The Write Thing

In an effort to stimulate your brain and get your writing fingers twitching, I’ve started a project.
The goal: to comprehensively list all the cool things that you could possibly write about.
Story lacking a little zazz? Fire up a random-number generator, and plug in these babies. I guarantee you, one laser-shooting invisible dinosaur later, your story will be the pinnacle of awesome!

Have I forgotten something? Let me know in the comment section down below and I’ll update the list immediately.

The List

1. Hallucinations

Hallucinations can come about through a number of ways. They can be brought on by periods of extreme mental and physical stress, by poisons or sickness, or by hallucinogenic drugs, and by mental illness. Each of these avenues to hallucination brings about new cool things to write about, and gives you a boosting point for a story or some of your plot.

Stress: Walking through a desert, dying of dehydration? Classic oasis hallucination, coupled with the phenomenon of mirages. Simply explained… Or is it? Sleep deprivation does strange things to one’s mind. Once, I stayed up several days straight while out camping I hallucinated a complete lounge set, including matching upholstery, sitting on the opposite face of the valley I was camped in. After passing out, it had been mysteriously removed.

Illness: A staggering amount of plants, mushrooms and other edibles are, if consumed in sufficient quantities, both poisonous and hallucinogenic. Often the two go hand in hand; some of the more extreme symptoms of poisoning from several plants include hallucinations before lapsing into coma or death.

Drugs and poisons: Hallucinations brought on by drugs and poisons deliberately consumed or administered can range from a mild shift in the perception of time and colour to full-blown psychotic episodes, where people lose the capacity to ‘see’ reality and envisage things entirely in their own minds. It can be terrifying and traumatising for those suffering the hallucinates, and people on the outside may not be able to effectively communicate with them. Poisons and drugs with hallucinatory effects are usually ingested orally and take some time to kick in, often with milder effects at first and then increasingly intense hallucinations as more of the substance is absorbed by the victim.

Mental illness: People suffering from a wide variety of mental illnesses view the world in distorted ways. Their conditions may be permanent or temporary, and triggered by any number of things. A heightened emotional state. Exposure to something seemingly innocuous. Flashbacks may occur at random. Those suffering both form permanent psychosis and temporary affliction may experience visual and audial hallucinations seeing things that are not real and hearing voices that are not their own It is nearly always a terrifying and deeply unsettling experience.

As you can see, hallucinations can be triggered from a wide variety of sources. How realistic they are to the viewer depends greatly on their mental fortitude and the cause of the hallucinations in the first place. Hallucinations clearly provide fantastic fodder for inclusion in your story.

2. Troglodytes

Darkly muttering figures in caves have had a bad rap in the Fantasy press. Generally represented as dank, dangerous and stupid. Often blind, finding their way about through touch and some sort of weird, unexplained echo-location. Often resembling bipedal slugs. Stupid singly. Dangerous en masse. Cn be tricked into worshipping people who bring sources of light into their caverns. Spread throughout underground networks. Bad-smelling.

3. Bitterness

Bitterness is a sign of a poisoned mind. Something bad has happened to a character, enough to turn their mind towards the darker side of the options presented to them. Bitter characters often speak with the voice of experience, foretelling doom and destruction on more idealistic characters. Bitterness can lead to betrayal; if someone expects to be set upon at every turn, they’ll often take ‘the initiative’ in betraying fellow adventurers. Bitter characters can have their hopes raised and then dashed, leading them further down a path of misery, or they can be redeemed by their own hand or by the actions of others. Adding a level of bitterness to one or two of your characters gives other characters a mirror to reflect their qualities off, and adds an enjoyable level of cynicism and tension to dialogue and group dynamics.

4. Poisons

What isn’t there to like about poisons? With poisons come poisoners, plots, treason, sneaking, suspense, discovery, horror, despair and danger. Who’s been poisoned? How was it administered? Can we denitrify it What about that spectacular death? Poisons get cool names, like Widow’s Kiss and The Barbed Strangler. Poisoners are the lowest of the low, the scummiest of the scummy, universally reviled… And yet extremely useful to the politically minded. Poisons are small, concealable, deniable weapons. Tip a vial into a pot and you poison a mercenary troupe. Dribble a little into your nuncle’s ear and become a king. Throw some scorpions into the sultans bed and marry a grieving princess a few days later. The opportunities are endless.

