The Worst Story I've Ever Written

I said last night that I would follow up tonight (at time of writing) with Part 2 of the "Failed Films" post. Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances and work obligations means that I wasn't able to do that. I am going to work on finishing it for tomorrow night - fingers crossed - but until then I still want to post something tonight, so... well, I'm gonna have to bite the bullet. I didn't want to tell you about this, but there's only one big "Failure" that comes to mind which I can talk about without any research... and that's the worst story I ever wrote.
It is a failed story, but I did write it, so it doesn't count as one of my "abandoned projects". I considered just posting it, but honestly, it's so bad that I don't really want to do that. Even with a disclaimer like "I write better now guys, please don't judge me", I still don't want to expose anyone to that story. I genuinely don't like it, and I don't ever plan on sharing it. But, that doesn't mean I'm not going to tell you all about it. I considered it a learning experience, so why not share what I learned with you all?

So, what's the story? Well, it was a short story called "Evil".
Yes, I was a pretentious little git when i was younger, but the title was because the story was from the perspective of a villainous character that I considered "evil". Since I don't really believe in objective morality, I don't really like the concept of calling things "truly good" or "truly evil", but my goal was to have an evil character.
See, the basic premise behind this story is, as a student , it bothered me how many silly little rules everyone has to follow for the sake of "safety", even though they don't actually make us safe. I'm talking walking on the left side of the footpath; wearing school uniforms; going home before the sun goes down & that kind of thing: arbitrary rules that don't actually make you safer.
Now that I'm older I know that this kind of thing is called Security Theatre, the little performances that are designed to make us feel safer, even though we're not. The most pertinent example I can think of are signatures. Not always, but like nine times out of ten, when you sign something nobody checks it. And of course they don't, nobody cares. Most people don't know what your "real" signature looks like and if you do your signature wrong, who can tell? Give it a go, next time you get a product delivered that requires your signature, spell your name backwards, or draw a smiley face, see what happens.
Usually? Nothing. Nobody cares. But the act of signing something feels important, it's feels like you're doing something official (even though you're just writing your name quickly), so it doesn't actually change how secure your money, purchases, or postal deliveries actually are.

So, with that all said, the premise behind the story was "What if there was a character who decided to show just how fake this false sense of security is?" That's why the story was called evil, I figured that all it would take to shatter this false reality would be one evil person, one bad guy. It was about a truly evil character who showed everyone how unsafe they really were, out of a sense of vengeance and disgust due to the frustration at his own dreadful life. I think now is the best time to give y'all a Trigger Warning that I'm about to discuss, a story heavily involving Violence, Crime, Murder, Sexual Assault & Suicide; and vague references to Death & Decay, and Domestic/Parental Violence. If these are an issue for you, you may not want to continue reading without adequate preparation.
Okay, well, that trigger warning is basically the spoiler warning as well, because that's kind of exactly what the story was about. Now, I actually had some interesting ideas which I don't entirely hate. Like, I wanted this to be five chapters, starting with him deciding to do wrong, committing his first crimes, turning to murder, and then finally killing himself on live camera; and I thought to represent his moral decay, I wanted to include a black & white image of a dead frog decaying in five stages from freshly-dead to bones. I only managed to find a dead lizard image, but I still think, for a darkly-themed story like that, the imagery is striking and thematically appropriate.
So, what happened in this story? Well, it was about this kid called Liam (I picked the name because Liam is mail backwards... that's literally it, I just thought that was interesting). It's starts with him doing a monologue about how the world is terrible, and people need to be more like him, able to see through the bullshit. Then he comes across a group of girls, who are all talking about how one of them was mugged with a guy at knifepoint. The guy calls the girl weak, and they tell him to go away, but it inspires him to try to "fix" the world.

"What if I could teach the world how to deal with shit like this . . . what if I could heal this broken mess. If one man can control a girl with a knife, simple math says that one man can control everyone with the right tool." - EVIL, page 1.

The rest of the story is then like the kid's manifesto, as he describes the steps he takes to "change the world". It starts with him deciding to rape a popular girl at school, the school captain, for the sake of making people scared. I wrote the scene in detail, of how he creeps out of his house and into hers... I did skip over the rape itself, but he describes how he didn't enjoy it, since to him it was just a means to an end. Most importantly, he tags the side of their house with the words "FIXED".
The idea was, he was trying to be like a domestic terrorist, and he wanted a name for himself. He saw himself as "fixing" society, so he tagged his crimes as "fixed".
In the next chapter, he kills his father, then steals his dad's car. Tags the side of it "FIXED", then parks it in the middle of a railroad crossing, in the hopes of derailing the train. It didn't derail (I wanted to show that this kid wasn't even that competent, I mean, trains can hit semi-trailers without derailing, so I didn't think a single ute would, even for a passenger train. But that was sort of the point - this kid wasn't that smart, yet he was causing all this chaos).
Chapter three starts with him bitching about the fact that the train didn't derail, but still wanting to create some more havoc, he steals a gun, goes into a local doctor's surgery, and shoots everyone inside, before writing "FIXED" on the wall.
Now, since he's trying to make a bigger name for himself as a domestic terrorist, he finds someone who looks rich, walking out of a government building, the person wearing the nicest suit, but without any security. He drags them into the bushes, stabs them to death, and puts a post-it note with "FIXED" into his pocket.
Finally, the last chapter - called "Change the World" was all about him breaking into a local television studio with his gun, He shoots everyone in a local news-room, looks at the camera and monologues into it about how he's the "Fixer", he's just a kid who killed so many people, and people need to wake up. Then he finishes his monologue by shooting himself in the head, and the story ends mid-sentence.

Alright, class, now before I reveal it all to you, can anyone tell me what's wrong with this story? Hmm?
I mean, besides the horrendously dark tone; the cringe-worthy attempts at a teenaged writer being "edgy"; the completely gratuitous scenes of rape, terrorism & suicide, and the overwhelming lack of research into how difficult it actually is to steal a gun, kill a politician/businessman or break into a television studio?
Yes, all that aside, can anyone tell me what the actual, fundamental problem with this story is?
Alright, I'll stop the artificial dialogue schtick, I know you can't answer, so I'll just tell you...
The actual problem with this story is that, whilst it initially had a point - divulge and deconstruct security theatre - it was so mired in darkness of tone, and this weird character study that the message was entirely lost. And part of the reason for that is I was angry when I came up with the idea. I was a teenager, and I know it's a cliche, but I was angry about learning just how unfair the system is, and how it felt like people went along with it out of a sense of either "loyalty" or "ignorance". Now, don't get me wrong, if you are a writer, and you come up with a concept that even you look back on and think "Oof, I was really in one of those moods, when I was thinking that", then turning that into a villainous character concept is fantastic. We all have dark thoughts, and using them to build a character is good. But... you really shouldn't write a story about that. Whilst I wrote it I was thinking:
  "Yeah, cop this... I'm fuckin' saying it how it is. I'm breaking down barriers, man. I'm writing the story they're not ready for..."
I didn't actually think with that kind of vocabulary, but that is 100% the tone of this story - and looking back on it now, it's fucking embarrassing. I still think I would like to write a story about the deconstruction of security theatre... but, I'd like to write it as a horror story. I'd write it from the victim's perspective, and have a villain who thinks of himself as a chessmaster, a mastermind, when really all he's doing is breaking societal moors.
  "What, you thought because you locked the door, you could keep me away from you? Foolish child, I'm much craftier than that."
And more importantly, I'd frame the story properly. A casual reading of this story disgusts me, not because it's poorly written (although it is), and it's not because it's so edgy, it lives on the underside of a cliff made of razor-blades (even though it is that as well), but it's because in my sad attempt to make a character that was exposing how civilization lies to its civilians, I was effectively blaming the victim. I was blaming citizenry for living in a society that has these systems which lie to us, rather than the system for lying to us in the first place.

So, in conclusion, I wrote a story that failed on EVERY CONCEIVABLE LEVEL. I tried to write a dark and edgy story that turned out to be cliched and whose violence only served as an attempt at shock value, rather than story development; I failed to effectively communicate my story's themes and messages because I was too busy developing a character that didn't deserve their place as a villain-protagonist & worst of all, I tried to write a story about a genuine issue, but I failed to fully understand the core of the issue whilst blaming those who it affects most greatly.
This story sucks... but, I still have it on my computer, I have the file saved to read occasionally. Not because I like the trite dialogue, or the gratuitous angst, but because I think it's important to remind myself just how important it is to think through an idea, not only how it's written, but also how it's read, and how it will be understood by a reader.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I hope now you can see why this didn't even deserve a spot on my Abandoned Projects list (and if you do attempt to use this to write something, please don't blame me for whatever you write. I do not approve of this message).
Until next time... I hope I actually have the time to write my next post before work obligations and deadlines sneak up behind me and force me to expose more of my embarrassing failures to the internet.

Failed Films (Pt. 1)

I own a lot of DVDs... at least 800, easily. I'm not bragging, most of them I bought at op shops for about a dollar or two; and I literally buy any movie that catches my interest. So, I've seen a lot of movies.
In fact, I have this system where I watch the DVDs I own, and if I don't really enjoy them, I add them to the donation pile, so I can send them back to an op shop for someone else to buy.
Because of this, I only keep the movies that are really good... or, really bad. See, because I buy these at op shops, a lot of these movies are kind of bad. I'm talking low-budget family movies; poorly filmed horror; high-concept fantasy or sci-fi movies that fail to explain their premise. I've seen the full gamut from amazing, classic and thought-provoking cinema... to absolute dogshit. But, when a movie is really bad, it can be more entertaining - you've probably heard of the term So Bad It's Good. A film could have Dialogue or action that's accidentally funny, plot points that are absurd, special effects that look ridiculous, acting so bad it makes primary school plays look good or scenes that are so over-the-top they become awesome.
But, as with most things in life, films aren't simply "bad" or "good", there's a spectrum; meaning there's a whole variety of bad films. From the "Mockbuster" to the "Exploitation Film" to the "Passion Project", bad films come in all shapes and sizes... but there's a specific kind of bad film I want to talk about today and that's the "Failed Concept".
See, even a film like Sharknado, whilst it is a dumb movie that a lot of people enjoy ironically it's not a failure. They set out to make a movie about a tornado full of sharks, so whether you loved or hated that film it succeeded at its goal. It's arguably a dumb goal, but they met it nonetheless.
That's the defining feature of a Failed Concept - it has a clear target, an idea or concept it wants to explore, but by the end, it fails. This doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad or unenjoyable film - I may well list some movies here that you enjoy - but it does mean that the writer or director had a vision in mind, and they failed to really bring it to life on screen.
If you're still not sure exactly what I mean by that, allow me to show you some of the most pertinent examples that I've seen. Also, because I'm talking about how these films failed, this list will contain HEAVY SPOILERS - if you wish to avoid that for any of the titles listed, you may have to skip its entry in this list. With that out of the way, let's get into...

