Twisted Spinster

I mentioned a few days ago that I was going to work on a novel. I haven’t really started yet, but I think I have the vaguest of story outlines. It’s going to be a sort of fantasy/science fiction thing. The main character is a guy who has ended up living as a somewhat eccentric loner after three attempts at relationships ended very badly. I will then insert the common plot device of other characters breaking into his personal world, and then things go haywire as he finds out that 1) he isn’t from Earth, but another world in a galaxy far, far away, 2) he goes back — somehow, haven’t worked out how yet — to what he thinks is his home world, and 3) since there were very good reasons his parents fled to an isolated planet that knew nothing about the existence of other worlds, hijinks ensue, though not very amusing ones. In fact, he gets himself and his friends into an assload of trouble and the novel will be how he tries to get himself and his friends out if it though not without much pain and suffering. It sounds stupid and boring outlined like that — I’m hoping that the finished work is more interesting.

I don’t even have named for any of the characters yet. Well that’s what the internet is for — lots of “baby names” websites to waste my time on instead of writing look up character names. The tentative plot came about from me thinking about the standard fantasy “prince in exile returns home” story and how it might be played a bit with to be something other than the standard sparkly unicorns, dragons, and wizards tale. Or the scifi version — the shiny starships and planets stuff. I’m not going to go all deconstructionist, though. I like sympathetic characters and happy endings, or at least happyish endings. The environment I’m conceiving is kind of “crapsack world,” but not to excess. One thing I liked about Star Wars when it the first movie came out was the way Lucas conceived of a science fiction setting that actually looked as if people lived in it — especially in the bar scene and the other scenes on Tatooine. (The later movies seemed to mostly drop this, unfortunately, in favor of flashy special effects and big speeches.) For example, instead of “space clothes” (i.e., goofy uniform-looking things and jumpsuits on everyone — I guess no one will have to piss or shit in the future) characters got to wear clothes that looked like stuff real people would wear.

I may post excerpts here from time to time.