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If you've known me for five seconds you know a write a lot of stuff, so instead of making new topics for each piece of writing I'm going to post things in one topic. Also, it's called "Elbbsas Writes Stuff" because I didn't want to deal with the apostrophes needed for "Name's Writing" when my name ends with an S. No thank you.


Quite a while back I started designing an original story. It's currently sat in my "Paused" folder, so it's likely to never see the light of day again. It was an interesting story but that's not what I'm getting into today. When I was sketching out the idea, the first thing that popped into my head were the establishing "shots," so to speak, of one of the main characters. It's extremely a draft and since I didn't have time to edit it for strict prose, it's still using the POV of a camera.

It's raining. After a few establishing shots of a windswept city, the camera shows a figure in a hoodie walking into and then through a train station. The figure descends and then opens a door leading into a train tunnel. They look around, sweeping their hood off as they do. This reveals a teenage girl, blonde. She looks at her watch and shuts the door, sitting down at the base and sliding her backpack off.

Not long after, there is a rattle of a train passing. She grins and moves quickly. She snatches something from her pocket, throws open the door, and jams it open with her bag. She then leaps onto the track, careful where she puts her feet, and starts scrawling lines and letters and shapes across the track in a circular pattern.

She dramatically finishes the last few strokes and then steps into the middle of the circle, staring down the empty tunnel. She is grinning, utterly confident. She focuses and raises her hand, readying herself. She quickly looks to her watch and nods to herself.

Setting her shoulders she says, ‘With my thoughts I change the world. With these words I cast my spell.’ In a manner that sounds like she's only reassuring herself she says, ‘I want this. I want this.’

There is a rattle of another approaching train. Unable to stop herself she grins again.

The train rounds around the corner and before it can strike her, she snaps her fingers, still grinning. She like sand fades away and the train blasts through.

After a few more seconds she blinks back, stumbling, and turns to see the train vanish away. She bursts out laughing and cheering and generally being proud of herself. She briefly bends to the circle and notes how the train had worn away a lot, but the spell still brought her back! She is pleased as a penguin and leaves.

The purpose of the snippet wasn't at all to practice writing and evoking an image without taking the reader out of the text (hence some remnants of outline-speak). Rather, it was to set up the character and the Unicorn* of the text that would eventually follow. I think this does that well enough. She's certainly got the character to go onto train tracks to test some magic circle thing, because that's a smart thing to do. Sure.

*"The One Unicorn Rule," which I annoyingly can't find via Google, basically means that people can only accept one unicorn (AKA one fantastical thing) at a time. You can have invisible monsters that represent souls, you can have robots in disguise, but having both at the same time is eyebrow raising if it turns out they're completely unrelated. And of course, you have significantly more leeway the longer the thing is and/or if the protagonist also discovers the unicorn and it's a Big Deal, but the significance of each Unicorn is less with each one that appears. Plus, isn't it more interesting to write about one Unicorn at a time? I dunno.

I'm curious, how many stories do you have in that folder that'll probably never see the light of day?

A fascinating premise though...maybe it's something you could incorporate in a future story if the opportunity arises and you never return to this one.

I'm curious, how many stories do you have in that folder that'll probably never see the light of day?

Let's see. Under "Original Things," the Paused folder is frightfully disorganized. I'm eyeballing at around thirty distinct ideas, plus a whole mix of blurry in-between things and/or rehashes of the same idea. Then there's eleven things that I should shift to the Paused folder but haven't yet, twelve things in my brainstorming/"Ideas I'd Like To Read" document, and as of yesterday a file of three hundred and thirty five poems. There's also my hard copy stuff I haven't copied over to digital from before I had my own computer. Hm. Oh, blimey, you've made me curious. I'm gunna check which ones are actually countable.

Counting only the things that had at least partial work put into it rather than being barely blurbs, and dis-counting non-original works, and not allowing for duplicated premises, I'd say there's 56 distinct ideas I've abandoned. I really need to clean up that folder. If I can merge all the ideas with less than a page of work into one folder, and merge the multi-doc ones into a singular one each, it would be so much neater.