THE A.W.N.'s TOP 10 MOVIES THAT FAILED (10-7)

10. JOKER
Well, this is a great way to annoy the internet, tell a bunch of comicbook nerds, and a bunch of men, that their opinion is wrong. That's going to go over well... but I'm not the only person who didn't like this movie. See, Joker is an origin story for the character of "The Joker", Batman's arch-villain and a supervillain, known for his tenacity, in some incarnations brutality, insanity and (of course) his dark sense of humour. This film chose to be a dramatic piece, losing the colour and flamboyance of comicbook superheroes to present a sombre, dark and personal piece about how an underprivileged, mentally ill man is pushed to his breaking point, so we can finally understand how this simple man became The Joker.
Where it Failed: Who is the Joker? Seriously, the character from the movie, who is he? Is he an activist? Is he a criminal? Is he a madman? Is he a victim?
Uh, kinda, not really... I mean, he's a bit of this and that, but he's not really any of those things, so it's hard to tell. But, that makes no sense. This is meant to be an *origin story*, the whole idea if which is elucidating upon a character, so we can understand what defines them, what guides them, and who they are. But, this movie utterly fails at that because it doesn't seem to know who the Joker is and in its attempt, it just muddies the waters. A lot of people have pointed out how this film's script is basically a remix of "The King of Comedy" & "Taxi Driver" with Batman iconography thrown in, and that's not necessarily a bad thing (I like homage as much as anyone else), but because this film is busy recreating the themes and concepts of these two films, it fails to fundamentally create its own identity, and so it cannot help to identify the Joker.
But, the Joker isn't that complicated... obviously, he can be, you cam add complexity to anything - but the basis of the Joker is - he is a character that finds crime funny. That's the heart of it. Now, you can have it that he finds it funny because he's so good at it, so to him it's a lot of fun; you can have him be so twisted that his morals are effectively backwards and he enjoys pain and bloodshed; or, you can even have him be a nihilist and an absurdist who delights in shattering the veil of civility - that's kind of the way Heath Ledger played him in The Dark Knight, he sees civilized society as a mockery of brutal human nature, and fragile human psychology.
But... this character doesn't seem to find crime funny. Sometimes he's angry and commits crime for vengeance, at one point he brutally kills people because he's crazy and the film makes it clear he's "off his meds", which is particularly tone-deaf considering how common mental illness is. And by the end of the film he kills one character for no established reason at all...
When I first watched this film, I was excited to learn about who the Joker was, what drives him, why he became a villain. As the credits rolled, the only answer I was left with was "he did it because he's crazy". What?! That's not how origin movies work, that's certainly not how criminals work... that's not even how INSANITY works! So, no, this film failed to truly explain who and what the Joker is, and since that's the whole point of an origin movie, that is why it failed.

9. CHERRY FALLS
This is a slasher horror movie, set in the fictional town of Cherry Falls, where a killer appears in town, and starts killing several young teenagers. But there's a twist, and this is the main conceit of the movie - the killer has a calling card where they carve the word "VIRGIN" into the thighs of their victims, and so the only lead the police have on the killer is that they do, indeed, appear to be targeting teens that are virgins. After a town meeting where police warn the parents, teenagers learn of this, gossip spreads quickly, and all the teens at the local high school realize that, if they simply have sex, they won't be targeted by the killer.
So, the whole premise of this movie exists as a conceit to show a lot of gore, blood and murder, as well as nudity, sex and softcore pornography. Honestly, that's a clever idea for a movie, especially if you love blood and boobs.
Where It Failed: This cheeky horror film has a lot of sexy blood, but it barely has any bloody sex! The main character, played by Brittany Murphy, is a virgin, and whilst she nearly sleeps with her boyfriend on two occasions, she ultimately fails. And, when the school as a whole learns about the "only kills virgin" thing, they organize an orgy at an abandoned hunting lodge in town. Now, I want to remind you, this is meant to be an orgy - a wild sex party with several people - and they refer to it as a fuck-fest, or an orgy, several times in the film. So, when the camera cut to a scene of the hunting lodge, and I saw dozens and dozens of teenagers paired up, slow-dancing, I burst out laughing. Sure, some of the teens kiss and make awkward sex jokes, but it feels like this "orgy" was written by a prude. Sure, these kids aren't exactly "leaving room for Jesus", but it's the most sexless orgy I've ever seen. In a later scene, when the killer attacks this "orgy", they gatecrash several people in their underwear, making out under blankets, and they go running out of the house in bras and boxer shorts. So, this movie, where a major plot point is losing your virginity, and includes several scenes at an orgy, has no sex scenes in it.
Now, obviously, you don't need sex in your plot to make it interesting, and I did find this movie kind of interesting, but this movie was being sold on the horror and sex. The copy of the DVD I own has a quote from Playboy saying "It's American Pie with a body count." and the advertising all focuses on that idea of whether you'd give up your virginity, if it could save your life.
Now, this isn't a bad film by any stretch. The killer has long, black hair, and wears dark clothing, and when Brittany Murphy's character describes them to a sketch artist, the police identify the killer as a woman called Lora Lee Sherman, a rape victim who failed to receive help, because her rapists were four popular high school boys - that's darkly realistic and relevant. And one of my favourite scenes in the movie is when one of these rapists is killed, the words "VIRGIN NOT" is carved into his forehead, which dials up the danger, as we realize that the "safety" the kids are (apparently) seeking out by having sex, is nothing but false hope.
I also want to make it clear, this wasn't entirely the film-maker's fault. This film was classified as R in Australia, and NC-17 in America, but according to the writer, they had originally devised the "orgy" scene to have a lot more nudity, and originally was written to have them all writhing under blankets, but they had to change it in order to avoid an X Rating.
I'm not going to lie, one thing I found disappointing is that the killer is eventually revealed to be a man in women's clothing, with some hints that he is crazy and enjoys dressing up like a woman; and frankly, I'm sick to death of the "depraved, trans killer" trope. But, it's mostly implied that they dress up mostly as a dark reminder of the woman raped by some of the popular boys, who have now become important men in the town's community, so that's not a deal-breaker. And the film is deliberately playing with tropes, since horror films have a history of killing anyone even slightly promiscuous, so there was a lot of potential here which they managed to play with. But, that doesn't change the fact that this film failed its ultimate premise.
In fact, Ken Selden, the writer of this film, is quoted as saying he first wrote this film because he was "interested in writing a teen orgy scene", but he also thought Hollywood would never go for it until he came up this idea of it being an orgy interrupted by a slasher killer. This was the heart and soul of this movie... and for the sake of avoiding an X-Rating, it was changed. So, whilst I do not think this film is a bad movie, it definitely failed at its premise of being all about sex and violence, because people who are incredibly weird seem to find sex more offensive than death...

8. THUNDERPANTS
This is a very silly family movie. The basic premise is that this is the story of a boy who farts too much, because he was born with two stomachs. I mean, that doesn't make a lot of sense because farts are developed in the intestines, not the stomach, stomach gas develops burps but it's not really worth getting into the science of why that makes no sense, because this is clearly meant to be a comedy film, you're not supposed to think too much about it. I think the only reason it was even slightly popular was because it co-stars Rupert Grint (the actor who played Ron Weasley) one year after the first Harry Potter film, so it was probably trying to cash in on his celebrity... speaking of which, besides Grint this same film has several famous stars in smaller roles, such as Paul Giamatti,  Stephen Fry & Simon Callow. And the effort on display is incredible. Most of the film, as most of the film is set in this kid's English hometown, has a green tinge to all of the set dressing, costumes and several of the key props. But, what's it really "about"? Well, it's about how it's difficult for the main kid to make friends, because he farts so much, until he makes friends with Grint's character - a child genius called Allen A. Allen who has no sense of smell. And, the story seems to be about how even the least-appreciated among us can find their place, and make a difference in the world.
Where it Failed: If this film has a message at all, that message is that being a child genius will change the world. Look, I like a good fart joke, but I don't think these fart jokes are funny, since they're often presented as so extreme, it literally causes injuries to the people around Fart-boy. But, I'm not here to critique the comedy, comedy is (for the most part) subjective, and this is for kid's, kids might find this funny. No, my issue is with how this film treats Fart-boy like an object, a tool to be used, not a person. Fart-boy is the main character (his real name is Patrick, but I'm gonna keep calling him Fart-boy), we see his point of view and his struggles, but in the story after meeting his friend who can't smell, it's his friend Allen that develops a pair of pants that contain his farts. And, after NASA loses some astronauts in space, it's only by poaching his genius friend to help them fix this problem that he comes up with a way of using his friend's farts to power a rocket. Yes, there's some talk about how he joined a group of "talented children" to solve difficult problems... but, all of the other talented children are also geniuses in their own right. Fart-boy does have this monologue about how he's finally being seen as useful, but that's the thing, he's being used. They create a rocket which literally has a seat for him to sit on with a pipe in it. He's not piloting the rocket - he's presented as a naive, simple boy, not stupid but nowhere near smart enough to pilot a rocket. So, he's just the fuel tank.
And whilst they pay lip service to the idea that children can be uniquely suited to solving problems, I also got the distinct impression that Allen manufactured this whole situation just so his friend could help. After all, this is a space-rocket, we have those... it's not like this was a new invention that required a special fart-based fuel system. So, I get the distinct impression that the real hero here is Allen, the boy genius who saved some astronauts, and his friend in the process. Oh yeah, did I mention that Fart-boy was going to be executed? I can't remember why, this film is pretty forgettable, but this kid goes to court, is declared guilty (although he was innocent) and was about to be judicially murdered before his friend intervenes to get him poached for this NASA child-genius project.
I think this was trying to take some logical extreme, "hey are you bullied for being ugly or stupid or weird? Well, look, this kid farts so much, he can clear a room, and can even fart with the pressure to injure people, and he found his place in society... surely, you can too."
Aww, isn't that sweet? NO. This kid's "place in society" is as a piece of machinery, with his arse stuck to a gas-pipe, he's an interchangeable cog in a machine. That's not inspiring, it's horrifying. I mean, he was necessary for this single task - save the astronauts. What next? Either he will have to move on, continue living his life, relying on the assisting technologies of his genius friend so as to exist in a world of people without a crippling fart-disability. Or if (for reasons that defy science as I understand it) his farts are in fact the future of rocket propulsion, is he doomed to having his anus surgically grafted onto a gas-pipe, so he becomes a permanent fixture of a rocket, or a rocket-fuel factory - in either case, little more than a machine component - either for the rest of his life, or until they inevitably find a way of recreating his farts in the lab, by which time he again is forced to live life with his fart-disability. And that seems more likely than not since, according to this film, his farts come from having two stomachs... so, basically, his job could be done twice as well by any modern cow.
So, I hope you found that inspiring kids! If you're not a child-genius, and not seen as worthless by society, you're doomed to being judicially murdered or (arguably worse) being seen as little more than a disposable machine-part.

