On writing stories

You know, I've always liked making up stories.

Ever since I was very young, I've loved stories. If I wasn't acting them out with my dolls, I was imagining them in my head. When I was old enough to read and write, sometimes I would staple pieces of printer paper together and my sister and I would scribble down tales of adventure in colored pencil.

When I got older, my favorite school assignments were journal topics, in which I was meant to write a story or poem based on whatever science, vocabulary, or history unit we were studying. I filled several composition books with strange and often very random short stories. Looking back, most of my work from seventh grade to about eleventh grade was decidedly very silly. Actually, a great many of the journal prompts were meant to be humorous, but when I say silly, I mean that what I wrote rested on the border of ridiculous and possibly insane.

At some point, I took one of my old composition notebooks and scribbled down a huge list of prompts to guide a bunch of vignettes that ranged anywhere from, "What if you were caught between two warring alien species" (by the way, I came up with that before I watched Transformers. Then I watched the movies and thought, "Oh rats. There went my journal prompt.") to "What if you stood at the edge of a cliff and someone said "jump", would you?" to "Hey, what if your feet attacked you?". I think my favorite prompt (or at least the one that provoked the most laughter from my sisters and I) was "Imagine a "Justice League" type group made up of the worst superpowers imaginable." 

Now, when my sisters and I made up stories like that, what it basically looked like was sitting in a circle and spouting dialogue into the air. We ended up with "The Incredible Hamster Man", who runs on a giant wheel to keep the electricity going in the secret hideout, and "Sweatshirt Boy", who can fire yarn from his hands into sweaters to keep everyone warm. One of us may or may not have been sick and on cold medicine for the invention of that particular character.

Four years ago, I began an adventure story featuring a fantasy world that my twin and I made between the pair of us years ago. We'd made maps, drawn up continents, written out species and their particular cultures, we even had a cold war between two of the countries and a somewhat complex political arrangement between the pair of them! My story serves as sort of a prequel to a series of tales Mer has been making up for a long time, which span from nearly the beginning of that world to nearly its end. 

.....I really need to finish writing that story. It's quite near the end, but I keep forgetting that it exists...

In more recent years, I have read a lot of books written in the 1800s, and book by book, chapter by chapter, I have been formulating three or four specific characters that I would like to write real books about one day. Perhaps I'll even send one to a publisher! The first is an adventure-genre character named Dresden Spoche. She serves in a function similar to the old "Tintin" comics by Georges Hergé Remi . I had a series of fun titles that probably won't ever be written, but they're interesting to think up plots for. 

Dresden Spoche and the Clockwork Diamond

Dresden Spoche at the Utmost Inconvenience

Dresden Spoche and the Erstwhile Ermine

And it would all be puzzles and secrets and riddles and fun sorts of things that younger readers could enjoy.

The second character I came up with was a jovial young Englishman from the 1860s by the name of Charles. Or, if you asked him, he'd tell you his name was Charles Friedrich Lloyd, and then he'd ask you not to tell his father or the family butler that he was out trespassing again. To my mind, Charles is an eccentric, but lovable, young man from a wealthy family who enjoys inventing odd little gadgets that only rarely prove to be useful. Generally, he only uses them to impress his fiance, Miss Iris Walters. The best words to describe Charles are "bumbling" and "swashbuckler". An uncommon mix of adjectives, I grant you, but that's Charles in a nutshell. I had more titles in mind for him, and even little bits of story to go along with.

Charles Lloyd and the Reticent Baronet

"Oh! Er...those are some really first-rate recreations of Caravaggio you've got there!" Charles stuttered, backing away from the angry-looking forgers. He ran a hand through his floppy hair and grinned nervously. "I say, gentlemen, do you paint by request? Because there's this wonderful little piece I'd simply love a copy of!" The smugglers looked wary and slightly confused. "What is it?" one asked. Charles swallowed hard. "It's called: Please don't kill me!" he squeaked, and darted away.

Charles Lloyd: 4:40 to Secrecy

"I should like it noted," shouted the scrawny inventor over the din, "That I had no part in this madness! Well, except perhaps the whole smuggling-a-wanted-man-out-of-Soho affair. But he had a knife to my throat! I'm not culpable for that, am I?" He paused and squinted at the impassive policemen's faces. "Annnd you're not saying anything. Oh dear, oh-oh-oh dear. I am culpable for this, aren't I?" Long fingers fiddled nervously with brass buttons on the front of his vest. "Oh spots and bother! Erm...I'm sorry fellows, I've just remembered this terribly important matter I was supposed to....There's this event I was meant to...erm...So long!" And with that, he sprinted away, flailing his arms like a madman.

