Young Writers Society

Memo from the Dionysian: I was chatting with a friend at work that is a psychology major. Being a philosopher/writer, I typically hate the psychology major; however, when she brought forth the topic of eugenics I was pleasantly surprised. She actually agreed with eugenics! (FYI--eugenics is basically genetic engineering that involves sterilizing "inferior" human beings and creating a caste system--a hierarchy--of individuals in a society). The biggest challenge to eugenics: geuss who were the most famous eugenicists? The Nazi's. Of course I would not ascribe to their practices. I was profoundly impacted with a classic I read last May, Huxley's Brave New World. Since I agree with Plato and Aristotle's doctrine that artists are imitaters, I was thinking a great new controversial novel could be written about eugenics in today's academic community. Lucky for me, that friend of mine had done extensive research on eugenicists' activities today, so I have been using her research, and other sources, to start the project. Let us muse: if a lot of the intellectuals are now the immoralists, could it be legitimate to practice eugenics? Huxley obviously thought it was immoral (despite its good points), but my objective is to look at the issue from the existential perspective, to take the opposite perspective of Huxley, and write something so corrosive it may lead people to heft out their black bile all over the office floor. So far it is about a small group of people living in a suburban part of a semi-major city, and these people are the victims of a eugenics experiment initiated by the government. I am drafting out a whole chapter devoted to a priest's sermon, an intellectual who is not poisoned, and a love triangle (of course). The challenge is to avoid the sci-fi leaning. If this sounds cool, get back to me and perhaps I can post my progress.

Hahaha... this sounds how my novel, FREAK, started out.

A couple of warnings:

Be very careful about the priest's sermon. The last thing that anybody wants to read is a long rant about how humanity should conform, blah blah. It gets annoying very quickly. So, to make it less annoying, you have to do a couple of things.

Still, most importantly, make it have action. While the priest is talking, the characters have to be do something. They might be looking at each other nervously, maybe they suddenly have a headache... you can be creative. But don't make them angst about it, or even think about the sermon, or at least not a lot. Actions say more than words and in this case, their thoughts would actually detract from the priest's sermon.

And, if you want to avoid the sci-fi leaning, guess what you have to do? Focus on the characters. Think of this Patton quote:

"Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory."

So yeah, even though you have all this technology, the people are still human. So you have to emphasis that and create real characters. And God help you if you don't...

That made my head hurt...

That sounds pretty sweet! I wasn't familiar with eugenics before I read this post, but I think I'd pick your book off the library shelves any day.

Hehe, I would have to agree with Snoink: sounds a lot like FREAK.

Not that that's a bad thing - I'd love to see how two similar ideas can develop differently. I'll keep an eye out for your work.

Good luck!

--Kay

I love the idea and would definitely read it. I personally would be terrible at writing a novel like that, but it seems like you have the knack. Good luck!

Nice job. But remember, although you want your characters and villains to be awesome, you've got to give them flaws. Nobody likes a perfect character. Keep up the good work!

I haven't ever read Brave New World, and I'm not sure if I would read this or not.

My biggest thing would be reading the priest's sermon. A lot of people forget that there are priests that're less stuffy when giving sermons and I've not heard a fire and brimstone one yet. That is, if you're going Catholic priest. That's my automatic association with the word 'priest'.

I dislike books that always make religion out to be the villain. Sometimes it's good, but most of the time, especially in fantasy novels, the religious fanatics are always the 'bad guys'.

But I'd give your book a skim, if nothing else, to see if I'd like it or not. Interesting concept, though.

I'm going to move this to Fiction Discussion.

*Moved.*

I had an idea for a great novel it was suppose to be of a diamond budhist artifact found in eastern asia and worth millions. sought after by governments all over the face of the world to secret organizations, and tomb raiders.

Kel wrote:I dislike books that always make religion out to be the villain. Sometimes it's good, but most of the time, especially in fantasy novels, the religious fanatics are always the 'bad guys'.

The operative word there is "fanatics". Fanatics and radicals tend to be the 'bad guys' in real life, too, whether it be religious fanaticism or not.

I think it could be excellent. It could be a lot of things, but that's the important one.