Things you've always wanted to put in your works

Where "always" means "for more than a few years or so".

Not necessarily plot points or characters, mostly just visuals or arbitrary things you thought might work well in one work or be totally awesome in another.

Mine are mostly about music, for some reason. It's a very important part of film in my opinion, so naturally I feel a need to screw with it.

(And no, these are not my priorities, nor should they be. Just fun things my stories may someday give me reason to do.)

1. A scene set inside machinery with the protagonists jumping across giant cogs and gears. (This image has been in my head since second grade. I have yet to find a use for it.)
2. An action scene set to anything off of A Classic Case, but mostly "Locomotive Breath". (And not "Aqualung". Seriously. The one song where an orchestra made an awesome song worse, in my opinion, but YMMV.)
3. Have the opening theme of a film go static and then reveal it to be a car radio.
4. Handwritten opening credits.
5. A apocalyptic crowd-panic scene set to "Bad Moon Rising".
6. Use the scene from Fatal Attraction with You Cant Do That On Television on a TV in the background in the background of a shot. (Okay, not always, but since I saw FA. It seemed natural.)
7. Use either "Downtown" or "Let's Hear it for New York" in a work about homeless people. (See also...)

edited 22nd Mar '11 2:57:16 PM by Wackd

Use of witch as a gender neutral term, like it was used in the middle ages.

I've always wanted a Fantastic Voyage scene in my stories, and also, some slash (yaoi) scenes and a Slasher flick-scenario, but I'm afraid my family will disapprove.

Which "Downtown" do you mean?

I always wanted to write about an heroic sacrifice involving purposely detonating an atom bomb in the outer atmosphere. Thing is it's incredibly stupid and narmy.

I'd certainly like to do a SPECTRE type organization with uniformed henchmen and a volcano lair. It would have a catchy and cool looking corporate logo

I've always wanted to do a fight scene where the fighters are using steel folding chairs like they were swords.

edited 3rd Apr '11 11:42:17 PM by GIG

@Atom James: Not if done correctly.

• A race of intelligent dinosaurs in outer space who were rescued and brought up by Ancient Astronauts. Why? Because awesome.
• I've technically done it, but I'm determined to slip the line "Is that a salad?" into each of my works/series. (It's a Creator Injoke.) Wordkeepers and Always a Hero have it in its original form (someone waking up groggily from a weird dream). But I'm going to have to get more creative in my later versions.
• The usage of the Mandelbrot Set in a magic system, if only because it looks like something with magical significance.
• A fat, nerdy vampire who collects Star Wars memoribilia.
• A Dissimile. Which sounds pretty simple, but I can never come up with a funny one. They just seem to have to happen and they never do in the way I write.
• This is also something I've technically done, but I want to do it in a work I'm proud of. A character wears a T-shirt which is described; while the meaning of its design is never stated, it is implicitly a T-shirt with Missingno. on it.

edited 3rd Apr '11 11:58:24 PM by FreezairForALimitedTime

A romance/tragedy/metafiction with a scene where the girl faces the guy and whispers, "One of us does not exist."

I've always wanted to write a work from the perspective of a Large Ham Supervillain. I've had them as antagonists, sure, but I've always wanted to get inside one of these guys' heads and find out just what it actually takes to make someone into a spandex-clad megalomaniac planning to Take Over the World.

... That, and there's more then a little supervillain inside me too.

edited 4th Apr '11 12:10:22 AM by nrjxll

Trust me, theres a little Supervillain in everyone! Embrace the dark side!!

I...don't know what this thread is supposed to be, but guess it's about something that you like to write about...? In that case...

• Military helicopters. My god, they are awesome. I'm planning to have a scene where the Monster of the Week tries to coup de grace the Five-Man Band...only to have him foiled by a freaking Apache breaking through the building's window and run him over, and shoot all his minions (the protagonists ducked in time) down. Then when the chopper tries to leave, the monster wakes up, tries to shoot the helicopter down. The chopper blows it up with a missile. I know, it doesn't make any sense, but DAMN IT I want to write that kind of stuff!
• A Mecha Dragon fueled by magic and driven by time-travelling alien.
• Jawdropping, LAVISH Scenery Porn. I swear, if I ever turn my work into a manga, it will be a Decompressed Comic where at least a quarter entire volume illustrates the city.