7. AFTER.LIFE
This is a weird movie. If you've not heard of it, this movie is about a young teacher called Anna (played by Christina Ricci) who gets into a violent car wreck, and wakes up on a slab in a funeral home. There, she gets to know the mortician named Elliot (played by Liam Neeson). The mortician informs her that she is dead, but he has a supernatural gift that allows him to talk to the dead. He explains that his gift allows him to prepare people for their transition from death to the afterlife, so they can come to terms with their death. At first, Anna doubts this, but as he shows her that she has no pulse, that she is numb to the world around her and she can't move without his help, she starts to come to terms with what Elliot has told her, and accept that she is dead. Alongside this, there's a parallel story about her soon-to-be fiancé, Paul (played by Justin Long) who is struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of his girlfriend in the prime of her night, on the night when he was going to propose. So, he's in denial, struggling to accept that his girlfriend is truly dead. Or, are things not as they seem?
Where it Failed: This film relies on a ridiculous premise. When I first bought it, I was excited about the idea, because I thought it was going to be about a character coming to terms with their death. Now, that's my fault, not the movie's, but what is the film's fault is that it pretended to be about that for the majority of the runtime. See, what this film is actually about is a girl who is taken to a mortuary and told she is dead and that all appearance to the contrary is being caused by one guy's supernatural ability to talk to the dead, and all throughout it's meant to be a mystery whether she is actually dead, or if she's alive and this is all an elaborate lie on the part of the mortician. And that subplot on her potential fiancé is part of that, asking whether he's just a grieving boyfriend who won't let go, or a hero uncovering the machinations of a disturbed serial killer. And, the problem with this premise is two-fold. Firstly, both of these premises are interesting. A story about a woman dying, and struggling to accept her premature death, but coming to terms with it because of a caring, gifted mortician, that's kind of sweet and beautiful. A dark story about a mortician that tricks people into believing they're dead so he can bury them, because of a philosophy about people so useless they're "as good as dead" is darkly fascinating. But, because this film spends most of its runtime maintaining the thin veneer of a mystery, thereby flip-flopping around the potential between the two, it means it never commits to either until the end. But that's the second and more fundamental problem with this premise - the mystery is stupid. This movie ends with the revelation that, yes, Elliot was a serial killer this whole time. He pretends people are dead so that he can bury them, and have them suffocate in the casket as a kind of sick punishment for living unhappy, unfulfilled lives. But, wait, are you telling me that every single one of his victims believed not only that magic exists, and that ghosts exist, but that they were themselves were unliving corpses, despite all evidence to the contrary?!
What really annoys me are that at first, Anna lays stiff on the slab motionless, only able to speak, but eventually she's able to get up and move around. And not a single other one of his victims questioned this? Yes, she has no pulse, and feels numb, but even though she can move, Elliot claims he doesn't want people to see her like this because "you look like a corpse". So, what is meant to be happening when they get up? Is he witnessing their "soul" whilst their body is actually on the slab? Or, are they stumbling like zombies, but only he can hear their voice? Also, the reason she's numb is because of an injection Elliot gives her of a (fictional) drug which actually slows her pulse so it's unnoticeable, and numbs her body. When Elliot injects her, he claims that the chemical "loosens your muscles, and prevents rigor mortis", but that makes no sense! This woman is meant to be a teacher, yet she doesn't know that injections like that don't work without a pulse?
Look, I know this is a movie, and I've seen plenty of movies where people talk to the dead, ghosts are real and magical, mystical things are possible. But, the main character doesn't know she's in a movie. I can't empathize with this character because it makes no sense that she would find the evidence convincing - all the "evidence" that she's dead make no sense in a world where magic doesn't exist. And this guy is a serial killer. At one point, he takes a photo of Anna, and he adds her to a collection of hundreds of similar pictures of his victims, pinned to his wall. You're telling me not a single one of these people realized that they were, y'know, not dead?!
In my opinion, the best way to have made this movie would have been to save all this for the end, spend the whole movie playing it straight - this is a film about a man trying to convince a woman that she's actually dead, only for it to end with a Shocking Twist that she's alive, and he's a serial killer. That wouldn't really resolve the fundamental "Failed Biology 101" aspects of this movie, but at least they'd be less noticeable! Because this was a mystery, I was basically being asked by the movie to think about this, to judge for myself whether this was at all possible. So, when it finally reveals the reality, I'm left angry and annoyed by how much of it doesn't actually make sense. But worst of all, this film spends a lot of its runtime pretending it's actually about grief, and coming to terms with loss, acting like it has a message of "it's troubling to come to terms with your own death, or the loss of another, but you can come to accept it in time"... but, with the reveal that the girl wasn't actually dead, it turns from a story about coming to terms with grief, into a story whose ultimate moral is left as "If you're in denial about the tragic, premature death of a loved one... it's because you're right, they're not actually dead! GO SAVE THEM YOU FOOL! Don't come to terms with it, that's just a lie to keep you from finding out the truth!!!"
Yeah, uh... that sucks. I did enjoy this movie for the most part, it was well-made and well acted, but ultimately it tried to be too much all at once, and after spending so long pretending to be about a premise that I found interesting, when it revealed what it was really about it just left me feeling betrayed.

- - -

Saved by the bell... it's nearly midnight, and I have to get this posted. Well, I guess we'll have to continue this next week. I was really hoping to get at least five written before I ended, but I had way more to say here than I thought I would.
Come back tomorrow night, where we'll discuss the top 6 (I guess) films that I think ultimately failed at their premise.

Until Next Time, I'm going to keep writing, so I don't run out of time for tomorrow's post...

I'm the Ab

The Night I Got Bogged

Okay... y'know, when I picked the theme of Failure, I didn't think it would be so literal. I want to work on a listicle about small failures that got out of hand, but I've failed to substantiate (or succeeded in debunking) several of the most interesting ones; I wanted to work on a story, but I failed to come up with a good enough idea in time. Then, I wanted to work on a simpler list about "Film Failures", but I failed to take into account time management. So, it's 10pm, I just got home from work, and I don't have time to do anything that takes that much effort, so instead, I want to tell you a story.

I wasn't sure I wanted to tell this story, but it does involve failure quite a lot, and it's a true story meaning I won't have to do any research. This happened to me a little over a month ago...

- - -

See, I work at a restaurant, and at the time our head chef went missing, and I was kind of worried. He just failed to show up to work one day, and didn't answer his phone when anyone of us called, and I considered him a friend. He didn't seem like the kind of person to just leave and ghost everyone without saying anything, so I was worried. I thought maybe he got into a car accident or something, so one night after work, I decided to head around to his house to see if he was okay - if his car was in the driveway, I figured that was a sign he was still around.
Now, don't go worrying about him. I've come to learn, no, he IS the kind of arsehole to just leave without warning and ghost everyone. So don't worry about him, he's not worth worrying about.

What is worth worrying about is that I was driving around late at night, after a long day at work, and it had been raining all day. I don't know whether it was because I was tired, it was dark or I was just dumb, but I failed to find his place... I got well and truly lost. See, I was driving through suburbia when I suddenly came upon a narrow, one-lane bridge that I'd never been to before. It was at this point I realized I was well and truly lost, and I decided, I really should turn around and go home. But, this bridge was narrow, and past the bridge, I was on this road with tall trees either side, much more rural than the suburbia I'd been in moments ago. I stopped the car, and I saw that there was a bit of a clearing to the left, with clear tiremarks leading into it. I thought it might have been a rudimentary carpark I could turn around in, and I didn't fancy the prospect of doing a fifteen-point turn on a narrow, two-lane road, so I turned into this clearing. Unfortunately, there were a lot of trees about, so I didn't fancy the idea of turning around here either, I'd have to check my mirrors to make sure I wouldn't bump into one of these thin trees. But, as I turned right, preparing to turn, I saw a little path, with clear tire-marks leading away. It looked like it curved around, and I was hoping it was a crescent that would lead back to the road. So, I turned down this path and started driving. I noticed one puddle deep in the tire-tracks, so I drove askew to go through it, but as I went past it, I felt my tires spinning on the wet grass, and I was a bit concerned, so I drove a little faster. But then, when I saw a second, much bigger puddle, instead of stopping, I drove askew again and hit the accelerator, but I'd failed to estimate just how deep this puddle was. My car tipped and fell into the puddle. I was left sitting in my car, which was now tipped slightly forward, but leaning to the right at about a thirty-degree angle. I tried the accelerator, but my car didn't move at all. I went into reverse and put the pedal down again, nothing. I tried this three or four more times, but the car wasn't even wiggling.
I was wearing my work clothes, and I didn't want to get them muddy (and I really didn't want to get mud all through my car, but after a while I decided to hop into the passenger seat, to use that as a kind of air-lock (or "sludge-lock") to keep the driver's seat part of the car clean.
So, I hopped over, got out of the car, and I decided to look at what I could do, with my phone. I could see how deep the puddle was - most of my tire was in the water, so I took off my hand-brake, put the car in neutral and tried to push the car forwards. But, that wasn't doing anything - the ground under my feet was too slippery, and even when I threw my weight against it, it wasn't moving at all. I figured strength alone wasn't going to help me here. So, instead, I grabbed a few fallen tree branches, and rammed them under the tire as hard as I could, in the hopes they'd get some kind of grip,  then I climbed into the car (after taking my shoes off in the passenger seat, and hopping into the driver's seat, in my socks). I tried to drive again, now with added friction... but that didn't do any better. I could feel the tire rubbing against the branch, and the engine was struggling a little, (the lights dimmed when I tried to reverse) but I wasn't moving, and I realized then how much water was flicking up when my tires span. I got out of the car again (hopped over the gear-shift, carefully put my shoes on again doing my best not to get mud on my hands, opened the door, and climbed up and out the angled door), and I grabbed the branch, but when I pulled it out from under the tire, it came free too easily - I thought it should have been rammed in the mud. That's when I realized - the front bumper of my car was resting on the muddy ground. The reason I'd failed to move the car was, the front-right driving wheel wasn't touching the ground at all, it was in the puddle with my car's chassis on the edge of the puddle No matter what I did, I couldn't move this car - I would need help.

