Different Ideas

            This week I came across a list of things writers are afraid of that they shouldn’t be, and at the top of the list was: other people stealing their ideas. And it’s true – I have yet to meet an author who wasn’t trepidatious about sharing their work because they were afraid of their ideas being stolen. It’s not just that someone could copy our work – it’s the fear that someone else might take our ideas and produce something with them before we do. Even worse, what if they produce something better than we do?

            There were to incredible arguments about why writers don’t need to fear their ideas being stolen. The first was that, quite simply, authors have so many ideas of their own, they aren’t about to go around stealing someone else’s. It’s true. Every writer I have ever met has had more ideas for what to write than they could ever write in their lifetime. I know from personal experience that for every book I write, I end up with two more book ideas – I’ll certainly never need to steal from someone else!

            I found the second argument even more compelling. Even when you share an idea with someone, their vision of that idea will be completely different from your own. We all view the world differently and, as a result, the way we flesh out ideas are all completely different.

            The reason I found that argument more compelling was because I have personal experience proving it true. Many years ago, a friend shared an idea with me. She said she wanted to write a story about a haunted piano. I thought this was brilliant! A ghost haunting a piano sounded absolutely fantastic to me and I was very excited to read the story.

            Once she had written it, however, I was very disappointed. The story was very well written, but it didn’t come close to what I had envisioned from the idea. It was a tale (as near as I can remember) of someone who acquired an old piano, and then the piano had possessed them and they proceeded to waste away their lives playing the piano – writing music and reaching for an impossible imperfection.

            I was so disappointed in the results that I wrote up a story of my own so I could share my take on the story of a haunted piano. This was a piano in a secluded alcove that could play itself. A person, coming upon the piano but not knowing how to play, played a few random notes. When they went to leave, the piano played the notes back – and then proceeded to build a marvellous song around those notes, to the awe of its audience. To me, it was such a compelling scene that I built it into the first novel I ever wrote.

            Both stories stemmed from a single idea, yet that idea took on extremely different shapes for each writer. How would a third person interpret the idea? A fourth? I couldn’t say, but I do know that I’m no longer as worried about people stealing my ideas.

            What about you?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Endings

            Last Wednesday brought a close to the Dungeons & Dragons campaign Colleen and I have been playing weekly for most of the year. Other games I’ve played in have ended, but this one truly rounded out the story and gave us an ending that was incredibly satisfying.

            Because he knew this game was coming to an end – and that many of the players wouldn’t be returning for future games due to work or other reasons – our Dungeon Master, Jeremy, wanted to make this a night to remember. It’s extremely difficult to arrange a situation like that, especially when other people determine how it plays out in the end, but he certainly pulled it off.

            The game was a high stakes game with a high mortality rate. The beginning of the adventure started off with our heroes finding an item that place them all under a curse. They had two choices: go insane, or assemble an object that would bring about an end to the world. The characters were all willing to accept the insanity, but they learned that if they didn’t complete this task, someone else would. So they decided to assemble the object in the hopes that they could defeat whatever doom they summoned. Bonded together by their common goal, they called themselves the Onyx Order and made their heraldry the likeness of Manny, the mammoth they had pooled together to purchase.

            Their adventures took them far and wide, leaving a swathe of destruction in their wake – usually unintentionally. They were pursued by a cult that, for their own reasons, wanted the item assembled.

            After many months, during which a town, a city, and the village one of the characters came from were destroyed – not to mention the deaths of three of the original Order members and two of the replacements – the item was finally assembled, and the curse lifted.

            Yet, though the curse was gone, the heroes felt obligated to complete their task. They had seen the enormous egg fall from the sky and knew it would hatch into giant worms that would eat the world away into nothing. They had to prevent it from hatching.

            Luckily, the egg had fallen onto a glacier and would need heat to hatch. Unfortunately, the cult had arrived first and had brought fire magic to hatch the egg. This was where the final night began.

            It was an epic battle that lasted nearly the full three hours we played for. The magical cultists were channeling magic into a crystal that was superheating the egg while their backs were guarded by a large number of minions. In the skies, two evil denizens lurked.

The Onyx Order’s druid (played by myself) turned himself into a giant eagle and carried the barbarian into the midst of the spell casters – where he wreaked havoc – then spent the rest of the battle using his speed and size to move his allies into favorable positions while calling down lightning to smite the cultists. The bard opened up with a powerful spell that did massive damage to the cultists’ rear guard, then fought on as best he could – nearly dying. The fighter (played by Colleen) hacked her way through the minions and took down one of the denizens. The rogue stealthily picked off more of the minions, and finished off the other denizen. The wizard helped where he could, then truly proved his worth by trapping the leader of the cultists in a magical sphere she couldn’t escape from.

