Science fiction, of course. I’ve already written one novel, which I haven’t been able to interest anyone in, and which I spoke of a couple of weeks ago. (A generation starship story in which the crew does NOT forget it’s on a starship).
I’m writing another now that is a very unusual First-Contact story. We’ll see how that works out.
Biblical fiction- Jesus living out His Divine-human natures in passionate, joyous frenzy, smooching Mary Magdalene, slapping demons out of people, just daring the authorities to crucify Him.
Horror- the enslaving and redemption of Richard Manfred Renfield
Near-future dystopian- The New World Order is here- a grey PC joyless fascist nanny-state that Lefties & Righties, Fundies & Wiccans, all the fringe folk, find
intolerable (of course, the NWO finds them even more intolerable & strives to bring them under control), so all these radically-different characters have to hang together against the NWO so that the NWO does not hang them separately.
I know dear, and it was very good - though I might almost like the time-traveling one better. Or at least the concept anyway.
I’ve written half a novel about an affair between a gay guy who lost his long time partner who was deaf to a gay bashing gang, and a sexually abused extremely fearful woman who is dying of ovarian cancer.
I didn’t say it was a good novel.
I’m seven chapters in on a fairy tale adaptation, focusing on the political, social, and economic conditions that would allow some of the weird-ass things that happen in fairy tales to occur. (What kind of country would accept a nobody, a Jack, as King? Wouldn’t the nobility have a hissycow?)
I’ve started a half-dozen novels. I will finish this one.
I’ve often thought about what I’d like to write, or what I could imagine myself writing. I wish I had written down some of the fantasy stories I made up for my kids when they were young. No, they wouldn’t have been Harry Potter successes, but probably some of the most creative stuff I’ve come up with to date.
I wonder if most people are like me, and see themselves writing novels in their favorite genre. Which, it seems to me that just because you like to read a certain kind of book, doesn’t necessarily mean you would be qualified to write same. For me, I’d like to write something in the somewhat humorous crime/detective/thriller genre. Maybe Travis McGee/Dortmunder-ish. Or Hiassen, Thomas Perry, etc.
Being a lawyer, I wouldn’t mind writing mind-bogglingly successful legal crap like Grisham.
Recently I was thinking about this from a sorta different angle (if you don’t mind a potential bit of a hijack.) I was wondering what type of novel I was qualified/capable/experienced to write.
I am a lawyer, but I do a boring kind of administrative law, not exciting criminal stuff. I work for the government, but for a small regional office, not the hallowed halls of Washington or City Hall. It seems to me that all of my areas of expertise are pretty damned mundane. I’ve never traveled much to exotic locales, and I’m not expert in any culture or historical period. Not sure what I could write authoritatively/believably about other than the life of a middle class suburban husband/father. Which I anticipate would have a HUGE potential market. :rolleyes:
How about you?
I hope there is a mystery novel, maybe a police procedural. Something in the Ruth Rendell/ Ian Rankin/ Peter Robinson/ Colin Dexter vein.
I fear there is a completely unreadable piece of feminist experimental fiction.
I tend to outlet these creative ideas in gaming or war sims, so bear with me, but my two are both hard sci-fi:
The first, and the one getting the most attention from me currently, is about a small colony ship that’s the first and last faster-than-light manned vessel produced by humanity, launched hastily as an attempt by its creators to preserve their way of life in the face of losing a war against a hostile nation that’s conquered or subdued everyone else in the solar system. I haven’t decided if I need aliens or not, but the antagonists include a spy/infiltrator, more-or-less insane robotic probes sent previously. Also, there’s some exploration of ghosts–one of the protagonists is killed during a faster-than-light jump, and some portion of her essence hangs around the environs of the ship and the scientists on board don’t quite know how or why.
The other one is sci-fi/fantasy about a village of impoverished humans living in a dustbowl with perpetual clouds, struggling to live with mostly steam age tech and a few high-tech items they don’t quite understand. And then they eventually discover that the nuclear war that plunged Earth into nuclear winter is still being fought with increasing desperation by the phenomenally high-tech remnants of the main combatants, who each have increasingly divergent technology and fanatical devotion about clinging to their own social order in the face of the rampant chaos.
The one I try and piece together (in my mind) is a fantasy story, involving dragons and their “dragon wranglers” (distinctive for their forked tongues).
Not sure how the story would go, but there would be a society in which the dragons and their wranglers are demonized as evil terrors on the good people, so there is a constant battle being waged, in which the king recruits knights to save the civilization.
Our main character (who becomes a knight after fleeing some sort of enslavement) comes to discover that the dragons/wranglers are really not inherently evil, and the “threat” they pose is merely a pretext by the king to steal the dragon’s gold (or harvest its blood - not sure yet) and keep the poor peasants compliant. Clearly, there are War on Terror allusions to this story.
Also, I tend to imagine that the fantasy setting is not imbued with “magic”, although there are wizards. Instead, the wizards are merely wise men who rely on natural herbs and plants (including hallucinogens like mushrooms) to proffer wisdom. Except for the dragons and wranglers, the world would be very much like our own middle ages.
Currently, fantasy.
But I’ve had some success with science fiction.
It’d be one of two things - crime, like Robert B. Parker or Lawrence Sanders or Ed McBain, or romance style stuff like Jackie Collins or Danielle Steel.
I’d like to write some smut! Either that or a compendium of restaurants I’ve tried. Hey, everybody likes sex and food, right?
If there’s only one, I’ll be very disappointed. The book I’m writing now is non-fiction, so maybe that doesn’t count, but I’ve done a significant amount of writing on two:
One is a story about a college grad who discovers his roommate has superpowers. The whole thing sort of turned into a metaphor for some post-college anxieties, but I think the idea is fun instead of whiny.