...And then there's the non-original folders, which have far more because creating ideas based on other people's work is far easier than inventing something from scratch.

A fascinating premise though...maybe it's something you could incorporate in a future story if the opportunity arises and you never return to this one.

Absolutely! I adored the setting, I just couldn't think of what should happen inside it. =D

Can't you just do Elbbsas'?

Can't you just do Elbbsas'?

I could, but I personally don't like doing it because s' also denotes plural people's possession. I usually do s's for names with an s on the end, but since Elbbsas already has two, (and because I do not want to bother with the mental debate), I just went for the cop-out. =P

Hm. I think it's safe to say this genre is not something I'm any good at. Ah well.

To say that Sara had a black thumb was gravely underselling her problem, and with how the old cactus Sara kept on her windowsill had withered within a week, she was distinctly the COD for any plant within her vicinity. Some days she expected the grass to shrivel when she walked across it. She clung to sidewalks, desperately keeping a good foot between her and the flora around her. Of course, it was exaggeration and superstition and nothing more, but Sara didn’t want to take the chance.

But Sara never wanted to look after a cat. Or, heaven forbid, a dog. A fish, perhaps, a parrot, absolutely not, and she was scared of gerbils ever since Robbie Whiri dropped the class pet into her backpack and locked them both in a cupboard. So, Sara turned to plants even as plants ruthlessly turned from her.

She started with the pōhutukawa that sat barely a few metres away from her front door. The gnarled bark was rough against her palms, and the winter chill kept the red flowers bursting from their confines. Kids used to scamper up and down its weeping branches. They spread from the stem like a brain pulsing in the wind. Sara believed that it was the best place to start. After all, it had been there as long as she had, if not longer, so she could pretend the plant belonged to her like a child could adopt a stray.

Sign one was the leaf litter around it. Sara hadn’t seen a pōhutukawa without its beard before, but still the leaves each blackened and fell.

Sign two was a branch snapping under the weight of one child. Sara was at her porch when, as reliably as ever, children scampered their way homewards and climbed what Sara hoped was her tree. Multi-trunked, the tree was, up until a child stepped in the wrong place, and the reliable branch peeled itself from the pack. Gravity was as reliable as ever. So was the pain broken bones called, as was the call for ambulances and help.

After that the tree was cordoned off. Sara heard whispers of poison, of foul play against a piece of pride, and the dwindling hope that the tree could be preserved.

Its death was scheduled for the beginning of spring.

So, Sara instead reached for a cactus. It was a short thing, a stout thing, and Sara kept it beside her desk. There it remained as Sara worked, busying herself with wage allocation and contract reading and the dos and don’ts of becoming an aunt. All the while the cactus sat in the sunlight, peacefully waiting as a part of Sara’s scenery.

It was an accident, really. A pen fell from a shelf and landed, squarely, into the cactus in a puff of smoke, a scant week after Sara purchased it. At first Sara thought it was dust that clouded over her room, harsh and acidic against her throat, but opening the window made the rush of it worse. She evacuated to the lawn. She sat, breathing heavy, in front of the tree with its bumblebee fencing, as dust poured from her office window.

When she had the courage to return, several hours later, when lamplight barely reached her front step, it was to find the pencil wedged inside the cactus, and the cactus itself deflated. All its innards, vanished. Sara reached for the pen. It didn’t budge. She tugged harder, but save for a slight shift, and a sound like a slug breathing in, the pen refused to escape.

Sara buried the cactus underneath the tree. That was what you were supposed to do, with pets, wasn’t it? The world seemed to sigh when Sara did, the leafless branches swaying in glee. Sara almost thought she saw the tree smile.

But that is ridiculous. Trees can’t smile. Nor do they have eyes that twinkle in the knots of wood, nor do they have innocent hands that brush hair aside like a patient grandfather, nor do they have arms that reach out for a hug.

Sara stepped away, away from the vast radius of the pōhutukawa. In that night she cleared the dust from the office, shut the window, and sternly moved on. She will not have a pet. Not a animal, not a plant. But she swore that the tree was looking at her. Sara closed all her blinds, kept them closed, and refused to give the tree a second glance. She started using the back door to leave. She abandoned the porch. The tree could have the lawn. The tree could keep the lawn. The lawn belonged to the tree, and the grass grew long and grasping.

