Young Writers Society

Basic idea: scrapping the 'hard' magic system from my previous attempt to write this poetry collection. This new version will involve people being able to travel to different parts of the Garden Realms (name uncertain) via dreams. I'm hoping to take inspiration from my own tendency to dream of weird architectural mish-mashes.

Not-so-basic idea:


Coming Soon

Index

1. Planning how to Plan This
2. Premise and Origin of the Garden Realms

Planning How I'll Plan This

1. Get a better premise description. This is the one I currently have in my docs:

The Garden Realms are a place where people around the world might go to in their dreams.
They are an embodiment of differing desires for structure and permanence . . . which resulted in a place that is constantly changing to accommodate different needs.

[DONE]

2. What's the organising principle for the dreams? Why do the Garden Realms exist? (Even if I don't mention it in the poem) [DONE, and I am mentioning it after all!]

2.5 Collect my list of story references for this, just to figure out the type of thing I'm trying to create. (The ones I currently have are predictably just . . . all over the place hah. Elephant Quest, which is a silly platformer 'meta' game about an elephant looking for a hat, a couple of dark point-and-click games I watched let's plays of at one point, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland . . . ) [DONE in a word doc]

3. Decide what mood I'm going with. To fit in with the other poetry I've been doing this year, things like humor, curiosity, aesthetic appreciation would be good. I could also do something a little different and go with contemplative, or mysterious, or more of a creepy uncanny atmosphere. Honestly not sure at the moment! [DONE]

4. (and 7) Themes and motifs: figure out how I'm going to represent cycles, absurdity vs clarity, complexity vs simplicity (which is also figuring out how the 'soft' magic system is going to work )

5. Reorganise my Pinterest board to put a) main ideas and overall view in one section b) specific poem ideas in another section c) different sections to show the range of changes the Garden Realms might make

6. Make some specific characters and storylines to go into. These should be non-chronological experimental narratives to fit with the dream-like atmosphere.

*7. Should the garden itself be a character? I do think so, and I did have the idea of giving it a specific value system and personality to guide the imagery. If that's the case, maybe I should decide this around the same time as step 4.

*8. I'm hoping to be able to come up with the basic principles of how each garden dream will look in steps 2,4, 5, but in case I need to turn back to some extra worldbuilding, here is where I would do it, maybe using these threads for a little help. * and*.

Premise and Origin of the Garden Realms

A young girl makes 4 trips into a mysterious dream dimension, aiming to discover the origin of the magic that has created it. Along the way, she has to solve puzzles and navigate ever-changing landscapes, collecting hints that the magic might have been created by a person with a fondness for dizzying embroidered slippers and postal stamps. She is motivated by the need to get a full night's sleep for once, as she's been having these wild garden dreams for weeks. As time passes and she gathers more clues, she learns to cope with the chaos of the gardens.


Spoiler for the poem!

The Mood

The speaker will be narrating the tale from third-person, and voicing the girl's thoughts. The girl will think in an annoyed, slightly snarky tone most of the time, but occasionally lapse into being mesmerised by how the garden works or into feeling confused. I hope to make the reader feel curious.

1. The First (Fifth) Night

Text:

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