Tumblr Post: New Story

New Story

I’m about to start work on a new story. And by story I mean novel.

I have three ideas I’m playing with- similar themes, very different settings. Basically I just want the advice of anyone who cares, as to which I should choose. Ultimately, I’ll do all of them, I reckon. But for this year I plan to focus on one.

Here goes:

Idea 1: Red Country

A story about a broken man named Zhe, living in the hellish tribal waste known as the Red Country. He is old - the oldest he knows - and his past is filled with pain and regret. Many have died so that he might live, and such is the nature of his guilt that he is a hollow and empty man.

The days blur together, until one day he frees a slave - a boy named Sanu that has lived in chains his whole life - and events are set in motion that none can undo. Thus, Zhe begins his desperate and bloody path to redemption.

Idea 2: The Husk

A story set after the fall of man, and the years known as the reclamation. Mankind has been reduced to a sliver of its former size, living in militarized compounds amidst ruined cities and ashen hills - worlds ravaged by war, poverty and disease. The whole planet is a third-world.

The story itself is about a group of brothers-in-arms at the forefront of one city’s personal reclamation. They oversee the recycling of the ancient world, the peace of their compounds, the wars between urban clans in the charred streets of the old cities.

Idea 3: Prophet

A story (sensing a pattern?) about a haunted young student with a gift of introspection so immense, he can walk his soul to the gates of the afterlife and return unscathed. He walks with the dead.

However, his short life of dimensional wandering has taken its toll. Shadows have taken notice- they watch him now. They follow him and trace his steps to the world of the living. Reality is distant to him- the world becomes cold and numb when you can walk beyond it. It is an arbitrary afterthought.

His life is unraveling; addictions gnaw at his mind and bad people knock at his door. He is no longer unnoticed- he is sought. His quiet life is over, and a far darker one is about to begin.

Okay, so…

1, 2, or 3.

On a side note:

1. is about law and morality, and the determination of an old warrior to save the soul of a young boy in a soulless land. Features all sorts of shamanic logic and tribal mythology (which is very real in the story). 

2. is about comradery and, if I can pull it off, both sides of human nature when human nature is forgotten. Would be quite violent, but is more about brotherhood and survival than war.

3. is about introspection and what it means to live. This would be the slightly more psychological of the three- the closest example I can think of would be Constantine meets Donnie Darko. Less violence, more fear and self-discovery.

So, do it. Help me out. I’ve started them all to some extent, and I’ll finish them all eventually if I can, but for now I want to pick one.

KGO!

(The above established which story I would write after seeing numerous teachers and establishing a style. Story #3 - a.k.a. "Prophet"- is what I've decided to run with.)