Am I missing the point of this thread?

No, that's fairly spot on.

• A chase scene through a forest full of gigantic (I mean those ten-meter thick trees you see in rainforest) trees...on fire. With lots of jumping, dashing, and barely dodging falling logs.
• A scene where a character shoots a Physical God in the face- wait, I am doing that.

I wanted to put in a Who's on First?/Your Other Left style conversation in the heat of a tense situation...

...so I did in the last chapter I completed.

Ooooh, I want to write that too! Mine might involve running away from hordes of Eldritch Abomination.

I want a metaphorical freudian acid trip... as a plot. But I'm afraid I am not skilled enough to write it well.

I want to incorporate metaphysical aliens who prefer to reside on Earth in the form of plushies into my story. ' w '

Not sure how I'll do it, though.

An extended fight scene in a large library or bookstore, both between and on top of the shelves.

I believe that the only way to write it is to have James Joyce resurrected and teach him Freudian psychology for decades.

Seriously though, I don't think anyone is talented to write something like that....

...Hey, would you mind if I write that too? That woulnd't be stealing, would it?

...sure, why not? :P

Yachar, I can tell you from experience that it's hard enough just ACCURATELY describing things you've seen on a trip, let alone writing one well.

The biggest problem with trying to describe a trip itself is reconciling the fact that the different portions of the trip are usually almost completely disconnected from each other (at least when it happened to me), with one's natural writer's instinct that tries to force you to tie it all together into something cohesive and meaningful with a narrative flow that doesn't break from the rest of the story TOO much.

Sometimes it just isn't cohesive, sometimes it just isn't meaningful, or narrative-friendly, or sometimes it just doesn't plain ol' make any sense no matter how you try to interpret it, like a human taxidermy museum exhibit or a military invasion of a med-lab where Death wears gold-colored MJOLNIR Armor and stares you right in your terrified face, or a neon pagoda with Jason Dohring and Tessa Thompson standing in the wings for no reason whatsoever.

Here's an idea:
Try first describing something simple and mundane (like...an orange? a computer casing? a square of toilet paper?) using flowery metaphors (maybe some Shakespearean language), then start moving on to more complicated things (like how exhaustion after staying up for 24 hours straight feels, or the taste of your favorite dish), and then maybe you'll probably be somewhere close to halfway towards being able to write a trip the way you want to. Embellishment and some pretty Purple Prose, and get more grandiose and descriptive as you go along, just for REAL things...then you can really prep to write about an acid trip without being on one.
Give it a try, it might just work...because I'm pretty sure you don't actually wanna risk having an ACTUAL acid trip just to be able to firsthand describe the experience.

I want a battleship duel. Fifteen-inch guns and armor, to the death.

I have a little bit of a teaser in one chapter of one of my projects, but it's a Q-ship with a twelve-inch gun mounted in the forward superstructure. About a twenty-degree traverse possible off centerline; any more broadside would probably overturn it. It takes out an enemy cruiser through the element of surprise.

A story involving a typical MacGuffin search, but in a world where reality regularly gets subverted and nobody comments on it even as they're walking underwater and their feet and hands switch places.

Somehow I don't think I'd be able to make it enough of a Mind Screw...

I've wanted, for several years, to write a story wherein one of the characters was slowly unravelling, like a sweater, not mentally. I've also always wanted to write a scene where people discuss existentialism while smoking and hanging over a railing.

I don't know why because I hate most all existentialist I know and do not wish to write any, ever.

Continued from previously...

I've always wanted to do a work where Anyone Can Die and death isn't even remotely dramatic. I've advocated it in principle for years, but the only works I've actually ever finished tend to be Affectionate Parodies where it would cause serious Mood Whiplash.

I also keep trying to top myself with scenes of Ham-to-Ham Combat. Of course, since this is actually in my works already, it may not belong in this thread.

Hey, nothing wrong with that. You can have people discuss something without advocating it. I study postmodernist theory even though I despise most postmodernists on both a personal and critical level.

edited 9th Apr '11 5:26:27 PM by nrjxll