Gifts and sharing - community thread

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

One issue that gives me trepidation reading through the community subforum is the issue of ideas. I have several ideas that I am hoping to use in writing, and I get ideas from many things. Reading someone else's short story or setting thread is a worrisome issue because an idea I have might look similar to one someone else has written. I might also read part of the setting and see useful ideas which can be stripped down to their basics and used. The issue of ideas is an old one, and doesn't just apply to forum members asking advice or sharing their work. This is an issue everyone faces when writing, and two works can be similar to one another not because they were based one on the other, but could be ideas that the writers came up with by themselves that look similar or are similar. It could be because they are both inspired by the same source, or from the same group of sources. It even could be that one based their idea on the others, but has made it distinct.

This thread is to share ideas freely. Any idea written here is assumed to be a writing prompt, scaffolding, or a brick for anyone - including the forum member posting - to use. Anything written here, at least as far are the person posting it is concerned, is something anyone can use. That doesn't mean the idea hasn't been used before by someone else, nor does it mean that it is an old idea used by others historically - it might be, but it doesn't have to be. Fresh or old, worn out or new, ideas of settings and plots and names that you would like to see and don't mind it if others use can be shared. This isn't to put all your ideas - any idea you would like to share you can share, and any you don't you don't have to.

Here are some examples.

Spoiler

Settings

• A galaxy spanning civilisation with no faster than light travel or communication
• A galaxy spanning civilisation with faster than light travel and communication which both allow for time travel
• A ship that travels from one universe to another suffers an accident and is trapped between worlds
• An ecosystem of alien worlds, each with its own chemistry and which makes some species toxic to one another, with trade and wars and sharing of cultures 
• A city build on a platform, the platform suspended above a bottomless void, a chain running into the sky
• A viral magic system, anyone who it is used on might gain it
• A magic system that uses caffeine to fuel it
• A magic system which is slowly changing, what it can do is changing as well as how it feels to use it

 

Plots

• The love interest of a secondary character in a story must complete the mission of the main character after the main character is captured, they don't feel like they have any skills in the right areas but the skills they do have help them to see their value - they don't gain the skills the main character had, and they don't need to even though they think they do
• A violent and evil man survived the loss of his kingdom but is left broken, and slowly comes to regret his life, and though broken physically begins to heal inside and heal the harm he had done to others, and must confront the victims of his who don't initially realise he is the former abuser of their families - point of view from the former monster and the victims, the victims given a choice to forgive him or take the same path the villain took
• A murder mystery where the murderer accidentally dies half way through
• A murder mystery where two separate murderers are killing people but neither knows who the other is, or that they would also start to kill people
• Two characters communicate across time and realise that they can't change the past - no action they do can make things change - and the one realises the other is involved in something historically important which might be considered terrible
• Five people are stuck in a time loop, they don't all like one another

 

Names

• Tyrant moon
• Chains of gold
• Eyes in the night
• Ice gate

To be clear, some of these are ideas I fully hope to use, some are ideas I think would be interesting, and some are ideas I think are interesting but I might not use. If you would like to share, then share. Give as freely as you like :-)

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

I am going to add a few more ideas here, as well as further comment on the idea of ideas - the issue of both getting ideas from external sources and having an idea which is similar to someone else's idea even if it isn't directly inspired by it.

When I first heard about Brandon it was because he was completing the writing of Wheel of Time. When I looked him up what I read about him made me not want to read his books. Not because I wouldn't enjoy them, but because he was writing something which was very similar to what I wanted to write - a series of stories which take place on different worlds, characters able to travel between them, and strange supernatural creatures which are the source of various powers, and a background plot connecting the different stories together. Later, after I decided to read his non-Wheel books after seeing how well he handled the last three Wheel books, I would learn he also was using the idea of a character travelling the worlds and accruing abilities while affecting the plots of the stories he was in, but hidden in the background. Yet the more I heard about the Cosmere, and the more it seemed to match what I wanted to write, I also realised there were several differences, including the focus of the writing being more on magic systems than on alien species and other dimensions. I also realised that the ideas I had were themselves based on earlier books I had read, my enjoyment of other worlds being started with the Magicians Nephew and then further explored in the Wheel of Time. Science fiction and fantasy together by reading Dune and Anne McCaffery's Pern novels, and watching Star Wars. Logic puzzles by Azimov and detective novels by Agatha Christie. What I read gave ideas, what I watched gave ideas, and just because an idea came from one source doesn't mean that it is unique to that source, or even if unique to a source that it can't be expanded and made unique in another way.

