RUST - Week One - Day One

So I started today on my Sci-Fi story that I have tentatively titled: RUST. I wrote over four pages of notes trying to outline my idea of what will happen in the story. I find this to be a very helpful process. It allows me to throw everything at the wall and I see what sticks. There is really no rhyme or reason to how I organize my thoughts, I just put it in bullet form so it is easier to read.

Here are some examples from my notes today:

• There are levels of civilization in this world, the deeper you are, the more primitive you are, since you are farther from light and pure, clean water. Our hero is from one of the lowest, primitive levels. There are lone savages living even lower, near the bottom, outcasts, criminals, etc.



• Hero is a scavenger for his clan, which numbers roughly twenty individuals of various ages. Older people are rare at this depth. The light is extremely dim and they have to create alternative light sources, perhaps. Glowing fungi. Oldest person in the group is late thirties.



• Hero knows of a cache of food tins across a chasm (a gap or break in the rust pile). Every couple of days he goes over there with a sack and brings back food for his clan. Then one day the bridge collapses into the chasm below. Hero needs to find a new food source. The clan has been trading food for other goods from a clan higher up. This other clan has more people and is more civilized.



• When the other clan discovers they are out of food, they attack and kill some of them and enslave the survivors. Hero escapes and thus begins our story of his journey up through the layers towards the surface. At each level he learns something new about his world, and he adds other people to his group.



• Perhaps a clan elder (late thirties) was wounded and escaped, and he tells Hero to travel upwards to a better life before he dies. Perhaps he tells him to look for something specific, making it a quest. He could give him something, something on a chain around his neck that will become very significant later on. It could be a key or a code that allows humans to escape the pit.



• One of the higher civilizations will have the remains of a library. Hero will learn from a librarian about the world above. The librarian could be a hermit who has kept the library a hidden secret and uses his knowledge as barter with other clans. Hero could befriend him in some way.
  

So there you have, a peek into the process of how I write stories...or at least how I am writing them now. My next step is to take all these loose thoughts and trying to create a linear story-line: A leads to B leads to C. I hope you folks are finding this interesting...

Continuing on my write of passage,
James Baron