Paper Sun vs. Stalemate
The battle of ideas continues…
Cutting right to it this time. This is a continuation of the battle of ideas started with my post called Round One: Fight
The choices thus far stand independent of prior posts, so read and vote on whichever ones you have time for. The winning ideas face off in the showdown post later this week. I need help choosing one of my many ideas to play with!
Paper Sun is a story I’ve mentioned many times. If you’re curious about scenes from it, or previous posts on it, just type Paper sun or Gida in the search bar in the left navigation segment (right under the picture of my muse). While the trope attempts to explain strong women by a sexual violent past, Paper Sun attempts to show the truth behind such a struggle. The true woman of strength is the friend she seeks to guard and protect, her more innocent childhood friend. For Gida, a sexually violent history doesn’t make a strong woman, nor explain her. Instead, it threatens mental stability and self-worth, saddling the victim with lifelong struggles. The story is her quest to find identity and self-worth by protecting in others what she’d already lost.
Stalemate is one of my oldest novel ideas with so many incarnations and beginnings. A large part of this is thanks to trouble getting in touch with the protagonist. I have so much building on this story but I have trouble condensing it…suffice to say, the main character is one of few surviving kyri, a race of humanoids now demonized in human legend. Raised by a human that adopted her in place of his own daughter, Isana has the perfect disguise to fit in, but is conflicted by the legends and afraid her true nature will possess and change her into something evil. When another kyri crashes into her life the fear over her true nature becomes more real as she’s discovered and forced to go on the run with him. However, her destiny is prearranged by the high god and challenged by the fallen, former goddess of nature. Not all is as it seems, caught in a struggle between higher powers. This story follows the path toward taking destiny in her own hands in the fight to restore balance to nature.
Pros: Paper Sun is very cathartic and I love the main character (for all her crazyness) and title. Stalemate is fleshed out very fully and I know almost every detail about story progression with specific and detailed scenes in my head.
Cons: Paper Sun can sometimes cause my post traumatic stress disorder to kick into overdrive and exacerbate my insomnia. Also, I’m afraid my current writing skill will to devolve it into a mere shewoman man-eating power trip revenge tale. Stalemate has been attempted numerous times and I’m not at all sure the most recent name change for the main protagonist will help…also it’s very much a coming into her own sort of story, which is kinda hard to pull off successfully for adults and I don’t think I want to make it a young adult novel.
Let’s hear your votes in comments!
Muse Sings 