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.
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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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.
I really like writing that treats tech, and the laws of physics, somewhat respectfully. (On that note, have you read K.J.Parker? He writes tech so well I was obsessed with his books for that even though they are quite depressing).
Nothing is more boring than a story where every natural obstacle to progress is just magically explained away with [random high tech from the future] or, well, magic. So can the plot arise from characters simply being let loose in the settings and having available x technology? Because I would rank characters before plot as well in pleasure of writing. If I don't believe the characters are real I don't care what happens to them.
What happens in me for plot - hmm I think I have asked for inspiration at some point. Like in, witchcraftily put an ad out there like 'Some friendly spirit please come and help me put stuff in words' - and have sort of (imperfectly) followed the instructions from there, and often get told parts of the story in my head. Problem is sit down and write them down, sometimes. Part of the instructions always involves going out there and do the stuff I write about. I'm afraid that will involve meeting people at some point, because, characters?
Anyways after writing nothing but shit for work or uni since 2006 all I have so far is notes, and a skeleton of a story that still keeps shifting around somewhat, and some tiny bits of actual story meat are attached to some of the bones. But hey I'm enjoying myself.
The photobashes are are cool thing to create an imaginary place one can actually move in!
I haven't read K.J.Parker but I'll take a look! I read a lot of schlock military scifi and a lot of cyberpunk, so in my reading I'm often all over the place on the tech-realism scale. I work with computers IRL so I tend to be kind of obsessive about getting it right when I write. I do a lot of research and try to run any ideas past people who know more where possible, which is often a limiting factor on what I write, but I think for good reasons.
Character writing is a bit of a weakness of mine, unless the idea at the core of the thing starts with them. But it's usually a setting idea. Without good characters driving a good plot, its easy to end up with a "here's an idea, the end" kind of stories, which I've definitely been rejected from magazines for submitting before. I think that can work on flash fiction, though I haven't written as much of that. I've got the luxury of writing for fun, so I can get away with just writing stories that I want to exist, and then trying to find a home for them. I'm waiting to hear back from a magazine for a rural-cyberpunk-with-environmental-rage thing and I've got a couple backburndered stories I'll probably pick back up when I finally burn out on the photobashes.
I definitely find myself wanting to try out some of the stuff I've been researching for the art. I'd like to build a parabolic solar cooker, and I've been making plans for a fresnel lens solar forge, which would be cool to build next summer. And now that I'm researching agroforestry, I'm looking at what crops I could be planting in nearby woods.
Best of luck with your writing! There's wonderful opportunities there to demonstrate solarpunk concepts, technologies, ways of life, in hands-on kind of ways that'll help regular people picture it for the first time.