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If Only I Didn't Have to Work
Sep. 7th, 2016 04:08 pmThis is the dream I mentioned in my post yesterday...
Zelda is a policy wonk. One day she's called on to deliver a report at a Senate hearing, and the reception she receives is chilly. Instead of going back to her office, she visits the National History Museum next to the Capitol Building, where she randomly joins a special tour led by Ganondorf, one of the museum's curators. It just so happens that his talk corresponds with the area of her current research, migrant labor in Hyrule.
Afterward, she comes up to him and says she noticed that a certain item on exhibit resonates with the strangeness in her historical data, which indicates that there is a dark underground even within the shadow economies of the immigrant workforce. Ganondorf doesn't want to talk about it, but he finds himself drawn to Zelda, and he takes her into his office to tell her that yes, she's right. In fact, people from the more magical races have long been used as slaves and then quietly disposed of in Hyrule, a process guided by both imperialist anxieties and a deep prejudice against magic. Zelda can't handle this information, but she's just as attracted to Ganondorf as he is to her, and they kiss before she rushes away.
Since this is so close to my own experience, I can easily write this story with all the serial numbers filed off. It would have four "acts," with four chapters per act that would follow a repeating pattern of A Plot -> B Plot -> A Plot -> Smut. The B Plot would involve the antics of Zelda's interns Link and Malon and Ganondorf's bosses Nabooru and Aveil (with, you know, the serial numbers filed off).
If I were to fashion this story as a short novel - my model would be Lev Grossman's Codex - I'd need to drop out of fandom, which is taking up entirely too much of my creative energy. This would be a hard call to make, since I'm already making steady progress on three separate fic projects. I think a more sustainable transition would be to write a pilot for the novel as a four-chapter fanfic, aiming for maybe 2,500 words per chapter. No one will read it, of course, but so much the better.
I'm super excited about this story right now. I wish I could take a week off from work to write it, but that's not going to happen. What do other writers do in this situation? Do people just not sleep?
Zelda is a policy wonk. One day she's called on to deliver a report at a Senate hearing, and the reception she receives is chilly. Instead of going back to her office, she visits the National History Museum next to the Capitol Building, where she randomly joins a special tour led by Ganondorf, one of the museum's curators. It just so happens that his talk corresponds with the area of her current research, migrant labor in Hyrule.
Afterward, she comes up to him and says she noticed that a certain item on exhibit resonates with the strangeness in her historical data, which indicates that there is a dark underground even within the shadow economies of the immigrant workforce. Ganondorf doesn't want to talk about it, but he finds himself drawn to Zelda, and he takes her into his office to tell her that yes, she's right. In fact, people from the more magical races have long been used as slaves and then quietly disposed of in Hyrule, a process guided by both imperialist anxieties and a deep prejudice against magic. Zelda can't handle this information, but she's just as attracted to Ganondorf as he is to her, and they kiss before she rushes away.
Since this is so close to my own experience, I can easily write this story with all the serial numbers filed off. It would have four "acts," with four chapters per act that would follow a repeating pattern of A Plot -> B Plot -> A Plot -> Smut. The B Plot would involve the antics of Zelda's interns Link and Malon and Ganondorf's bosses Nabooru and Aveil (with, you know, the serial numbers filed off).
If I were to fashion this story as a short novel - my model would be Lev Grossman's Codex - I'd need to drop out of fandom, which is taking up entirely too much of my creative energy. This would be a hard call to make, since I'm already making steady progress on three separate fic projects. I think a more sustainable transition would be to write a pilot for the novel as a four-chapter fanfic, aiming for maybe 2,500 words per chapter. No one will read it, of course, but so much the better.
I'm super excited about this story right now. I wish I could take a week off from work to write it, but that's not going to happen. What do other writers do in this situation? Do people just not sleep?
