#oop i derailed this post lmao rip

[al-james-the-author]

YES

i need to rant about this one idea of mine so excuse me while i do so lmao

okay okay so several years ago - yes, years - an image appeared in my mind. solely an image; a snapshot of a moment. a lush, vibrant green forest, with a cloaked figure turning away from the “camera.” there’s a tree in the forefront, with those above ground exposed roots that are hella cool. but in those roots, as if the tree grew out from it or just on top of it, is a glowing blue something. it’s like a stone, with a circular texture i can’t describe, and it is very specifically a particular shade of blue. i can’t really describe it, but I could immediately point it out to you if i saw it. and the cloaked figure is turning away from the glowing blue something, mid-turn, cloak fluttering out behind them. the only context i have for this image is a feeling of bad guys hunting through the woods in the distance, getting closer. i think they’re after the blue something.

but that’s my idea, and that’s all i know about it. it literally just appeared in my mind out of nowhere, with no explanation, and I only wrote it down once before this. i wrote it down maybe a year after it appeared in my mind. it’s stuck with me this long, and i don’t know anything about it.

I’ve tried to develop it into an actual idea before, but nothing felt right. everything I came up with felt distinctly wrong. so I’ve basically let it be, and focused on other projects.

now, if you’re a writer, you probably understand what i mean when i say this: characters and stories do what they want. they can and will keep secrets from you, and they will only tell you what they want to tell you and they will only do it on their own terms.

ill bet that sounds crazy to non-writers, but it’s true. it really makes no sense, but it’s true. i had this character once, who i knew nothing about for the entire first draft of a novel i wrote. then i sat down and decided to write a interview between him and me, and after some coaxing, he finally told me his backstory. it all just appeared, and it felt like he was actually telling me it. it was a great backstory and explained his character perfectly. but it took me a whole 80+ thousand words before he told me about it.

this idea feels the same way. it doesn’t feel like my other ideas, where it’s a seed of an idea that I have to nurture and grow and create myself. this feels like a fully realized story that im not ready for yet. it feels like a full story that won’t tell me what it is yet, for whatever reason. it has an almost... personality to it, too. i can’t develop this one like i can the others, doing all the work myself. if my other ideas are infants I need to raise and create myself, then this story is a teenager ive just adopted that won’t open up to me yet. it’s already been created and raised, it just needs to tell me about itself.

and so, moral of the story is, writers are crazy. or at least i am. because ive been waiting for years for a story idea to tell me more about itself so i can finally write it.

Does anybody else get this thing where they have a new idea for a story except that its not really a whole idea? Just like, a picture or a scene from a movie unfolding in front of you? Only its so clear, so sharp and strong that you know its going to be a story. It burns inside you, making you replay it again and again, from a new angle each time because you want to know, need to know, how this fits in a narrative.

Like, you see the characters and how they look, you know the setting, you know the motivations (but not the context), and every minute detail and nuance of expression or shadows or well, everything. 

You even know what sounds the characters can hear, what sensations they are feeling. You know what music would be playing if this was really a movie. 

You just… don’t know how it fits into a plot yet.