So, I yanked all the branches out of the way and got in my car (taking my shoes off, sitting in the driver's seat). I considered calling my parents - I live with them, and I figured we all had Scout training, we could figure this out. But, I looked at the time... it was 10pm. I'd left work around 9, and my parents go to bed earlier than me. I didn't want to wake them up. Besides, I'm a card-carrying RACQ Member!
For those not in the know, RACQ stands for Royal Automobile Club of Queensland, it's a club that provides insurance, vehicle inspection, apparently banking for some reason... but most importantly, it provides Roadside Assistance, and that's what I needed.
Now, I don't live in Queensland, I live in New South Wales. Actually, I live in Albury-Wodonga, which is on the North side of the New South Wales, Victoria border (hence the name Albury is in NSW, Wodonga is in Vic, so we're two cities, but one community). Anyway, the point is, NSW is usually dealt with by NRMA (I believe that once meant "the National Roads & Motorist's Association", but it's not actually national, it mostly covers New South Welshmen), but as I understand it, these clubs usually operate interdependently.
Anyway, so, I call RACQ, using the number on my card. After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, I speak to a lovely lady and explain my situation. I say something like.
  "Hi, my name is Matt, look my car's been bogged, and I need help, but I'm not sure who to call. I'm with RACQ, but I live in New South Wales, is that okay?"
  "That's okay," she says. "I can't help you from here, but I'll just transfer you to the NRMA."
I appreciated that, since I didn't even need to write a new number down or whatever, I just get transferred over... but, I'm back on hold again.
Quick aside: Why is hold music the crappiest repeating loop of muzak-jazz in the world. It's not like it's calming to listen to shitty music through a crappy speaker whilst waiting on the phone.
Anyway, after another 15 minutes or so, I finally get through to NRMA, and I explain my situation.
  "Hey, I just called RACQ, I'm an RACQ member, but they transferred me here because I live in Albury now. My name is Matt, and I've got my car bogged."
  "Well, we don't usually help people whose cars get bogged," the lady says, rising my anxiety until she adds, "But, with the rains lately, we have been sending out tow-trucks to help people who are stuck. Can you just tell me where you are."
I put her on speaker phone as I then opened my GPS app to find out where I was. According to my phone, the nearest road (which I had turned off of, to enter that clearing) was called Island Road. Huh, I guess that bridge actually lead me onto an island, I think. So, I tell the lady "I'm just off island road"
She looks it up on her computer, then she says:
  "Oh, you're in Victoria? Just a moment..."
Then, she puts me on hold. Thankfully, I'm only on hold for five or so minutes before a woman answers the phone, telling me I'm talking to someone from RACV (i.e. the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria).
See, in Australia, the border between Victoria & New South Wales is the Murray River... but, the border officially and legally starts on the northern shore, so the moment I'd driven onto that bridge, I was technically in Victoria. When looking back on it, it was a fun fact, but when you're just trying to get some help pulling your car out of a puddle, it's bloody frustrating!
So, I tell this third nice lady "My name is Matt, my car is bogged just off Island Road, I NEED a tow to get out of here."
The lady then says "Okay, I'll just organize to send a tow truck out there to help you, can I get your information."
So, I tell them my full name, my license plate number, the make and model of my car, my phone number, and I think my birthday as well, just for fun.
Anyway after all this, it's about 10:30 when the lady says "Okay, we've called the guys out, they have your number so they'll text you when they're nearly there. But, it may take up to an hour to get out to you."
  "That's fine," I say, "I'm not going anywhere, I'll be fine... uh, should I do anything for when they arrive?"
  "If you're a potential danger to other drivers, you might want to put your hazard lights on. And don't get out of your car and wander around on the road. Otherwise, you should be fine."
I say okay, I hang up, I switch my hazard lights on and I lean back to listen to a podcast on my phone.

Unfortunately, the podcast I was listening to only had episodes 30 minutes long, so after that time, I didn't want to listen to another, because I figured "up to an hour" usually means "an hour, or less", and I didn't want to leave an episode half-way through. I tried reading my book, but I couldn't do that without my lights on, and since my lights had sort of flickered when I'd reversed, I was worried about flattening the battery. So, I wound the window down and watched the stark, dark trees either side of me blinking orange in the glow of my hazard lights.

After 45 minutes, I get a text. It tells me there's a tow-truck nearly there. I sit my seat back up straight, and wait for the truck. After five minutes, I get a phone call. It's the tow-truck driver.
  "Hey, mate, where are you?"
  "I'm just off Island Road, to the left", I tell him.
  "We're on Island Road, but I can't see you," he says.
  "Right, well, there's a little clearing to the left just past the bridge, and there's a muddy path that seems to go around."
  "How far are you from the road?" asks the tow-truck driver.
That's when I begin to worry... I remember my Dad vaguely mentioning that "roadside assistance" was literally limited to the roadside, and there was a legal distance beyond which was not considered "the side of the road". I guestimated that distance was about 50 metres, so I say to the guy "I don't know, maybe 50 metres."
  "Well, our truck's front-wheel drive, so we can't go in the mud," says the driver (which made me feel kind of stupid since, yeah, my car's front-wheel drive and I found that out the hard way). Also, he says, "and our tow-cable is only 20-metres long."
  "Oh..." I say. I'm relieved that this wasn't a coverage issue, but now this guy seems to be saying he can't help me at all.
  "Well, I don't want you guys to get stuck as well, but what am I supposed to do, then?"
I was hoping he'd tell me the number to call to get back in touch with RACQ (or RACV or whatever), or maybe give me the number of a better tow-trucking company. But, instead, the guy says.
  "You need someone with a four-wheel-drive to get you out. I recommend you go onto Facebook and find a local group of four-wheel-drive owners, and post a message asking for help."
  "I see," I said. I think I was able to hide the disappointment in my voice. "Well, thank you."

I hang up, the truck drives away, and I look at the time on my phone. It's approaching midnight, at this point - 11:24. I know the exact time because I have the record of when I made the call on my phone. See, over an hour earlier, I'd decided against calling my parents because I knew it was very late at night, and they were probably in bed. However, my Dad owns a 4WD... I was hoping to let them sleep, and keep all this to myself, but that plan, clearly, had failed. My parents were definitely in bed, but I knew I had to get home since I had work in the morning. And yeah, they're retired, so they can sleep in - but come on, it's still rude to call someone that late, even if it is an emergency.

So, I called my folks, and they came out with hooks and straps and gloves and wellington boots, and after thirty minutes of fussing around, we strapped up the car, Mum got in the front seat (she's lighter than me, so we figured it was better for her to be in the car), me behind pushing, with wellington boots on, and Dad driving the four-wheel-drive, we managed to get my car up and out of the puddle.
The cable did snap as we got near the road, but the car was out of the mud, no damage was done to the cars, and after making sure my car was running fine, we went home.

I was apologetic about waking them up, and they said it was fine, but Dad said "don't drive on unpaved roads when it rains", and my mother added. "Well, I'm tired, so if you don't mind I'm going to take off my shining armour, and go to bed."

So, all told, I don't think a single thing went right for me that night. Some of it was my own fault, I really shouldn't have driven through mud after a rainy day like that, and I should know exactly what roadside assistance means before I call for it. But, if there's one thing I learned from all this, it's that when things go wrong, you can always rely on your loving family to help you in times of need.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and if there's two things I learned from this, the second one is that I probably get my wicked sense of humour from my mother. Until Next Time, take care, drive safe, and make sure you have someone you can rely on who drives a four-wheel-drive.

The Facts in the Case of Patient S.

Tonight, we'll unravel the sordid mess,
From the Facts in the Case of Patient S.

The patient was a female with cerebral palsy,
    in a paraplegic condition,
She was also mute, had been so since aged three,
    With Doctor Marcus as attending physician.

Patient S couldn't speak, but her mind was sharp,
    Although she was mute, you could not call her dumb,
She used her phone to speak, for the most part,
    By texting her words, with one thumb.

Although most impressive, this caused tendonitis,
    constant cramping, and repetitive strain,
So, Doctor Marcus sought out a new means for this typist,
    To get the words out of her brain.

And that's when he started to make a device,
To interpret her brainwaves, into signals precise
    With brainscans, computers, and predictive text,
    To translate her thoughts into what she'd say next.

Although the machine was incredibly clever,
    After tweaking, and testing quite vigorous,
It took three weeks of trial and error
    To make a sentence came out of the gibberish.

"Doc, can you hear me? Doctor Marcus, hello?"
    Even Patient S's mother was surprised.
The doctors and men all shook hands at the breakthrough
    And Patient S had tears in her eyes.

They interviewed S, asked her perspective,
She said so many saw her body defective,
    But the body she had was "granted by God",
    She was truly unique, that's why she seemed odd

She said she was glad when her Mum took her phone,
    Although she was stiff, and her legs felt cold,
With the freedom to talk, she did not feel alone,
    She said "Now I can walk in my soul".

But don't yet rejoice, it would be in haste,
For you see, there's a few more facts in this case.
    Just a week later, she shocked her physicians,
    When she died... "choked on water", reports the mortician

Although S was deceased, the device kept speaking.
    "Perhaps one day, I'll be able to dance," it said
That's when all the doctors began to start freaking.
    How is she speaking? She's dead!

But even after the wires were cut,
Their talking device still wouldn't shut up!
    They couldn't explain how it worked with her gone—
    But then, Doctor Marcus found her old phone.

One last desperate message on the girl's phone read
<<Someone please help me thats not wat I said>>
    the talking machine that they thought they'd perfected,
    Had drowned out her screams with the words they'd expected,

They'd committed the sin, like so many before,
    For the differently abled among us,
She was not speaking through; she'd been spoken for...
    when we confuse what they suffer for justice

Although you may think I declare it in haste,
I think that is the crucial fact in this case:
    When we fail to listen, all we do is supress.
    That's the Fact in this case of Patient S.

Dangerous Dumbasses, or A Discussion of The Dunning-Kruger Effect

How difficult could it be?

It's a simple phrase which may well be the basis of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias which has been "common sense" for a long time. It's been said “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, and even Charles Darwin is quoted saying “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”, and this is how the Dunning-Kruger effect is understood in general, but what exactly is it?
The Dunning-Kruger effect was officially quantified in 1999 when social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger published their paper “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”.

In this simple study, the two researchers gave their test subjects an exam which tested their logic, grammar & humour, and before evaluating any subject, asked them how well they thought they'd done. Dunning & Kruger then compared the subjects' percieved scores against their actual scores, and found a fascinating correlation... The lower the subject scored, the greater the disparity between their actual score, with the lowest scoring participants assuming they'd done three-to-four times better than they did; middle-scoring participants thinking they'd scored double or one-and-a-half times better, to the point that the highest scoring subjects actually underestimated their scores a little. I've included a stylized recreation of their findings as today's Illustration (see fig. 7, above), and I don't want to overstate this... the lower scoring quartile of subjects, on average, didn't believe they'd done the best - but they were still overestimating their abilities by a wide margin.

Now, this test wasn't great. I haven't been able to get my hands on the actual questions, but the fact that they were tested on "humour" seems questionable at best, I'm not really sure how you score someone on their sense of humour. However, this test was the first of several more tests on different subjects and sciences, and similar results have been found throughout several fields of study.

So, why does this happen? Well, there are several theories. Some of the most common theories relates to Illusory Superiority. This kind of cognitive bias is also known as the "above-average effect", "leniency error" and the "overconfidence effect", because it's not simply one thing (and in fact, in modern psychology the "Dunning-Kruger effect" is considered one of the factors of Illusory Superiority). But, it includes a bevy of psychological fallacies such as the "better-than-average" heuristic: in simple terms, the majority of people do not think they're "average", but the majority of any set is "average", by definition, meaning that, the majority of people therefore must overestimate themselves. Some theorize that this is because most people hold "above-average" to be ideal, for most social and personal traits - honesty, intelligence, kindness, popularity, strength - whilst these are positive traits, having them to an unusually high degree can be seen as negative, i.e. brutal honesty;  arrogant intelligence; self-sacrificing kindness; idolized popularity; dangerous strength - so, by seeing oneself as merely "above average", it's holding oneself in the highest possible esteem with most of these traits.
In a way, it could be seen of as a form of high self-esteem, as we're holding our own selves equivalent to what we see as the societal ideal. However, it could be seen as a form of low empathy, as we're considering the majority of others as sub-standard, which relates to the second form of Illusory Superiority I want to talk about, Egocentrism: basically, it's when you hold singular and greater significance over yourself, your abilities and your characteristics, compared with anyone else and often involves a kind of perception of advantage and/or privilege for oneself, compared to others.

