One idea that was at the top of my mind which told me the page limit would not work, was based on a joke.
"We all know that if you drop a cat, it will land on its feet. If you drop a buttered piece of toast, it will land butter side down. If you strap a buttered toast to the back of a cat, they will stop a few inches above the ground and spin wildly. One can then attach them and use them as power for a monorail."
Let us see you use that in a story. most people would shrug.
My note based on this was about three pages single spaced. I explained what really was happening and why, then made suggestions of how it could work, and then discribed the monorail system, how to get it to work, and problems one would have to deal with for such a system. I think I only had three sentances suggesting how it could be used in a story.

I know more about science than I did when I started writing, and know more than I did when I started the story ideas. I therefore have to assume I know more about science than most people who read my story ideas. I will go in depth about the science behind a concept. Late last year, I explained how our use of electronics could possibly cause global warming by effecting the magentic fields in space, which then effects the sun.
Other stories require detailed explanation of the society or the situation the society is in.

Finally, I like to show how my concepts could be used in a story. It is one thing to have a concept available, but many times spinning a story around it is hard. I give an example of how it might be used, which could be used as a jumping board for something else.

I work from the belief that if twenty people write something from my story ideas, we would come up with twenty different stories. From what I remember, some good dozen people have written something based on my story ideas. There are likely more, but I have not heard from them.

Of course, there are times when I will sneak up on my core concept, using it like a punch line. It makes it funner to read and write. There are a few times I will tell the punch line first, then discuss and build into the story as I go.
all the story ideas are written live, from the keyboard. There is no editing other than a spell check.

One of the great things is that a white page is never a problem. I never have writer's block. My typing has improved dramatically.

The times I dig into my library of story ideas (approaching 4000 of them with few or none as repeats), My biggest problem is finding one I want to write. Recently, one of my favorite board systems had a hack attack and a lot of data was lost, including story ideas. I copied them from one bulletin board and pasted them, one at a time on the board. I had to see the begining and end of the story ideas I was posting. Generally, about two per month caused me to stop and read them completely, because they sounded so interesting and could not remember what I wrote. What interests others my be a different set of story ideas.

While these are not publishable, they are still short stories. My favorite part of most anything I do is the time I start a project, and the time I finish it. The closer they are together the better. I also prefer the "making" of the project, and have less interest in fine tuning something. this is the same as with at work, in my wood working, in my writing, and a few other things I am involved in. The act of Doing, is where the fun is. These story ideas are perfect for that trait. I get to create a work, not having to worry about the quality or anything else. The story ideas gives me the chance to write a new brilliant story every night, starting and finishing it quickly and then go on to other things.

For others, I suggest roughing out your concepts like I do, to be a good exercize. If you are working on a serious project, You can "relieve the pressure" on your self. By getting the new, strong concept on paper, you can forget about it until you are really ready for it. You will have expended the excitement and will have protected it.
I take about an hour a night to write my story ideas, they generally run about two pages a piece. That is more than enough to know what the story is about and tells you whether it is a short story to be cleaned up, or an outline for a novel (which most tend to be).

roughing out your story ideas is a great exercize, it is good way to start a story since you can edit in more information from your rough draft, and it develops a library of things to dig into later when your mind goes blank.

Many authors will sit with baby books and search out the name with the perfect meaning to match their character. They will fret over whether the names they picked are exactly right, that gives the correct impression to the reader.

I will let those authors in on a little secret based on the thousands of books I have read over my life. Unless the reader has one of those baby books, the readers have no idea what a name means. It is just a name.
Of course a name does make a difference. We generally associate hard names, Thor, Conan, Kirk, as male, belonging to leaders or other powerful people. We tend to associate soft names, Helena, Gabrialla, Sandy, as female names, or Snerdly, Halspot, Maynard, as possible names for evil snake tongued advisors to the good king (bad examples but what came to mind at the keyboard).

In my story ideas, I am after easy to remember, easy to write, names for my characters since they are only going to last one session. One tactic I might use on a novel, is to use a short name, with a letter combination that is not often found in most words. Get the rough draft written, then do a global search and replace to the name I really wanted. I might change Gary Smyth into Ogalthorp Kadiddlehopper. This method does not work with Bob Right. Both names are used normally within the text such as bob and weave between the punches.

Something one must also avoid is names for the main character is out of place.
Bob Smith, Tom Jones. Mike James, Buckaroo Bonzi, Al Holt,
It stands out and is a bit silly. Unless the main character is of another species, or from another place, your main character should have a name that fits what everyone else has.

This quote refers to how, in science fiction or especially fantasy, one can create outlandish rules for your world and the reader will accept it. If you change the rules partway through the story, the reader might refuse to accept the change and put the book down.
An example might be having a world where magic is weak, useless in combat, more knowledge based. It might be divining water, finding who one will marry, show vague referances to what course one's life will follow. One then changes things near the end of the book where everybody is sending out blasts of energy, levitating, sending people into the seventh hell. It will take an author a lot of skill to make the reader accept the changes in the rules of magic.

The key to a good fantastic story, is consistancy. If your story has a major change in the rules from start to finish, go back and rewrite it so it becomes one world. Make it plausible, such as one starts out far from the source of power and as they get closer, show their abilities improving.

Stay true to your rules and the reader will not leave you.

The Year Is 1904
......Very Interesting Maybe this will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1904 ...one hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some of the U.S. statistics for 1904: The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents an hour. The average U.S worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.

Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was 30.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

Two of 10 U.S. adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."

Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic.

There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.

.... And I forwarded this from someone else without typing it myself, and sent it to all of you in a matter of seconds! Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years .. it staggers the mind

Up until Woman's sufferage, when a man said "My home, My horse, My wagon, My wife, My children," He meant it. The wife and children belonged to him. Even into the 1960s, Women on Television would be Mrs. John Thomas. Not Mary Thomas, or Mary Brown Thomas. The culture still held them to belonging to the man. (I am exaggerating, but trying to get the point across).

