{"id":519,"date":"2015-04-07T02:45:26","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T07:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/?p=519"},"modified":"2017-02-12T07:36:06","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T07:36:06","slug":"dancing-with-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/07\/dancing-with-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing with Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2007 I came up with an idea for a fantasy story called “The Dance Lesson,” involving a wizard and a royal court’s dancing teacher — probably a short story, but it might reach novelet length. It could, I thought, be set in the world of the Walasian Empire, as seen in A Young Man Without Magic<\/i><\/a> and Above His Proper Station<\/i><\/a>, which had not yet seen print when I came up with it.<\/p>\n

But then I put it aside and didn’t worry about it. I never actually forgot it, but I didn’t do anything with it, either. I knew the central characters and their situation and the ending, but I hadn’t worked out the details and didn’t think it was worth the effort.<\/p>\n

And then on Monday, April 6, 2015, almost eight years later, while sprawled on the couch watching TV, I suddenly knew the rest of the plot. It popped into my head without warning, completely unbidden. I could write the whole story any time, possibly in a single sitting.<\/p>\n

But I need to figure out where to set it. It could<\/i> be in the world of the Walasian Empire, but not in Walasia itself; the political set-up is all wrong. It would have to be in either Ermetia or the Cousins, probably the latter.<\/p>\n

I could probably jam it into the Small Kingdoms of Ethshar, but it would be a bad fit.<\/p>\n

The world where my short story “Keeping Up Appearances,” in one of Esther Friesner’s Chicks in Chainmail anthologies, would work. Or I could create a new setting; a pretty generic medieval fantasy setting would work fine.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’ll just start writing and see whether it decides where it wants itself to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2007 I came up with an idea for a fantasy story called “The Dance Lesson,” involving a wizard and a royal court’s dancing teacher — probably a short story, but it might reach novelet length. It could, I thought, be set in the world of the Walasian Empire, as seen in A Young… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}