If you don’t know what story cubes are, see the introduction to the story cubes series.
To see the original roll of the story cubes, see yesterday’s post.
A billion years ago, the world turtle that carries the planet on its back, like a swimming Atlas, dies. Its retinue of turtlettes build it a tomb at the bottom of the sea in the shape of a pyramid. As the eons go by, the planet dries up and the nomads who wander the desert find these pyramids and act out stories to explain them. One night, an explorer watches one of the performances and comes up with the idea of exploring the inside of the pyramid, despite the dire warnings of the storytellers. He looks inside the tomb and discovers a technology so powerful it tilts the balance of power of the entire world in his favor. The story has two possible endings: The good ending is that he uses that power to become a benevolent despot, ensuring everyone has eight days worth of ice cream every week. The bad ending is that he becomes Elon Musk, turning things other people had created into utter crap and making people wish he was an actual turtle instead of just looking like one.
Wow, what a tough roll. A turtle? What’s anyone supposed to do with a turtle? And then two different kinds of electric lights plus moonlight? Creating something from this must be what writer’s block is like. I don’t get writer’s block (if anything, I have the opposite problem), but even I’m hard pressed to dig up something out of this.
This week is a lesson in how to “write off” something written. Not everything you write will end up perfect, or even good. Sometimes that’s just because the writing process is hard, and if you want to do it well, you’ve got to put in the work. But sometimes, no how matter how much work you put in, you can’t get a good story out of a bad idea.
It’s hard to tell when something will be good on the other side of the hard work or when something simply isn’t going to ever be good. Even Stephen King gave up on Carrie, the book that was his major breakthrough: he threw it in the trash and his wife Tabitha fished it out and told him to keep with it.
This week’s is one of those ones that doesn’t need to go into the trash: it needs to go straight to the shredder. But the beautiful thing about writing is that maybe this roll was perfect for you. Maybe you came up with something brilliant because you looked at them from a perspective that made them line up better. I certainly hope so, and I’d love to hear it!
The comments section is the perfect place for what you came up with. I’m sure you did better than I did this week!
I'd love to hear from you!