5. Cave networks

Quick! Hide! Where? In this cave!
So begins many fantastic adventures. What’s in the cave? A tunnel, leading into darkness? What could be in there? Troglodytes? Goblins? Orcs? A dragon? Treasure? Nazis? Carefully-obscured Nazi lookalikes (Thanks, Enid Blyton.)? An escape route? Who knows their way through? Do you have a dwarf in the party? What if people get lost? Can they find their way out? What lurks in the darkness?

Cave networks can be natural or artificial. Mines get made and abandoned, rusted equipment left lying to trip the unwary. The deepest, darkest caves can hold whole hosts waiting in their depths. THey’re very rarely mapped out and signed, leaving adventurers to rely on markings, instinct, memory, air flows, half-remembered guesses…

6. Torture devices

Thumbscrews. Tooth pliers. Eye pokers. Wang Manglers. Sharpened but rapidly growing bamboo stakes. Interpretive dancers. Mind leeches. The list goes on. Once you’ve got a captive, then you’ve got to torture them, right? They might have valuable information. Or you might just want to hurt them. Torture doesn’t need to be all subtle and elaborate traps, Saw style Smashing someone’s feet with a hammer does the job quite well. But if you’ve got a little bit of equipment, preferably laid out with glittering precision on black velvet trays… Well, now you’ve got atmosphere.

7. Minstrels

With a hey-nonny-nonny and a merry ballad, minstrels – particularly travelling ones – add a welcome element of lyricism and history to your story. A minstrel is the perfect excuse to a little bit of disguised info-dumping. Minstrels are inveterate gossips and slandermongers, usually possessed with an excellent memory for names, faces and scandals. That, and they’ll know everyone’s favourite songs – the balladeering equivalent of Baby Got Back. Sneak in the names of a few famous tyrants, castles, battles and victories, and you’ve laid out your world for us in iambic pentameter.

8. Submarines

Water is pretty cool. Travelling on it is even cooler. After all, that’s where pirates come from. But what about underneath the water? Well, now you’re talking. Submarines take us to where humans aren’t meant to go – well, not for more than thirty seconds of pearl-diving, anyway. What lurks beneath the surface of the ocean? Mega sharks? The Kraken? Davey Jones? Rogue submarine commanders, armed with nuclear torpedoes and deadly accents?

Submarine warfare is the very definition of suspenseful. Lurking in vents and ocean valleys, hunting prey with invisible pings of echo-location, torpedoes burrowing through the water, sleek and deadly… Ye Olde Submarines have their own unique attractions, too. The image of bespectacled adventurers and scientists peering out at aquatic wonders revealed to them is a fantastic one, and something you can weave into a story of adventure and discovery.

9. Clockwork

Clockwork is all about precision, engineering, delicacy and planning. Clockwork makes watches tick, orreries rotate, and automata shuffle. Clockwork in your story can range from the simple to the complex. A clock in the town square. A simple spring-driven motor on a dirigible. A low-power electrostatic generator. The gubbins of a Victorian Time Machine. You’re only limited by your imagination on this one. Plus, it makes for a fantastic hand-waving device for anything unusual built around the Elizabethan through Victorian era.
“Zounds, man, is that a Demon Machine?”
“Faugh! Stuff your superstitious nonsense, old boy ‘Tis powered by clockwork!”

10. Uniforms

There’s nothing quite like a shiny, spanking new uniform. Unless it’s an old, tattered, blood-stained uniform. Uniforms give a sense of identity to a group, and also make them an easy target for the enemy. Without uniforms to distinguish who you should whack with a sword, ground battles would be even more chaotic and messy than they already are. An individual can have a uniform, of course. Usually something either over-the-top balls-to-the-wall all-out impressive, like a Barbarian massive codpiece/black leather straps combination, or something they wear out of habit or allegiance.

