Sorry I dropped off the grid like that, going half a month and then "poof." Remember Kevin's advice on not constraining yourself to a specific time as long as you just write? No one to blame but myself, but my brain just I guess picked up on "don't limit yourself to a specific time" and interpreted that as "don't need to write at all." Oops.*
Valid point, though. I'm (more of?) an ideas writer; ideas are what I write-- piece them together into a coherent narrative, do whatever with them... and writing writing, long form, takes dedication... which is something that you need to force on yourself by definition. Forcing all my ideas though into one hour is unnatural.
Motivation
Another fairly major thing that's really impeding me-- I can't get into my guy Finn's head. What's his overarching motivation for anything? I dunno. He'd kind of like to be able to get out of the spy business, which by all means he should be able to do, given his extrication powers-- of course, whether Tetragrammaton is a "danger" he'd be able to escape from given his powers is debatable.
Then, of course, there's the idea that he actually doesn't have to ability to extricate himself from any supernatural position, and that was just a ruse to ensure compliance from him-- that he can't actually quit the agency, which is what the ability to extricate himself would suggest. But that raises a lot of questions on its own-- a neat idea to be sure, but to put it in play now would be premature. Maybe at a later point, to inject some much-needed angst into the series later on, right as things are seemingly getting comfortable.
But for now. Burn Notice, we know Michael Weston's motivation from square one- he's been burned, and he's not willing to let anything get in the way of his finding out why how and by whom. Finn Michael Moone has the opposite motivation, and yet something, some obstacle, must be keeping him from saying screw it and leave. What would that thing be?
My guess is (and it's apparently only a guess?) that there's something he needs desperately on the inside. May have something to do with his family, I suspect; their safety is in mind. Haven't really given much thought into his family life, as anything I can think of is still too way clearly inspired by Burn Notice. Yep, yep, he's got a deadbeat brother, a chainsmoking hypochondriac mother, and his deceased dad was enough of an a-hole to everyone to inspire him to leave the house in the first place, starting him on the career path that would lead to international espionage... Of course, details can be changed; what's important is having them in the first place enough to get a feel on things...
the team--
The dynamics of Finn's team is another thing that needs to be considered. Did a bit of research on exactly what supernatural critter could go where (vampire agent as "master of stealth?" boggart assassin, with literal magic bullets?) but honestly, I don't know. Maybe there's not a "set" team so much as one of those Mission: Impossible assemble-your-team deals. Yeah.
nightmare eaters!
Baku is the Japanese word for tapir. Whether Baku spirits in Japanese mythology are actually just a mythologized version of the real thing (the way foxes are kind of mythological) is open to some debate-- see more here -- but when they're being depicted nowadays they're more often than not depicted as just tapirs. Tapirs that eat nightmares, of course, 'cause that's their thing. The way that Baku are described in the classical sources (elephant trunk, rhino eyes, tiger legs, an' all that) makes it seem that maybe it could be just some distorted account of a real creature corresponding most closely to tapirs, and indeed the word "Baku" for tapir comes from the word "Baku" for Baku-- but I'm not sure; maybe it could be some kind of freaky elephant thing.
That aside. Baku are benevolent, right? Eating our nightmares away, sounds like a good thing to me! But what if-- what if-- Baku aren't hunters-and-gatherers, rather harvesting nightmares, planting them in our heads until they ripen and germinate...
At first I figured, maybe Baku are how they get around total surveillance, with the idea that eating dreams and nightmares could somehow set up "blind spots" in systems... Decent enough idea, not bad. Then I thought, maybe there's some kind of anthropomorphic Baku on the team? But with this idea, sure why not, let's have some bad guy Baku. Alright!
total surveillance; that's a "total issue" on its own...
I have a tendency to overthink everything, deconstruct everything, uncover the bare bones of the universe-- and then I'm left with the obligation to how things would actually be, even if that would overshadow the actual inciting concept...
Intelligence would no longer be about intelligence gathering but rather intelligence interpretation (and, um, all that-- I've discussed this already.) Tetragrammaton is basically omniscient. Which at first seemingly throws a lot of ideas about "moles" here there or anywhere out of the window-- a lot of my proposed plot for book (one?) revolves around it. I prefer not to think of molehunts as a "cliche" of the genre, but rather a "staple" of it; espionage means being embedded in the enemy's secrets, and your biggest threat is being found out and possibly executed.
But, omniscience. How we gonna do that? Do we want to do that? Can we have compelling spy fiction with zero "fog of war" (you know, the stuff that spies were invented to get around in the first place?) Granted, they don't need to have scrying "technology" in book 1 or whenever, and in fact the implementation of it would provide rich opportunities for storytelling as people learn to adjust...
Also, ooh, something, an idea I already have that sort of relates, which I don't have time to review right now, but which I do have time to hint...
*Oh, speaking of Kevin, he went over his "Maker" story again today, reread some bits I mean (y'know, the freewrite he aborted,) and it's not as bad as he remembers! Which he says gives him more confidence, in at least his abilities. That's how it do; after you finish a draft give it some time before you come back at it... fresher, more objective eyes, and all that.
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