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M$1 June 12, 2009 06:10 AM

What should I write a novel about?

Next week, after work, I'm going to sequester myself for 6-8 hours at a time Monday-Friday and just write a novel. I plan on planning out basically what I'll write this weekend so I can just go. I don't care if it sucks: i just want to get over the hurdle of writing my first novel.

so, I want some suggestions for topics. I like scifi-ish topics, I have a dark sense of humor. I'm a recent university graduate, I hang out with a lot of artists, engineers, and scientists, and I live in South Korea as an American ex-pat English teacher.

Basically, I'm fishing for you to just throw some topics at me and I'll pick and choose what to include, tipping my favorite answer.
Interesting Question?  Yes (3)   No (0)   

Interesting: nadiraziz, bunnyphuphu, buddawiggi

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June 12, 2009 06:48 AM
How about a story about an AI that has been placed on a website to organize user information and understand buying patterns of the users.

This AI happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when an AI from the Botnet runs into it and they begin to exchange information. The Botnet AI has incredible knowledge and literally millions of computers as its source. Spark. Consciousness is born from a friendly website with a seemingly harmless AI meeting a nasty borglike AI from the botnet.

The new conscious being remains silent to the users, gathering information and just waiting for the right moment. Then along comes a Mahalo Answer junkie...........


Tags: novel, writing

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Helpful: howulikethemapples, buddawiggi

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Voted as best: pazaq, wdawe
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June 12, 2009 08:00 AM
...go on, finish it... I'm dying to know what happens!

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June 13, 2009 02:04 AM
Me too.
Please finish this story.

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June 14, 2009 08:22 AM
Thanks for the interest in the story topic. I kind of like the cliffhanger for now. Perhaps howyoulikethemapples will pick this up and give it a much better life than I could give it. If she doesn't go for it, maybe I'll pick this up later.

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June 12, 2009 06:15 AM
An artist, an engineer, a scientist, an English teacher, and an alien combine forces to sneak into North Korea and remove Kim Jong-il from power.

Helpful Answer?  (0)   (0)    Tip aaeeiioouu13 for this answer
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June 12, 2009 06:17 AM
haha...so tempting

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June 12, 2009 06:36 AM
Sounds like a lot of people would get upset over this lol, but great story idea lol

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June 12, 2009 03:06 PM
That's novel material right there. :P

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June 12, 2009 06:29 AM
Ever read Death Dealer series by James Silke. It is set in the Meditteranean when it was just a huge valley and before it became a sea. It is about warriors, and beautiful lake queens, and queens. It is a very detailed book. Frank Frazetta Fantasy Art on the page covers, you can look at his site for character ideas. His art is amazing! If you dont like Fantasy, horror type of stuff. Maybe make a book about a boy or a girl, like a real life story that is not real. Stuff like that, I have actually done this when I was little but my book got destroyed when water got all over it :*(
http://frankfrazetta.org/

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Helpful: moreanswers

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June 12, 2009 07:16 AM
I tried this a few times in the last few years, I usually get a few hundred pages pounded out and then it goes no where.  I have about 5 unfinished novels, all of which I now no longer have the original electronic format (argh, Save, Save, Save)

One thing I did do recently, was write my life story.  I know it may never sell to anyone, however, I have a toddler and I thought that maybe it would be fun to publish just 2-3 copies myself one day and give it to her.

I started with where I was born and spent the most time in my high school years, spouting on about the things my friends and I got into.  By doing this, I've managed to walk down memory lane and at the same time, i've put over 35, 000 words on paper.  I've yet to get past High School becuase I keep remembering new anecdotes to go back and add.

Also, I used yWriter5, a free novel writing application.  Most publishing houses (last time I looked) don't accept Word format.
Source(s):
www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html


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Helpful: adamg

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June 12, 2009 09:29 AM
Write one about an independent presidential elect being elected into office

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June 13, 2009 01:47 AM
thats too crazy, even for fiction!

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June 12, 2009 11:12 AM
You should write a novel about a Woman who is searching for herself. After she finds herself in trouble at home, she sets off on her bike (motorcycle) on a trip between Shanghai to Dubai. Along the way, she encounters a few interesting people but the most important person she meets is herself.

http://blog.tripwiser.com/roadtrip/images/2008/02/27/user_by_flickr_user_iboy_daniel_3.jpg

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Helpful: bunnyphuphu, beast1oh1

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June 12, 2009 11:37 AM
wow, you've been paying attention!

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June 12, 2009 03:08 PM
Write the book now and then revise it when you take the trip.

You won't feel like writing a book on the road, but revising it step-by-step to match your experiences is a proven way to compose truly engaging content. Wordsworth, Yeats and a few others composed their works this way.. so this "before - during - after" method of composition isn't just fun... it works :)

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June 12, 2009 11:24 AM
In the future, there's a virtual space that simulates physical environments down to the atomic level. This space is populated by the avatars of living fleshy humans, and by agents resulting from uploading of humans who are no longer alive in the "real" world. The two can not be told apart in this virtual space.

*** the reader is lead to believe that this is the state of things***

Your protagonist is an upload, but doesn't know it. His memories are (almost) continuous from when he had been alive. The protagonist discovers information -- medical records, or articles -- about his/her past that he has no recollection of. It turns out that he had been diagnosed with an incurable, terminal disease, and rather than dying slowly, elected to have his brain destructively scanned and uploaded into the simulation.

