Idea Book
Extracted from Scrivener backup: Idea Book.bak2020-01-05T21-22
Draft
General Ideas
Unlikely superhero origin story: We don’t know that this is where the story is going until the end.
A road trip up Highway 1 on your way to try to convince an athlete to invest in your enterprise.\
- This is similar to the artist heading to the chalet to record their magnum opus.
How can I evolve this one. Perhaps as a caravan of cars instead of just the artist. Make it kind of like Apocalypse Now.
The week in Relevance: Discuss various things that have happened this week so no one feels out of touch.
Different sections:
Pop Culture, Mainstream Arts, Memes, News,
How to Put on Pants: An advice podcast that assumes you know nothing and goes from there.
Topics: Pants, Making Eggs, eat food, brush teeth, drink water, breath, think,
What am I good at?
\ - Sense of humour\
- Pragmatic view of world and life\
- Chess\
- Planning\
- Speaking\
- Dumbing things down\
- Aviation\
- Browsing Reddit\
- Being social\
- Making friends\
- Bringing people together
Act like you know:
What do I want to give people:
Structure:
Today’s buzzword: tell the word but don’t describe it:
Ranbir teachs an alien: something social skill related
News this week and when to mention it:
Random Facts:
Main topic:
Now, something you should actually know: a practical skill
Drink of the day?
Hans:
Training to be a cop, entering that lifesyle, injured what is the cost of being a cop.
Creativity vs practicality - creative
Hans - saving someone from getting stabbed in the vagina.
Think of a short story I can write in about 500 words. This I can then perfect and show around. This will give me the fuel to get back into it.
Ideas:
Someone getting torn apart. - A regenerative mutant.
The Vela Incident - the joint South African/Israeli nuclear test in the most isolated part of the world
A terrifying gangster enters a tatoo parlor. He sits in the chair and points at a trail of 3 teardrops on his cheek and said, add another one. That’s the setting and plot. But what is the conflict behind this.
2 tatoo cultures clash - the old gang culture and the new hipster one.
Protag: The tatooist. Eager to get the shop started up. Opens it in a recently gentrifying neighbourhood. He is further down the road from the rest of the new shops. He is at the forefront of the wave.
The conflict: his idea of enterprise comes into direct conflict with the environment it is surrounded by.
Ceasefire - revisit the old idea. Make an easy setting to explore, and make it a multi-faction chess match.
The will rewriting in India is ripe for a short story.
A science fiction version of an airline conference. There are various superhero’s available to be hired by different cities and organizations. They each pitch what their problem is and how they see the protag’s heros helping out. How do the economics of crime fighting work? A hero either is either power-based or tech-based. A power-based hero is usually cheaper to maintain, but unpredictable in what they bring to the table, and how they will work since the powers aren’t explainable. A tech-based hero has a whole supply-chain they need to bring to bear, and are such usually more expensive. The upside is they are usually more predictable in efficacy and easier to deal with.
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Branding
The Importance of Branding
The wave of progress swept west from the metro clean down rue Notre Dame. The crack den on Lemieux was now a condominium.
A ramen shop sprouted up where the old mattress store had been.
One by one, the dominoes fell and prettier ones came up 3 to 4 months afterwards.
It was my turn.
I bought the old grocer a block past St Remi. I was going to turn it into a tatoo parlour.
I learned to ink from Pierre Tremblay. He owned three parlours in the Plateau and taught one on one by appointment.
Master of Arts
A school where you get superpowers as part of your degree.
Along with a secret coldwar between the art disciplines and the business (or stem) disciplines.
Space Opera
I want an idea that lets me explore a large society, with sotrylines at various levels of power.
Level 1: The leadership of an interplanetary species. Like house of cards.
Level 2: The captaincy of a vessel in deep space. Beholden to the leadership but far enough off to have significant autonomy.
Level 3: The average citizen. Either on a foreign world interacting with the species, or at home.
Focussing on three locales like this is too difficult. Focus on a space station where the captain can act as a near sovereign.
Dynamics on the station:
Captain and senior staff - dealing with the macro issues and direction of the station. Power plays amongst the members to run it better. The station is a public/private mix. The staff have recognized ranks, but the station must continue to be profitable or they will be ousted.
Security and operations - dealing with day-to-day firefighting. Frequently overruled by senior staff, but they are the ones who save everyone when the big bad comes.
Commerce & Labour - show the daily life of cargo loaders & merchants & traders and passing tourists.