11. Maintenance

Swords need sharpening. Cars need inspections. Bows need re-stringing. Lutes; tuning, guns; cleaning, muscles; workouts, moats; dredging. A wooden ship stays afloat by constant, vigilant maintenance. Armies function by constant drilling and practice. Skills un-practiced grow blunt. Lockpicks need to thieve. Master swordsmen need to duel, or at least run through training exercises.

Showing characters maintaining their skills and equipment speaks of where their focus is. A group of hardened men might sit around a campfire in filthy clothes, smelling like a boar’s flatulence, but ten gets you one they’ll be keeping their blades sharp. Showing a lack of maintenance is just as telling. What does it say when things are left to rot and ruin?

12. Logistics

Logistics are a challenge to work successfully into a story. Often taking a back stage to the action and adventure, a quick thought on logistics is necessary to keep any semblance of reality. Two adventurers strap on some swords and head out into the jungle, unequipped, to find the Lost Gem of NgThungu? Two days later, one’s dying of dysentery and the other’s gotten lost.

Any adventure is bound to end up in pedestrian disaster without maps, food, water, shelter, weapons and all the other things someone sensible would take with them. Logistics are a necessary element of any story. Don’t feel obliged to give us a full-on packing montage, replete with itemised lists of what everyone’s got. This is a story, not reading off a D&D Character Sheet. But give reasonable thought to what’s going to be necessary. Is anything rare or difficult to get hold of? Would the acquisition of it be a worthy part of the story? How much can people take with them? What do they have to leave behind? What will they regret not bringing?
“Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don’t you think?” – Jayne Cobb, Serenity

13. Drugs

Drugs do wonderful and terrible things to people. Administered properly, they save lives ease pain, open the mind, relax tension, and take people on journeys that are profound and life-altering. Abused, they can drive people insane, lead to life-destroying dependencies, cost vast sums of money, fund criminals, and end lives.

Very rarely is a drug all positive or all negative. This balance of influences creates enormous tension, especially for this using, administering, creating, smuggling, selling and policing drugs. Medicine and recreational drugs can be bought and sold on black markets all over the world. Drug companies with budgets bigger than countries influence entire governments.

14. Cryptography

This is Neal Stephenson’s forte, but I’m sure there’s something left over for you to play with. Cryptography, the art and science of hiding messages from those who shouldn’t be reading them, is as fascinating as it is complex. From simple letter substitutes all the way up to 1024-bit encryption and beyond to quantum fiddlings, people have wanted to keep secrets as long as there have been lies to tell. A clever code-breaker is an invaluable tool to whoever owns his services.

The military, spies, industrialists, lovers, criminals, plotters, inventors, investors and schemers all have excellent reasons to communicate ideas with a select audience, while being concerned about their messages falling into the wrong hands.

Facing off against them are the code-breakers and cryptanalysts, working furiously to break codes, extract secrets, and take advantage of the fruits of forbidden knowledge. Warning: researching cryptographs will put you in the realms of some scary, and scarily smart, people. Don’t get too sucked in, or you’ll never finish your story.

15. Facial hair

Twirled cryptically. Stroked luxuriantly. Grown ineffectually. Beards and facial hair can be a marker of gentlemanly respect, barbaric danger, manly gruffness, grandfatherly wisdom, grand-vizierly plotting, test-pilot adventurousness, musketeering dexterity, piratical rapscallionism… The list goes on, limited only by design, density, colour, and whatever you can find on the World Beard And Moustache Championship gallery.

16. Dinosaurs

Universally awesome. They lived millions of years ago. Some of them had teeth as big as a babies’ head. They hunted in packs, get brought back to life by mosquito-borne DNA, chomp cavemen, leave fossils. It took a freaking METEORITE to knock ‘em out. Can you imagine humans surviving that? No, I didn’t think so.


