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Have you ever had a great idea for a story you'd much rather read than write? Everyone needs a little inspiration every now and then, so what stories do YOU wanna see written? I'd like to see a story with a transformation based on String Theory, for instance.
String Theory?
There are only eight people on the planet who understand string theory! LOL.
Actually, I've started a story based on string theory and one of the characters is TG. It's not just a story, it's a trilogy of novels so don't hold your breath waiting for them. :) They're all plotted out but that's often the killer for a story for me. The first one is called "Zig Zag Zeke" and the second is called "The Perpendicular Invasion" and the third is called "The Punctuated W/o:m!a?n".
I've got Zig Zag Zeke started but that's been true for almost a year now.
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Which makes it perfect!
Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
String theory?
I'm a bit tied up at the moment, so before I become unravelled, I'll keep to the threads I'm currently following, or is that a yarn too far?
Angharad
Angharad
oh yeah, string theory
Um, so how long is it huh...colours?? Gee, it was a few years ago that I did High school maths.. and I failed it then. Never did do phyisics...algebra and stuff, eek.
***String theory is a still-developing mathematical approach to theoretical physics, whose original building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects called strings. Unlike the point particles in quantum field theories like the standard model of particle physics, strings interact in a way that is almost uniquely specified by mathematical self-consistency, forming an apparently valid quantum theory of gravity. courtesy Wiki***
Did we all follow that then class..hmmm??
Kristina
Rewind
I had difficulty in following the thread Kristina.
Unravelled
I did too, but then I basically only caught the end of it.
By the time I had cottoned on, I was wound up and my woolly mind got knotted - or is that knitted?
Lady E
I Guess...
...I was thinking along sort of similar lines. I had an opening for a story where a shape-shifter was discovered (by National Security types in a day-after-tomorrow world where DNA samples are copiously on file) having transformed from a 6-1, 210-pound guy to a 5-8, 140-pound teenage girl by redistributing the excess mass into one of those microscopic extra dimensions that the theory postulates. There was also a mental "filing cabinet" there where the shifter, who'd been around since the 1760's, could store and access memories of her previous identities.
The idea was that our three-or-four-dimensional senses can't account for material in the sixth physical dimension any more than the denizens of Flatland can judge the depth and weight of something that shows up as a line in their world, but that we could somehow build a viewer where we'd see length, width and Dimension #6 instead of length, width and depth.
One problem was that I had the feeling I was seriously butchering the physics, to the point where someone other than the eight people Erin mentioned might be able to tell. The second was that I had to impose so many ground rules on my 250-year old shapeshifter that the back story was suffering. The third was that I discovered that I didn't know my character quite well enough to decide what she'd decide to do once she learned that those ground rules no longer applied. (There were additional problems -- for one, anything I write bogs down almost completely once I hit a couple of thousand words or a point where I need to use dialogue as exposition.)
So that's why you're reading this in a blog reply and not in a story where it belongs. Maybe someday I'll get the whole thing straightened out...
Eric
Don't worry
The eight people who understand string theory all live in the highlands of New Guinea and have no internet access. Besides, they're anthropophages. Oh, what, maybe you should worry. :)
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Wool Theory
All this string is a bit dull really. How about some nice colourful wool? Then you could knit something really nice to wear!
Hmmm... a story about magic knitting needles, perhaps.
What's sew great
about knitting, huh? Why, that's a complete macrame of this thread!
Okay, sorry. Glad to see I'm not the only one interested in string theory though. I'm afraid my fantabulous Evil Dead TG fanfic was lost with my computer, as was my will to finish it, but I'd still like to read one. Heck, I'd help with ideas if asked.
Evil Dead String Theory?
How does that work? They're not after your brains, they just want the top knot on your knitted tam? :) Oh, I get it! They're anthropophages, too! :)
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
String theory is EASY, ask my cats
String is for cats to pounce and chew on, duh!
Just don't let them swallow it.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Reminds me, John
Your reply made me think of the old Bill Cosby routine - "Why Is There Air?". My brother has some of his comedy albums, I've been trying to get him to put them on CD or MP3s for a long time.
Karen J.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"
Janis Joplin
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Bill Cosby
"Why is there air?"
"To blow up volleyballs and basketballs. Any Phys Ed major knows why there's air, for crying out loud."
Which recalls (was it on the same record?) Cos' bit about the secret to a happy marriage: "I cry first."
"When we have an argument, I cry first. Yes, I do. And then I go and lock myself in the bathroom before she can get there. Then, I get to the telephone before her and I call my mother first."
Maybe there's a TG story in there, waiting to grow.
Annie
How about a title?
In my notes for stories yet to be written, I have a few words for each idea that reminds me what the whole thing is. But for one, I just have the title, "Metamorphosister," and I don't know what the story attached to it was going to be when I wrote it down. So anyone else is free to use it. Maybe I was planning a Kafka parody?
OMG
First thing I thought of was a TG version of The Fly...
Melanie E.
yug
nevermind.... (my stupid kafka idea)
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Revival!
I know I know I'm lame.
Here's an idea I had I simply don't have the experience to execute. A young man is in a horrible car crash as a teenager. His body is badly damaged and he loses his manhood, and ends up in a coma for ten years. When he awakes, everything is different in more ways than one....
Melanie E.
Do you mean with a mad scientist?
Who does a brain transplant? Or do they just do a sex change operation while he's out? Jennifer Brock did write a story like that (I mean the second).
Could be, could be...