If you look at the most common version of the Ten Commandments, It does not say "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's husband." The wife belonged to the man. IN many of the middle eastern cultures (even recently), The brothers protected the girl until she reached marriage age. They approve the man she was to be married, even beating up those that did not fit their standards. Once she was married, it was up to the husband to protect her.

There usually has been some form of bride's price involved in a marriage. In some societies, The woman was extremely valuable to the family. When the man came to marry a woman, he had to pay a compensation for what the family would lose with her leaving.
In later societies, the woman's roll was not as valuable, so the woman's family had to pay a value for the man to take her. Even today, the bride's family usually pays for the wedding.

In main stream writing, authors are supposed to create their characters to the point where they know the character better than they know themselves. Then they start writing, knowing how their characters will react to any situation.
In fantasy writing, many authors will do a period of "world building" to get the background and situation for their stories right before they start writing.

That is the way you are supposed to start writing. Know everything necessary for the environement and characters, then let them loose and see where they go.

I know of a few would-be fantasy authors who ran out of gas by the time they had finished their world building and did not feel like writing the actual story.

I, myself, have ever conciously created a character in detail, nor have I ever practiced world building.
I get a scene or situation in mind, then write about that, I will lead up to it, I will explore the concept, then finish up the story I have created. My story ideas are written that way.
I work from the concept that I want the story written. I will work on the details and accuracy later. I figure I will write until a serious problem crops up or I finish the story, then I will work out exactly what the story needs for consistancy and edit according to those notes.
My method does not come up with great stories. It does, though, cause production.

English is a full, varied language. It fully accepts forign words, or invented words. You can say EXACTLY what you need or want to say exactly how you want to say it.

I remember hearing in the 1980s, where one of the soviet block countries became alarmed at English infiltrating their national language, deluting it. The leaders passed a law where one could only use words of their language. One author over there was quoted as saying he litterally had a loss of words to say what he needed to say.
English is not a "pure" language in that way.

The vast majority of us use far fewer words than we know. We use a lot of the words we know, wrong.
I would love to write pieces where the wording is full and wonderous, where the writing itself is worth reading, let alone the story. Every time that urge comes over me, I shrug and go back to my normal drivel. My writing uses little more than my speach.

I don't even play with connotations. Assassination, exicution, murder, kill in anger, accident, all have a different emotional and legal meaning, even though they all refer to the death of someone.

Skinny, scrawny, slim, bean pole, all refer to a person who is under weight. Still, they have diferent connotations.

I am a lazy writer. I want to get my thoughts on paper. If I am not sure of the exact definition or exact usage of a word, I will use something else, simpler. I will even rewrite a sentance if I cannot seem to come up with the right spelling during a spell check session. Spelling was one thing I was horrible with in school and, while I have improved dramatically, I am still not accurate.

In photography, I reached near publishable levels for selling pictures to magazines. I remember when I started serioiusly in photography, I was so worried about what my style should be. I then simply started shooting heavily. I photographed certain types of subjects, with a specific eye, using the equipment I had. I developed a style that others could look at a picture and know I took it. The strange thing was my brother had the same style. When we shot together, one picture one of us would take, was the only way we could tell who shot which roll of film.

In writing, what we write, our word selection, our phrasiology, our plotting of what we write, ends up being our style.
On one board, I visit, we joke, we talk, we create alternate characters and try to hide who we are. About three months after a couple new people arrived, one of them created a new character. I figured out, by the writing style, that it had to be one of them, and I suggested to one of the regulars by E-mails, who I thought was. He agreed. Just by the writing style, I recognized who it was.
I have several characters on there. One of them I will spell check, reorganize the sentances, then replace the N with Gn since he is a Gnome. Only a couple people know I am him. Hopefully, none of them read this board....
The fact that I don't write in my normal sloppy live style like you see here, hides my writing style, and the originator of the character.

My writing style is conversational. It is not Shakespearian. It is not James Joyce. It is not even Anne McCaffrey who's writing I have always love. It is not Issac Asimov whom I would love to emulate. my style is different, and is easily recognizable by anybody who has read my work. My style simply developed from writing a lot. I am too lazy to use expansive wordage, my lack of advanced writing rule education prevents my writing great works, my weakness in spelling causes me to avoid words I have great difficulty in spelling especially if the spell check does not recognize my spelling attempt. These and more factors define my writing style.

One's writing style simply appears after you have written enough. Never worry about Style, instead, worry about writing the best you can. Style will follow later.

Throughout history, The original Kings were generals, conquerers. They would take over other areas and rule. Those who helped them gain control became lords and other titled leaders over portions of the land that the kings controlled.

Until the 1100s, they were no different than anybody else around them.
In the 1100s on, the offspring of the rulers of all levels held their power for several generations. They developed a clique where they would act differently than the common folk. They would develop speech patterns, mannorisms, dress, that the common folk could not do. It became something one had to be born into, to learn to fit in.
The normal person does things because it is easy. They slouch in their chairs, they slouch when they walk. they use their fingers or just one or two pieces of silverwear to eat, they talk sloppily with a limited vocabulary and so on.
The "in crowd" would speak in a dialect or accent that takes a bit of effort to learn. They will develop a stride that takes more effort, stnad straighter, learn how to use many more different utensils to eat, and so on.
After a century or two, the merchants developed great wealth, but wanted to be part of the royal clique. The only way to become a member of the clique, was to marry one's daughter into royalty so your grand children would then become within the in group. The royalty liked it because they got a infusion of wealth into their families. The merchants themselves never learned how to walk, talk, or other "in things" the elite would do to separate themselves from the common folk.