As winter passed on, to Sara’s surprise, life curled back into the tree’s beating heart. It was a miracle, the street whispered. But the affairs of a tree, while a tree near and dear to the hearts of them, never stood a chance against the tears of a missing child plastered over the newspapers and the screens. Then two. Then three. And the tree swelled with its leaves, so there was no sense in worrying about it when there were far larger problems in the world than one woman’s failure to care for it.

Still. Sara kept her blinds closed and kept using the back door. Because every time she looked at the tree, she could swear she could see a sunken face in the way the bark twined. Then two. Then three.

For those who have no idea what kind of tree I'm talking about, this is what it looks like in the summer:

Spoiler

Ghost Layers 1

In the interests of full disclosure, I have zero idea how long I’m going to retain interest in this idea. I believe that I’ve mentioned this world, but I’m going to hit the reset button on all my preconceptions and just design it from scratch. Namely: if I don’t put it into this thread, then it doesn’t exist and can be altered. (And I’ll probably edit things anyway).

The reason I’m going from scratch is so I can play around with outlining a story’s structure, along with explaining my thought processes behind certain choices. So… yeah, that’s that.

So. Here’s this story’s premise. Bear with me for a sec.

The current placeholder title for this story is “Ghost Layers.” My old files are titled “The Living Layer” and I think that’s a terrible name, so let’s stick with “Ghost Layers” until a better one drifts down the creek and I can hand it a paddle. This concept is inspired by several things, and I probably consciously only recall some of them. Ghost Trick, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Ace Attorney, and The Long Earth.

Ghost Trick is a video game that you should not look up unless you do not intend to play it, because it is beyond amazing and is constructed out of plot twists. It’s available on Nintendo DS systems and one mobile platform…? “iOS on the iTunes Store” according to TvTropes, thank you TvTropes. It’s a puzzle and mystery game, in which the player character is a ghost trying to figure out who they are, why they are dead, who killed them, the usual things. Considering the player character does not know their own name at the start, spoilers for this game are very, very, very easy to accidentally give. But the gameplay involved possessing items and making them become Rube Goldberg machines, using a “ghost world” to move from item to item.

Murdered: Soul Suspect is also a video game that… uh, I have no finished because I’m a massive coward, but it’s a pretty good game all things considered. The main character in this one, while they have (most of? I can’t remember, and that’s not supposed to be a joke) their memories and thus know their name, they are a dead police detective ghost trying to solve a mystery about their death, assisting others complete their unfinished business, and so on.

The Ace Attorney series is on this list because I really do like murder mysteries, and these are my favourites, and honestly anything I write that involves murders, deaths, and so on will be inspired by them. For those who don’t know, the main character’s a lawyer and usually they’re working to prove a client innocent as their defence attorney, while also solving the extremely convoluted murder method and find the true killer and prove their guilt in court. It also has fantastic music.

The last one on this list is not a video game. The Long Earth is a book by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, and it’s the only book this year that I read three times and was not something I needed to study. Somebody put a machine’s blueprints online, whose most hard-to-aquire component was a potato, and so a large number of people tried it out. The world promptly discovered that by using the device they can “step” to parallel worlds. These worlds aren’t populated though, they’re as if humanity never existed, and thus there are seemingly unlimited numbers of untouched alternate earths. Lots of social examination on part of the narrative ensues. I mean, yeah, there’s also a plot, but the premise is amazing. I highly recommend it. I haven’t read the sequels so who knows what’s up with those, but the first book is fantastic. Looking at the TvTropes page the third book is called “The Long Mars,” so that certainly has my interest.

The annoying part of the video games influencing this story concept is that my head keeps imagining it with video game mechanics. You might notice there’s a theme in the influences for the thing I still haven’t explained yet. Ghosts, murder, layers of worlds, and so on and so on. There’s a reason why “Ghost Layers” is the placeholder title.

So. Premise.

This world has particular mechanics arranged around how things work when death happens. The protagonist, who I’ll get to at a later date, is able to break one of the rules around it, which I’ll also explain when I get to it. But let’s look at how death works because who doesn’t need a little bit of morbidity in their lives?