I’ve also started work on a story about three kids, one of whom may be psychic, who skip school for reasons I haven’t totally worked out yet.
Fantasy, or hard-core full-bore SF. But I’m waaaay to lazy to ever actually sit down and try to write one.
Some of my dreams, though, would make great serial killer/mystery stories.
Zombie apocalypse. 
God, I hate zombies.
This made me LOL. 
My short stories are mysteries, so I imagine if I ever found the courage, discipline, and time to write a novel, it would be a mystery too.
I have several, some started, some just ideas. My real problem is disciplining myself into writing and finishing the damn things. I read a lot more SF/F than anything, so most of my ideas for stories are in those genres.
Fantasy: A story I started after high school about a man who can’t die. He’s a second son of a minor noble, gets seduced in his late teens by an older, married, woman he meets at court. She’s involved with witchcraft, falls in love with his youth, and finds a rite to preserve that youthful beauty forever. Serious drawbacks in that no matter how much you might want to die, you can’t, which he discovers for the first time when his relationship with his lover ends. Badly. That’s about as far as I got, and the story to that point needs significant fleshing and rewriting. Past experiences will be related in flashbacks. I still haven’t figured out if I want to keep it mostly real-historical, as I thought at first, or go to full fantasy setting. I later tried to avoid anything that’s too close to the Highlander ideas, so thought to set it in a fantasy world with nothing that’s too close to our modern world, maybe putting “now” in a semi-industrial revolution setting. Premise is so prone to pitfalls that I may never get an acceptable story out of it.
Another fantasy, I think it’s probably no more than novelette length. Inspired by the types of stories you’d find in Snow White, Blood Red, retelling of impossible tasks you have to complete to get the girl, but set in modern times. Accounting = separating grain; progressing in company = climbing hill of glass. And of course, I haven’t figured out how to do that in a sufficiently entertaining way. Modern life is a little too boring somehow, but using an actual fantasy setting for it is too cliched and takes away the novelty value.
Horror: 32 page romance/ghost story was done for a uni class, using one of the stories assigned during the semester for inspiration. I took a short piece from one of the novelettes we read, and expanded and changed it significantly. It’s amateurish, needs resetting and restructuring, but it’s actually finished and has been polished a couple of times. Problem is, it wants to be a much bigger story, so I’ve given up on trying to cram it into a short story. I posted on here a while ago for help with the setting. I’m thinking Antebellum south, with the protagonist being a free black woman. Impossible romance with the manor’s son was part of the original and my reworking. It won’t work as a traditional romance, because the whole heart-wrenching part can’t be resolved into a happy ending, but I figure that would be the niche I’m going to fit most into, since the ghost part is a sub-plot/mystery to be solved but the relationship is the main story.
SF: Mostly just ideas here.
Story 1: A series of plagues forced people to live in isolated enclaves. Draconian measures were necessary to keep infections from spreading. Now, long after the last of the plagues have died out, movement of people and supplies is still restricted.
Story 2: Murder mystery/thriller with SF trappings. Nanotech undermined traditional industrial society and neo-nomads splintered off into smaller groups. Good communications and computer technology means that people can work anywhere, so cities aren’t necessary anymore, nor are farms, really. Many are still around, but it’s also quite common for people to live alone or in small wandering groups hunting, gathering, and using nanotech to produce food. Power for these bands is usually from a combination of solar energy (easy when you can cover just about any surface with a photovoltaic layer) and a kind of fuel cell for storage. Tech is also a lot less energy-dependent than it was in the industrial age.
Series of destructive wars at the beginning of nanotech era and greatly reduced fertility from voluntarily restricting offspring due to high global standard of living has led to lower population overall. Takes place a few generations after that. Basis of what economy remains is the trade of designs and reputation. If people like your stuff and download the design, you get a better reputation. Similar to how stolen icons, web designs, and other plagiarism is spotted by the online community, most policing of unauthorized copying without giving credit is socially enforced.
Main conflict is that a top designer is attacked at a flesh-party (virtual parties being common also) and has to figure out why. The recent death of a friend gives him a clue and he uncovers an encrypted message encoded in a nano-design she sent him a day or so before her death. Obviously, he has to figure out what the message is, who is trying to kill him and who succeeded in killing her, and what significance this has for others.
Story 3: Some news reporters have ocular, cochlear implants and a recording rig implanted in their heads. The tech is relatively new, so social structures around it are still evolving. It has led to a completely new kind of reporting, where the reporters are much more involved in the action, since being an outside observer is seen as too boring, safe, and in some cases morally irresponsible by the public. Everything they see or hear can be recorded and software helps them edit it down into manageable chunks later. Recorded information can be stored on-board (limit of a couple days of storage) or streamed to external storage when they’re in range of a network, or when they use boosting equipment for a satellite link. Obviously has implications for privacy, relationships, and POV entertainment/information visual media. The ocular implants are visibly distinctive and don’t look quite like real eyes.
Main character is former-military and after discharge and university, decided to combine his adrenaline-junkie tendencies, military training, and a bent for writing to become a news correspondent. He has been involved in mountain rescue operations, participated in extreme racing competitions, covered military peacekeeping operations, and is now enrolled in a police division in a new and experimental role as both a SWAT officer and a public relations person. The idea was to have him provide an inside view of what service the unit provides the public. Unfortunately, after a few months on the job, he accidentally starts to uncover some internal corruption (though he doesn’t realize it at first) and has to make some tough decisions.