Sadly, this is the common pop-culture understanding of the Dunning-Kruger effect: egocentrism, arrogance and self-importance. I admit that this is how I viewed it, and what inspired this post. After all, what's a better example of Failure and the Dunning-Kruger effect than Donald Trump? His thoughtless actions are still affecting the world to this day, and I thought his incompetence could be explained by this psychological phenomenon. It's well-established that Donald Trump would frequently overestimate his own capacity, intelligence, abilities, political knowledge and didn't even understand the responsibilities or powers of the presidency - the Mueller report found that on several occasions, Trump ordered his political staff to commit illegal acts, and the only reason he was not punished for this was because those members of staff chose not to follow through with his unlawful demands.
But, after doing this research, it's clear to me that Trump was not an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect... it's just textbook Narcissism.

See, the Dunning-Kruger effect may have nothing to do with self-perception at all, it could simply be because humans suck at counting, and estimating, in general. There have been several studies showing how common innumeracy, discalculia and poor mathematic ability is amongst the human population. There are even several theories that claim humans don't count linearly, but logarithmically. I won't go into detail on that because it would take two hours of research...

[A/N: I know that because I already DID that research, and lost it all because my computer crashed (TWICE!). I guess it took this year's theme of "Failure" literally...]

But the important thing is, humans suck at counting and estimating, and perhaps our overestimation of ourselves is just another example of how badly we screw up at counting.

It could even be related to Game Theory, specifically Information Asymmetry... in the absence of relevant information, we are often left with inadequate strategies of how to proceed, especially when we don't know just how much information we don't have, in a given "game".

But, at the end of the day, the important thing we all must learn from these examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect, is that when we fail... we may be unable to understand just how badly we've failed until we see the results. Whilst Donald Trump turned out to be a shitty example of the Dunning-Kruger effect (as he's kind of a shitty example of basically everything humanity has to offer), I do think a much better example is "Climate Change Denial". I was once a climate change denier - I even have a blog post all about it - but the difference between myself and most other climate change deniers is that I was still pro-environmentalist, and I saw the benefits of the climate-change position, even though I disagreed with their conclusion (at the time).
Even now that I better understand climate change and fully accept all of the realities of anthropogenic climate change, those who still don't not only don't seem to understand the realities but their lack of understanding is so deep, they fail to understand how they could possibly be so wrong, and how wrong they could possibly be.

This is true of basically all science-deniers: creationists; anti-queer bigots, anti-abortionists; conspiracy theorists...
They're all dangerously stupid, but not because they're significantly dumber than the average person. I've met a lot of dumb people who admit their own ignorance - and hell, some people on the autism spectrum have learning disabilities, but autistic people aren't more dangerous than the average person, despite their lower intelligence quotient. No, what makes you a dangerous dumb person is when you fail to understand that you are dumb.

So, yeah, all of this just to circle right back to the beginning, because there is truth in that quote:
     "A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing".
We fail, all the time, but that's not always a bad thing. To err is human. I think I've used that quote about five times already in this Countdown but it's the reality, we fail yet we thrive regardless.
But Our Failure becomes Truly Dangerous when we Fail to Recognize It.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I'm going to see what's wrong with this computer, so it doesn't fail on me again... that would make this Countdown take much longer to write.
But, Until Next Time, I ask that you self-reflect, take a good look at yourself, your life and your actions, and ask yourself... have I already failed, and just not realized it yet?

My Abandoned Writing Projects (Pt. 2)

In yesterday's post, I listed the first five of ten of my most interesting abandoned writing projects. It's a lot of fun, you should check out that post here.

But, without further ado, allow me to continue with the Top 5:

THE A.W.N.'S TOP 10 STORIES I CAN'T WRITE (5-1)

05. THE GUY IN THE TREES
This one is kind of embarrassing. Not to talk about, no, but because this one is something I nearly completed. And first thing's first, it was a story, but it wasn't a novel or a short story... this was a YouTube series. See, I am a huge fan of Night Mind, a youtuber who presents dark ARG; unfiction & horror series from the internet, for people to learn about and discover for themselves. I had seen a lot of these really creative video series, and since I'd done a course of Film & TV in university, and helped write a successful student short film, I thought it would be a fun challenge to do something like this for myself. At the time, I didn't have a job, and I was at home, alone, for a few weeks, so I came up with a plot for a horror series. The concept was pretty simple... it starts off as my character, played by me, discovering that there's a homeless guy living in his neighbourhood, whom he just calls "The Guy in the Trees", since he seems to spend most of his time in this little collection of trees (that actually was in my neighbourhood, at the time). He decides to confront him, so he goes to his tent late at night, and the guy is missing, but instead he discovers a creepy notebook. The homeless guy returns, and he has to run off, and jump in his car to escape. He gets home, and reads the notebook, it's full of mad ramblings. But, what intrigues my character is how it talks about "a creature that controls me", some kind of monster which he appears to fear as well as worship, which killed his whole family - and there are several pages torn out of the book, which the guy finds. The character then recieves a threatening message, from the Guy in the Trees demanding his stuff back. So, he encounters him, and they get into a fight which my character manages to get out of, although he's covered in blood, but I didn't show (firstly, because it was just me, there were no other actors; secondly, because it was important to the plot). After this fight, my character reveals that he's lost sleep, and managed to get the missing pages off the guy, which reveals both some important names of his family, and the ritual to call upon the monster. After attempting the ritual; my character disappears, reappearing hours later, and tells a weird story about slipping into another dimension. Then there's a knock at his door, he answers it, and the story ends shortly after. So, what was this about? Well, I really only had ONE idea... basically, yes, there was this evil monster, but the reality was, that all happened after the guy became homeless, he was just an unfortunate drunk... after the fight in the woods, my character had killed the Guy in the Trees, hidden his body (stolen the pages from his corpse), and that's why he was losing sleep, and investigating this mystery, he was looking for some justification for his murder, proving that the Guy in the Trees killed his family, or that he was trying to summon a demon, but he wasn't. The knock at the door which he answers was the police, coming to arrest my character.
Unwritten because... actually no, that's a lie, this is written, I wrote it; and I filmed it. . But, in the editing process, I realized that this was not that great of a story. So, uhh...
Unpublished because: It had only one gimmick. I had a lot of fun filming this whole thing, and creating the notebook prop, but it all relied on the whole "he secretly killed the Guy in the Trees" thing, which I thought was clever... but it's not clever enough to rely on for a whole story. Also, I don't have any skills with special effects, so I couldn't really make the monstrous demon thing that I wanted to, it just looked like a crappy power-point animation... which it basically was. And, without the monster thing, it lacks that necessary misdirection, of the guy trying to find a monster, when in reality he was the monster - the murderer - the whole time. A year after filming this, I came to admit to myself that the only reason I created this wasn't because I had a cool story that I wanted to tell, it was because I could, and I wanted to be able to say I'd created a cool youtube series. But, after looking back, my major inspiration was "I want to create a YouTube thing", and that's not a good reason to create. That's why I say this one is kind of embarrassing, because it's only as I approached the finish line that I realized, I didn't have a good reason to run the race. Whilst I still admit that I enjoyed the hell out of acting, filming and creating this short series, and I do recommend that kids try creating short films, it's a lot of fun... but, don't do it for clout, and don't do it because you want to post something to YouTube. Do it because it's a lot of fun to bring a story to life. I'm not opposed to creating any kind of YouTube series... in fact, I created a pair of videos for my Halloween Countdown a while ago. But, that was because I created something that needed to be on video to show it off in its full glory, not created for the sake of creating it, and that makes those videos something I'm still proud of, to this day.

04. COLD VIRTUE
Remember how I said I love a good murder mystery? Well, Crooked O'Hare wasn't the only time I tried and failed to write one. The difference is, rather than a series, this one was planned as a novel. I still think it's a pretty good idea... see, I wanted to set this in a dystopia. I was inspired by the prevalence of YA dystopia novels at the time - see Hunger Games; Divergent; The Maze Runner - and I thought it would be a great place to set a murder mystery story since, well, all the crime - and who doesn't like a couple of pseudo-futuristic technologies thrown into the mix? So, the concept was simple, a kid is being trained for the youth police (yes, very much Hitler Youth, I said this was Dystopian, right?), but just before he graduates, even though he is basically top of his class (or near, I didn't want to be too cliche), his father is declared a traitor to the state, and executed. His father was a mid-to-low-tier member of the political party, and so he'd been given many benefits of the 1% - free housing, cheap food, low taxes, household servants.
This means that after his death, not only is their family name horrendously besmirched, but they lose their home, their income and their food security in one fell swoop. The main kid and his mother are forced to live in government housing (i.e. slums), so they're crammed in a tiny apartment with a dozen other people, and since this kid lived his whole life of privilege, he walks, breaths, talks and smells like money, so as soon as he walks through the streets, he is targeted and attacked, he defends himself, but he gets a hard and nasty lesson about "justice" in the slums - Criminal gangs, drugs and murder are rife in these densely packed, low-income facilities. So, to earn some money and hopefully clean up his neighbourhood, the kid sets up an "office" in the burned ruins of a state-banned church - no roof, and little-to-no security, but it has privacy - and so he starts working as a private investigator. The idea was that he would solve a few small time crimes, but the story would focus on a series of 5 or 6 murders; starting with victims of crime, moving up to slum-lords, state police and eventually to a politician visiting their slums. He'd make a few enemies when he refuses to ally himself with any of the street gangs, until he manages to find himself a space as someone who turns a blind eye to non-violent gang activity, and eventually he makes enough money to afford a smaller (like, the size of half a room), but nonetheless private home for his mother and himself (I didn't decide what, but his mother would find work, probably as a servant in a richer household).
The whole idea was showing, from the ground up, how the system was forcing the lower classes into desperation, and the upper classes into classist paranoia. And of course, the novel would end with the kid uncovering the mystery of whether his father was truly a traitor, and who betrayed him to have him executed. It was a cool idea, one I still think would make a fantastic story, of dystopian murder mystery.
Unwritten because: Dystopia relies upon worldbuilding, and this requires a lot of worldbuilding and politics that I am not the best at parsing. Out of fear I'm starting to sound lazy, I want to clarify, I'm not against doing research. The problem is that I really need to have some foundation upon which I can build - Stephen King, as a writing teacher, is famous for his oft-quoted lesson: "write what you know", and people unfortunately misunderstand this advice horrendously. They think it means "only write something if you've experienced it" which would make for a lot of boring fiction, every writer would write about what it's like to be a writer... no, what "write what you know" means is, write stuff you can understand. I am not a murderer, but I can understand murder, I can understand the emotions and motives and opportunities and biology of murder, I can understand what it is that leads to a murder victim, in a murder mystery. But, I don't understand politics and socio-economic strife (at least, not very well); and I don't understand how to represent the lifestyle of people living in slums and gangs and political strife. Basically, I don't know enough about this setting to really bring it to life, even though I think it's a clever cross-genre concept. And hell, if I threw in a love triangle subplot, I'd have hit every one of the necessary tropes for dystopian YA of the era... I think I've kind of missed the mark on that particular "pop culture" moment, but I insist that murder mystery is awesome, and I'd love to see someone turn this into a real story. I'm just not the one willing to do it...