The way it works is that when living things die, they soon reawaken as ghosts. So far, so standard. They cannot touch or otherwise interact with the world around them, it’s very sad, yadda yadda yadda. It’s like they’re on another “layer” of reality. But like a ream of paper, there are hundreds (supposedly) of these layers, and being dead means that they can shift into these other layers freely. Mostly. See, recall that part about being unable to touch the “real” world? All these layers are stacked, one atop the other, onto that layer (“layer zero, the living layer”). All other layers are governed by that layer, and ghosts cannot interact with things in that layer. This includes moving through things.

For no apparent reason, I’d like to note that walking through the rain is essentially suicide for a ghost in this world. After all, ghosts are still limited by what’s in layer zero, which means a raindrop won’t land on their head, it’ll go straight through them. There’s some grace period for ghosts, so that I don’t need to deal with air molecules technically being sufficiently solid to wreck this mechanic if I was to go full-hog, so one raindrop probably would just hurt a heck of a lot rather than drill a hole through them, but a shower would likely kill them of anyway.

Building off the whole “wait, ghosts can die?” point, let’s go back to the “layers” chat. You go “upwards” away from layer zero and “downwards” towards reality. Barring layer zero, ghosts can see, blurrily, the shapes of ghosts immediately above and below them (though there’s no distinction for direction. I may alter that, but for now I’m not). So far, being dead seems like a decent deal, so, naturally there needs to be a downside, hence the whole “ghosts can die” point. But I wrote somewhere, at some point, that it’s far more tragic to not kill someone and just make things suck a lot for them, hence this next point. Dying as a ghost hurts a lot. It also boots the ghost up a layer, and once they’ve died they cannot go back down. Die in the living layer? Yer a ghost. Die in layer five? Say goodbye to layers one through five, because six is the lowest you can now go.

This also prevents there being a massive buildup of dead flies in the low layers. What, I said living things. Animals are living things. Trees and things that don’t move are going to be tricky to wrangle, and I might just lampshade it rather than properly deal with it, but I didn’t see why not dead animals.

I had some more stuff about this, but I think that’s enough for the general premise.

The protagonist, as mentioned previously, is able to break one of the rules. Namely, they can see into the ghostly layers. Or rather, layer, because they can only see into layer one. I’m on the fence about murky sight into layer two right now, but it’s an option. Now, add this to the whole “ghosts can die” deal. I arranged this character’s ability in this manner in order to prevent the stakes going out the window. After all, death becomes kinda meaningless if you’re able to pop around for a cuppa with those who’ve passed on. So, one layer. They can only see the freshly dead (who haven’t wandered off) and the dead who haven’t died again yet (since they’re able to go back down).

(Incidentally, the double death rule is also in place to prevent risks on ghosts’ parts, and to prevent the narrative ever going “hey, let’s go talk to *insert famous person’s name here*.” No thank you).

And now I’ve been working on this for over an hour, so this seems like a good point to pause for the day. Next time, the goal is to shift onto plots, themes, and/or characters now that the background details are available. Feel free to share any thoughts! =D

Interesting premise. So how exactly does rain kill ghosts? If they can't interact with the living world, how would rain hurt them?

Interesting premise. So how exactly does rain kill ghosts? If they can't interact with the living world, how would rain hurt them?

What I mean by "they can't interact" is that they can't pick things up, throw them, and so on. However, they are constrained by what's in the living layer. So, they can't go through walls, falling from a great height hurts and can be deadly, and raindrops in large amounts going directly through their limbs and heads will kill them. It's like a hundred bullets hitting them at once. Even with some leeway, that's not survivable. Also, grass won't bend underfoot (so running on grass bare-foot would hurt a lot), they can't fall endlessly through the floor (because that would suck), and so on.

The only exception I reckon would be their own corpse. Since ghosts awaken wherever they died (note: not where their corpse is, but where they died), this prevents them being in immense pain due to their limbs being where they left them. So if, say, a miner suffocates in a collapsed mine, things will really suck for them. Also drowning. Don't drown in this universe.

