories form a trilogy of their own.)  But I wanted to explore all of this further, so I envisioned three stories centered on the maid, the gardener, and one of  the other Annie Two robotic clones.  I titled these stories I, Gardener (written earlier in the month); Maid Ex Machina (finished this week) and I Think Therefor (not yet written.)


So far so good, yes?  I mean I plotted three stories and wrote two of them.  If I finish the third then surely I'm finishing my story ideas rather than creating more of them, yes?


Well... not quite.  For you see, I initially had no idea what Maid Ex Machina was about, other than it involving the robotic maid.  I also had an idea for a villain named Riddle Me Rhino, and so I wrote an entire opening scene in which Grandpa and sidekick investigate the scene of a bank robbery, and it's clear that Riddle Me Rhino was the perpetrator.


And... this did not seem to fit my goal for my story.  The maid wasn't in the first scene and I didn't have a reason to bring her in later.  Obviously based on the title Maid Ex Machina, I could just have her pop into the story at the end, completely out of the blue, to solve everything... but then I would be guilty of writing a story where the title was the ending.  Instead I came up with a new idea involving the villain the Clichémonger, who is just the type to kidnap an innocent maid and threaten her life, because he's a very traditional villain of course.


Thus, I spun my first scene off into a new story file called Riddle Me This -- to maybe be completed later.


Likewise I thought it would be funny if the Clichémonger threatened to reveal Grandpa's secret identity, because he doesn't really have one.  I was trying to write this angle into my story but it wouldn't work, because (of course) the kidnapping of the maid and the revealing of Grandpa's secret identity are two different crimes, and trying to shove them together was confusing and messy.  So I spun all of the secret identity stuff into another story file called, appropriately enough, Secret Identity.


So, yeah... wrote one story, but created two more story files.  :P


In the same manner I've managed to finally write most of Infinite Dojo this week.  This was a story I planned after writing Miss Trinity, in which I expanded on everything Annie Two and Glory Ashes have been up to... namely not just building a bunch of robots, but first building a complex beneath the Anarchy Cave which included the manufacturing facilities for said robots.


Of course, along the way I thought of too many different things to do with said complex, and before I knew it I had enough ideas for a second trilogy.   The first story is Infinite Dojo.  The second story I titled Princess of Pluto, and for the third I am calling it The Return of Normal.  The second involves a robotic magical girl based on Annie Two, and the third involves a demonic entity buried deep beneath the Anarchy Mansion which the new complex has awoken... and/or also the return of Victorian Honesty St. Normal, an enemy and neighbor of Kid Anarchy's in the 1920's.


So, again, I write one story, and create two more story files.  :P


Of course I've had other story ideas as well.  In the last week I've created these story files:  Day Trader (a story inspired by the GameStop day trader shenanigans.  Not sure where it would go but I suspect Annie Two has made more money for Grandpa Anarchy), Oumuamua (about the weird asteroid/satellite from outside our solar system, of course), The Great Pillow War (about... well not really about the My Pillow Guy, but that was my inspiration) and Save the Cat (a 'save the cat' moment is when a horrifying person/creature takes pity on a kitten or other cute animal, thus showing you that they're only ugly on the outside and are really one of the good guys).


That's what I'm working on.  Current goal is to write I Think Therefor or else Princess of Pluto next.

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