Sick Man of Europe
A tourist visits a European city and stays at a hostel. He goes about his day and observes a resident in his hostel getting progressively more sick until he decides to help him… and regrets it.
Set in Ljubliana.
Is the sick man a super-natural being?
Is our hero a super-natural being? Should we subvert it?
To go super-natural or not?
If supernatural: The man has been travelling for a while trying not to “drink.” He is tempted all around him, but has stayed restrained until this point. To stop him from drinking he travels and sees sights. These sights don’t do as much for him as he hoped. When he comes back to the hostel he sees a dying man and takes pity on him.
At first he ignores him like he does most people he encounters, for their sake more than his. He walks around with a hood on, and sunglasses to stop from the sun. He likes winter in Slovenia as it sits well with him. The castle on the hill “Dracula’s castle,” appeals to him, but reminds him of an era that is too romanticized today. “It’s almost as if people didn’t need to work hard for their meals back then.” For every Count tucked away on a hilltop, there were a hundred peasants toiling for the scraps.
Slyly mention how he is weaker during the day but the night appeals to him as that’s when he used to be at his best in his drinking days.
The man is arguing with the receptionist and is getting kicked out. He asked the hero to help him get to a pharmacy. They get to one and are told to go to a hospital for treatment. They call a cab for the man and are going to the hospital when the man faints and loses vitals. He tells the cabbie to gun it but he freezes and doesn’t want to go any further. The cabbie pulls over and calls cops/ambulance as he doesn’t want to be liable.
The hero calmly feels the man’s chest and sense his life leaving him. The vampire uses his increased sense of hearing and can’t hear any sirens within 3 miles. They will be too late when they get to him. He is close to death so he’ll only have to take a small sip to turn him (THIS IS THE REVEAL LINE). The vampire takes a bite and feels his pit fill with the fire he’s been missing. He wants to hang on longer but stops himself, the man is not healthy so his blood didn’t taste good either. The man falls cometose. He will rise again in a few moments, turned to one of the Djinn his mother would have told him tales about.
The vampire would be there for him. He wouldn’t be a father who walked out. (Have him mention his own father walked out on him.) He is waiting and turns to notice the cabbie, the fire in his pit hadn’t died yet.
My Online Life
A chance to see what Google knows about you.
You request a profile extraction.
The story would be told in a 2
nd
person perspective. “You see the pictures you took in 10
th
grade. They’re horrible.”
What would be the arc of the story?
You realize that your idea of yourself is not who you actualy are. Google knows things about yourself that you’re not able to come to terms with yourself?
How would this work?
The Fall of Rome
The Fall of Rome
A legacy airline goes out of business overnight. As employees and customers try to make sense of things through the aftermath, one man is tasked with dismantling the dead company for all it’s worth.
First scene is a pilot and crew getting ready to take-off from a foreign country. The pilot is running late. They finally board and the pilot gets the word that the plane is being confiscated by airport staff. The airline hasn’t paid bills to the airport for months and/or the lessor wants it.
A corporation hires a chief restructuring officer as it nears bankruptcy.
A legacy airline goes out of business overnight. As employees and customers try to make sense of things through the aftermath, one man is tasked with dismantling the dead company for all it’s worth.
First scene is a pilot and crew getting ready to take-off from a foreign country. The pilot is running late. They finally board and the pilot gets the word that the plane is being confiscated by airport staff. The airline hasn’t paid bills to the airport for months and/or the lessor wants it.
Main character: analytical, methodical like Mueller, dry wit, noble to a fault, weak to women (ala sugar daddy), misogynistic, lone wolf. He has a boss, or two bosses. His new ceo and his boss at his consultancy firm. He has a mandate from the ceo to leave no stones unturned. Until he starts venturing too far.
CEO: Embattled, bitter, disillusioned. He wants to distance himself from the restructuring so he retreats to his skyscraper castle.
Cold Opening: Airplane about to depart and is impounded. Igniting incident.
How many plots:
Corporate Internal Investigation - key one
Mueller’s Personal Life
Airline Ops
People of Flight 123
A by-the-book auditor uncovers a corporate conspiracy and takes a stand.
Plot device: cameo characters and settings to show the company falling apart in a more real sense.
Airplane Impounding
PR department trying to spin the story
Flight cancellation at an airport with no hotel or repro. Passengers bond
Soc sends the planes all over the world and grounds them to make it hell for repo
Flight crew on endless layover until the corporate account dries up. Then they pack up.
