I’m not going to lie, I found myself at a bit of a loss as to what I would write on here this week. I finished the author branding trio (one, two, and three) and, while I know I want to write about authenticity and possibly writing roots at some point, most of my other plans need more research first. I thought about writing a short story related to Shifting Sands – any excuse to write from Masa’s point of view! – but knew I could easily write for days with him. And, as I discarded each idea, the idea of visiting my story ideas graveyard popped into my head.
I feel like every writer must have one; an endless field of abandoned ideas, riddled with plot bunnies stuck hibernating among the skeleton drafts. I know I have folders upon folders of story ideas that are only half developed. I’d love to go back to them one day. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The perk of the graveyard full of abandoned story ideas is that a) you have a backlog of ideas to dive into if you ever find yourself adrift without a project and b) it shows you how far you’ve come as a writer. So, since my focus on this blog is my author/researcher identity, why not look back at where I came from? What story ideas have I kept for later and what’s stopped me from continuing with them? Let’s look at some of the early entries to the graveyard.
Abandoned story ideas 1: Super Spot and Brilliant Blackie (early childhood)
I can’t believe I nearly forgot to write about Super Spot and Brilliant Blackie! This was a collaboration between myself and my sister. I’m not even sure why we started doing it, but one day we booted up the computer and started writing together. I remember designing the outfits of the characters – all based on pets and animals we knew – and being shocked at the twist ending that we were writing. So sweet, so innocent.
The basic plot of Super Spot and Brilliant Blackie was as follows: our pets were part of a superhero gang, trying to take down the dastardly Smokey who… I don’t really remember why he was a bad guy. I know he kidnapped Lovely Lucky, who, in our twist ending, was revealed to be the brainwashed sister of Brilliant Blackie and love interest of Super Spot. That’s pretty bad, but what motivated him? I have no idea. I guess my skills in writing fully developed villains didn’t really come until later.
This story was abandoned, most likely because we were children. Once we finished the first story, some of the lustre of writing wore off and we started doing other things. My sister got older. The pets who inspired he characters died. And superheroes weren’t really the genres my sister and I typically read or wrote anyway. I still think there’s some merit to the characters – they were well developed and relatively unconventional for the age we were while writing – but the plot definitely needs work. Why was our villain a villain?!
Abandoned story ideas 2: The Golden Locket (approx. 2002-2004)
Ah, The Golden Locket. This was probably the start of me getting serious about writing. I remember standing talking to my neighbour about the fact I was going to be an author and, while she seemed to indulge me, she also looked somewhat dubious. Then came two years of writing into the night, obsessing over the world I was creating. It was over 100, 000 words long! I was eleven!
The basic idea of The Golden Locket was a young witch going to the magic school her grandpa taught at, only to learn that she was actually the princess of the Magical Realms and the dark wizard, Tenebros, was after her. Kind of a Harry Potter meets Princess Diaries. I plotted out the whole six book arc and even mentally lived in the sequel series (where she was queen, but her magic was breaking) for a while. It’s grown from its Harry Potter-esque roots as I’ve got older, becoming more high fantasy each time I try to redraft it, but it’s stayed in the story idea graveyard for a number of years now.
I’ll never take back those years writing The Golden Locket as they served as my foundation as a writer. That whole practice makes perfect thing? Yeah, don’t think I’m perfect but my writing improved greatly in those two years. I would, however, overhaul a lot of the details. There are chapters that go nowhere, bits where I was clearly writing for writing’s sake, and, in all honesty, I’m not sure I actually like the characters. Not the protagonist and her friends, at least, but I was learning as a writer. In future rewrites, I think I would have to either push hard into the Princess Diaries-esque parts (it would work well for the age range of my younger self and I don’t think there’s anything on the market like it currently) or continue to push it towards high fantasy.
Abandoned story ideas 3: The Young Prince (approx. 2004-2006)
If The Golden Locket marks the start of me seriously writing, The Young Prince is probably the maturation. It started as a handwritten scene, exploring the origins of Tenebros, the dark wizard from The Golden Locket. As I was moving into book two of my series, I felt I needed to know my villain more. I’d written a few scenes with him in it and found that, for a dark wizard, he acted almost fatherly to my protagonist and came off as quite sympathetic. That then spiralled off into a whole planned stand-alone novel, which I got about half-way through. Incidentally, it may also have started my love of killing characters. I rewrote that initial set of scenes for a school assignment and let other people in the class read it. They cried. Excellent!
The Young Prince was my bad guy origin story, but it really ended up showing me that characters – bad guy or not – always have their own motivations. They’re not all bad. It focused on Tenebros before he was Tenebros, starting on the day his older brother was crowned king – oh yes, he’s the great uncle of the protagonist in The Golden Locket! – and moves through him falling in love, facing tragedy, and being tricked by the truly bad guy.
Like The Golden Locket, this story has been shuffled and tweaked many times since I first started writing it, but nothing has really stuck. I’m not wholly sure why I abandoned it. Possibly because I knew I was overhauling The Golden Locket and The Young Prince wouldn’t work with the overhaul? I do think there’s promise in this one in its original form, but there are several things I need to figure out first.
The endless graveyard
The graveyard full of drafts is never ending but I try not to let that bother me. I assume that each story will have its time, if it’s supposed to enter the world. I just have to figure out why it’s stuck. These three stories, I would argue, were the foundation of my writing self. Their the reason I fell in love with storytelling and built my skills as a writer. They have their issues, but maybe one day I’ll work out how to fix them. Either way, their tombstones in the Graveyard of Abandoned Drafts are swept every so often. Just in case!
I have many more stories in the Graveyard, which I may dive into in time, but these were some of the first and most impactful. Does anyone else have a graveyard full of ideas? I’d love to hear about them!
