I’ve been futzing with stories lately. Writing a novel taught me that I can do it, and I’m eager to try it again. I just don’t know what story I want to tell. Yet.

I love the idea of the epic. Star Wars. Lord of the Rings. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There’s something mythic and gigantic and fun and I just love those stories. I’d love to tell one of my own. Of course they’ve all been told before. Coming up with a new story, even a few new elements, is incredibly difficult. But I’m giving it a go.

Maybe not a serious go, but I’m futzing with it. I like the idea of a big epic story, but also one that isn’t entirely serious, in the way that Buffy, and to a lesser extent, Star Wars aren’t entirely serious. Buffy doesn’t always take itself seriously (like the episode “Normal Again” in season 6 when Buffy thinks she’s in a mental institute and the previous six years are a dillusion) and is often poking fun at the horror genre. Star Wars has that campy, space opera feel–which is part of why the dialogue in Episode II is so horrible–it’s supposed to be.

It brings me to a nerd hero, someone who wants to do all these epic, amazing things, but just can’t quite make it. I love the idea of reaching for the epic, and in some ways getting there, but also keeping a sense of reality. There aren’t very many Luke Skywalkers or Buffy the Vampire Slayers in real life.

Of course I have no idea where the story is going, or if there even is a story. At this point I’m just playing with the idea, trying to see what’s there–in essence pushing it until it falls over. The biggest problem I have is how to define this reality. I like the idea of involving the supernatural, of meshing it with the natural as if the two always coexist (like what Philip Yancey said), but finding an original supernatural world is tough. Star Wars has the mystical force. Harry Potter has magic. Buffy has old school mystic power. It’s tough to find some supernatural element that isn’t just rehashing something else. Of course they’re all rehashing, but it’s a matter of finding an element of the original to inject.

I’m also unsure who my bad guys are. One of the great needs in any epic is expendable bad guys. Orcs, stormtroopers, vampires. The only series that gets away from this requirement is Harry Potter. Though that story managed to have a bad guy so bad that he hardly needs minions.

It’s especially hard to mesh the realistic setting with bad guys. You end up needing some kind of obliviousness on behalf of your characters (Buffy, Harry Potter, the hobbits in LOTR), or a fantastic setting (Star Wars, LOTR, etc.).

So this little experiment is doomed to failure. But that’s okay, I guess. That’s part of writing. I also have a suspicion that I’m not cut out to write a sprawling epic. I think it would disentegrate into the interactions between characters, which seems to be what I really like writing (though the real strength of some of the best stories is the interaction with the characters–Buffy, Harry Potter, to a lesser extend Star Wars, LOTR).