If it helps I've been thinking that things, from the perspectives of ghosts, are all made out of some immutable, identical material, since nothing will bend under their touch anymore. Or it's like a kid's colouring book. All the drawings in them will have the same lines on it, regardless of what each kid draws/colours. And whenever something goes through them, it hurts, and too much of it equals pain (since whatever material ghosts are made out of has to rapidly get out of the way of the real world, and if it isn't able to, it hurts/gets blipped out of the world? I haven't quite worked out the exact mechanics/the "because" of why it hurts yet, just the general outline).

Thinking about it, though, I think they'd be immune to electrocution, since they aren't able to create connections and the like.

Ahh, ok. So walking through people isn't a funny trick a ghost would do since it'd hurt the ghost.

Can ghosts swim? Or is water also made out of the same immutable material? Would they wake up from death underwater (or in a collapsed mine) to be stuck in the material, continually dying forever?

Could gases/fire hurt a ghost?

Are ghosts physically the same as when they died? So there are paraplegic ghosts in wheelchairs, baby ghosts who can't think/speak, and old ghosts who have trouble getting up after falling down?

Sorry for all the questions. Just find it interesting.

Hey, question's are great. It's helping me get thoughts out of my head too, so they're super helpful.

Can ghosts swim? Or is water also made out of the same immutable material?

No, they're can't swim. It's not possible for the water to part around them, after all. However if the water's perfectly still, they can walk across it. Smooth waves would push them up and down, but storms and water crashing down over their heads is a death sentence, so walking across oceans is not a good idea, but lakes are great. Heck, lake-based ice skating might be a thing depending on how friction works in this universe. Gravity also continues to work, so friction likely exists too.

Would they wake up from death underwater (or in a collapsed mine) to be stuck in the material, continually dying forever?

Yes. It's actually a bit worse for the collapsed mine. Since the ghost would probably end up in the same position as their body, they'd probably just be stuck there, screaming, until the corpse eventually rots sufficiently for the rocks to come down and crush the ghost. And then they'll be dying forever.

Could gases/fire hurt a ghost?

Good question. I'm not sure. Fire hurts because of burning and/or heat, but I'm unsure if ghosts are affected by temperature and they're also not going to be fire's fuel. On the other hand, fire still occupies space... it might be that most ghosts still keep away from fire because fire = bad when they were being educated. I'll say for now that fire doesn't hurt ghosts since it'll just be the same as them attempting to poke a sculpture. A sculpture that moves very quickly, but a sculpture nonetheless. If I decide that temperature exists, then I'll come back to this point. I don't think it would though, at least, not in a manner that's tied to the living layer.

Are ghosts physically the same as when they died? So there are paraplegic ghosts in wheelchairs, baby ghosts who can't think/speak, and old ghosts who have trouble getting up after falling down?

Okay, so this is interesting. Yes. That's my answer to the question, but when I start following through the implications, there are some which I find interesting and want to exist because themes, and others that are fiddling and I'm not smart enough to totally make sense.

One thought that I had was about hospital deaths. Logically, if ghosts can see into the living layer at all times, some ghosts are kind enough to watch out and assist those who they see are about to die (and by assist, obviously they can't prevent deaths, but they can talk to the ghost when they wake up, calm them down, direct them to family, and so on). So deaths in childbirth that happen in hospitals, there's likely a network of ghosts who work to look after parents and children. Ghosts in the same layer are able to touch one another, after all.

I was on the fence about if I'd like aging to exist in the ghost world. For the case of children with developing brains, for example, I'd like for it to happen. But if death by old age exists, then we hit the fridge horror of a ghost growing old and then apparently vanishing. That's a neat idea, and I'd like the quiet wondering of "hey, why does the protagonist never see old ghosts," but I don't know if I want to commit to it. Because, the idea of ghosts being frozen at a particular age also has appeal, as does ghosts who only ever knew being ghosts. However if aging is introduced, it implies there are bodily processes going on too, which... no, that makes no sense, and I'm not dealing with "what do ghosts eat" in this.