As Brandon has said in his website, even if writing something similar to what he had written, similar ideas or premise, an author can put a unique spin on it, and the works would still be very different from one another based on what the rest of the story was about. White Sand, for example, has a desert which has waterphobic life that has a unique relation to the ecology and magic system of the planet, which is similar to Dune. And other stories which has desert planets usually have a sandworm like species as well as a homage to Dune. Sleepless are a hive mind species consisting of other individual hive minds, rather than a species sized one, which has been used in A Fire Upon the Deep, though it usually is not how hive minds are portrayed. Schlock Mercenary - which I learnt about through Writing Excuses - calls intelligent life Sophonts, which originate in another science fiction series, and Schlock is similar in some ways to Kandra, with a brain distributed throughout his body, and has some shapeshifting abilities, though weaker than a Kandra's in some ways. Various science fiction writers have covered a species which turns other species into members of itself, like the Borg or Cybermen. In Schlock Mercenary a group of lawyers try a similar approach on another lawyer. The background plot of Schlock Mercenery also is very similar to Mass Effect, with galactic civilisation being periodically destroyed or reset by an old possibly artificial menace. Yet all these ideas, while used before elsewhere, are done in a unique manner.

Even outside of Science fiction this can be shown. Shakespeare based plays on older stories but added new details, and Agatha Christie originated many plot twists in detective fiction which are still used today. A good idea can be done with a new take, and a bad idea can be used to make a great story - even if you take two bad ideas and write on a bet.

This brings the discussion to the final point - similar ideas with divergent sources. Brandon probably got inspiration for Sandlings from Dune, as well as Atium from Dune. Anne McCaffrey got ideas of dragons from early dragon lore. In both cases the idea was made unique and interesting. But Robert Jordan and Frank Herbert probably gained their ideas of mystic female-only organisations from real world cultures. Robert Jordan might have refined the idea using Herber's version, especially with the unique man who has powers that the female-only group has, but both probably got the idea from the real world. Common sources and different levels of inspiriation - one person is inspired by this idea, another gets the idea from him, and a third from her - mean that two people can have a similar idea while not having known about one another, and then later on when they meet they think the other has copied them, like Rowling and Pratchett, with someone once asking him if he based UU on Hogwarts, and Unequal Rites being a parody or homage, to which he replied that they should look at which was published first. Good ideas and settings can come from the same source without having previously read anothers work, but one can use anothers work to find a way to refine an idea and make it distinct from anothers.

 

So, here are some other ideas. These aren't the only ideas I have, or my favourites, but they are ideas I think could be fun. The method I list ideas is not the same method I record them though it is slightly similar. There are useful categories which I have abstracted slightly.

Spoiler

Settings

• A character who is a clone of another character, and edited, and who meets other clones of the same character which have also been edited and each is different, and questions about if they are the same person still
• A character is the only person who isn't a ghost on a planet, and ghosts stop existing if they move too far away from where the character is
• A group of people who have their minds forced into nanites and then put in someone's body, and able to communicate with the person they are inside but with limited senses of the outside world, trying to cure the person of something hostile
• Species which has members that can agree to become space ships
• And while mentioning Schlock Mercenary and cybernetics, the idea of a person sharing a body with an artificial intelligence, and then dying, the artificial intelligence now taking control

 