03. TRANSYLVANIA
The idea here was pretty simple, it was the idea of doing a Frankentein rewrite with a transgender theme. The story I had was that in this version, Frankenstein had an Igor that helped him from the beginning to develop the methods of creating life, as he was inspired by Frankenstein in college to work with him. But, as they discovered the keystone to the research, the alchemical/electrical (or whatever, as the plot needed) element to finish, Victor and Igor celebrated, and Igor finally admitted the truth... (HEAVY TRIGGER WARNINGS for discussion of Gender Dysphoria & Suicidal Ideation - it's a huge part of this story, so you may need to skip to the next list entry if that's too much for you, but it's a huge part of why I couldn't write this story, so it's important)
Igor is a pre-transition transgender, and she loves Victor. She was inspired to work with him because, as a male, she is incapable of carrying children, and the idea of creating life inspired her. She admits all this believing that, as they've gotten so close (and with his love of science, she hoped he'd understand her). However, Frankenstein rejects her out of... well, basically "Trans Panic", and attacks her.
Then, Igor dies... I'd originally planned, as suicide because she basically gets her gender thrown in her face, but I thought maybe it could be murder or manslaughter.
But, when Victor calms down (or, when he discovers Igor's body), he realizes how wrong he was, so he decides to resurrect IGOR with the science they uncovered together. And, as per her wishes, he actually uses the corpses of women to surgically transition Igor.
I hadn't decided the name, and this was all in the planning phase, but for the rest of this, I'll refer to Igor as "Irina". The idea here is that Victor and Irina would work together, and at first Victor is simply sympathetic to Irina's plight, and wanted to save his old friend, but in time Victor would fall in love with Irina, but there would be complications as the townspeople learn of this resurrected person turned into a woman, and would rally against the doctor.
I hadn't decided the ending, but it would be very much fire and pitchforks.
Unwritten because: Do I even need to explain it? The key feature of this whole idea is Unfortunate Implications. Part of the inspiration behind this is that I love science and medicine and knowledge, and the idea of showing how science can turn a person assigned male at birth into a gorgeous, feminine woman is the epitome of that; and the inspiration for this was seeing how many - even modern - movies tend to write sci-fi horror as "man should not wrestle in god's domain", as though toying with nature is inherently evil, but I think that's nonsense. The real monster is ignorance, and this kind of story would thrive on that... However, it also thrives on:
  1. Representing Motherhood as the pinnacle of Womanhood
  2. Turning a transwoman into a creature literally called Frankenstein's Monster.
  3. Trans Panic as a Plot Device (for a main character no less...)
  4. Suicide/Murder as plot device. (Yikes... I never decided which but pick your poison, both suck.)
And whilst I personally like the juxtaposition that Irina would be seen as a monster, but the real monsters are the townspeople who fear her; the problem therein is that it requires a delicate equipoise of understanding the inherent reading and counter-reading of the "monster" metaphor, which idiots like JK Rowling have already shown to be completely incapable of.
Also, do I have to mention that I'm cisgender? This is me looking from the outside at the trans experience, and trying to write a story to represent that from experiences that are entirely academic. I don't think I can, or should, attempt to write a piece of literature designed to define the transgender experience. I've considered writing this by working heavily with a sensitivity reader... but I realized, I'd have to rely on them so heavily that clearly I'm the wrong person to write this story, if indeed it can be written at all without going against everything I believe in. I don't know how to resolve all of these unfortunate implications, even though I think this is a cool story idea, so I'd rather just admit defeat, and step away from the concept altogether. I do plan on writing stories about transgender persons, but I want to do so in a way that doesn't have so many unfortunate implications.

02. THAUMATURGUS
Y'know, this one is a little hard to explain, and that's because it's an absolute mess of a concept. It's easy to understand in principle... when I was younger, I realized that I had a LOT of story ideas, and I mean a whole lot, so I decided "Hey! What if I took ALL of these ideas, and put them together?" so, I did. But, this was before I realized that you could, and should, cannibalize, frankenstein and remould ideas to make them fit, so I basically took whole story ideas, and slotted them into this story wholesale. The basic concept was that the story would follow this young boy and his sister, who live with their grandfather, and the boy discovers  a magical world, and has to fight a big, bad evil wizard... very generic "2000s YA Urban Fantasy" schtick. But, I threw in all these other concepts wholesale. So, the grandfather owns a dozen weird cats with weird names, because I had this "kennel for familiars who lost their witches" idea; the kid meets a teen boy who has a living car with a personality, because I liked this "living, magical car" idea; I threw in a wise, old cat called Tembley, from my "Cursed Cat of Cecil Street" idea (which I also used for a "hyperlinked story" project at school, that's why that story's so short, had to fit a wordcount); they also encounter a dozen strange freaks on the street, because I threw in my 'Nocturnals Gang' idea; the kid works in a burger joint that gets attacked by a shadow monster, because of my 'We Never Close' story idea; one of the characters would be a late night jazz musician, because of my "Smokey Jones" idea, and I think I even threw in a DJ at a magical radio station, because of my "Wizard Radio" idea; and two of the characters were identical twins, and vampires, because of a "Sinister Sister" idea I got from my cousin... hell, even the title comes from an unused story title I really liked, so this world was heavily populated with all of these fascinating characters and stories, I figured it would be like a crazy, fantasy amusement park ride of adventure!
Unwritten because: I realized that this would basically be like an amusement park ride. Specifically, a dark ride. Sit in the car, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle as we drive slowly past hollow, plastic, lifeless scenarios, where cheap representations come out and play out some distilled version of their full character before sliding back into the dark so we can drive past another fake scene. I thought I'd come up with a clever way to use all my unused story ideas, but I wasn't using them, I was abusing them. I had to just ignore major parts of these ideas to fit the main story... I still like a lot of these ideas, and I think I can reuse them (and like I said above, some of the ones I really like, I'm not sharing, since I either can, or already did, alter it to work in another story), but throwing them all into a story like this simply turned the story into a junk drawer. And if I strip all of that away, all I'm left with is a generic urban fantasy premise - child discovers magic; child learns of magic threat; child defeats threat... blah blah blah. I'm not against urban fantasy by any stretch of the imagination, but without the junk drawer full of unused ideas, there really isn't anything left.
So, I'm not going to write this story. If someone else wants to try, they can... heck, you can even throw in your own unused story ideas. Or, hell, you can take some of these individual ideas and turn them into something... heck, even though I already wrote "The Cursed Cat of Cecil Street", you could try that too. Write a better one - I made that for a school project in like 2007, surely you can do better than teenaged me.
But no matter what, learn from my mistakes. Ideas are incredibly adaptable. Take, for example, the idea of a living car... that's a cool concept, but why? You might have a lot of reasons why you think it's cool, but I like it for three reasons. Firstly, I like the idea of exploring an inhuman mind (how would a car think?); secondly, I have always enjoyed the A Boy And His Weird Pet trope, since it's about friendship and forming a unique bond; lastly, I really like the idea of having a Cool Ride. Knowing this, I can adapt this idea to fit in literally any story. If I wanted a (somewhat) realistic romance story, I could have an unusually smart horse; if I write a sci-fi, the obvious rendition would be a space-ship with a quirky A.I.; if I wanted it in a horror, well, that's basically just the plot of Christine...
That's why I find that idea cool, but if you have an idea, but you're struggling to find a way to make it fit your story, break it down into it's fundamentals - why do you like the idea in the first place? And, can you adjust those things so that you can include the parts you like, and leave out the parts that don't fit your story? I know I spent half of this entry talking about writing advice, but that's really what this idea is... the idea is "find a way to put your unused story ideas to use, in a single story". If you want to give a try for yourself, well, I hope you do a much better job than I did.

01. THE UNSPOKEN KING
This is the biggest one... because all through high school, this was my magnum opus. For literally eight years, this was the only story I ever thought about, it was going to be a middle-to-high fantasy series, and the premise was simple. It was about a knight in the middle-ages, called Sir Graham, who died in a battle against a dark, evil monster, but came back as a mindless zombie, because of the evil lord's magics. As he had once saved the king from an assassination attempt, the king had a soft spot for Graham, and so had the poor man buried in a stone sarcophagus, in a far, secluded corner of the cemetery. over 100 years later, for reasons unknown, Graham's mind returns, his mind is alive, in a dead body. So, Graham pries himself from his grave, and decides to seek out who or what resurrected him... kind of like an anti-murder mystery, if you will. But, since he's a corpse, he's reviled and rejected by society, meaning the only people he can turn to for help are similarly abandoned outcasts of society: a half-demon cursed man, a mad wizard, a pirate ghost... all kinds of fun monsters, some who are friend, others who are foe, he doesn't know who to trust. And the first story was all about how the same evil monster that killed him hard returned (yes, very "dark lord returns"... it's a trope for a reason, people), so he's the first suspect in Graham's undead anti-murder mystery, so he decides to confront him first...
Unwritten because: Well, two reasons really. Firstly, I am not a historian. I decided to set this in the actual middle ages, as in the year 1472, meaning I had to do research on all kinds of medieval things from that specific year... and it kind of slowed down most of my research. But that's not a huge issue, this is clearly pseudo-fantasy, I could get away with a lot of this by leaning on magic... but then I hit a terrible snag, and this is only the second time this happened to me.
I had philosophical issues with this story.
See, I started working on this in high school, before I'd fully come to terms with my own beliefs regarding atheism, absurdism and dualism, which means at the time, I still believed in ghosts... albeit in the form of souls, or spirits, whatever you want to call it. Now, as an adult, I don't believe in souls or the afterlife. Part of what initially appealed to me about this story was exploring the ugly side of life, death, and since Graham was asking "why am I not dead?" there was some philosophical discussion of  death, and what death even means, why does anyone die. I mean, one of the main characters was going to be a ghost. And, without going into horrendous spoilers, my plan was effectively that Graham was going to be a "ghost" trapped in a "zombie" which the "Anti-Murderer" (no spoilers) had basically fused with magic back into a single body, for some reason relating to later stories.
But, since I now don't believe in souls, I'm kind of... well, philosophically opposed to the main conceit of this story. I could potentially rewrite it to refit my philosophies, but I would have to change the story so drastically that, it wouldn't be "The Unspoken King" anymore. I'd have to lose my ghost pirate (what a shame, he was cool), I'd have to change the villain and his whole deal (he was basically a poltergeist, so that's a whole thing...), I'd have to change the philosophical and thematic underpinnings of the story, and I'd have to change how the main character... works.
So, I've basically abandoned this story, thrown the pieces onto the recycling pile. I still do like some of these ideas, which is why I'm actually sharing the subtitle, not the series title. It's not a huge secret, I mentioned it before on this blog even, but like I said, if it's in this list, it's up for the taking, and I still like that title enough that I'm not willing to just give it out to anyone. But, this story - like its main character - as it is, is dead, and even I can't resurrect it after the damage my philosophical maturation has done to it.

