abandoned ideas 3

Third one of these as I'm just not in the mood to type out a proper blog entry, I'm afraid.

It's weird - yesterday I was totally "up" and full of energy. Today I feel like I've come "down" off of the high and feel a bit listless :/.

box

This was one where I got so lost in my own ideas I confused the crap out of myself.

Basically, the idea was sort of a riff on Hellraiser. If you're not familiar with Hellraiser, basically there's a puzzle box in it that, if you solve it it opens a doorway to hell. However, being Clive Barker, it's a bit more twisted, but I won't spoiler it.

Anyway, my box wasn't a puzzle box or anything, it was essentially just a symbolic thing. This was partly where I managed to confuse myself. It was partly that people just had a desire to possess the box (a la the ring in the Lord of the Rings, I guess) but also it kinda granted wishes.

But I wasn't sure if you had to gain the box in order to have your wish granted or if you got the box having had your wish granted. But either way possession of the box then brought disaster via the granted wish. So a bit like the classic Monkey's Paw story - granted wishes are bad, in essence.

Anyway, the structure was also a horrible minefield. The idea was it was effectively going to be a series of short stories. One was set back in medieval sword and sorcery type times. It was about a knight who was delivering a warning message or something - basically he had to get to a castle.

His wish revolved around being in love with the Queen and killing the King. It never really got much further than that.

The second story was about a detective with a death-wish. It was something to do with a bunch of drug dealers who had the box. Quite what his wish was and that side of it never really coalesced as I didn't get that far.

Lastly was something to do with an "average Jo" type. See there was basically going to be some witch or demon or something that, I dunno, tempted people or she was the one granting their wishes or something.

The end was that she got her comeuppance - Jo resisted the temptation of having his wish fulfilled and instead killed or something.

I dunno. As you can see it got a bit complicated and I realised I just didn't really know what I was doing. Even the basic idea of what the box did never really solidified into anything.