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Remember that Idea I had . . .

 


Sometimes an idea comes to me and then it just sort of sits there, mulling around my subconscious until I decide to write a story. Then I think, ‘hey, you know that idea I had? I wonder if would work for this?'

One idea I had was when I was musing about eye color. I know that people with brown eyes have more pigmatic (yes, I made that word up) protection from the sun than blue eyes. They are less sensitive to bright lights. But I wondered if there was more to it. Did people with different colored eyes actually see colors differently? That seemed a stretch, but what if they did? Or, what if it wasn’t eye color, but what if there were genetic differences in cones in the retinas, or if there were genetic differences in the optic nerves that made the color you see as blue look green to me? How would we ever know if red to you looks like purple to me? What if different brains simply interpret colors differently from each other. The answer is, we can’t know. The only way to know would be to place one person’s consciousness inside another person’s brain. Though there have been science fiction stories that have done that, it doesn’t seem very likely that this could happen in real life.

But if it could happen, how might we experience life differently. This was on my mind while I was trying to think up a story for the anthology Rainbows Aren’t Just for Leprechauns which was to come out in 2025. All the stories in this collection were supposed to be inspired by a color, or color was supposed to be an important factor in the story. This seemed to work well with that earlier idea I had. So, my premise was that different people (perhaps different races) would see colors differently. As I picked away at a possible framework for the story, I decided it would work better as a fantasy than a science fiction story. I found my main character, and she ran away with my story (sometimes characters do that).  The story I wrote is called “Blue Consequences.” I am quite proud of this story.

Another time this happened for me was when I wrote my novel The Down Side of Eternity (as yet unpublished). In this case, the basic premise (drugs that stopped the aging process and what that would mean to society) had been rolling around in my head for years, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I just couldn’t figure out how to get started on a story about it. Then I signed up for NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month) and I had to stop dithering and just write something. With the premise in place, I fleshed it out and it worked. It worked really well.

Maybe I just needed the premise to be working on my subconscious for a few years. Or maybe I just need a kick in the butt to start writing.

Star Liner


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