The "I hoe em, you grow em" series - Need a story idea? Look here: hoeemngrowem

I love writing opening chapters. Establishing characters and setting plots is often more interesting to me than writing a full book. One of the ways I judge movies is the opening scene. Likewise, I judge books in the first few sentences. If I don't like those first few sentances, I move on to another book. [Digression - so far this has worked for me: I have been talked into finishing books before b/c someone else recommended it, and have found that to be a waste of my time at about a 90% rate, including some books that are supposed to be classics)

What this means is that I come up with I think is a cool story, but that I know that I will never write. A lot of times, this happens as I read a book, or watch a show, and think, why did they take the story in THAT direction?. So let me change the main character to one I like a little better, add different support characters, change the story completely, and put these into a more interesting setting (to me, at least). Other times, a story comes out of nowhere, and I haven't seen anything like it before, but that isn't interesting enough for me to keep working on.

In all these cases, I would still like to see the full story explored. Since I know that I will most likely not do it myself, why not throw the idea out there and see if someone else wants to write their version of it?

Some of yall know what Creative Commons are. I'll give a short summary, and you can go to the page for more info and sources:

Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to make a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work–on conditions of your choice.

Basically, you can allow your work and ideas with other people, or you can build upon their work and ideas; some conditions apply depending on the creator. I have been using images from Wikimedia Commons to illustrate my stories under this kind of sharing platform.

What I'd like to introduce is the Stemmit tag and concept #hoeemngrowem

By Saukkomies at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Basically, this is applying the idea of Creative Commons to Steemit writing. Stuck for an idea? Check out the tag and see if there is an story you'd like to run with. Likewise, if you like a story, and don't have any plans to finish it, kick that baby out there and see if somebody else will take a crack at it.

Last night, I was watching the first season of American Horror Story. I wondered, as I usually do in horror shows, why the characters were so damn stupid for staying. (Yes, I know there wouldn't be a show if the characters noped the hell out of there). Barring getting out of Dodge, why not resolve some of the money issues by exploiting the Murder House history?. Hmmm, there is a good story line there.

American Horror Story, FX
Not really relevant here, but the actress is cute, neh?

Obviously, you can't reuse the same house, nor can you reuse the characters (especially such stupid people: SPOILER ALERT, stupid people die when they put themselves in dangerous situations). But haunted house stories are a dime a dozen, and developing the history of a locus of death associated with a house is really a story in itself.

Throw in a much different character to deal with the ghosties, and take the story in a different direction.

Later on today (yard work to catch up on now), I will write an intro chapter to that story. I know damn well that will be as far as I go with this story, so I will put that up as the first offering them in the "I how em, you grow em" series.