17. Zombies

The Undead. Eat People. Take Over The Planet. Killing them involves shotguns, shovels, pick-axes, heaving bosoms, broken ankles, sieges, helicopter rescues and occasionally unleashing the full awesomeness of machine guns. They’re tenacious, mindless, ferocious, and undeniably cool.

18. Lasers

Lasers are about twenty times cooler than anything else you can realistically hope to handle in your lifetime. Not everyone will get to fly a spaceship or wrestle a crocodile, although the latter is apparently part of a new marketing campaign put on by Queensland Tourism. Lasers, on the other hand, are one of the coolest things on this list that are available for legal public consumption.

You can go and experience the sheer coolness of lasers very cheaply by going to a rave party. There’ll be lasers all over the place, glowing funky colours and bouncing around the room. Yu can also flip your mouse upside down and check out the cool little red beam skittering across your desktop. Or you can go to a novelty store and buy yourself laser pointer and pretend to snipe your cat with the ubiquitous Red Dot.

What can’t lasers do? Shoot them onto parts of your skin to destroy scar tissue? Check.
Poke yourself in the eye with one in a certain way and fix your vision? Check.
A force that travels at the speed of light? Check.
Used to guide the delivery of missiles and other impressive ordnance over hundreds of kilometres? Check.
Get used as swords and slice people in half? Check.
Slice through anything (except another laser)? Check.
Make cool “Psccchiw, wheeeiw!” noises? Check.

Lasers: awesome.

19. Space

The Eternal Black. It kills you if you touch it. It’s cold. Us humans aren’t well designed for it, but exploring it is one of the coolest things in, well, the Universe. Who knows what alien babes lay out on the fringes of the starrs, waiting to be showed ‘this human thing called “love”’? Oh, and did we mention space ships? And the things that makes space travel possible,


20. Faster-Than-Light Travel

Variously caled Hyperspeed, Hyperspace, A-Through-Z-Space, Wormholing, Warping, Jumping, Phasing. High School Physics says it shouldn’t work. But it does. Awesome, eh?

21. The Ebola Virus

It makes you bleed, and then you die. This virus is such a stupendous badass that the only thing stopping it from killing everyone on the planet is its own deadly efficiency. A favourite of terrorist groups everywhere, notably the bad guys in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six.

22. Chuck Norris

You, Internet User, should be already well aware of the various reasons why Chuck Norris is one of the coolest single entities in existence.

23. Aliens

Sometimes they’re friendly. Other times they aren’t. One thing all aliens have in common, however, is their indisputable coolness. If you didn’t write at least one story involving aliens between the ages of six and twelve, then you’ve missed out on a serious part of your development as a writer.

24. Orgies

Risqué but popular for obvious reasons. Trying to sneak one of these into a PG-rated book is an excellent exercise in analogy and simile.

25. Nuclear Missiles

The ultimate in plot devices. Need something scary on the horizon? Nuke. Need a convincing ticking clock? Nuke. Stubborn rodents in your backyard? Maybe something that’s not a nuke.

26. Waterfalls

Training under them gains you mystical powers. Then you can run up them in slow-motion, wielding a sword and avenging your mentor. Also useful for: studying nature, meditating, romantic encounters, unicorn stalking.

27. Sunrises

Poetic, dramatic.

28. Blizzards

If you’re a ninja, you can run through one without a flake of snow touching you. The rest of us can struggle through blizzards, giving manly men chances to be manly, situations to en-grim-men, the weak to drop behind, ambushes to be sprung, and appearances from the swirling snow to be dramatic.

29. Explosions

BOOM

30. Naval engagements

Thundering cannons. Sinking ships. The screams of the dying, the gurgles of the drowning. Boardings. Swinging from ropes. Cutlasses. Men in well-pressed uniforms. Horatio Hornblower. Manoeuvres.

Also awesome in space. Less swinging-on-ropes, more lasers. Seems acceptable.

31. Buried trasure

Because pirates need something to hunt for. Because treasure chests full of gold are awesome. For bonus points, bury it in a non-typical fashion.