These differences were one way where, in stories, a stranger appears, looking like a bum, and everybody knows instantly that they are of royalty. Their speach and manorisms are instantly recognizable. A few tests of popular activities clinches the deal.

In modern times, you will find similar chiques among the born wealthy. Old money children have ways to stand out instantly. Others will go to prestigious colleges to learn how to be among the elite.

I have found, even if I write myself in a story, the person on paper comes out differently than I am (it could have something to do with the written me able to lift cars, able to fly, knowing everything about everything, fight like a ninja...).

To write a real person, one must write a fictional character and use the real person as a guideline. The final character ends up being something to carry the story along.

This is all ignoring legal considerations on using a real person in a story.

If you truely knew a person fully, one could predict what they would say or do in nearly any situation.

Fully knowing a story character, period, is difficult. One can have a good idea about a character and that helps in writing. The more you know about them, the easier it will be to write them.

I like that cowboy who comes into town, seems not to be paying attention. He is not looking at every person who passes, not sizing anybody up. He will lean his chair back, tip his hat over his eyes even when the bad guys are in town.
When the time comes for him to act, he is calm, relaxed, in no hurry. the bad guys draw their weapons and he blows them away. He walks away, uneffected, relaxed, as if he just woke from a comfortable nap.

Another version is the old chineese woodsmith. He arrives, gets to work at a wood shop and shows he is a master of his craft. Even the shop master is learning from him. The old man tries to ignore the activities of the local gang\lord\ despot. He is then forced into action. He ends up fighting the entire leader's guard and wipes the floor with them. He then fights the leader himself and ends his rein of terror.
The old man packs up his things and moves on, knowing trouble will come to the village if he stays. He does not want to be known as a great fighter, but instead as a good woodworker.

Both these characters are best if seen by another, someone who is excitable, worried about what is going on, and wondering what the main character is doing. In both cases, they are forced to show what they can do against their will, or they show it only at their time.

As I am writing this, one might say that they have a super attack and don't use it until they have no choice, sort of like cartoons that are popular now.

My problem is that I am a logical person, not prone to vast swings of emotions. The closest I have gotten to really been angry, is "do it one more time and I will hit you" and they always stop before then.
Because I am not prone to wide emotions, my characters are not either. It is one of a few hundred reasons why I am not published yet.
Take an emotional person and put them in a situation where the emotion is to their disadvantage, and you have a great story. I never have great stories.
A character guided by emotions will get into situations that a cool headed person will never experiance.

During his life, we visited the moon, created computers powerful enough to invent worlds that do not exist and project them on screen. We have jets that can fly to any continent with hundreds of people in a few hours, and fly around the world in just a few days. We have high definition Television, DVD, sattillight communications, visting planets, weather reports reasonably accurate to nearly a week, plumbing in every home.

the above shows just a bit of the advancements in the life of one person. When you look at the 1800s, we started with horses and cows being the only power beyond our own muscles and all metal working was casting and forging. At the end of the 1800s we had steam power, machining, factories, mass production, anastetics, etc.

When you compare the 1800s and the 1900s, you can see that advancements increased over time, each one building on the other. One can presume, if Government does not put the brakes on, or we are not destroyed in war, that we will continue on a similar curve through the next century.

There are technologies we know will stop improving at a certain point. The theoretical limit that the computer chip can continue to get smaller and more powerful will be reached around 2047. I think, though, that this assumes the single dimensional chips we are using right now. Make computer cubes rather than chips and one will gain more power well past that level, if we can solve the heat problem.
I read something in 1999 that said that at our present useage of oil, we will run out of petrolium by the year 2100. Of course, we will miss it just like we missed whale oil back in 1900, which had already been replaced by petrolium.

At least in the near future, next two hundred years, we can give a good accounting of what the future world will look like. I thought I heard something recently that said that it is becoming difficult to find people in true poverty around the world. The entire world's standard of living has improved that much. One can expect that to continue to improve.

Social changes cycle. The roaring 20s and the free love 60s are spaced with more puritan periods betwen. We are going towards puritan period again.
Each generation tries to "shock" their parents. After a period of time it goes to far and a generation recoils and returns to a "norm" again. Of course, there is more of that among the very rich than among the lower middle class and poor. When dealing with the near future, one might take that into account in your stories.

On another forum, there was a partial discussion about money and what could be money. Currency is really what the discussion was about, but since I already wrote a page on this, I will continue to use money instead of currency so I don't have to edit this.
The answer, is anything the people decide it might be. Generally, the value of something used as money depends on the rareness of it. In early Texas, they used horses as money. They stopped when they got tired of the natives stealing their horses.

Money could be anything. Bottle caps, garbage can lids, hub caps could together be different denominations of money. It could be grocery store coupons with a money amount as a discount. Of course, it could be paper with pretty designs printed by a government. As long as the people agree on the value, it is money.
In Early American colonies, they had scripts. For example, Tom raises chickens. Bob grows wheat. they write a script. In exchange for X amount of grain now, Tom will give Bob a Y number of Chickens. Between the time the grain is delivered and the chickens are delivered, Bob has to take his daughter to the doctor. He writes a script with the doctor that he will give Z chickens when he gets them in exchange for the doctor's services. When Tom delivers his chickens, the script is ripped up. Bob then gives his chickens to the doctor and that script is torn up. The doctor likely has scripts for things he needed and passes the chickens on and rips up those scripts. There is no inflation in this system. New scripts are nagotiated. It should be noted that bankers in england heard of this system and pushed a law through the parliment to make scripts illegal.

Gold is reasonably rare. With touch stones, it is easy to detect the purity of the gold too. That is why it was so popular as a coin. The rarity and ease of varification made it a fixed level of exchange. Governments used other materials too. Silver was popular among the norse, salt was part of a soldier's pay.
Before the civil war, Banks printed their own money. These were notes based on gold they had on hand. There were people who would take money from other state banks and exchange them at other banks to see what the exchange rate would be. More trustworthy the bank was at returning the gold, the higher value their money was. These values were published regularly and learning the exchange rates was part of the elementary school curriculum. Lincoln nationalized all the bank's monies because he was having so much difficulty financing the civil war.

