Monday, June 13, 2011

Evaluation: TCOFTWOFTL

Sometimes I need to stop writing what I want to finish so that I can write what I enjoy. And so the few days I wrote this week were dedicated to The Chronicles of the Wars of the Light, a thing I thought of many years ago and decided to finally start.

Don't be misled by the title, it's a just-for-fun thing. The basic idea occurred to me when I was on the first or second incarnation of Project Tapir (the fantasy novel I'll never finish), thinking about black-and-white morality in Fantasy. Y'see, one of the things about Project Tapir is that it's about ambiguity. Any of the three factions has a claim to being the "good guys". So I was thinking about how I didn't want to write a story about how Goodguy McHeropants and the Light Warriors fight against Azazel, Emperor of Evil...

And the idea came to me. I would write just that story. Except, Goodguy McHeropants would be the most evil bastard ever to lead the Light, and be the entire cause of the war between him and Azazel, who was the nicest guy and just happened be named after a demon and inherit an empire called "Evil."And it would all be told by a narrator who tries as hard as possible to be completely neutral to the conflict.

I never got around to writing it, but it was sitting in my idea file for a while and I figured it was just time to do something funny. In the current incarnation it's a bit less openly ridiculous (I changed McHeropants' name, for one) but the idea still remains. I still don't know if I should just send it back to full-blown self-mockery. I'll see if I can write it as-is and still give a feel that yes, the Order of the Light are genocidal maniacs and Azazel is just protecting the Darklands from them.

Wordcount: 762

No comments:

Post a Comment