Story Planning: Week 7

This week, I know what story I want to do, but it hasn’t quite congealed in my mind just yet. So since it’s still all abstract and amorphous, I’m doing a story planning post for now, but I may go back tonight or tomorrow and add the planned story itself. Not for a grade, because I’ll already have that from the planning post. Just so I’ve got it done, got it hammered out into something mostly concrete, and so there’s something more interesting for people to comment on than a planning post.

One thing that struck me about both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata was the casual coexistence and exchanges between mortals and other people who were widely suspected to be/were even officially confirmed as avatars of their own gods. I always find that juxtaposition interesting—the shoulder-brushing of the everyday and the otherworldly, the fantastic—and I think I’d like to play up that dynamic in an ultra-YA setting, where that kind of thing is heightened already.

My first thought was a god of war in teenage form; I had another story option earlier in the year about a character who just wanted to keep fighting forever, never mind fighting for a cause, but I never could find the right story structure for that one till now.

Right after, though, I realized the distinction of the war god in teenage form was kind of pointless. Better to just make him a teenage war god, full stop. After all, what’s better for that than a hotheaded teen? More of a war godling, maybe; his dad is still the war god in charge at this point, and it’s not yet this guy’s time—not his fight, not his war. Anyways, I think he joins up with the local kids’ fight club scene and ends up wrecking it in the process; it was a good thing, and at first it seemed like having the war god along would just make it a better fighting ring, but he trashes it instead. It’ll never be the same now.

And if somebody calls him out on breaking everything he touches, I don’t even think he’d be mad. Just kind of tired. Because if we’re remembered for what we create or destroy, what chance did he ever have of doing anything but destroying? He’s destruction himself, bottled up and waiting.

Bibliography: Epified: The Mahabharata, by Epified TV. Source: YouTube.

Image Credit: Black and White Sport Boxer. Source: Pexels.