Take a step back: The reader knows that when Mueller starts out, he will face friction, and likely find something much deeper than he was expecting. How do we flip the usual on it’s head Right now I’m focussing on the combo of corporate intrigue and the sci-fi rooftop life idea.
Let’s explore some options:
Setting: A futuristic Sao Paolo that has most of high society living in roof-tops and commuting to work by chopper. This can be contrasted with what is happening on ground level by way of an armoured convoy once in the story. How is everyday life for these people? - They travel to restos and nightclubs in the clouds. They are helipads at the airport, where they have secluded lounges to wait for their flight to depart. This could be the scene that loops into the cancelled flight, as their lounge may have closed for the night already and a riot ensues.
They also take choppers out past the city to vacation in fenced off forest areas.
The air is up top because there is less pollution, which hangs lower. They also mostly take in recycled air. There are roof-top parties and sun tanning. (Think of that view you have from one roof-top to another in Montreal). Mueller often gets nosebleeds due to altitude sickness at the beginning of his stay amongst the clouds, but this subsides as his body gets used to the height and he gets used to the life.
The uber rich have floors dedicated to them. The semi-rich have apartments along with access to a shuttle chopper to work. The companies offer accommodation to higher-ups in one building to allow for this type of life to be feasible for less well-offs.
Genre: Cyberpunk Detective ala Blade Runner
What is the conspiracy? Chemtrails, smuggling, perhaps they smuggle the drug used by people as detailed in my last run at this story.
What is the company? A conglomerate that recently got into the airline industry.
What is my middle moment? - Look into this
Snowflake method - marketing first\
Match
A short story detailing matching with someone oversees and how a relationship matures over text and the phone. This could have legs.
Arc:
A night of matches from around the world. Interesting chat excerpts. One match stands out from the rest.
The chat escalates and holds lots of promise.
The two of them talk on the phone the next night and it leads to a real kindling.
One of them sneaks off from work to have phone sex in a secluded area of their job.
They talk about meeting up. The other person is in a city a flight away. They begin to get rocky once things start to get real enough for them to visit.
They grow apart. One of them sees the other posting about their trip to XX. They look happy.
Planning Podcast
Titles: GamePlan, The Best Laid Plans, Operation,
Know Your Neighbour
A website that allows people to meet their neighbours online, see if they’re cool, and then meet up in real life.
Helps combat the increasing urbanization and disconnection people face.
Chess Book
Titles:
All Chess Players are Artists
The Struggle Against Error (“How you never gonna be a little slow, a little late?” - Avon on the Wire)
The Philosopher’s Game
Be A Player, Not A Piece
Make The Good Moves
Make Good Moves
Make The Best Moves
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From A Pawn to A Player:
Get your life in order by learning chess.
Or
The Games We Play
Look at historical examples that can be compared to chess moves. Look at my own endeavors too.
Chapters:
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Appreciating Where You Come From - Origins of Chess
Learning Your Language - How the pieces move and notation
Bright Ideas - Tactics
The Long Game - Strategy
Putting Your Best Foot Forward - Chess Openings
Experiences Matter - A select few games from the greats
Don’t Fear Change, embrace it - the age of supercomputers
The difference between this chess book and others is me and my take on motivation. Try to frame it around that, rather than the orthodox way to learn chess.
Think about how I teach people how to play chess. An excuse to talk to girls.\
India Epic
The story covers 3 generations. The great grandfather is too far.
Modern Day: A vengeful son comes home to his paternal village to claim what is rightfully his.
Setting: Punjab during election time. Roads are shut down and there are curfews in place. No more than 3 vehicles can be in a convoy at a time.
30 Years Ago: 2 POVS - Mom and Dad
Dad while he is in India and then once he comes to Canada as a refugee
60 Years Ago: Maternal and Paternal Grandfathers
Conference
A science fiction version of an airline conference. There are various superhero’s available to be hired by different cities and organizations. They each pitch what their problem is and how they see the protag’s heros helping out. How do the economics of crime fighting work? A hero either is either power-based or tech-based. A power-based hero is usually cheaper to maintain, but unpredictable in what they bring to the table, and how they will work since the powers aren’t explainable. A tech-based hero has a whole supply-chain they need to bring to bear, and are such usually more expensive. The upside is they are usually more predictable in efficacy and easier to deal with.
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