            With the lesser enemies destroyed, and the fire removed from the egg, it seemed the day was saved. They escorted the cultists as far as they could from the egg before the magical bubble dissipated, healing what wounds they could. The barbarian stayed behind at the egg, packing ice into the hole drilled by the cultists’ fire to prevent further damage to the egg.

            The rest of the party prepared to strike down the cultist leader and released her from her prison, but as they did so, the egg shattered, becoming a portal from which a giant worm sprang to attack the barbarian. The rogue ran to help while the others finished the battle with the cult leader – a battle that took longer than expected. The cult leader did finally fall, and not long after the heavily injured barbarian rent the worm in two.

            But there were more worms swirling in the portal. A book found on the body of the cult leader revealed that only extreme cold could seal the portal. In that instant, the barbarian knew what he had to do. This quest had claimed many of his friends, destroyed his village, and turned his beloved grandmother into a vampire he’d been forced to slay. Failure wasn’t an option.

            Taking a magical ice crystal he had, he leapt into the portal and swung his axe. When the axe struck the crystal, there was an astounding blast of icy magic, and the egg was sealed over the portal – with the barbarian inside.

            The Order was devastated, but they respected his sacrifice. Their long journey over, it was now time for them to return to the world. Each player gave an epilogue for what became of their character.

            The rogue, one of the two remaining members of the original Order, took to roaming the world – reuniting with old friends when she felt like it, sometimes reliving old memories.

            The other original member, the fighter, returned to the city she knew best. Suffering from PTSD that she’d had even before the beginning of this adventure, she took to drinking and fighting until she was banned from all the bars. One night, alone in an alley, she died of liver cancer.

            The wizard built himself a tower of ice on top of the sealed portal, defending it from intruders for the rest of his long elven life.

            The druid returned to the wilderness with Manny the mammoth and Balto the wolf (the former companion of a fallen ally). Together they roamed the boarders of the glacier where the egg resided, slowly collecting more mammoths and forming a herd.

            The bard roamed the world, singing tales of the Onyx Order, with particular emphasis on a great barbarian who had sacrificed himself.

            Jeremy made one addition to these epilogues.

            In the dark alley, where the fighter lay dying, a figure appeared – the same person who had led the adventurers to find the cursed item that set them on this quest. She knelt by the fighter and whispered:

            “Not yet.”

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Frogger Game of Life

            Last night, while driving home in the pouring rain, I saw a brownish-yellow leaf on the road, highlighted by my headlights. As the car drew nearer, the leaf seemed to be lifted by the wind and carried in two arcs to the side of the road. In fact, it looked almost like it was hopping.

            The idea was still forming in my mind that it may have been a frog (or toad) when I saw another one. This one was sitting on the edge of the road and I was able to distinguish that, yes, this was some type of amphibian, and it confirmed my suspicions about the previous ones I’d seen.

            Having identified the first two frogs, I was then able to spot more – and there were a lot along this particular stretch of road, all trying to get to the other side. Luckily I was able to avoid hitting them, but it did get me thinking about the situation.

            Had it not been for the specific lighting provided by the combination of the rain and the headlights, I never would have seen those frogs. And while some of them expertly dodged the car, Frogger style, there were others that I actively steered around – those ones would certainly have ended up squished and I never would have known. Perhaps they ended up flat anyway, courtesy of another car with a driver who didn’t notice their presence, or perhaps one who did notice and simply didn’t care.

            It struck me as a perfect metaphor for the relationship between humans and the natural world. For centuries we’ve blundered around, shaping the world to fit our needs. Sometimes, some of us notice that we’re causing harm and we do what we can to stop it. Others of us never even notice the harm, or refuse to believe harm is being caused. Some people are aware of the harm and just don’t care.

            The greatest threat to the frogs are the people who don’t even know they’re there. We could, of course, tell them that the frogs are there, but we humans are a skeptical lot. We like to see things with our own eyes. What we really need to do is provide the correct lighting conditions so people can see the frogs for themselves. Then it’s up to them what kind of person they want to be.

            Personally, in life’s great game of Frogger, I want to be the type of person who helps get the frog safely across the road.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

What Change?

