Idea #5: Insanity

I find something ironic about the fact that when I finally get to this last idea, it's late, I'm stressed, and I want to kill things. Or maybe it would be better said that it's a trifle too appropriate ...

This idea comes from my fandom life ages ago - I am ninety percent sure that the game / community responsible started at the end of 1996. (Author's world, original characters / no canon characters, in a shared writing type of format.) Over the course of years, I explored a sprawling series of plotlines through a lot of characters, dragging other people and theirs with me. Conspiracy, skulduggery, backstabbing - figurative and literal - and action ... some really good ideas backed up with some really poor writing, and some hare-brained ideas similarly backed up with really poor writing.

I think I have now been mulling over this project for over a year - and my brain returns to it possibly more than any other idea. Been working on how to create my own setting so the plot can remain roughly in place, without it feeling as if I've filed off the numbers or plagiarized. If I didn't think I was working solely with my own elements, I wouldn't even be considering writing this. What I've ended up with is a very dark world, influenced by fairy legends. Considering how the character interrelationships both change and stay the same excites me. It's like visiting with old friends.

I know I've got the fantasy writer's stock in trade here, a trilogy - and the backbone of the arc that connects the three is a love story, but it's the villain's love story. (I've kind of tentatively thought there are two central questions to the romantic subplots in the project: "Does love conquer all?" and "Should it?" ... and different characters demonstrate a different permutation of answers.) I'm confident the first book would be standalone, and I'm not going to write any sequels (to anything!) until / if / ever that sells.

But the weight of my concerns with this is far heavier than with any of the other ideas. Will this simply be too complex? My ideas tend to turn out more detailed than I intend, even when I've planned simple. On the other hand, I have to outline this one - and I already have a pretty firm idea where most of it is going - so that may restrain the exponential explosion of pieces. The amount of prep-work would be immense, though I don't really mind that. And I have concerns that the parts I'm really looking forward to are in the later books.

It also has occurred to me that I have built this up so thoroughly in my head there's no way it's not going to be a disappointment in writing ... but how else am I going to excise it?