Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family
rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to
write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration
(quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind.
These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat,
irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if
anything comes of them. Regarding
Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an
ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows
the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity.
Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of
ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa
McPhail.
OK – visiting a
VERY old post…pair of posts…I thought I’d weave this together…
Trope: None, I
hope!
Current Event: The
Top Twelve YA Fantasy books (9/11/2018) https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st_review-rank?keywords=top+ten+YA+fantasy&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Atop+ten+YA+fantasy&qid=1536701445&sort=review-rank
(PS – three of them are OLD and not Rowling or Pullman)
The thing is that most
of these will be seeing the bottom bins of recycling containers everywhere in a
few years while the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, HARRY POTTER, OZ and a very few others
will take their places in the annals of “classic children’s literature”.
CS Lewis said, “No
man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply
try to tell the truth (without caring a tuppence how often it has been told
before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having
noticed it.” (MERE CHRISTIANITY, Ch 11, Book 4)
TANGENT!
Some of you may
know that I spent eight months in Africa as the guest of the Nigerian,
Cameroonian, and Liberian Lutheran Churches. If people aren’t impressed with my
time there as a tool of the Church, they’re appalled by my white supremacist
intention of crushing African traditions beneath my white supremacist
assumptions of African savagery that needs to be saved from savagery…
Both responses
make me feel ill and neither one grants the people of the Continent any power
of self-determination – and are equally white supreme-ist.
OK – rant over.
(I’m sure this little essay may possibly irritate some people…) So, I recently
read THE BETRAYAL OF AFRICA (for a brief review, go here: (http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=17923)
follow this with an apparent non-sequitur, a few years ago, I read and
recommended for an ANDRE NORTON Award, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s second book, THE
SHADOW SPEAKER (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Speaker).
If you’ve never read it, do. If you haven’t, read both and then build a story
on this foundation: a Library to rival the one at Alexandria is nearly done in
the center of the Sahara in the Erg of Bilmah – and the dark forces of America:
Jersey Devils, Yuma Skeletons, Wampus Cats, Bigfeet, Headless Horsemen,
Mosquitoes, Trickster Coyotes, Maids in the Mist and Pecos Bill and his legions
take on the legends of the Sahara: mummies, scorpions, Desert Rattlers, raging
sandstorms, desert wolves and tigers…who wins and how…Now, throw in a hay bale
(one of the round ones), a city park, a lamp made of used electrical
conduit, circuit boxes and insulated wire and a girl who wants nothing to do with her magical family and everything to do with the wonder of electricity...create an outline for a really TRUE
young adult/teen fantasy.
Write it!
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