In an electronic age money would simply become a name for an exchange number. He has radios, she has televisons. they want to sell to each other. It would be silly for him to send her money, she send the televsions and then send him the money so he can send the radios. They simply agree on a value of both products and ship. No money exchanging. On line business is becoming almost the same way. Hard currency is not exchanged, just the value of the currency. In a pure electronic system, with credit cards and on line exchanges, currency could cease to exist entirely. One would have, as some stories I read have, "credits" and one simply buys and sells according to the credits one has. Labor grants you a given credits, you get products and services for their credit value.
Money and currency can be the same thing, but not always. IN the electronic economy as I suggested, there would be plenty of money, but no currency.
Currency is just a medium for business to operate. It could be shlepping around the actual products and finding someone who can use it, or it can be pretty printed papers with an agreed value to them. Money, on the other hand, is the labor or product that is being exchanged. The value of which has to be agreed on before the sale is completed. currency makes exchanges easier to do. One can do business with a lot of people who have no use for what you provide, as long as you have a market for what you provide to give you your money.
out of time

One example, When Napolion started his conquests, Air powered guns were in existance. They were easier to load, had a longer range and more powerful than the gunpowder rifles at the time. Napolion sent out an edict. He would torture to death any soldier found with a air powered rifle. Gunpowder became our standard weapon.
Now as a writer, consider what a world would be like with air guns as the norm. Where would there be changes in society? No gunpowder evidence, easier to make, what would warfare be like? no smoke on the battle field to show who was shooting.

There is nothing new in the universe. Basically, if you see it around you or read it in history, it likely will follow a similar pattern elsewhere.

Life is one excellent example of this.
I hold that the first life was Enzymes that simply bumped into things that stuck or separated. Some molecules became food, while others were preditors. Life went through naked RNA, to RNA in shells, to DNA, possibly naked and later in shells, to single celled animals and finally plants.

Because there was no method to guarentee exact copies, The early forms had more diversity than later forms. Those that gathered enough energy and supplies to split, continued to exist while others did poorly or ceased to exist.

I figure that each step where a new form dominated, was likely due to major extinction events. Change of global climates, loss of food supplies, addition or loss of certain chemicals. Survivors would be these accidently optimized for the new conditions, those who just happen to find a habitat and a niche they could survive in.

In Single celled life, you have plants, preditors that concentrate on other preditors, herbavors which are preditorsw of plants. The dominate life filled the seas while others were in small numbers.

AFter single celled life existed for a while, some would stick together, and that lead eventually to multi celluar life.

Now is when ecological niches become self evident. You have high end preditors, feeding on other animals. YOu have ominvores who feed on plants and other animals. you have herbavores that feed off plants. You have pack hunters and lone hunters. You have those that are only active at night, those that are only active during the day, those who are active during the low light of dawn and dusk. You have those who live in the open such as herbavores basically too big for the dominant preditors, and preditors big enough to deal with anything they meet, and those who hide among plants and debris, who stay too small to be a bother for large preditors. You have those that are loners that a single individual is not worth the effort, and you have vast schools or packs that any one individual has the odd in its favor against being eaten this time.

As life develops, you find this pattern continueing. Dinosaurs had dominant herbavores, dominant preditors, little forms sneaking around. YOu had loners, herds and packs.

One thing with my vision of life is that an extinction event tends to remove the largest creatures and the unlucky. After an extinction event, forms will become larger to fit into the evacuated niche. There will be structural changes due to the size change and do to sexual selection involving the larger forms. If you carefully look through the fossil record, whatever was dominant at one point, was a small form two extinction periods earlier. When you have a lot of small forms, the large versions of them will keep reappearing over time until the form goes completely extinct.

I should note that herbavores tend to go really big since plant material is hard to digest. One needs larger stomachs to let the food break down. Bigger stomachs require bigger bodies. Then, of course, there is safety in size.
Once an ecological niche is filled, another form cannot move into it unless it specializes.
Some periods have preditors almost as large as, or even larger than the herbavores themselves simply because the preditor was among the largest survivors of an extincition event.

Back to the thought that started this note. One can look at the lion and elephant today, and compare that to the T-Rex and Triceritops or Saurapods. You have a dominant preditor and a dominant herbavor. You have smaller herbavors of many kinds, and smaller preditors of many kinds.

You will see a simular pattern among the birds, among the insects, among the mammals, among the reptiles, though some will depend on other classes for their food.
You will even see this among plants. some plants are preditors, while others are prey. Even the distribution between dominant forms and barely surviving niche forms exist among them.

When creating your alien world, look at the ecologies of our world, and try to emulate the distribution and pattern. It will make your world a lot more believeable and rich.

At one side is the natural order of politics, and at the other is grossly unnatural, but most likely to be found.
To best understand the natural order of politics, one must understand the foundation of it. Then, one can understand the development of the unnatural version of it and why it develops.

Basically, our labor is our own. If we refuse to labor, and are willing to take the consiquences of refusing to labor, no one can make us do labor. One might starve to death, one might be tortured, but if one refuses to labor in spite of those conditions, no one will be able to force one to labor.
That is the foundation of the natural order.

Any labor you do, is your own. Now since you cannot aquire everything you need on your own, and one might not have all the time and skills to make all the things you need on your own, it is natural to trade your labor for things others have labored for. You make an agreement, trade the labor, and get what you need. Again, no one is forcing you to do so.

I do wood carving and wood turning. There is no market for what I make until I make it. If someone wants to aquire it for more than I want to hang onto it for, I can make a trade, usually money for objects. The "business" of my woodworking exists only because I made something and someone else wants what I have.