32. Slime

Often green. Often sticky. Occasionally acidic. Gross if warm, hairy or scaly. Can confer superpowers onto innocent turtles and teenagers. Impervious to edged weapons. Hell, impervious to most weapons short of a flamethrower. Can be packed with nutrients and healing properties. Intelligence and self-animation is entirely determined by what direction you want to take. Often found in the hydraulics of robots, oozing from monsters, and dripping from cave walls.

33. Flips – both front and back

I’ll happily admit to not being able to flip, myself. But when characters do it? Impressive. Flips get you through laser-based security systems, let you evade attacks, move unexpectedly in combat, and impress the hell out of any less-agile observers. Not strictly necessary – a simple side-step or shuffle would suffice in most cases. Employed by ninjas and assassins for necessary reasons of self-image.

34. Polyglots

Speaking more than one language is not just for Europeans. Bi-, tri- or poly-, having characters being able to converse with others from different countries and backgrounds opens up your story immensely. Speaking an uncommon or difficult language may be a ‘selling point’ for an otherwise noxious character. Remember, languages can be learnt, but not often easily. Children often pick up new languages faster than adults. The gift of tongues is a powerful one, and polyglots are rarely unaware of this. Translations don’t always have to be accurate, and you have to trust your translator…

35. Blossoms

Blossoms fall through the air slowly. They highlight differences in speed with the environment around them. They symbolize changing seasons and the impermanence of life. Thousands of slow-motion sword battles have been fought under sakura blossoms over the years. They land delicately in snow. They’re buffeted by winds. What’s not to like?

36. Dancing

Dance is stunningly expressive. It can be formalized and politic, like courtly dances. It can be romantic and intense, fast and furious, refined or slutty, graceful or wild. Dance is closely associated with ritual and performance, and as such it’s easy to work into your stories. The interpersonal plays of stealing partners, out-performing rivals, recovering from stumbles and more can be played out on dancefloors. Dancing is a test of a man’s mettle and a woman’s sophistication, and it’s hard to go wrong getting your story onto the floor at some point.

37. Cockney Slang

Nothing says “cheeky” like a bit of cockney. Rhyming dictionary at your side, jump in head first and explore the grimy world of petty theft, guttersnipes and poxy whores. Accent can be purloined for other locations with only a bit of work. Writing an entire piece in the vernacular can pose a challenge to the reader, but if you can get it to work, it’s a real treat.

38. Prophecies

Prophecies are seriously cool. Often delivered by extremely awesome individuals/Oracles/Gods, prophecies smash established reality in the face with a big knobbly club. They set things on end and give them a good shaking down. Whether the prophecy just affects one character or the entire world, as soon as prophecies happen you know that someone‘s in for a rough ride. Commonly delivered cryptically. Variation: false prophecy, often with ironic overtones.

39. Gnomes

Diminutive but often found with funky headgear, Gnomes are like midgets but cooler. The European varieties are long-lived, nature-loving Dwarf-wannabes, chilling out in forests, tundras and marshes than underground. Often take on roles of forest-guardians. Not particularly wrathful. Generally wise. Good source of forest lore. Occasionally found high on mushrooms or pipe-weed. Not as over-done as Dwarves.

40. Ice

Man, this stuff is awesome. Spray baddies with it and they can’t chase you. Clogs up instruments and machinery, forcing risky operations to fix them. Signifies harsh environments where a simple mistake can mean death. Primal, primeval. Technically speaking, Ice is a mineral. Cool, huh? You can crush it and put it in drinks. Make hotels and palaces out of it. When you freeze water, it actually expands slightly. Sound dangerous? I’m sure there’s a story somewhere.

41. Fire

Fire is what keeps us going. It’s comforting on a primitive basis, awesomely destructive in large quantities, and looks really cool when thrown from a catapult or outstretched hand. Favoured by mages everywhere, nothing says ‘sod off’ better than searing someone’s head to a crisp. Pesky villagers not paying their taxes? Burn the village down! Need to get someone out of hiding? Burn away! Need to cook up a rabbit you just caught? Fire’s your friend here, too!