He was even supposed to cameo in a few Dresden Spoche stories, such as "The Erstwhile Ermine".

"Strange company you keep, miss!" observed the Detective Inspector Wesely. Scratching his nose, he leaned forward. "One Dresden Spoche: journalist, accounted for!" He checked something off in his notepad. "Two Southampton constables, disoriented but accounted for! A rather mangy looking parrot? Unaccounted for, but I don't think anyone actually misses the flea-bitten nuisance." He moved on to a rather miserable Charles. "Well well," he chuckled, "If it ain't Sir Edwin's boy. In trouble again, I presume?" The accused coughed politely. "Weeeelllll, yes. Actually, yes. Please and oh please don't tell my father about this! For once in my life, it wasn't my fault!"

Charles Lloyd and the Authors' Strike (featuring his sweetheart, Iris, and his nemesis, Baronet Mayhew Maconaghy)

Iris hurried back and forth, checking gauges. "If we stay on this course at this altitude, we should make New York by tomorrow, and hopefully before the Baronet gets there. What do you think, Charles?" The inventor watched Iris with his chin in his hands and answered, "I think, Miss Walters, that life would be considerably less difficult if you were to marry me. Just think of all the paperwork we'd avoid! And whenever I get arrested, you can come in to fetch me. Hullo, Mrs. Lloyd they'll say. Good day, officers, I hope Charles wasn't too much trouble, you'll say, and they'll answer that I was very very troublesome indeed."

Charles is bad at proposing. Sometimes social graces elude him.

At one point, I thought it would be amusing to throw him into the future and have him be utterly bewildered by the modern world, surviving with the help of a descendant of his. That would take up two stories:

Charles Lloyd and the Wheel of Fate

and

Charles Lloyd and the Inconceivable End

(if I were to write the paragraphs that went along with those, we'd be here all day.)

One of these days, I'm actually going to write down all the Charles Lloyd stories.

The third character I had was a young lady named Noira Blanche. She would go on adventures while traveling across Europe to work as a governess for her cousin. I meant for Noira to have to deal with various folk-tale monsters in whatever part of the world she stopped in, but the bulk of her tales were meant to come when she was an old woman. As for a title for the "series", I simply wrote down,

The Perilous Life of Noira Blanche

and underneath I wrote the following.

The first time I ever heard of Noira Blanche, I had stumbled into her tomb during a storm in the Carpathian mountains. Over the grave itself stood a statue of an angel with crystal tears forever frozen on her face as she held a banner over the bier, wherein was inlaid the inscription: "Noira Lynn Blanche, 1875-1974. She loved the unlovable."

And the stories were to begin with her last days and move backwards. I've not actually written much of anything for her, but I like to toss around ideas in my mind.

The fourth, and quite possibly the favorite, of these characters is Viktor Creed. The way he began is really rather ridiculous. I had been watching a show in which a character had been found dead and the others were discussing who could have done it before they called the police. For absolutely no good reason, I began supplying non-existent lines of dialogue in a Brooklyn accent, running commentary on the crime such as, "Well sure, you can rule it suicide. I mean, all ya gotta account for is that after killing herself, the deceased dragged herself over here to the middle of the floor. Which is weird, because why would she change her mind about where she wanted to die? What's wrong with the first spot? These are perfectly good curtains!" 

The monologue got more and more ridiculous, and eventually I named the voice "Creed". He's a detective during the 1920s, and no matter how serious the case, his enthusiasm and eccentricity make him a little hard to take seriously. Sometimes he has a secretary named Sierra, and sometimes he's wandering the town alone, getting into scrapes. I actually have one complete story that he belongs to, the first chapter of which can be found here: http://ravensandteapots.blogspot.com/2013/12/i-like-to-play-around-with-making-up.html. The title of that particular story is "Carnadine House" or, alternatively, "Horror at Carnadine House". 

Maybe someday I'll actually be brave enough to type them all out and send them to publishers, but at present these are all scattered across journals, computers, flashdrives and iPods.