On this post, I listed the top ten badly named ideas from my story idea folder. Here are the answers to the question what were the ideas.
10. A scroll for all occasions
Space time traveler hoarded slices of space/time in a magical stasis. He could reactive it and spread out the scroll to revitalize a scene.
9. Bridge of Retribution
Writing prompt: The story’s protagonist is female and a prostitute. An eye plays a significant part in the story. The story is set on a bridge in the industrial age. The story is about balance.
8. 18th Century Lady and space assassin
Romance! Set in alternate 18th Century, the matron of a house woke up to find her house invaded by a space assassin needing a hideout.
7. Chicky Death Face
Little girl who saw how people would die in their faces. She is afraid to look in the mirror.
6. Space Fish
A race of flying humanoids have a decade long mating dance to produce the next generation. The queen is in love with an outsider and wants to be with him when the dance is over, but does not know that the last act of the dance is her death.
5. Brain Worm Girl
A young woman who could not control her ability to steal the essence of those around her is conscripted by the military to become a spy.
4. Girl-Man-Dog-Bird
An alien species takes a woman and her dog and transforms them to a man and bird and then drops them back into their lives.
3. Choice on a Raft
Two rafts adrift in the ocean must choose how they survive to land. One raft has a lottery for cannibalism, the other raft has volunteers.
2. Fiddler Pie
Opening line: It started as most things do with something innocuous. Pie. That was what lead her to the side of a deserted road in the middle of nowhere with a table full of pies. Pies filled with human viscera.
1. Wolf and Alien Island
Romance! Werewolves are trying to save the remnants of humanity from a plague caused by aliens.
What do you do with your ideas?
I would be tempted by Brain Worm Girl and Chicky Death Face from the titles alone! They sound like highly entertaining pulp fiction. 🙂
Yes, very pulp fiction sounding. 🙂
I agree, most of those were bad. Tweak Brain Worm Girl so that she can read a thought in another person’s head, but doesn’t get the whole idea. She may hear “throw him in the lake” but not the first part “put the fish on the hook and”. Of course, you want to do something more serious so you can stop an assassination plot or a robbery. Having a few mistakes along the way could add some humor as well as intrigue – did I get that right? What am I missing?
They are awful, but it is fun trying to make them better. The time stamp is from a LONG time ago. The brain worm girl I thought about her being set-up as a spy, but really she is a tool used against the army trying to use her. Or if she take memories they are gone from the person she took them from. So no matter what she did, she could clean up the mess by removing memories. I wonder what a twist would be? And no, it would not be a dream. LOL
Did you ever see the list of what not to send for strange horizons? http://strangehorizons.com/submit/fiction-submission-guidelines/stories-weve-seen-too-often/
Some of these I find very funny as well.
I looked at the link you sent and a lot of them were like from the Twilight Zone series. Some of theirs were funny but most were weird. I’m going to use that idea for Worm Girl for one of my short stories. I plan to tweak it more on the humorous side, but will see how it goes when I start writing it. I want to get enough short stories written to put in book form.
Great quirkywritingcorner! Let me know how it goes.
Our library is doing an author signing in December which doesn’t give me much time to put my stories together.
A few more titles to add to your collection. Feel free to expand.
11. The kitten dies at the end
12. Sweet and Kind Mrs. Lester is the killer
13. Eat More Peas
14. I hate weekends
Ha. I found eat more peas particularly funny.