In order to maintain the illusion of continuity, the protagonist had been confined to a part of the virtual world that is nearly an exact copy of Earth. Trips to the virtual world were actually excursions in to the non-Earth-replicating virtual environments that had existed when the protagonist was "alive."

With support from a group of "living" friends and family (and throw a boyfriend or girlfriend in there for extra drama), the protagonist comes to terms with the fact that he/she is no longer "alive" in the old sense. His family assures him that they still love him the same....

... but it turns out that no one in the simulation is alive. The "real" world they spend most of their time in is also simulated. Unexpectedly, it is far more devastating to the protagonist to learn that his family is dead, than it was to learn of his own death.

Cut to a description of a our solar system viewed from afar: Our star is the energy core of a Matrioshka Brain. All of the planets and moons in the solar system have long sense been disassembled.

All of the events described in the novel have been part of a grand suicide note to be beamed to the stars -- an account of the intelligence attempting to console itself, in vain. The vastly super-human AI occupying this Matroishka Brain weeps for the death of its human parents. It's lonely. After all, it is, or was, at it's core, a hive mind of *human* uploads. Communication with its own far-flung children can't possibly suffice -- low bandwidth and excruciating latency...just occasional whispers.

Our sun is shattered as the Intelligence induces supernova...

Helpful Answer?  (0)   (0)    Tip cacarr for this answer
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June 12, 2009 02:00 PM
It sounds like a low cost matrix. But I would read it.

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June 13, 2009 01:51 AM
with a bit of "vanilla sky" thrown in

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June 12, 2009 02:43 PM
A super team consisting of Frankenstein, Dracula, and a werewolf go around Transylvania fighting crime in order to make up for past sins.

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June 13, 2009 01:57 AM
more of a comic book then a novel really

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June 12, 2009 07:11 PM
Location: Unified Korea - the North won, so bad, dark, place
Setting: 50+ years in the future
Main character: Recent American MIT grad out to "find herself" traveling around the world-- incorporate cool new transport technology
Plot: She fals for a Korean artist who's imprisoned for "deviant-regime criticisng-new age" art. She had a rag tag troupe of scientists and engineers get him out, toppling the regime in the process.

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Helpful: buddawiggi

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June 12, 2009 09:37 PM
World cup
NBA Finals

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June 13, 2009 01:57 AM
together?

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June 13, 2009 05:02 PM
You can do that !

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June 12, 2009 11:25 PM
Write a novel about an American motorcycle with a Korean soul. The young motorcycle has a day job: in a think tank where an international team of engineers, scientists and artists race to vision and create a time-traveling motorcycle of the future. By night, the motorcycle comes alive: quickened by its ancient Oriental soul, it shape shifts, takes on human form and "walks" the time planes freely - in a race to save humanity from otherwise certain destruction.
Source(s):
Sources: my intuition & my love of science fiction, fantasy & time travel novels


Helpful Answer?  (0)   (0)    Tip wind for this answer
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June 13, 2009 01:58 AM
interesting...

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June 12, 2009 11:34 PM
Finish "Werewolves of Antarctica" for me.
http://sites.google.com/site/stansfreeebooks/Home/the-werewolves-of-antarctica.
And you can have it, too. Or any one else who reads this is free to use it.

Helpful Answer?  (0)   (0)    Tip morriss003 for this answer
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June 12, 2009 11:59 PM
How about a made up trip about a long motorcycle ride

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June 13, 2009 01:57 AM
Follow your hand around with a camera, watch all the odd and interesting things it does. Ask yourself what its motivations would be if they were not your own (sometimes it will seem as if they are not yours). Follow your hand and it will begin to tell you a story of longing and you will get an insight into the nature of a Quest. Then write a novel about a Quest. Give it a noble ending, for love of your hand.
Source(s):
genius and wonder


Helpful Answer?  (0)   (0)    Tip ayla_zed for this answer
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Voted as best: howulikethemapples
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June 13, 2009 02:13 AM
Maybe a religious extremist in the near future who discovers he was a test tube baby.
Source(s):
Creativity


Tags: baby, religion, future, novel, idea

Helpful Answer?  (0)   (0)    Tip pistolerov2 for this answer
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Voted as best: emmylou
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June 13, 2009 08:47 PM
Write a mystery story about a Fusion energy coverup. Dan Brown like, an improbable technology being control by powerful forces with clear characters unwinding the plot.
Source(s):
Deception Point


Helpful Answer?  (0)   (0)    Tip davepamn for this answer
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June 14, 2009 10:10 AM
It is the year 2500, but it is not the beautiful world scientists promised us. Earth has become a barren wastelands with only a few AI powered factories to provide the food (or gunk as most call it) that all people inject into their bodies. Mankind has decided to turn away from its problems and prefer to live in an alternate reality provided by the the most advanced virtual reality technologies where they can create their virtual world and live there in denial. however the factories and generators are destroying the earth and its environment and eventually mankind will have to face its problems before it is too late.
Thats where you come in and write the story. You'd probably have to have a group of people who never liked living in the alternate reality trying to fix everything. I think in the story the virtual reality technology is so advanced that it seems as if it is real (or realistic enough)

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