I was thinking more real life medical, you know, wakes up to find his ex-girlfriend is the duty nurse who first sees 'her' eyes open, the trauma of losing both ten years of your life AND your sex, all that.
Melanie E.
Story idea
I wanted to write this, but I really don't have the time:
Revisionists
It's a take-off of Quantum Leap. A young scientist, let's call him Fred, on the Quantum Leap project, is jealous that only Sam Beckett has all the glory. One night, he gains access to the lab, starts the Quantum Leap accelerator and dives in, expecting to seek adventure in the past. Instead of adventure with God guiding him around to do good deeds, he is shuttled off to a somewhat miffed angel, who is also a screw-up, to live in limbo, somewhere between Heaven and Earth.
They have nothing to do, so they end up arguing about the classics, what went wrong and so forth, and here's where the story really starts.
The Angel has enough power to manipulate small pocket universes in limbo -- say the size and complexity necessary to contain the scenes and people in literature and film. Essentially, Fred will be doing what Sam Beckett is doing in the real world -- just doing it to straighten out what the angel decides are bad endings. This will earn Fred brownie points with the angel, who will put in a good word for him with the Creator -- or possibly will earn him a reward as a life as a character in a pocket universe styled after a story. Fred, of course, isn't quite as "dexterous" in solving problems as Sam Beckett, in fact, he blunders around, but it's part of the fun.
A few story/series/chapter ideas:
Fixing "Ice Angel": The ending where Matt Clark is evicted from the body of the Olympic ice skater Sarah Bryan after Matt put in all that work to get her the Gold Medal (and then have to die when it wasn't even his fault the first time) was particularly disappointing to the angel. Fred goes in as Sarah and royally twists the film to something completely different.
Potential similar plots/chapters are possible for "Identity Matrix," "Switch," "Goodbye Charlie" and anything else along those lines.
"Fixing" "Pride and Prejudice": The angel is a romantic. Somehow, he sees a kindred spirit in Mary Bennet, the bookish sister, and wants to give her a good ending instead of leaving her as sort of an old maid type. Fred goes in as Mary Bennet just before Elizabeth meets Mr. Darcy and destroys the story.
This will obviously work for any story the author is dissatisfied with or would like to mess up. :)
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
Scenes I'd love to see
So, the question was: stories I'd rather read than write.
This is one I wish I *could* write, but it's way beyond me.
I had the idea while reading Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself by Robert Montgomery Bird. In this book, Sheppard Lee discovers that he has the ability to inhabit the body of any person who's recently died. (It's a comedy, by the way.) He goes from one life to another, constantly getting himself into the most insane situations. When things build up to a pitch, and there is no other way out, he rather stupidly pops into another body.
I'm only halfway through, but I doubt (partly because this was written in the 1850s) that Sheppard will pop into a female body. There seem to be certain cultural limits to the imagination.
ANYWAY... I'd like to see this lapse rectified. In a more modern version, maybe Sheppard, when he dies, could pop up in another body, not of his own choosing, and so he'd find himself in any number of ages and genders and orientations.
String Theory and the old guard
I read an SF novel, oh ten or fifteen years ago in which Cosmic Strings were used as a method of instantaeous travel. It was one of the guys like Peirs or something. It was pretty good too; very surealistic and all that.
I was just watching a NOVA thing on particle theory last night. It was so charming how these guys would be so sure that it was one way and then years later they would find out that it was another.
The discussions about dimensionality are neat to listen to also.
I doubt that I will live to see it but I just know that a way to do FTL travel will be found.
Please keep in mind that I just barely made it through first term Calculus. giggle.
Gwen Brown
Superstrings
There's just something fascinating about one dimensional subatomic phenomena vibrating in eleven dimensions, it warms the blood.
Melanie E.
Just think...
What if they made a bathing suit out of that stuff?
Technically
All bathing suits are made of Cosmic Strings:P
Melanie E.
Some more than others
It took me a while, but I managed to write this story.
A new challenge for Kaleigh Way
Or anyone brave enough to try! No prize, but surely someone will take the bait.
Here's the challenge- a family road trip gone horribly wrong. Only rules are no body swap (personal preference) and keep it PG13. Could even work for a summer romance contest entry.
If people actually start trying to do these more, I may start a new thread and post a challenge a week- lord knows I have the ideas, and if others write them I can finish what I already have started!
Melanie E.
Not a "road trip" road trip, maybe
Here is your road trip gone bad.
Fudging
I think you fudged the 'no body swap' a little bit.
KJT
"Being a girl is wonderful and to torture someone into that would be like the exact opposite of what it's like. I don’t know how anyone could act that way." College Girl - poetheather
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
I don't think it can be classed as a swap.
When software code is pinched to do something in another application, we in the industry like to call it reuse.
It's not swapping.
Fred's body wasn't swapped for Dexies, it was merely a case of re-use.
I liked it anyway.
NB
I don't just look it, I really AM that bad...
I said fudge
I didn't say break. The father had his body swapped for the girl's. Has nothing to do with the quality of the story.
Taking code from one application and using it in another could be reuse, it could also be theft if you didn't own the code in the first place. Different kettle of fish.
This is more like taking an entire software application (like an OS) and trying to transfer it into a different computer. M$ frowns on that.
KJT
"Being a girl is wonderful and to torture someone into that would be like the exact opposite of what it's like. I don’t know how anyone could act that way." College Girl - poetheather
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Not theft
And yet that's what they did with the Apple OS isn't it?
I don't just look it, I really AM that bad...
Inspiration
And Apple was inspired by Xerox PARC. Seems like everyone builds on previous work.