Money is not even needed. Back in early America, they had a Script system. A chicken farmer needs grain so he can expand his chicken farm. He makes an agreement with a grain farmer to buy the grain now, and the grain farmer gets an agreed upon amount of chicken when they are raised. The grain farmer might need a doctor, so he will write a script with the doctor, based on the chicken script, that the farmer will get chickens in exchange of the service. When the chickens are raised, the chicken farmer hands over his chickens. They then tear up their script. The grain farmer gives the doctor his chickens, and they tear up their scripts. One thing about this system is there is no inflation.

Now a lot can be done by individuals making agreements between each other. the only real time GOVERNMENT is needed, is when a group of people want to do something that an individual cannot do alone. In that case, they will get together, pool their talents and resources. Someone becomes in charge of the project to make sure the project gets done. When the project is done, the group basically disbands.

Now most government leaders start out as warriors, or gang members. They go to war against the neighbors, usually to gain stuff they don't want to trade for, or for their leader's aggrandizement. They conquer their neighbors and set themselves up as king. Royal families always descend from military leaders.

Then you have those who are highly educated. They have the honest belief that everybody has the same interests that they have, but are too stupid to follow those interests. These educated people have plans for what a perfect society would be and, if only they can get everybody to follow their plans, they would have a utopia.
Because these educated people think they have the perfect plan, they do not like people with other plans, competition. These educated people work from the concept that a group of highly educated people can learn to know how the value of every resource and manage it for perfect efficiancy. The flaw on this is that even the most knowledgable experts in specific resources are not sure of the proper value at any moment and are bumbling along themselves. There is no way a group of people can know all that is needed to know.
Since these people have what they consider brilliant plans, they will try and force people to follow the plans. If there are two brands of products, and only twenty percent of the population uses one of the product, the educated people will decide that those twenty percent need not be serviced as that is resources that could be used in some other capacity. They will go as far as to ban the lesser product.
The problem with these plans, is that they only deal with the majority and will force the minority to follow the majority. You see the minority is following a different plan and that is not allowed. The educated people will take necessary steps to stop other plans from being used.
Stalin, Hitler, Saddam, Pol Pot, just all refused to accept other plans. They went so far as to exicute all those who followed competing plans. Millions of people under each leader died because they did not follow their leader's brilliantly designed plans.

Names is always a problem in our stories.
Many authors are after just the right name. Some authors will go through naming books to find the name with a meaning that is just right for the character.
I can tell you that readers, unless they are into naming books, have no idea what names mean. For the most part, they will accept whatever name they are given for a character, whether it is Maynard Bubba and Earney, or Hisu Gimble or XXalack. For the most part, people are given their names by their parents and have to make due with what they get. A man named Sue-Anne might have a problem with other kids, but if he becomes powerful, either head of a super corporation or a muscular special service soldier, the teasing will not go for very long. He might also go by a nick name or change his name if it was bad.
Generally, though, the names don't really make that much a difference.

I post 365+ story ideas each year. One runs out of names very quickly at that rate. I generally have used the same names over and over again.
Recently, I came up with a brilliant idea for coming up with fresh names. I get hundreds of junk mail each day. I don't block them because I get some interesting stuff out of junk mail, usually sayings or jokes, but other things too.
Anyway, I got the idea to go through all the names before I delete them from my outlook, and note down any names that catch my eye. I don't take every name, just ones that catch my fancy at the moment.
After several times of this, I realized I needed names for aliens. Some forign sounding names and some combination names have worked for those. Lately, I have mainly searched for interesting names I don't remember getting. I have about four pages of names so far.

When I want a name for a character, I will generally have a sound in mind. I will search through the list for that general letter, and if something does not hit me, I will go to a similar sounding letter.

Now most societies develop naming conventions for the time. primative peoples will have one name. After a while, families will become important and a family name will develop, usually based on either profession such as smith, or a location such as hill or a place as a few examples.

First names also tend to follow convention. At one time, woman were named for vertues, such as Chastity and faith.

What you can do with your world is play with naming conventions. Woman's names might be Harlott and Hussy. Men's names might be Justice and Freedom.
Then of course, one could have tenticled aliens all be named Bob, Tom, Bill, Jim.

One thing to avoid is having your main character having a strange name compared to everybody else, such as Buckaroo Bonzi when everybody else is named bob, tom, bill and jim.

(This was posted as the September story idea #26 )
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I just read an article where they are creating antimatter molecules. They are basically similar to hydrogen atoms, which they have been able to make for years, but now they are getting them to combine together. The hardest part about making these is to slow the particles down enough to allow them to stick together.
IN many of these story ideas, I depended on strange effects caused by particle physics. The idea is that something exotic is accelerated and something unpredictable happens. It might be an opening to another universe, or a new energy field, or time travel or something else. Many times, I have used this effect purely as an excuse to have something in the story to happen, something that could well have been activated by waving a wand or something else.
For this, I have depended on atoms of atomic numbers we had not reached, assuming that if we had not found them, we would have no idea what their real properties were. I really depended on, I think it was atomic number 118 which was in line with argon, fluorine, helium, and assumed it would "stick around" a whole lot longer than the faction of the seconds that most manmade atoms last.
I was disappointed when they actually created the atom and it did not last any longer than anything else at that level. Atom 117 has not been found, but that does not help my stories.
I started depending on the BOSE-EIENSTEIN candescent for my proper effect. This is where atoms are slowed down to the point, near absolute zero, where the electron clouds around atoms start to merge and they become one entity. Again, I decided that if we did something strange to something very exotic, it would take time for anybody to point and say "that is absolutely impossible.
Learning about the development of antimatter atoms gives me hope. at this moment, we do not know what the chemical properties of antimatter is. They may have a different chemistry than our matter. That also gives me hope.
If I come up with a story that uses this science, I can say that they accelerated the BOSE EINSTEIN candescent of antimatter atom 118 and it does something really strange. What is more, since it is highly unlikely they will ever find that atom, I will be safe for many decades of writing story ideas.