Plots

• A detective learns that someone who they arrested and who was executed was actually innocent, and realise that someone - they are not sure who - who they interviewed is actually the murderer
• A character trying to escape an area with a large monster nearby, trying not to draw attention
• A world where people can have one of two abilities, the two abilities needed to work together to perform a function, and suddenly a new culture is discovered which has a third ability which is different to the other two, but which can interact

 

Names

• New emotions
• Broken residue 

 

 

[Elandera she/her]

It's a fairly common thing among writers to become hesitant or worried that their works will be too similar to other works. The thing is, though, there's a reason why there are tropes in writing and TV. There are certain things (plots, themes, etc.) that just work. No matter what genre it is written in, things like unrequited love, loss of loved ones, and redemption arcs are all things that are easy for the reader to connect with and understand.

The difference is how you carry it out. Yes, there may be similarities, but the story can still be unique even if the idea was inspired by something else. I see people all the time compare LoTR with Harry Potter, and Harry Potter with Star Wars, but despite themes and character backgrounds that seemingly match, the stories are vastly different. Each one has a huge fan-base, with many people liking all three.

As for my own idea that I'd like to share, I had the thought the other day about a detail in a fictional world where the people's eyes turned gray/silver as they aged instead of their hair. I changed it a bit to fit in with one of the books that I'm working on (a modern fantasy/action novel) as basically a mana indicator. 

Another world idea is one covered in watermelon snow. 

Edited September 3, 2018 by Elandera

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

@Elandera Indeed. How the story is told is just as important as the story.

To explore the two ideas you have contributed then, and adding two examples I added before, lets explore some possible stories and settings with people whose eyes change colour rather than their hair as they age, an algae snow covering the whole planet, a species where the members can become space ships if they want, and an ecosystem of alien worlds with different chemistries

1. The planet is a colony that humans settled on, and the local organisms have entered into a symbiotic relationship with the people which slows their ageing and changes their eye colour instead of their hair.
   1. The algae is actually from a crashed ship, long ago, and with the humans help eventually a member of the species that it came from is revived
   2. The algae is actually the enemy of another species - once the algae spread across space, but a second species hunted them down, and now the species is searching for any surviving members
2. The aliens come from a world with a large amount of the algae on it, a very cold planet, and they live in symbiosis with it, some able to transform to spread it to other planets, one of which has humans who age with their eye colour rather than becoming wrinkled or their hair changing. This begins the start of trade
3. Humans can partially merge with or work together with an algae-based species to grant it the ability to travel space, and in so doing their eyes change colour as they age, the algae thriving in the cold but needing a human to help it survive the vacuum of space where heat pools without convection
4. Humans explore and meet two species, one of which loves the cold, the other very long lived, with the only changes being their eyes getting greyer.

Each of these leans towards a very different story, being one of rebuilding, preparing for war, first contact, exploration and the changes one must undergo to explore, and humans as ambassadors.

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

Again, some additional ideas both others and myself can use

Spoiler

Settings:

• A nation where some accident happened, and thoughts can form into physical matter - anyone present could accidentally make something which could kill them
• A time machine is constructed that links two civilisations separated across time, but it isn't known if history can be changed
• Aliens arrive, and they have no concept of privacy - they believe anything that can be known should be known to everyone, so they cover the planet in nanites, and take control of the internet, added to it, so that if you know what you are looking for you can see any point on earth, anything that happened once the nanites arrived, and look up any thought anyone has had or currently is thinking, and see and hear through their eyes

 

Plots:

• People find an artefact which has appeared in several nations historically, and shortly before they destroyed themselves - it let the nation become stronger than the others, dominating them, but then lead to their destruction, and only legends and myths remain. At least two were destroyed by it that are known about, but in fact it is closer to fifty. Now it has been discovered by a nation almost consumed by enemies, and the two protagonists consist of someone who doesn't believe the myths, but is cautious, and another who does believe them, but thinks they can be change.
• A detective - who is a ghost - discovers a society of ghosts, and is recruited to find out who murdered someone - everyone is still a ghost, they haven't vanished, but they want to know who killed them

