Solarpunk writing prompts/challenges and collaborative writing
Solarpunk writing prompts/challenges and collaborative writing
Inspired by all the discussions happening around community, conflict, world building and writing I would like to suggest some of the above.
Probably best short and with generous time to not overwhelm anyone's schedule, but maybe a monthly thing to start with, would anyone else enjoy trying that?
Yes, based on a recent topic here I thought it would be interesting to write a Solarpunk story from the perspective of an "anti-hero" sort of narcissist or so. Something that doesn't villify these mental health issues but shows how a Solarpunk society sort of manages their deficiencies.
That sounds interesting and I'll want to read it!
The story I'm trying to put together tries to include all the imperfect and awful people that just happen to exist already, given the chance to sort themselves out after given the chance to do so undisturbed by central government. The global fossil fuel supply chain and telecommunications are suddenly interrupted by some disaster, and people are forced to self-organize in their local communities. The anti-hero is reluctantly sent out on a hero's journey that then after all will not be one (the long journey short, after all, the difficult problem solved by other communities happy to share). So it's set up to start rather dramatic and then works out to be a lot more slice-of-life. A lot of it is about getting along with a range of annoying people - from the full-blown armed militarist invader to the bullshit artist narcissist (and how exactly the getting along works is to be worked out, and a lot of the stuff we discuss here helps the writing along).
I can't promise I'll do them just because of how I'm allocating my time these days, but I've been thinking a lot about a solarpunk setting while working on the photobashes and as always , I don't have many ideas for plots. So if one of the prompts lines up with other ideas I'm working on, I'd definitely go for it
Maybe the idea of a plot is overrated. Life itself has not plot, yet it keeps happening. You see a plot when you zoom in somewhere? I have a plot of sorts but find describing stuff tedious and am afraid of writing other people and dialogues because I can't even talk to people in real life. So there, this is as much to kick my own arse in a fun way than anything else.
I think sometimes! Though I've never really been able to pull it off. I like when I can get the plot to flow naturally from the setting - I usually start with whatever issue or technology hook I'm interested in, and build the setting around how that tech or cultural change would warp the society. If I'm lucky, the plot flows naturally from that, sometimes around a pivotal moment in that setting or one that just concentrates or showcases the themes I'm playing with. Other times I end up with a cool setting, characters, even an idea of what they're doing, but it'll feel like it's missing that hook that'll catch the reader and give them a reason to read it.
I've been making these photobashes because a picture doesn't need a plot to tell a bit of a story, and I can do some worldbuilding in the attached text post. The upside is that I've been thinking about this setting so much that I'm starting to get some ideas about how people really live here, which is where the interesting conflicts and potential plots rise from, plus a bunch of ideas for the society that'll work better in text than in pictures. So I'm hoping to make another attempt at solarpunk soon.