So I'd say that yes, there are babies who are stuck. Maybe after the considerable human history ghosts have worked out a way to help things out, but until I can think of it I'll probably not have the protagonist ever get an answer. (Plus, it allows a scene of the protagonist wondering about this and then promptly being very uncomfortable by the idea).

(but wait if there's no bodily processes then no ghosts would be able to create memories-- gah. I need to draw a line somewhere).

With regards to physical limitations, I hadn't thought about it but I'd say yes. Depending on the I'd like to note that ghosts awaken only with the clothes on their backs, so, there's no wheelchairs. Strictly speaking ghosts should end up waking naked, but I don't want to deal with it, even though it raises the questions of "so how do they actually get those clothes" and "what happens if you die naked."

Hm.

I was going to bring this up later, but one vague concept I have in mind is that if ghosts travel upwards a lot of layers, say in either the hundreds or thousands (or millions) depending on how plausible it would be, the connection between layers and reality starts to break down. I know, for example, that as you go upwards, light sources in reality grow increasingly dim, sounds are increasingly muted, and/or it's generally creepy. It might be that in some layers, physical, touchable, non-living matter can be acquired. Like... if you're in a clothing shop you can go upwards and upwards and eventually, in pitch blackness, the shirt you're touching moves under your touch. Good luck getting back down though. There might be rumours, unfounded or not, that going upwards significantly might stop you going back down again, and there's always the real world still there and something could kill the ghost and lock them up there in the dark. I dunno. It's a nice worldbuilding feature, but I'm unsure if it would ever really come up in the story or how feasible it is. (Then again, if the ghostly supporting character gets stuck somewhere, they might end up hearing rumours about layers breaking down if you go high enough, and end up in a scene where they go up, and up, and up... and eventually push straight forward through the door. And then scramble back down again. Or something. Also, it reduces the fridge horror of the ghosts who die in places where they'll re-die, since eventually they'll be able to get out. They'll just end up in darkness and will never know why they've been damned to a terrible fate, unless they run into someone who is very, very old). It's nice to iron things out, though. This ended up far longer than I anticipated. =D

Edit: Oh, also, ghosts can't walk through people, but it would be more like they're trying to walk into a statue rather than anything else. If someone walks into the ghost, they'll likely be shoved backwards until they're out of the way. If a ghost is stepped on, and there's nowhere that the ghost can go that's not solid matter from their perspective, then the foot goes right through their chest and they probably die. I think the scale of pain to death would be regulated by speed and mass of whatever enters their space, or something. But yeah, everything is moving statues that push ghosts around, and if ghosts can't get out of the way, they're in pain or they die.

I like it! Look forward to reading more.

Question: why do you write for free? Aren't you worried you might stumble upon a premise that could earn you quite a bit of money, and then someone steals it?

IIRC Elbbsas removed a bunch of writing after the the Wintreath TOS made you give up the usual rights, and now only posts stuff she doesn't ever plan to publish. (That said, I am aware of people publishing things initially put on the internet, so that might not necessarily be an issue.)

Tau pretty much nailed it. That said, I did put them back up again, because even though my mindset is that I'm not keeping anything I put here, that's just motivation to write more. It's not like I've finished anything long yet. =P

Regarding money and idea theft. There are literally thousands of interesting premises out there, some executed well, some poorly. And honestly, a lot of creators advise others to be inspired by what's around them, AKA steal things outrageously, because no matter how specific the concept, the way one person writes it would be highly different to that of their neighbour. But even if I somehow discover the Most Most Uniquish Thingy in the world, I have to first write it well and then go through editing and publishing before I can even chance earning money from it. From there, the chance of getting serious amounts of money is unlikely. Course, there's also the ebook route, but I'd like to finish things before I look into that.

Alternatively, I can write things and put them here, where people can read them and might get some enjoyment out of it, while also ensuring I'm not practicing writing in a lead box of my own brain. That's unhealthy, and family aren't the best critics/audience in either direction. So I'm not so much writing for free as using y'all for my own devious purposes, bwah ha ha.

(Also, if someone did steal any of my ideas, I would be SO hyped. I get to experience the concept with zero effort on my part!!! Hahahaha! Short cut to entertainment!!!)