 

Names:

• Dryrot sky
• Daughter of time

 

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

And again :-P

Spoiler

Settings

• A planet where every organism in the ecosystem can be repurposed as technology, including energy weapons and teleportation
• A species which reproduces by turning corpses into more of its species
• A magic where everyone has some abilities but can't use them until the ability is shaped by another, which might be someone with the same abilities they have or might be only one type of ability lets one shape someone elses, but they can also shape it into another type

 

Plots

• A magic which the villains have but not the heroes, and a group of mystics are trying to reverse engineer the abilities
• A technology a civilisation uses which is the foundation of all their infrastructure suddenly stops working, and those who were treated as primitives now have the upper hand, beginning a struggle
• A character wakes up from a simulation, realising everything they had experienced was a simulation that they had agreed to but forgotten

 

Names

• Taming the dark
• Forgiveness
• Remembered mercy

 

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

And again again

Spoiler

Settings

• A city or village or town or street, one of the buildings taken over by a strange creature, and the creature ignoring the people and the people having learnt to ignore the monster
• A  massive chamber filled with portals, each portal linked to another massive chamber filled with portals
• A city that is barely visible, the inhabitants nanites which each live their own lives 

 

Plots

• A world which humans live on, and another mystic species lives on, but people don't know about them, the species having access to tools that let them use magic and lets them hide. One day a human discovers one of these tools, and now has more magic than any member of the species ever had, something they had thought impossible - the species now trying to stop the person from discovering more about the magic and spreading the secret
• People eventually discover that long ago, fantastic species from their legends once existed, and instead of dying off, they actually intermarried with the species - all members of the species are actually part fantasy species - and some are starting to re-emerge from the species families
• A single nation guards the rest of the nations from a terrible invader, fighting long and hard, not knowing the nature of the invaders. Then one day some invaders are captured - not only are they the same species, they are the same ethnicity as the nation that fights them

 

Names

• Branching futures
• Before the edge
• War whistles

 

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

I'm going to try something different for this entry. Rather than add ideas, I'm going to demonstrate how the same ideas can produce different stories. There are currently seven entries in the list excluding this one, but if @Elandera's reply and my reply to them can be counted as a single entry with two sections, then in total there are six entries, each with either two or three sections, which can easily be mapped to the roll of a die. I'll explain what I mean. 

The idea behind this is I will role four dice three times. Each time the first die rolled will correspond to the number of the entry (e.g. a one would be the starting post, a two would be my first comment, a three would be Elandera's post combined with my own, etc.). The second die roll selects if the idea to be used is from the setting, plots, or names section, or for a first die roll of three if the idea will be based on eye colours or watermelon snow. The third and fourth roll are added together - and yes, this will skew the results, but this isn't supposed to be fair, simply random enough :-P - and that total is used to determine the entry in that section used. If any number is higher than the maximum entry number (possible only for the second through fourth rolls) then the numbers wrap around. So, for example, rolls of 4, 3, 6, 5 would correspond to fourth post, names, and 11 mod 2 = 1, Dryrot sky. This would then be repeated for more dice rolls, so if the next numbers were 3, 2, 2, 6, that would be third post, watermelon snow, 8 mod 5 (5 because entry one contains two parts) = 3, humans able to merge with an algae to travel through space. The third would be the third idea, so if they were 4, 2, 2, 2 that would be fourth entry, plots, 4 mod 2 = 0 (i.e. 2), a detective who is a ghost is recruited by a society of ghosts to find out who killed them.

Now, the first two entries seem to mesh well, but the last comes out of nowhere - how can a ghost detective story match an algae symbiot space exploration story with the idea of the sky somehow being dryrot. Well, there is at least one way, being that the people who merge with the algae are actually dead, and the algae lets ghosts leave earth to explore, the dryrot then being about death. Or the ghost story is tangential to the main plot, and this is someone who died on another planet, and is recruited by alien ghosts to find out who killed them, the ghost detective reflecting on how he got there by merging with algae. Or modifying the idea slightly, the detective is actually someone who merged with algae to explore and has been recruited by an alien species to find out what happened to another alien species, and dies in the end, and is now a ghost.