Edited because the idiot hit the wrong key and posted it before the note was ready to be posted.

I have seen a few notes about a character being mortal.

There are many levels of immortal. Each gives your plenty of problems. They also give you plenty of opportunities.

The more mortal the immortal is, the more of a challenge it is to get the character through the troubles. A godlike being that cannot be harmed at all will have to be given problems that a "deadly fight" would provide.

Consider where the character simply walks into a battle and starts mowing down the enemy, their blades doing no harm, your character healing the instant the blade passes, feeling no pain, just laughing and slicing with the immunity of a ghost. The problems the character would have to have, would be internal doubts or questions, or a problem where the bad guy is escaping with his girl and he has to deal with these soldiers just to cross the battle field to give chance.
The doubts might be the character disliking killing but this is the only way. The character might secretly believe in what the opposing army is fighting for but has no choice, a penally for immortal life.

On the other hand, an immortal might not age and might not get disease, but can die from injury. This immortal would have all the frailty of a normal person, but could operate during a plague to clear out the enemy and not worry about getting sick.

If that is too frail, one could have an immortal who heals quickly and perfectly. AS long as it is an injury that a normal person can survive, at least a few days, he will not die. This kind of immortal could be less cautious about battle, but still would be careful of injury. A broken bone would eventually straighten themselves out and mend perfectly, but it would not be a good situation for a long time.

Between a godlike person and someone who has a long term advantage, one can create an exciting character to drive your story.

When I was in photography, the saying was there are no laws in photography composition success, just rules. You don't break the rules unless you understand them completely.
Rules such as the sun over your shoulder, morning and afternoon light, never put the main subject in the middle of the screen, have something in the foreground
Of course, most beginning photographers don't want to take the time to fully learn the rules, so they make all the mistakes the rules are supposed to guide you in avoiding.
Instead they shoot into the sun, or at noon, center their subject because that is where the focusing screen is, have a vast landscape and nothing to give it scale.

The rules are a consolidation of what has been successful in the past and is a very good place to start as it is tougher to be successful later.

I notice in writing, we tend to follow the same practice. There are rules that make for successful stories. I see a lot of begining writers (myself included) who break one or more rules. We talk in one way, but write in another, though in some cases that is an improvement.

I got -->||<--- close to being a magazine publishable photographer back in the 80s. I then purchased my home and ran out of money.
While in photography, I would go through "darn, only a couple came out" then "Gee, nearly all came out" then "darn, only a couple came out" then "gee, nearly all came out" This happened hundreds of times over the years. What started out with a couple pictures one could recognize the subject, stepped up to darn, only a couple magazine quality pictures.

In our writing, we do go through similar stages in our writing, but it is not as obvious as having twenty three blurs on a strip of film or eighteen images that take your breath away.
The process is still similar. I really did not get good in my photography until I decided to shoot two hundred rolls of film in a year, rather than my casual one fifty I was doing. Seeing the images shot last weekend, during the week while I remembered conditions I shot under, taught me to improve my work fast.

In writing, writing does help with your writing. Good writing helps even more, but the act of writing does make a difference. The practice of just getting your thoughts on paper in a logical method does help.
I have written my story ideas for about ten years. They started out telling about ideas I could not use. They were strictly that, telling what the story was about. Now, many of them are complete short stories. The practice of writing complete thoughts quickly has improved my writing over time. I still am not publishble, but it was a definate improvement.

The big problem I have in being publishable, is that I don't edit. I am more interested in creating wonderful tales (problem made worse by the story ideas) than I am polishing my work to the point they might get published. I notice that effect in my woodworking too...

In my writing, I have some general rules on how some terms are used. I stick to them strongly.

A sorcerer uses his power to gain control of a magical entity, usually a demon, and force them to do their will. If a sorcerer tries to handle an entity stronger than they can handle, they suffer the consequences.

A priest is like a sorcerer, but usually works with a team, and trades worship, the giving of energy to the being, in exchange for receiving help from the entity. This is usually done with very powerful entities, gods for example.

A Wizard uses the powers of small, weak entities, stores powers into objects, and uses chemistry and devices of various sorts to do magic. The most powerful are known to capture demons within swords or other objects. Like the sorcerer, the wizard uses personal powers to guide the powers to the will.

The magician uses only the powers they develop and store themselves. Other than a wand or a staff to concentrate their powers, they seldom use other items to do their magic. If they later become a priest, wizard or sorcerer, they are extremely powerful.

Warriors also have magical powers. they are closer to sorcerer than anything. They tend to develop magical skills because they are dealing with magical weapons all the time.

shimiqua,
I don't visit blogs. I sometimes post these notes on other boards where they are likely to be read.

Elsewhere, I saw a discussion about whether to include detailed information into a story, and whether it would be frowned on as limiting the story's appeal.

A comment about writing a piece set in the past caught my eye.
I am in Model Railroading. One thing model railroaders do is to choose a date in history, whether a decade, a year, a month or even a day, and do the scenery based on that date. Finding detailed information about the past is sometimes hard. Especially when it is not something most people notice.

One mention was to write a story where the character is in the future, writing about our time.

It can be a fun challenge, to walk around your area, and actually figure out how someone in the future would look at our world.

One can use past information as a guide. In general, one knows a whole lot of details about the rich, famous, and politically connected. Finding out information about lesser known or unknown people is so much harder.

What one can do is look back in time, and see what information was available the same number of years into the past, as your future character is writing about. Then look around your world and see what kind of information is not available. House construction, clothing, tools? You leave out that information in your story. Work with the missing gaps to show the lack of knowledge.