            I’ve been reading a series of books called the Death Gate Cycle to Colleen. This is fantasy series (by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman) from the late 80’s and early 90’s that I read once before when I was much younger. It’s one of those series that really proves what I always say about fantasy being the perfect way to take a closer look at human nature.

            This series takes place in a universe where the world has been split into four separate elemental worlds – plus a couple extras, but the details aren’t important for this blog. This happened because of two races of people so magical that they and the “lesser” races believed them to be gods – but the ideals of these two peoples opposed each other, so they were at war.

            The orderly and “goodly” of these two races, afraid of losing the way, cast a spell that tore the world to pieces and reformed it, dumping the chaotic and “evil” race into a magical prison while they were at it. Many of the “lesser” races died in the process, but the “goodly” race saved as many as they could. Unfortunately, the elemental worlds were not self-sustaining, and before the “goodly” race could link them together to work as a team (as they had intended), something went wrong and they began to vanish.

            The story follows a member of the “evil” race, who is one of many to have escaped the magical prison after generations of torment. Under the command of his lord, the first of his people to escape, he is scouting out the worlds in preparation for launching a war against the “goodly” race.

            As he is exploring these worlds, he finds them in chaos – with the three “lesser” races fighting endless wars against each other while the “goodly” race is absent. Then, on the fourth world he visits, he discovers dragon-like monsters who profess to serve him, but he eventually determines that they are pure evil and that they gain power from fear and hatred.

            These creatures get released into the other worlds, where they insinuate their way into the ranks of the “lesser” races (they are shape-changers) and spread chaos, fear, and hatred. They always present themselves as wanting to serve, and whenever confronted by someone who knows what they are, they say “You made us.”

            Then, at last, someone learns how to fight them by pinning down what they actually are. They explain it simply as “they are us.” The monsters are the embodiment of all the hatred and fear the races have of each other, and the more hatred and fear there is, the more powerful these monsters became.

            As I was reading this, I thought, wow... that looks a lot like the issues we’re facing in the world today.

            And, as with today, the way to fight these monsters was for people to put aside their hatred and fear and work together.

            To me, it is an obvious message. But then, this is woven into a series of books that was written over twenty years ago and we’re still dealing with the same issues. Perhaps the time has come to say it louder.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Predispositions

            They say that first impressions are important. This is very true, but have you ever stopped to consider why? Why is it that the first thing you say to someone, when you don’t even know them, is so much more important than what comes after?

            The answer is predisposition. As humans, we like to make up our minds about things before we actually know about them. It sounds like a silly thing to do, I know, but we do it anyway. When we meet a person for the first time, we’re already deciding who we think they are before they even speak – before we know anything about them. And then, from our very first interactions with them, we react to them and choose how to treat them based off that predisposition.

            However, the predisposition goes on to do much more, unless something happens to change it (and it often takes a lot to shift those initial impressions). It shapes the entire relationship with that person, because they are viewed through a lens of that predisposition. For example, if you believe someone to be rude, you are more likely to interpret things they say as rude, regardless of their intent. If you believe that someone talks too much, you’ll notice every time they are talking and automatically assume they’re talking more than someone else. If you believe someone is intelligent, you’re more likely to pay attention to what they are saying than if you believe they are stupid – and you might entirely miss the brilliant ideas of the person you considered stupid because you disregarded them without even considering.

            As you may have noticed, I’m somewhat predisposed to believe that predispositions are bad. Are they, though? I think they can be, and often are, because we just let them do their thing and go along with our lives. We don’t give some people the chances they deserve – contrariwise, we give some people far more chances than they deserve.

            So, then, why do we do this? I think it is a survival instinct. In the natural world, it is important to make a decision quickly when determining if something is a threat. If something is approaching us, we have to decide how we’re going to handle it before it is close enough to slash at us or rear our throats out. The instinct helped us survive, and therefore it has lasted into the modern world, where it functions in a similar manner – deciding if there is a threat or not. Once again, it works to a degree, and it is important to us.

            So, is predisposition good or bad? I think it all depends on the person and their awareness of it. Predispositions are good so long as we know they are there and we know to question them – to allow ourselves to re-evaluate our first impressions. That way, we have the protection provided by the instinct, without allowing ourselves to treat people as what we think they are, rather than what they are.

            Of course, some predispositions are so strong that we don’t even give some people a chance to reveal who they actually are. That is the sort of predisposition that is the hardest to fight – but it is also the most important to fight. Otherwise they could grow to control our lives.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.