An Epic Fantasy Idea – The Climb #630

Friday 13^th November 2020

I’m not sure whether my brain does this to dick with me or whether the most attractive idea is the one you don’t have to write yet.

But, I’ve had the beginnings of an idea for an Epic Fantasy. My “plan” is to get the current NaNo novel first draft written by the end of the year. There’s lots going on these last couple of months and juggling everything is already proving a challenge.

But the idea is that come the new year I’ll be looking at working on a new Epic Fantasy. I won’t be writing it from 1^st January but I would hope that I’ll be looking at starting to outline it.

The best ideas are not conscious and always come at the wrong time. It’s like my creativity trying to procrastinate by creating something else. I don’t mind as it allows ideas to percolate. This might be a book that I ultimately don’t get to for another 5 years or more, but if it is it will mean that it will be a book that has had 5 years to mature.

It started with a simple image of a bird flying through a blizzard. This simply comes from playing a lot of the Shadowlands Pre-Patch event and flying my Druid through the periodic icy winds. It was a cool visual.

But I had them landing on a submarine and shapeshifting into a modern day naval commander outfit. I have a image of them walking along the length of the submarine to the hatch, arctic seas throwing spray everywhere. Again, this idea is stolen. I loved the witches on the submarine in His Dark Materials, and I love the juxtaposition of the magical and technology. I want to do more where the fantasy world is similar to our own with similar technology levels.

This juxtaposition of magic and technology got me thinking and how to play with it. This got me thinking about the war, and world war 1 and how the introduction of tanks saw the end of cavalry and infantry charges.

I spun off a few ideas around this which could potentially form part of the plot but by no means was it a story. It was more a setting.

I wrote this down as I really don’t intend to do anything with it anytime this year and there were quite a few ideas I spun out of that initial idea that could be worked into something.

I wish these ideas would strike when I’m actively developing a novel but in all truth I would much prefer it that these flash of inspiration happen adhoc and that by the time I’m ready to tackle the project, I’ve got all the ideas worked out with an almost organic outline.