Currently plugging away at this tree. The end goal is to be able to organize all of this information on a wheel, but first I want to expand as much as possible to create hundreds of possibilities for idea generation.
you might invite others to annotate what you have. e.g., print out on 11x17, with room for notes, additions, suggestions.
project has two aspects : (1) the creature creation/generation tool — an aide to the generation of interesting (as opposed to routine generic) beasts, and (2) your own demonstrations of its use, in helping you generate new characters (or overhaul old ones)
for the record, this passage
Fifty years ago, science fiction and fantasy were marginal genres. They weren’t respectable. In 1974, you gave a talk entitled “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” There’s a tendency in American culture to leave the imagination to kids — they’ll grow out of it and grow up to be good businessmen or politicians. Hasn’t that changed? We seem inundated with fantasy now. But much of it is derivative; you can a mash lot of orcs and unicorns and intergalactic wars together without actually imagining anything. One of the troubles with our culture is we do not respect and train the imagination. It needs exercise. It needs practice. You can’t tell a story unless you’ve listened to a lot of stories and then learned how to do it.
you might invite others to annotate what you have.
ReplyDeletee.g., print out on 11x17, with room for notes, additions, suggestions.
project has two aspects :
(1)
the creature creation/generation tool — an aide to the generation of interesting (as opposed to routine generic) beasts, and
(2)
your own demonstrations of its use, in helping you generate new characters (or overhaul old ones)
for the record, this passage
Fifty years ago, science fiction and fantasy were marginal genres. They weren’t respectable. In 1974, you gave a talk entitled “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?”
There’s a tendency in American culture to leave the imagination to kids — they’ll grow out of it and grow up to be good businessmen or politicians.
Hasn’t that changed? We seem inundated with fantasy now.
But much of it is derivative; you can a mash lot of orcs and unicorns and intergalactic wars together without actually imagining anything. One of the troubles with our culture is we do not respect and train the imagination. It needs exercise. It needs practice. You can’t tell a story unless you’ve listened to a lot of stories and then learned how to do it.
from
Writing Nameless Things: An Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin
David Streitfeld. Los Angeles Review of Books
November 17, 2017