quote:
Create, in oral cooperation, two characters suitable for a ghost story -- first the victim (the person frightened or harmed), then the ghost. Work out for these characters the name, age, background, psychological makeup, physical description, family connections, circle of immediate friends, occupation, appropriate setting, and anything else that seems important. In doing this exercise, and all those that follow, do not be unduly clever -- for instance, choosing as the two characters here a dog and a lizard. Undue cleverness defeats the purpose of the exercise, raising complex problems before the simple ones have been solved.
Since we're not exactly "oral" here, whatever we "say" will stay (unless you decide to edit what you've said, or I or my assistants delete it because it goes against the registration agreement).
If you've ever been to one of OSC's "1000 Ideas in an Hour" presentations, you may know one way this can work.
Think of it as a brainstorming session -- no idea will be tossed out, but some ideas will inspire other ideas, and those are more likely to be the less obvious ones. Feel free to build on anyone else's ideas and let the ideas flow where they may.
(Strive to be less obvious without being "unduly clever.")
And anyone who reads this topic or participates in it can use any idea or any inspiration from any idea in any story any person cares to write. Ideas are not copyrightable and they are a dime a dozen (as we will see).
Ghost = 10 year old girl. Died by some freak accident in the drafty third floor of a stone walk-up on a busy city street.
Victim = 45 year old female writer who is renting the apartment. Unmarried. No kids. No pets. Lives alone. Don't all haunting victims need to live alone? Shoot, then she probably needs some sidekicks.
Further inversion - all the hauntings happen during the day, JUST when the writer gets her flow going.
I kind of like those ideas, but since we're kind of brainstorming let me try to think of something else.
I don't think I've seen many writer ghosts. So how about nstead the ghost is a writer? A 35ish struggling writer who hanged himself in a lonely garret room papered with letters of rejection back in the 1920s.
The victim? An editor who has taken the beachhouse for the summer and brought a briefcase full of manuscripts.
Ok. Not too good. Too writer related and no one cares about writers except writers. Alternate idea.
The ghost. A geeky computer hacker who was accidentally exectricuted while over-clocking his computer. (Ok, unlikely but it COULD happen)
The victim. A female programmer whose computer he invades.
This might be an intersting exploration, since ghost-writers never really "exist" in the literary world, they are almost like ghosts themselves...
Then we could get all existential and Freudian, and try to determine whether the ghost-writer (who doesn't "really" exist outside of the books he writes for other people) or the ghost (the dead vain celeb who was out there in the spotlight, but had to have it all, including being perceived as an author) is the most "haunted" by the experience.
[This message has been edited by Igwiz (edited December 20, 2007).]
[This message has been edited by skadder (edited December 20, 2007).]
The overclocking one sounds like fun...I think it would be more interesting if the processor exploded and killed him rather than electrocution...
Victim: Nadia, an abusive au pair, who is only doing her job until she can connive some southern gent into making her a legal U.S. citizen. The family she lives with are restoring an old plantation.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited December 20, 2007).]
The victim: Julie, Sarah's twin sister. Julie is autistic while Sarah was born completely normal.
The concept: Ghost reversal. Julie started out as "Sarah's Ghost" and now Sarah is Julie's ghost
Hopefully that doesn't fall in the "cleverness" category.
Ghost - 7 year old girl who died in the same house the family lives in (pretty cliche, but this is what happened nonetheless). she finally has someone her age to interact with, but the boy doesn't like girls. especially ghosts!
Perhaps she is very disappointed to be stuck with a boy as a playmate.
the ghost takes the greatest delight in the fact that she can terrorize him and nobody believes the 7 year-old boy with an overactive imagination.
from the girl's perspective, it is all a fun game; from the boy's, it is a complete nightmare.