42. Dragons

Some things are so obvious, I’m not going to spell them out.

OK, whatever. Dragons are MAGICAL BEASTS OF EXPLOSIVE AWESOMENESS. how cool do you want your dragons to be? Flying? Ancient? Unkillable? Intelligent? Telepathic? Firebreathing?

43. Kinesis

Doing stuff with your mind. It let Matilda dominate a horrendous headmistress and teach her family a few lessons. It can make sparks fly, plates spin, doors and windows slam, fire combust, water slosh, lights flicker. Common side-effects include vacant stare, mild nosebleeds and psychosis. What’s not to like?

44. Gravity

Apart from contributing to the lethality of falls from very tall objects (cartoon characters seem strangely immune), gravity is at its most awesome when you tinker with it. How do you get gravity in space? You can stick people inside a massive ring and spin them, of course. You can engage the ‘artificial gravity’ switch, but that feels a little like cheating, especially in hard SF. What else about gravity? It gives your characters an Escape Velocity to push against. It makes flying harder (but not impossible). It leads to Black Holes and other funky phenomena. Thanks, Newton!

45. Raptors

To cool to sit in with the rest of the Dinosaur category, Raptors deserve their own special mention. Fast. Lethal. Presumably intelligent. Massive, sexy, wicked-looking claws. Pack hunters that make wolves look like toothless hamsters in comparison. The scourge of historically-incorrect cavemen and bewildered time-travellers.

46. Wheels

Their absence would be notable. Their discovery was important. Uses: many. Without wheels, we wouldn’t have unicycles, bicycles, tricycles, quad bikes, cars, wheelbarrows, monster trucks, semitrailers, trains, buses, drag racers, airplanes (until we got to VTOL technology, anyway), carts, dune buggies, trestle tables, radio-controlled cars, trolleys or rickshaws. Was the discovery of the wheel inevitable? How could it occur naturally? What alternatives are there?

47. Reflective surfaces

Quick! Behind you! Luckily that shard of glass showed the killer sneaking up on you. Phew!
Stranded on a desert island? Need to get the attention of a passing ship or plane? Something reflective and some sun is all you need.
Need something to look at meditatively? Mirrors and ponds let you stare deep into yourself.
Checking out the damage from that last barroom brawl? Luckily there’s a bathroom mirror to help you mop up the blood.
Reflections are mystical, symbolical, and practical. The surfaces that make them are clearly awesome and valuable.

48. Mazes

Is it possible to get any heavier on the symbology without resorting to a photo of Oedipus smoking a cigar? I don’t think so. Mazes are cool, and even cooler when you call them Labyrinths . (Thanks, Mr Bowie!) Dangers lurk in them. Treasures can be found if you hit the right paths. They can be simple, or complex enough to take up an entire story. Many mazes can be solved by following one wall consistently – but that presumes the maze-maker doesn’t know this trick, and that the maze itself isn’t fluid…

49. Sharpness

Take a cool thing.
Then sharpen it.
There you are! Instant increase in coolness.
I remember being entranced by dubious infomercials as a child. I watched as kitchen knives would slices through a seemingly endless line of books, shoes, belts, cardboard, before returning to plunge through over-ripe tomatoes without a whisper of resistance. Stunning! How sharp can you possibly make something? Terry Pratchett’s Death has a scythe that’s infinitely sharp. Constantly surrounded by a blueish aura, the edge slices through atoms not quick enough to get out of the way. Mythical swords that can hew through hundred foes and still be keen enough to shave with are about par for the course in terms of mythical sharpness.

What have I missed?
“What?!“, you cry, indignantly hammering away on your keyboard. “The fool! He has left off my favourite thing, the coolness of which is both indisputable and pre-eminent! I shall lambaste him in the comments section below, that he may fix this error post-haste!”
“A thousand apologies!”, I cry, bowing my head spine-tinglingly low. “Please, cease lambasting me with your flagrant wrath and allow me the merest moments of rectitude, and I shall add your wisdom to the above list!”