Why is it that inspiration always hits at the most inopportune times? I'm swamped with classes and homework, plus Christmas parties for a zillion different orgs, and a Christmas concert coming up in a week and half (and of course I barely know the music because I was so tired that I slept through two rehearsals, and so busy that I had to miss several more). Yet a plot obnoxiously decided to pop into my head earlier this week, and I can't stop jotting down ideas.
The story I had been working on before (extremely slowly, but gradually moving) was about a teenager who lost his entire family, his one friend, and was beginning to lose his sanity. I've had those characters stuck in my head for a couple of years, so I feel like I know them and want other people to get a chance to know them too. But they appeared in my head gradually over a long period of time; I decided one day that I wanted a certain type of character, and Phillip was born. Or I needed to write a dialogue for a class, and Katy came into being. My versions of those characters came about over a period of months, and I'm still not sure about some of their backstories.
On the contrary, the one that just came into my head is complete with a lot of minor characters and a plot that is actually exciting and has the potential to become a page-turner. It's about a detective and a reporter who are individually trying to investigate a case involving a serial killer, but wind up working together. I actually just came up with about half of that previous sentence on the spot; all I knew before that was that there would be one detective, one random other person also helping, and the serial killer is torturing his victims in specific ways and for specific reasons before killing them. I've never thought about trying to write a murder mystery before, but I already have fleshed out a lot of details about the killer's past, and know tons about his victims... but I just came up with the basic premise in the beginning of this week.
Next semester I'm taking a lot of easy classes, and have a lot of random hours of free time throughout the day where I won't be able to get a lot of homework done, so I'm hoping to be fairly far into this story by summer. Depending on how much time I wind up having, how much I procrastinate, and how the ideas flow, I may even be done by then. Either way, I'm actually incredibly excited about an idea for the first time in a long time, and can't wait to get started! :)
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