Wonder of wonders

On impulse here i've decided to write about one of my weaknesses in writing... um besides unconventional grammar and ye olde spelling stylles :)

Namely my love of wonderous new ideas and creations. I have to be a bit careful in some of my stories to watch out for this tendancy to have a new device or an interesting plot idea become the focus of the story.

You may have noticed this trend in some science fiction writing. I tend to think of it as the Captain Kirk problem. Wait for it, before trekkers and trekkies get in an uproar. That's not a dig at the sacred Trek. I'm simply trying to point out that in some of those episodes the entire story was a big set up for one idea.

The idea of a Mafia controled world, Or the Yankee verses Viet Cong. Those episodes were fine, it's just not a strong basis for an entire written universe.

The discovery of the ultimate powersource should be about the people and the struggles and the triumph not the technical specifics of the power source itself. Though that is another story idea I wanted to play around with, sort of a home shoppers catalog of future tech.

At any rate my advice is if you are writing a story with a gadget or moral to the story that's fine, as long as when you sum up the story you talk only about the characters. You don't want the wheel to be the main character of your cave man fantasy, you want the cave men and the development of their culture and the effects of tech change and revolution to be the story and the invention of the wheel to be the mechanism through which it is expressed.

Check your work to see if you could replace the main item with some other gadget or event and still have the story be relatively unchanged. Then you know you've done a good job at showing the people and the story and not doing something cheap and preachy.

I'm going under ground for a bit now as I'm likely to just barely make it to the one third point in my novel writing venture today. Meaning I have some serious work to do to get myself to a good enough place to finish the task I've set myself. You may hear from me again by Monday night. Check back On Tuesday for sure. I'll let you know at least when to expect me to reimerge from my writing binges.

Take Care of yourselves.
Roving Jack