I've often mentioned my first completed novel, On Freedom's Wings. It was a fun space opera that was grandiose, epic...and very, very bad. It was too Star Treky, and it used far too many clichés that one could easily figure out if only one watched Saturday morning cartoons.
However, I was recently daydreaming, and I came across a few ways to possibly re-create that universe. For starters, the novel began at...well...the beginning. What if I started it during the climax? Moreover, the characters were participating in some stuff that, while adding moral complexity to the story, could not be justified in the end. But what if the characters still participated in such a thing because they were fed misinformation and thought they were on the right side? Stuff started spinning in my tiny little brain, and I think I may have the stirrings of a new book.
I hadn't thought about On Freedom's Wings in forever. The possible new direction got me thinking - how can we make previously bad ideas good. I'm a better writer than I was 20 years ago when I began to write for real, and I can take garbage and maybe spin gold out if it(or at least plastic). What other ideas have I abandoned because they weren't initially handled very well? What ideas have you abandoned for similar reasons. I think this should give us pause to go back and re-examine our old work to try and find nuggets we can not only salvage, but ones we can make into a great story.
However, I was recently daydreaming, and I came across a few ways to possibly re-create that universe. For starters, the novel began at...well...the beginning. What if I started it during the climax? Moreover, the characters were participating in some stuff that, while adding moral complexity to the story, could not be justified in the end. But what if the characters still participated in such a thing because they were fed misinformation and thought they were on the right side? Stuff started spinning in my tiny little brain, and I think I may have the stirrings of a new book.
I hadn't thought about On Freedom's Wings in forever. The possible new direction got me thinking - how can we make previously bad ideas good. I'm a better writer than I was 20 years ago when I began to write for real, and I can take garbage and maybe spin gold out if it(or at least plastic). What other ideas have I abandoned because they weren't initially handled very well? What ideas have you abandoned for similar reasons. I think this should give us pause to go back and re-examine our old work to try and find nuggets we can not only salvage, but ones we can make into a great story.
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