So, those are three examples of a story based on a few ideas, and while those examples are fairly similar, I think they could be expanded out. Those were not dice rolls, but entries chosen at random to demonstrate the idea. I aim to come up with at least three for each set of three ideas. So, lets roll!

 

The roles are

2, 3, 3, 6, new emotions

3, 5, 6, 1, people whose eyes change colour while they age are being hunted by those who are trying to destroy the force that is changing their eyes

6, 3, 2, 2, branching futures

 

Two names in this one. If most use names then I will probably select four entries. For this one, it seems very open ended, so, three ideas

 

• An exiled people fleeing hunters. They resemble other peoples, but can't stay around them too long, as their eyes draw attention, and if they stay too long they will be discovered not to age. Eventually, younger members rebel against this, not having known death and pain, and say they will remain where they are, marrying the local people, saying that their future branches off from the older members. The older members tell them that this is dangerous - they have yet to experience the new emotions to them of pain and death, loss and rejection. The older members leave, and reflect that their lives are ones of old emotions that will soon come again - their children will seen suffer pain, and so too will they. Branching futures? No, the same future as always, and while the emotions might be new to the younger, they are old enemies of the old.
• Someone whose eyes are silver and who doesn't age but can see the future. They are cold and callus, but don't see anything wrong with this, and don't fear death, or telling those who ask them about the future how they will die. One day, they see someone come to ask them something, and while telling them the future realise that what they are saying will result in their own death, something they had seen before but forgotten about, disregarding. What they will the questioner angers them, and as they are slowly killed, killed because they mocked the fears of the questioner and twisted the knife on what they wanted to know, telling it cruelly, they think to themselves about how this feeling is a new emotion to them.
• A species which is seeking another to destroy them, as after a terrible war they were victorious, but are taking a long time to find the remaining forces of their enemy, and have been seeking them for a long time, the members who now hunt having no part in the war, many thousands of generations before, finally find the enemies. They are the same members who had attacked their species, the same individuals who haven't aged. They regret what they had done, but the two species are so alien, they think in different ways. The hunters don't care, they have no emotional connection to the thousands of generations ago war, but the last members do, and they hate what they had done, almost glad to be finally found, but still seeking mercy, telling the hunters there are other ways they could now act, that they don't have to kill them. The hunters make their choice, but the hunters thinking on how strange seeing these new emotions are.

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

I left this fallow a lot longer than I had intended. 

 

I've been working on classifications for a few things, such as time travel, undead, etc., but there is something I would like help on if anyone can think of something to add to this:

I'm trying to classify what grants someone access to magic, the method they access it or what is distinct about them which gives them abilities but which others who don't have magic doesn't have. I have come up with six things:

1. Internal symbiosis (something lives within or on someone)
2. External symbiosis (a symbiotic link to a separate being that isn't necessarily in direct physical contact with the individual)
3. Link to things, drawing on them (abilities are based on drawing on some source of power, either internal or external)
4. Link to things, affecting them (ability is based on manipulating a source, so not drawing it in but rather affecting it)
5. Internal change (something within someone has changed, such as they now have a new organ or internal layout)
6. Knowledge (anyone who knows the rules can perform magic, and if they have the right resources)

These aren't mutually exclusive, and the possible combinations can be very versatile and interesting, such as an internal change (number 5) allowing someone to access an external power source (version of number 3), or drawing on internal batteries (version of number 3) to change something within ones own body (5), both using 3 and 5 but in different ways. Some examples:

• Superman (internal change - though his normal physiology is standard for a Kryptonian, it is different from a human and the reason he has superpowers)
• Green Lantern (external symbiosis, link to things to draw on, and a little knowledge)
• Elantrians (internal change, link to things to drawing on them, knowledge)
• Mistborn and Feruchemists (internal change, link to things to draw on)
• Hemalurgy (knowledge)
• Knights Radiant (external symbiosis and link to things being their link to spren and drawing in stormlight, small amount of internal change due to spren changing spiritweb)
• Breath (internal symbiosis, internal change)
• Dragonriders of Pern (a bit of a stretch but mostly link to things to affect them, as most humans on Pern have some minor psionic abilities)
• Most forms of psionics (link to things to draw on, being internal reserves)
• Anyone with colonies of insects living in their bodies (internal symbiosis and external symbiosis)

 

So, my main question is this: can you think of something which can fit into this list that isn't primarily a variation of one of the entries on this list? It is okay if it can be related to one of them or more than one, but can you think of something unique that isn't on the list?

Edited March 21, 2021 by Ixthos
minor tweaks

[The Unknown Character he/him]

I would like to add something I've toyed with, but never found a good story based on it. It's essentially a telekinesis magic system, but the more familiar you are with a thing or, in some forms, if it's a specific item that you can control, you can use stronger telekinesis, or just telekinesis in general, on it.

[Regent she/her]

Struggling with the same problem here as well. I've tried to work this idea out, but couldn't seem to form a cohesive plot for it so I set it aside for now. And I felt like it was similar to a bunch of other stuff that is already out there, or too cliche. 

It was about this institute that bred the future leaders of the world. Students were kept coddled, and they were taught things like foreign languages, diplomacy, laws--anything future leaders/officers would possibly need to know. For a long time, no one's managed to sneak out, until a group of 4 teens did manage to escape and see the world for themselves, only to be disappointed with how its current state was.

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

On 4/14/2021 at 8:47 AM, The Unknown Order said:

I would like to add something I've toyed with, but never found a good story based on it. It's essentially a telekinesis magic system, but the more familiar you are with a thing or, in some forms, if it's a specific item that you can control, you can use stronger telekinesis, or just telekinesis in general, on it.

I rather like that idea, and it has some interesting implications depending on how skilled or strong one can get, and if when you move something you are using your own mass as an anchor or it is grounded in something else. For example, it implies flight if you aren't the anchor, and the ability to move your friends, or prisons guarded by someone who spends time getting to know the prisoners habits to make sure that, if the prisoners escape they can contain them. A surgeon familiar with hearts in general might be able to perform surgery on ANY heart without needing equipment if they can use it to cut and to heal, and engineers could maintain or run machines they built, with their telekinesis as both power source and control.

 

On 4/14/2021 at 2:49 PM, caramel_ said:

Struggling with the same problem here as well. I've tried to work this idea out, but couldn't seem to form a cohesive plot for it so I set it aside for now. And I felt like it was similar to a bunch of other stuff that is already out there, or too cliche. 

It was about this institute that bred the future leaders of the world. Students were kept coddled, and they were taught things like foreign languages, diplomacy, laws--anything future leaders/officers would possibly need to know. For a long time, no one's managed to sneak out, until a group of 4 teens did manage to escape and see the world for themselves, only to be disappointed with how its current state was.

The idea that the four teens never knew the true nature of the world? That can work well and be very unique if you frame it right. For example, do the teens start as friends, or some as friends and others as enemies, or all as enemies, and what is their dominance heirarchy or views of each other? Did they stick together after leaving, or split up, or split into three groups, or two groups of two each, or three together and one apart. Do they each see the same sides of the world, or do some see poverty, one of the others industry, one of the others ended up in another nation, and another got caught by those who don't know who they are and was sent to prison. How do their natures interact with other teens or adults they meet, including friendships and new mentors, and those who only want to use them. If you can already think of a story which uses one of those branches, pick another, and go from there. Maybe one of the teens becomes the main villain of the series after what they've seen and what they now are motivated to do. Maybe one of them dies and completes a character arc doing so, so dying saving someone when before they would have refused.