Most Unusual Story Idea

A while back, I put up a post inviting my noble readers to ask me anything. In response, Lydia came up with a series of very interesting questions. This is, I think, the third of her suggested topics:

What is the most unusual story idea you've ever come up with? If you have used it, can we read it? If you haven't used it yet, why not?

Boy, howdy.

One of the great truths of writing is that there is no new thing under the sun, and that novelty is much more in the execution than in the idea. And, as with most authors (I suspect), my writing tends to come back to certain certain themes and certain character types. We may contain multitudes, but they're our multitudes.

So I will say, without apology, that I usually tend to write either warrior-sorcerers, or some variation of (usually an expansion on) werewolves. I like characters who are versatile; I like characters who are caught in between things. (In D'n'D, I tend to play either half-elves or half-orcs. Same basic reason: I like blending archetypes, and setting up tensions between them.) But if that's my "usual", what's my "unusual"? And what would it take to qualify as "most unusual"?

I have a lot of weird dreams. Most of the memorable ones are extremely narrative -- that is, they either form cogent, coherent plots or they seem to be trying to do so. But that isn't governed by my preferences, and a lot of those bits of weirdness have been written down precisely because they feel like story ideas. Unusual story ideas.

But I think possibly the weirdest, least typical story idea I've had is the Chained Man. You can't read it... not yet. Among other things, I'm not sure if it's a mature YA story, or a full-on adult Dark Fantasy novel. I haven't gotten that far into it yet. I'm still throwing up spears and waiting to see where they fall, if that metaphor makes sense.

It's the story of a construct, a reanimated man bound by chains that run deep into the earth, for whom every bit of movement is an effort. It's the story of what happens when his master sends him out to retrieve another construct from the clutches of an invading hero. It's a story of what happens when things go horribly wrong, and the Chained Man begins to discover that almost nothing about his life is what he thought it was.

But you can't read it yet, because I haven't finished it.