- - -

So, those are my abandoned writing projects. It's kind of bittersweet looking back at this list, because when creating this, I had to look at a lot of projects that I haven't worked on in a while, and for some of them, I could say "no, I still want to write this, I want to keep it. This is a good story.", but for some, I really had to bite the bullet and admit, yes, this is a failed project, I can't write it anymore.
Especially those top two. Both are projects I spent literally years working on, but I couldn't manage to pull it all together, until I finally realized that it was beyond saving... for me, at least.

But, I hope you found this interesting, and I especially hope that this list can help inspire a writer out there to make something of these unwritten projects, to create something upon the stained workshop table where I was broken. If any of these ideas inspire you, or you'd like to know more about them, feel free to ask me in the comments below. Just because I failed, doesn't mean you can't succeed.

Speaking of which, I want to finish this by saying that, whilst these failed projects are works that I have abandoned, I do have some stories that haven't failed, and this whole experience of listing my abandoned projects has inspired me to let go of the failures, and turn towards my successes.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, I'm going to work on some projects I haven't abandoned.

My Abandoned Writing Projects (Pt. 1)

When discussing failure, it provides an interesting opportunity for self-reflection. I am not really the sort of person to regret, since I'm proud of who I am, and most of the events in my life - even the ones which didn't go as planned - have helped to shape me into the person that I am today. However, there are some things that I've failed at which I wish had succeeded, or some opportunities that I missed whose alternative outcomes I wish I knew. But, a lot of those are minor and not really interesting unless you're me. So, I figured I'd talk about something most people can understand - stories.

I'm a writer, and so I have come up with... too many stories over my career as a writer. But, even when these stories fail, I usually hang onto them, so I can cannibalize ideas for later stories. So, even though I can't always write stories the way I originally planned them, they still will turn up on a page somewhere, somehow. Maybe that dumb protagonist idea can show up as a funny background character, maybe that thin "magic key" plot could be put into a larger story, where it doesn't outstay it's welcome & maybe that line of dialogue makes more sense from a villain character. So, I try to reuse & recycle ideas as much as I can...
But not always.

There are some stories - some concepts - that I come up with that I cannot write, and today I'm going to list them for you. There's various reasons why I can't write these. If you're a writer or storyteller of any stripe, and you're looking for ideas, feel free to use any of these as you wish, as I would be impressed by anyone that can write these stories. If I list a story here, it is because I cannot write it, but I would like to see it written - and for the sake of legal purposes, I want to formally state that I am not seeking any kind of trademark/copyright or monetary/intellectual property rights or any of that if you do happen to use these ideas. Whilst these are "my" ideas, they are just ideas, if you put the work in to actually write it, it's your story. All I'd ever want in return is, if asked, that you tell people where you got your idea or inspiration (i.e. from me) - nothing more.

With that out of the way, here are some story ideas which I tried, and failed, to write. (Note: most of the following titles are "working titles").

THE A.W.N.'S TOP 10 STORIES I CAN'T WRITE (10-6)

10. MONSTER
This idea is a bit weird, since it's part of an idea I don't want to talk about... okay, basically, I am working on a YA Horror novella series. I don't want to get into details, but basically it's set in Australia, and based around characters dealing with supernatural monsters. I liked the idea of the series, and using it to explore a lot of ideas, and one idea I liked is writing a full-length story, since I've only ever written short stories, and novella-length stories. So, I decided to have a special story, set in the same universe, but novel-length. I came up with this idea when I was younger, and the series was less lovecraftian, and I was intrigued by the term "monster". I wanted to develop what a monster was, in more ways than one. The idea of this story was about a kid whose mother died, and his father started dating a younger woman, and the kid is super angsty about it. Not long after, he discovers a strange egg which hatches to reveal a monster which he decides to hide from his family, but as the monster grows bigger and stronger, he starts to lose control of it. The basic idea was that this monster was actually a part of him, and a metaphor for his own anger, angst, hatred and feelings of inadequacy, so as he grows more stressed, the monster grows more dangerous. The story was meant to be all about this theme of the real monster being the anger within.
Unwritten because: It was a bad story. Full disclosure, this story was almost entirely inspired by "Beast" by Ally Kennen, a novel about a kid who takes care of a crocodile from a little egg, until it grows so big, it wants to eat him. I read the book, it was well-written, but I was annoyed that a story called "beast" wasn't actually about a beast. Like, I guess technically a crocodile is a beast, but I was imagining a grisly, fantastical monster, not something you can see at a zoo. But also, as a kid, I was aspirational towards those books written with drama and angst and intrigue, because it felt like that was "proper writing". As I grew up I realized, no, I still find that kind of thing boring, so wanting to write a story where a kid is angsty about dumb teen stuff, which develops into a monster, that's just kind of lame. Now, you might be saying "Great, you tell budding writers they can use these ideas, yet you present ideas that you think are crap. Do you genuinely want to see someone try to write this?" well, yes. Admittedly, there's a reason this is the lowest item on the list, but this idea has potential. Firstly, I'd think the kid's situation should be much more tragic, and the plot needs to be better developed. But more importantly, what inspires me is the title: "Monster". With a story called monster, it must be 'about' monsters, and that alone is pretty inspiring to me. What even is a monster? When I say 'monster' what do you picture? Is it a scaly creature with teeth, or is it a furry beast, or something else - feathers? Blubber? Is it small and ugly, or enormous and dangerous? Is it more human and intelligent, or more wild and animalistic? Is it new, young, perhaps a prototype, or is it old, ancient, perhaps mystical? Monster is a broad concept, yet it's particular, so much is and isn't a monster. I guess the real question is... what's a monster, to you?

09. URBAN SECTOR
The idea here was pretty simple. I like the idea of sitcoms, but I usually find it hard to engage with them for more than a few episodes, since they're living boring, ordinary lives - who cares when they resolve their personal drama, if it means we return to status quo? So I figured... if you set a sitcom in a sci-fi story, it would make it much more interesting. And I think living on a starship sounds fun, and this kind of gives the opportunity to play around with that. So, I had this idea for a trio of guys who live on a Starship that transports cargo between different human settlements around the solar system. I wrote the outline for the first episode that introduces Craig, a bit of a schlub (and alcoholic) who once helped design robots in a factory, but ironically lost his job (because robots took his job); so now he's a homeless drunk, and kind of pathetic (in a funny way). Then, there's Wax, an alien, who is homeless because he is an alien (actually half-alien, but doesn't like to talk about it), and faces a lot of covert discrimination, since Earth is quite xenophobic. I figured Wax stands up like a human, but looks like a mix between an axolotl and a squid, and he's blue; he doesn't have any weird powers, he just looks weird, but he's actually a regular guy. Then there's Luthor, the ship's navigator, and a gay man, and whilst he doesn't face any discrimination, he struggles to have a personal life since whenever their ship stops, they recieve their next destination and he has to spend all his time plotting their next course, and nobody else on the ship is gay or single, so he basically doesn't get any time to himself.
The idea for the pilot was that after introducing each character in a small vignette, explaining who they are, the starship docks on Earth, to unload cargo for several hours, so the rookie pilot goes planetside for some drinks to celebrate a successful first run; Craig finds the sucker, and convinces him to "party" with him (on the pilot's dime), and results in him drinking himself into a catatonic state; this delays the ship's plans, even after Luthor has plotted their new course, so he finally gets a chance to go planetside, where he meets Wax, and they eventually encounter the man that got their pilot drunk who becomes fast friends with Wax because, as a roboticist, he is used to interacting with non-humans, and whilst he doesn't approve of the means, Luthor appreciates that he got a chance to finally socialize with someone new. After some shenanigans and coincidences, Luthor has to go back onboard the ship, so he invites Craig and Wax to be his roommates.
Because Luthor basically doesn't work whilst the ship is in transit, it meant the story would mostly follow these three socializing, getting into drunken hijinks, dealing with prejudices with Wax, looking for love, and occasionally getting into sci-fi shenanigans due to the various anomalous or secret cargoes and passengers they have to transport.
Unwritten because: Well, a few reasons. Firstly, I originally planned this as an animation (back when I was unemployed), and I attempted to create this in Macromedia Flash... and I learned very quickly that single-handedly animating anything longer than 15 seconds is an absolute ball-ache. Also, as much as I like these characters and the concept, I am not a sitcom writer. I have come to realize that whilst I can enjoy reading character archs and interpersonal drama, I do not like writing it. I came up with some ideas for plots, like Luthor coming out of the closet to his new friends; Craig activating a robot that joins the cast; a fun romance with Luthor getting into a long-distance relationship with a guy that's scared of Wax; Craig trying to woo the ship's second-in-command & even some plot about a brewing alien war... but I just struggle to write stories that are entirely character-focussed. Characters should usually drive the plot, and I love writing dialogue where characters discuss the plot, but when the characters are the plot, I don't enjoy writing it (even when I enjoy watching it).
I am still very interested in writing science-fiction, so I haven't told you everything about this (there's a couple of plotlines and ideas I'll gladly cannibalize and Frankenstein into other stories, especially the alien war stuff) but at this point in time, I don't think I'll ever attempt anything remotely sit-com-like again.