I have seen many works where they made fun of the time period. One I saw back in the late 60s was done by a university where they said that a hill in Seattle becomes a volcano. They then do an archeological recreation of the time. They showed a business, where the job was to crumple up papers and artfully toss them in the waste can.
Others were dependent on misinterpreting the past items and news events.

One way to show that the information is not in good detail is to mix time period information. There were a lot of differences through the twentieth century in clothing, equipment, styles, and events. Writing about wing mounted smart bombs on biplanes and Zoot Zuits with flower children might be used to really show off the lack of knowledge or lack of research.

I will never get around to such an assignment but it might be fun for the rest of you.

Back in the mid 90s on Prodigy Classic, an author had a question about a world where magic was not allowed for religious reasons. I suggested to him the idea of water wheels on the river, powering a cable car style cable system, to supply power through shafts, gears, and belts, to homes and businesses. In my suggestion, one would plug a flexible shaft into the wall and the power system could power a fan A refrigerator needs only for the compressor to be spun to cool foods.

Recently, I had an idea where a group was trying to disable the system so they can return to electricity. I told my brother and he had alternative systems that would work better than my original idea.

Why certain technologies are not available will be dependant on your rules. It could be political, religious, or physical.
We all love wisards using wooden clockwork machines to attack our heros.
Actually, clockwork (mechanical) machines can do highly advanced activities. Fine machining and careful design can allow a device do anything a real simple computer program can do.

My brother suggested the use of hydaulics, compressible liquids) to transmit power over distances. It is used in construction equipment because it csn apply great lifting power.

For light equipment such as house hold appliances, pnumatics, compressed air, can be used. Plug in an air hose and it spins the machines.

For heat, which would be a small problem, could be provided by steam and steam can provide locallized power.

For centuries, waterwheels would power belts and shafts to drive machinery. The machinery could be a grist mill or could be a full, almost modern machine shop.
Water wheels had the peoblem that they had to be some place where the water could move fast enough to provide power, usually near a waterfall, natural or created.
Steam power could be located anywhere. One only needed to get the fuel, wood, coal, oil, to the boiler to do the work. These were usually used shafts and belts to power equipment.
It was only when electrical motors became efficiant and small enough for use that each machine had its own motor.

Now an advanced society would not use water wheels for power, but instead turbines which are far more efficiant.

I write a lot of science fiction story ideas. I have a basic theory that works when describing animals on animal planets. I use the basic theory that life forms will fill in similar ecological niches in whatever environments that will exist. You will have the comparatively large dominant herbivores and predators. You will have smaller predators, herbivores, and omnivores. Then you will have the "bugs" Our world followed this pattern when life was only in the sea, and in every stage that life was on land.
Each extinction event killed off the largest life forms that could not find a place to hide or enough food, or the unlucky. The remaining life forms fitted into the vacated echological niches. There is an advantage to size, one, less creatures can eat you, and a larger body can make use of lower quality foods, or large amounts of food at once. Hence, every extinction removed the largest creatures and some smaller creatures grew into the open space.

In my musings, and Have used the thought in a couple story ideas. I deduced something about the nature of Evil.
Evil, by nature, wants to be in charge. It will use force, manipulation, skullduggery and influence to gain absolute control. Once it has control, it will search out and remove anybody and any thing that will challenge that control.
Good, on the other hand, is willing to let other control, or no one control Good uses influence to change the minds of others, and resorts to violence only when forced to and only as long as it is needed.

What I have used in several of my story ideas, and is the key to understanding when evil takes over, is that Evil's desire to hold control, means that it will concentrate on hunting down and removing other evil first. Some good, if they are strong leaders will also be removed, but mainly Evil will remove any evil that is likely to challenge its power.

The end result of this, is that good will tend to dominate, and thrive, while evil becomes scarce and in hiding. The world in essence, becomes more good, should evil take over.

Of course, All survivors will suffer due to the rise of power of evil. All that is under the realm of evil, is a belonging, to be used and abused at will. The people are slaves to provide for the evil one and its minions, above their own needs.

In one of my story ideas written years ago, One of the heroes on a quest fails, and evil takes over the realm. Evil of all levels are everywhere. One evil gets lucky and takes out some stronger evil, and gains control over the territory. Knowing that it took out stronger evil, it will take out weaker ones that could harm it. It becomes totally preoccupied with removing evil from its territory, just in case.

so, evil taking control, causes good to florish, spread. The evil one is slowly sewing the seeds for its destruction, since there is few evil to aid it in holding power.

It has been a while since I last posted here. Ideas stopped for a while.

There is a fun exercise we did in 1999, where we wrote our predictions about the future. What things would be like in a hundred years.
Unless I can retrieve some backup data, I might have lost my predictions entirely. I have not had time to check to see if I still have that data.

Anyway, the big thing about my predictions, was that the near term predictions were almost the exact opposite of what actually happened. That was a bit embarrassing. Of course, the forums I posted those predictions on, ceased to exist long ago. If I don't mention my errors, no one would know about them....

One key thing I discussed, was that there is a battle between political philosophies. Each one is struggling for domination. Each one has its own effect on the future. From the way I wrote it at the time, the end result would be that either we would be doing weekly trips to the asteroids and planets, the same as we fly around the world, or we would be riding in horse and buggies.

In the past nine years, I have learned a whole lot more. I still see that my near future predictions would fall way off.

Since many of us write science fiction, which by definition deals in the future, one needs to give thought of what the future entails.
Of course, I tend to write (in my story ideas anyway) about other worlds, long in the future, where present history has no bearing on what happens, and many times has nothing to do with us. I am left to my own devices on what the background is going to be like. In essence, I can do just about anything I want. I am not tied down to too much reality.

Hard science fiction is based on taking some technology or society trend, and push it to the limit to see what the world would be like under those conditions.

