Hatrack River Writers Workshop: 1000 ideas,

This is topic 1000 ideas, in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :

The Dragon thread got me thinking about the old Thousand ideas thing we did a while ago. It was fun so shall we go again?
Let's do something on the Fantasy spectrum like magical animals, what are they? Where did they come from? What is so special about them? WOuldn't it be easer to use a wombat?

Or if anyone has a better seed I'm open.

Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

I'm always up for something on the fantasy spectrum, since the great American Novel I'm currently working on is fantasy.

Might you be kind enough to explain the guidelines for a neophyte such as myself?

Edited by suggestion

[This message has been edited by Elan (edited April 09, 2005).]

Posted by Jaina (Member # 2387) on :

This really isn't much of an idea, but your thread reminded me of a dog I used to have. Her name was Wombie because she looked like a wombat (except for her ears) and we were half certain that she was from another planet. Mostly because she seemed to constantly be receiving messages from her home planet (which might be because she had this funny way of sitting with her head cocked just so, and her ears were too big for the rest of her so they looked like receiver dishes).

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

I hate to get nitpicky, but this isn't really how thousand ideas works. The point of thousand ideas is not to start with something specific like a magical animal, because you've already limited some of those thousand ideas.

When OSC did this in boot camp (just like when he described it in his books) He starts one of these ways:

1. You have a character. Male or Female?

That's all you get. He goes with the first person to call out a gender that isn't their own and then asks about the age...and then what kind of things is a xx-year-old FM going through in life? Then you get into the Why? Why? What's for? What else? What next? How? etc. And ever time a new road is crossed you get paths that, even if the group didn't take, an individual could take to get a thousand more ideas.

2. For scifi....What makes an alien different from humans?

After you throw out a lot of ideas (in whic hopefully you get something that is not cliche) you pick one at random (although someone else is free to pick a different, part of the thousand ideas point) and start asking What kind of environment would have bred such a thing? Why would it be like that? What kind of problems would it face? What could go wrong? Why? How? Why? How?

3. For fantasy...What is the price of magic?

He always asks this for fantasy, and I agree that magic must have a price. Once you come up with a price, you start asking who would pay that price? What kind of world would they live in? How? What? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Of course, you could start with number one and get any kind of story, fantasy, scifi, lit, horror, etc. There are other questions you could ask, too, but they have to be very broad and encourage lots of different kinds of answers. The point is to ask questions that spawn thousands of branches of answers. The answers themselves should generate questions.

Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :

Thank's Christine, That's what I was trying to say. But I don't see why a magical animal is any less specific than an alien.

Let's go with something living not real but fits in the Fantasy realm(Can be race or animal)......Why is it different from normal?

I forgot to add that no Idea here is sacred or personal. Everyone will probably come away with something different. So Elan you might want to edit those specific to your world things out.

[This message has been edited by Pyre Dynasty (edited April 08, 2005).]

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

There IS a difference between what you're asking and the question about aliens. I'm not sure how to state it, but let me give it a try.

First of all, aliens are one of the primary topics of science fiction. The difference between aliens and humans and how we could have evolved differently is a key theme in the genre. Magical animals are a very small, not often discussed part of fantasy and it is certainly not an overriding theme of the genre. In fact, it is a small subset of the genre and does not encompass a large subsection of stories.

Next, an alien does not exist in a vacuum. It had to have evolved that way for a reason, for a scientific reason, and this can branch off into what kinds of worlds created such a beast. A magical animal, when you have not gone a step up and discussed the constraints and rules of magic, is created in a vacuum. It does not easily generate the important follow-up questions that are the most important part of the thousand ideas.

You can get to a magical animal from the fantasy question...What is the price of magic? It is more difficult to go the other way. You essentially will have to step away from the magical animal, create something else, and combine it.

These questions are not arbitrary. Card came up with them because of the importance of these questions in the backbone of the genres. Certainly, science fiction might also ask questions such as: What new technology will be developed in x years? But this is an inherently more difficult question to answer.

The thousand ideas questions, when asked a thousand times, should generate a thousand different stories, no matter how many times you start with the same question.

It's not wrong to ask about magical animals. I'm not saying that at all. In fact, if you want to go write a story about magical animals I think that's great and it might be interesting, but if you want active participation and a wide variety of answers you might consider trying it the way it was developed. It may even surprise you.

In fact, why not start two topics? That might be the best way to illustrate my point. Why don't we have a topic simultaneously ask about aliens and magical animals and see if the difference doesn't show itself. Or maybe I'll be proved wrong. It's happened once or twice.

Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :

I think it has already shown itself that people don't want to talk about magical animals. I chose that because I noticed that people don't often talk about them, and alot of times it seems that they were created in a vacume. I guess I went wrong with the word magic. I just wanted things about the natural world in fantasy.
Personally I was looking for another question from Card's, not to replace the ones he has but to steer it a diffrent way than usual. I'll still work on my question, but untill then I'll start another thread with OSC's seed.

BTW THanks Christene.

[This message has been edited by Pyre Dynasty (edited April 11, 2005).]

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

The basic principle of parsimony suggests that as many as possible of the novel elements in a milieu should be descended from the core distinctions between that milieu and reality.

In a fantasy, magic is one of the core distinctions, while non-magical animals are not. If something about magic and it's implications causes the need/potential for a certain type of non-magical animal to exist, that is part of a thousand ideas discussion about magic. For instance, a special type of domesticated chimpanzee intended for use in blood sacrifices might be an implication of using magic powered by blood sacrifices where the life blood of different animals gave you different amounts of power.

There is an exception, where the entire milieu is to be entirely fantastic (The Dark Crystal is a wonderful example of this sort of thing). In this case, the thousand ideas pattern is counterproductive because the intent is for use in creating a system of the parsimonious type.