08. CROOKED O'HARE
I love a good murder mystery, but they're surprisingly hard to find. Even though they were once incredibly popular, they seem to have vanished. So, I've been interested in writing a murder mystery for a long time. And I don't mean an occult detective or a crime story about a detective, I mean a proper Fairplay Mystery, where the reader can solve the puzzle alongside the detective. That's half the fun of a murder mystery. The other half is the detective themself, a character that is interesting, or has some key gimmick, that guides the story along. So, I had this idea of a detective called "Jack O'Hare", an whose gimmick was that he was a criminal. An Irish gangster who moved to New York in the early 1900s, after he gets framed for the murder of his own gang-leader, he's forced to solve the crime, and when he realizes the killer is his own best friend - meaning that he's going to be killed by the surviving members of his old gang - well it inspires Jack to go straight. So, the gimmick is, he's an ex-gangster, a ruffian and a thief, who spent most of his life being a criminal. So he knows how they think, he has connections in the underworld and now he's become a "good guy". I had this whole idea of him having a love interest - a Catholic, Hispanic girl - that did love him, but rejected him for his criminal, sinful ways; so, there would be this subplot about him trying to convince her that this isn't a scam or a con, he's actually going "legit". However, he does occasionally bend the rules to solve his crimes. Breaking and entering, roughing up suspects, stealing clues... that kind of thing, and he'd have an antagonistic relationship with a particularly by-the-book policeman. And I did have some plans for several stories in the series... about five. I had a closed-circle mystery set in a prison after that policeman caught him on trumped up charges of assault, when someone dies in a prison riot; a mystery where some drug addicted prostitute gets killed, so the police don't care enough to investigate; a mystery at a mansion where he arrived uninvited, and as an ex-con, people assume he's the killer, so again he has to clear his name... a few fun ideas. But, I never did write it...
Unwritten because: A few reasons. Firstly, 1900s? What the hell was I thinking?! I know almost nothing about the 1900s, I was just inspired because that's the classic "noir crime" era and several thinkpieces about "the decline of murder mystery" had convinced me that modern technology made murder mysteries harder to write... this is all nonsense by the way, modern technology doesn't change the murder mystery formula, unless you're a lazy writer and setting a story in a certain time period "for the vibe" is stupid. Now, I did try to revamp this story for a more modern era, something I could write without having to do a butt-tonne of research... but when I removed these characters from the early 1900s, their "classic" noir style washed off, and revealed them for the stereotypes they were. Irish gangster? Hot Catholic Hispanic floozy? By-the-book policeman with a moustache and a superiority complex? These weren't characters, they were caricatures. The real nail in the coffin? My inspiration, my gimmick, that made O'Hare feel so original? The idea that he was a "criminal-turned-detective"? Not only is that not original, it's the LEAST original detective concept in the world... one of the first ever icons of modern criminal investigation (and I'm talking in real life, not in fiction), who first profiled criminals, collected clues & started the whole concept of "detective work" was a man called Eugène-François Vidocq, a Frenchman who was a criminal-turned-criminalist from the 1800s. It turns out, after several years on the run, he witnessed a childhood friend of his César Herbaux, with whom he'd committed several crimes, being executed, and this inspired him to turn away from a life of crime - seriously?! Even my own character's turnaround was unoriginal! Vidocq had no other skills except committing crime, but he realized those skills could be used for good, to capture criminals. And it's not just art imitating life, but life inspiring art - Vidocq inspired several of the earliest "detectives" in fiction, including: Alexandre Dumas' "Monsieur Jackal"; Émile Gaboriau's "Monsieur Lecoq", who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes"; Edgar Allan Poe's "C. Auguste Dupin". So, in the end, I figured my story would require too much research; would take a lot of effort to polish up the stereotypes into three-dimensional characters & relied on an unoriginal premise.
Now, I've not given up on murder mysteries - far from it, I still have murder mystery story ideas I want to write - but, not with this detective, not this concept. I am not prepared to write a period piece, I don't find that kind of thing interesting, And if tried to adapt it to the modern era, I don't think I could do the story justice.

07. THE OTHER NEIGHBOURS
I still kind of like the title for this one... I might use it for something else. I even know the inspiration behind this one, because it's right there in the title... I live in the suburbs, and here everyone has neighbours, people whose homes are near theirs. But, if you're taking a stricter definition, a neighbour is someone next to you, meaning your neighbours are the ones you share a fence with. By this logic, most homes you should have three "neighbours". There's neighbouring homes to the left and the right, and one behind. I don't know if there's a special term for these, but I call them my "other neighbours", and the idea of this story was taking that concept to the extreme. See, I can talk to my left-and-right neighbours, if I want to know who they are, I can talk to them. But, if I want to know about my other neighbours, I'd need to put in more effort. And, I wanted to take the idea of "strangers in your neighbourhood" to the extreme.
So, this story was about a kid called Toby that became curious about his other neighbours. They had a tall mansion-like property, and the kid sees only one light on in their window at night, and hears strange bird-calls and jungle-like animal sounds. There's hedges all around, and he's never seen or heard a single person on the other side of the fence. So, one day, he pretends to throw his ball over the fence, to have a flimsy excuse to jump the fence and learn more about his neighbours. The story was about him encountering fantastical things on the other side of the fence. There would be a dog that was part-monster, and the size of a small car; a talking tropical bird called Clark; a cranky, old sleeping ghost; a squid trapped in a broken water heater; a room full of living instruments; a swarm of hyper-intelligent mice; a nature-spirit turned into a house-cleaner & a mischievous, talking monkey. I think it's a fun, quirky little story. I came up with the idea by designing the house first, and placing all of the weird neighbours all around it - the idea would be, the kid would meet the bird that would warn him about the dog, then he'd see the monkey, which would try to trick him into unlocking his cage by sending him to talk to the house-cleaner. So, then I tried writing the story, but when I got to a part where the kid could either go upstairs to the bedrooms, or downstairs to the basement, I didn't know which way to go. See, I was a young writer, and I had failed to give Toby a character, so he had no reason beyond 'the plot says so' to enter the house, let alone explore rooms. And it was then that I realized, I'd created a series of encounters inside rooms, most hidden behind doors, which often involve a young boy dealing with a magical puzzle, or encountering a creature sending him on a fetch quest - I'd accidentally written a videogame! So, hey, what if I turned this idea into a videogame.
Unwritten because: It turns out, videogames are supposed to be fun. I actually tried to create this game, twice, the first time was in Adventure Game Studio, a free "point-and-click" game maker and engine, but the coding was much too difficult for me to figure out, and I shelved the project, with dreams of one day finding someone who could create the game for me. Much later, I came across GameMaker Studio 2, a game creator tool which was much more intuitive to the non-coding mind. Now, this was a year or two ago, so I was much older; I adapted the story to add more horror elements, designed the levels - I even drew the whole first level, and created the character. But, after playing around with the character for a little bit, I realized... this game isn't fun. Sure, the story was more interesting, but a good videogame consists of gameplay, story and challenge. I had story, but there was no challenge: most of the puzzles I'd originally come up with were just fetch quests; and there was nothing good about the gameplay: walk around, talk to people and pick stuff up was kind of the start and end of the whole game. And because I had rewritten the story, the original plot (discovering that the swarm of mice was the wizard who originally owned the house, and bringing them back) was kind of lame, and I couldn't come up with a good reason why this whole thing had happened in the first place.
I still do like both concepts - I like the cutesy, "kid's book" feel of that original story, a kid encountering weird animals in a suburban home; and I also really like the horrific dark fantasy concept, with a teenager entering a cursed mansion. But, until I can learn how to make a videogame 'fun', I'm going to leave game creation to game creators. And whilst I'm still holding onto that setting and some of the characters and monsters from the horrific re-write of this story, I won't try rewriting The Other Neighbours for a third time (or would this be the fourth?). But damn, I still like that title... it still inspires cool ideas.

06. OTHERWORLD
This one is actually quite old, but the idea is very, very simple... geofiction. Also known as conworlding, geofiction is the basic idea of developing a real maps for fake places... "creating fictional geography", basically. See, a long while ago I created my own world, which I called Otherworld. The basic idea here was that I wanted to create stories which I was going to set on this artificial world I made. I was inspired by discworld's use of an alternate world to come up with interesting concepts and play with fun tropes, but instead of comedy and fantasy parody, I was interested in sci-fi homage and satire (I think... I'm not actually sure, but I wanted it to be kind of funny). The main intrigue of this planet was that there was a big hole in it, right through the poles, which affected sea, weather, culture and geography across the planet... in retrospect, that doesn't make any sense scientifically, since the world would probably have to collapse back into a spherical shape, but that was my idea, alright? I was young...
I had a series of stories based around the peculiarities of this world. The first story, with the working title "Weather Forecast" was originally set in Gorsenia, a country with crazy weather (because it was so close to the hole in the planet), so they developed the most advanced weather forcasting technology, only to realize it was so advanced, that by entering the right data, it could be used to predict the future. Another story, Firestorm, was about the king of Curland (a Pan-Asian Mishmash) leaving his throne to walk the country, and learn more about the lives of his citizenry, resulting in a political storm as several miscreants, both foreign and domestic, try to take advantage of the King's absence, only for a literal Firestorm to cause countrywide turmoil that only the king can resolve. There was another one about a scientist on the gothic, technologically advanced continent of Styriose creating artificial consciousness in a robot slave; and a story just called "The Hole Story" where several characters from Uranika (a cross between Eastern Europe and America) encounter the aliens responsible for blasting a hole in their planet... And there were several other ideas like different technology used to deal with the peculiar issues of each continent, and unusual terminology, since whilst these people basically spoke English, their cultural differences meant they used different words for some things.
Unwritten because: Honestly, it was too much work. I attempted to write the first chapter of the first story, set on Gorsenia, and since I was a young writer, I thought I'd start with my character waking up and going to work. But, even that scene was incredibly difficult, since I wanted him to be awoken by his alarm clock... but then I realized, would this world have alarm clocks? Also, how do they tell time? Does this world have a 24 hour day? And he's going to work, this must be a workday, but does this world have a weekend? Do they even have a 7 day week? I guess it depends on the time of year, but what kind of calendar does this world use? Would they base their seasons on the harvest, like many cultures have, or would they base them off some other yearly milestones. I did manage to come up with a 25-hour day, segmented into 5-hour quintants, skipping the whole calendar question, but even then, he got out of bed, and I realized... I had no idea what he would wear. I wanted to have weird creatures on this planet, not regular animals, so there weren't sheep, so what would their clothing be made of, if not wool and leather?
Okay, I'll worry about that later. So, he goes downstairs and eats breakfast... wait, what the hell would these people eat for breakfast? I just established that we don't have normal animals. Damn it!
I tried to skip ahead, and came up with some fun ideas, like there being subways to take people around the country, and a postman being this talented runner, since the terrible weather would make wheeled vehicles unreliable... but then I realized postmen wouldn't be the only people who couldn't use vehicles. How could a city work without vehicles... and wait, if it rained so much, wouldn't the trains also struggle due to the weather?
Basically, I realized that I'd walked into fractal writer's block, since any attempt to bypass a difficult section of research was just putting me face-to-face with another one. And if I tried to skip ahead, I'd just create problems that I'd either need to retcon, or ignore in the future.
This is not to say that geofiction, conworlding, or stories set on alien, fictional worlds are impossible, of course they're not. But, if I was going to create a story for one, it would need to be for a better reason than "drawing maps is fun", since I already drew the map and had fun, but when I tried to develop the world... I didn't. I'm not against doing something like this again, but I'd need to find some way to make the development much easier.

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This blog post is getting a bit long, so I'm going to hit pause right here... but we'll continue this in tomorrow's post. I hope you're enjoying this, and let me know, do you have any story ideas that you've abandoned? You don't need to share them with the world like me, but since going through my old catalogue of Story Stuff, and finding my abandoned projects, I'm fascinated by the concept, so please let me know in the comments below.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, these are just a few of my abandoned ideas... and I'll see you tomorrow to share some more.