In writing about what you expect the future will be like, Knowledge helps tremendously. One needs to look at trends. Some trends run in cycles. When you have many trends on different cycle patterns, the timing of the peaks and valleys of the different cycles can effect the way the world and society will go.
When I wrote my original predictions of the future, I was thinking that there was a group that was striving for power, for power's sake. The thought was that they would suppress technology to better apply their power on the population. The other group wanted to rein in that power so individuals could explore their creativity, bringing forth a more advanced society.
My biggest mistake in my predictions was a misunderstanding at how fast various trends take to develop.

One example of changes over time, Each generation tries to shock their parents. In the fifties, it was tight sweaters and leather jackets. In the 90s it was black. I teased my nephew's ex girl friend, who was really into Goth, that her children would shock her by wearing pink sweaters and poodle skirts.
The problem with trying to shock parents, is that each generation, it takes more to do so. Many of the activities of the stars, would have been career ending in the 60s and 70s, but are nothing today. Not even shocking. What really would shock the next generation?

You can have a story of the people who have the idea of building a generational ship and the problems of getting a start on the project. One could explore the reasons the ship is needed, either research or escaping for social reasons, or to escape an on-coming disaster. It could be filled with prisoners who are being shipped so no one has to deal with them ever again.

Then there are stories of the problems of designing the ships, getting the materials for the ship. Is the ship being built on the sly, as a private project or as a project involving all the countries of the world. It could be one one ship or a fleet of hundreds of ships. It could be that every ship is built by different contractors and using totally different components. How exactly do you build a ship with all the systems that will survive for a thousand years?

One could have it where the project starts today with modern technologies and developing suspected technology as it is built, or could be in two hundred years with really advanced technologies. For an evacuation, it might be where one has to launch in a hundred years to be able to escape or it might be planned to launch in twenty years.

For raw materials, one could build the ship around asteroids and mine them in flight, or one could make the ship of moduals and pack the space between them with raw materials to be mined later. There are other methods to operate with imagination.

Once the ship(s) is launched, one can explore problems of the type of "government" on board. It could be operated like a submarine where everybody learns every job on board, or be operated like a large city where people specialize and might never know anything about the operation.

One could have a form of hibernation where people sleep for long parts of the journey, taking turns of being on duty for like six months or one could have suspended animation where small crews run the ship while the rest of the population sleeps.

With whatever government, society rules you choose, the breakdown or problems of such a society is prime problem causer for the journeys. There could be coups all out battles, religious groups who are sabotaging the ship because they decided that the spread of humanity to the stars is against the will of god.

One could have a ship where the founders calculated how much supplies the ship would need, and never took into account the population changes or decay of materials. The passengers either find they are running out of supplies, or things, as simple as rubber bands, are going bad. They have to figure out how to recycle or remake the products they need.
Another is where they have factories to make whatever they need, but they miscalculated on the power supply requirements.

Disease, battles, other population losses could kill off the older people, losing key knowledge for the ship. The computers could become corrupted. The language might drift so no one can read the old documents. The population could find itself with no knowledge of how the ship works or how to repair it.
The ships could be falling apart, entire sections might have been abandoned as being uninhabitable.

How do you deal with the lack of gravity? How do you repair the hull of the ship if there are debris hits, especially if the ship is spinning to provide gravity? What about cosmic rays when doing repairs? I heard one theory that the debris density we see beyond Pluto, is the same all the way between stars. What if that is true?
Do you use constant power to half way to the destination and then constant power to orbital speeds or do you coast once up to speed? How much fuel and how is it fueled?

Once at the destination, the population might not know how to use the equipment to explore the solar system, or they no longer work due to not being used or maintained. They might not be able to stop the ship. They may choose not to even go to the planets, but instead colonize the asteroids instead, or the star turns out not to be useable at all, and they have to go to another star. The population may have "evolved" dramatically for the less than space gravity and could never again.

Then there is problems of building the colonies themselves. People have to learn how to live on a planet when no one has done so for generations. One has to decide how they are trained for it. Do they go through intense schools and simulators or do they learn by pure trial and error?

I mention about clothing suggested this note.

There is always the elite of society. These are the powerful, the rich, the connected. In essence, they are the masters of society.

In a master/slave situation, the master never wants to be mistaken for a slave. They will always have some way to mark the slave as not being a master. It might be a physical mark, it might be clothing style, It might be physical differences. One must tell at a glance, that one was a slave or one was a master.
In Roman times, the slaves wore short skirts, the masters wore robes.

Until recently, muscles counted. Women had less muscles than men did. From the beginning of time, women ended up in a subservient role and was the property of her father, brothers, or the property of her husband. When a man said "My horse, my house, my wife, my children, he meant it. The wife belonged to the husband.
Because of this, women always dressed differently than the men, usually wearing long dresses while the men wore shorter skirts or pants.
It is only recently that women became truly equal to men, since muscle work is not a priority in our society. Men still won't wear dresses, but women are dressing like men and are accepted as such.

Most societies develop from conquest. The first kings started as clan leaders and are generals who lead the conquest of other lands. Their power comes from the captains that surrounded them. The general's relations and the families of the captains, become the elite families in the society. The conquered peoples, most of the time, remain the same over long periods of time, just the elite are replaced by each conquest.

In Europe, around the 1000s, the elite of the European countries developed into a clique. they started dressing, acting, speaking differently, so there was no way they could be taken for a common person. They were the masters and they did not want to be taken for the poor. They were the society.
After a period of time, the merchants got rich, but were not part of society. They did not know the styles of dress, the style of speaking, the style of acting. they were simply not elite. the only way to improve their lot was to get their daughters married into society so that the rest of his daughter's offspring would be taught from birth, to be part of elite society.

The elite of society will dress with more expensive materials, more materials, add decorations that have nothing to do with the practical use of the clothing. They stand out from the poor or even the uninitiated new wealth.