0135B: A Quick Mind Map of Three Stories

Still no progress on the writing front beyond (1) blogging about wanting to write and (2) lugging my writing notebook around. Bad, Rocky, bad.

So let's pick at this idea a bit more.

I have at least three stories bouncing around my head that can either end as short stories or can develop into full novels if I find the nerve for that sort of thing.

The first is THAT story - the one that every writer drags around with him for years on end. This is the same story that almost became a novel during my first year of high school - at least before I decide to delete the whole thing since I hated how the tone in the beginning was way different from the tone at the latest chapter. It's one of those stories that blends science and magic into a single reality - or in this case a multiverse spanning near infinite dimensions and possibilities. I've written so many different parts of this story over the years but I can never seem to stitch them all together into a single narrative.

I keep writing stories centered around my more-or-less protagonist - Chi'tairn the Wanderer. She's your stereotypical green-eyed,. red-haired strong female character. Think a mix of Mara Jade from the Star Wars universe and the Rogue character from the original Diablo. After all, her name was first used as my character's name in the game.

The other two happen to be LGBT-themed stories, which may contribute to why I have such a hard time fleshing these stories out.

One idea involves a guy who decides to go to Boracay after a break-up. He's a bit of a geek and he's trying to escape from thinking about the fact that he just broke up with his boyfriend of many years and now he's back on the island where so many of their most intimate memories happen to have been made. He'll have a chance encounter with some guy who seems way out of his league, but naturally it'll lead to them hooking up while on the island somehow. This doesn't guarantee a long term relationship right away or anything like that, but it will mark him starting to move on.

The last idea involves a zombie apocalypse, mainly because I've been reading too much Mira Grant as of late. Our protagonist is one of your more "discreet" gay guys who is naturally more focused on staying alive than hooking up. But when he starts to get weird glances from one of his fellow survivors in their particular camp, the possibility of a little romance despite all the horrors of the new world lingers on his mind.

So which one do I flesh out? Do I try to create a story based on the universe that is meant to host my "one big novel of my life," or whatever you want to call it? Should I write the gay break-up story with a protagonist who just so happens to be a lot like me? Or should it be the zombie apocalypse piece, which will be my first venture into that sort of genre writing and hopefully will be a funny story in the end.

Decisions, decision, decisions. As much as I'm trying to re-learn how to use a notebook, I have to admit that I'm still a lot more fluid at the computer, even for activities like brainstorming or mind-mapping.