A few months ago, I published a post stating that I was working on a new fictional project with the moniker Woodstock, and had it based in rural New England. I’ve done some more brainstorming and drafting, alongside having the opportunity to view other pieces of art and have it further curate my ideas for the story.
Recently, I have gotten into playing Red Dead Redemption 2, which, while it takes place well over 100 years ago, has gotten me to learn more on frontier life then and how people were trying to survive much harsher conditions than what people generally speaking have to go through today.
This is further supplemented by recent pieces of artwork that I have seen recently at The National Gallery of Art, and have allowed me to dive deeper into life away from suburbia and the hustle and bustle of modern life.
On something “closer to home”, I’ve been re-reading Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and recently completed an biography on him. A gross oversimplification of his work is to live simple; and focus on yourself. This, alongside the general behavior of 19th-century Concord, Massachusetts, has been helpful in shaping the ideas that will be translated into the 21st century via Woodstock.
But onto the proverbial fishing trip: one of the missions at the tail end of the game has the main protagonist go fishing with their son in an attempt to connect them with nature more and not be as glued to books. I wanted to take that general idea of a fishing trip being a time of reflection between two men and adjusting the son’s expectations on what He should see in the world, and not just look at it through a narrow lens.
Take one of the major youth protagonists: Noah Moseby. He’s the only child of Douglas Moseby, whom we established in an earlier post to be up to… something above my pay grade. He may be school-smart and know the grand scheme of global economics, he doesn’t know what life is like for those not in the 9-5 office. Compare that to Paul Stanton, the general store owner. So I brought the two together to create a sort of “abridgement” of the two lifestyles, and signify how both have their strengths and weaknesses.
One of the major plotlines is the assimilation of a cosmopolitan family in small-town America, and to have them understand that things are not as simple as moving a chess piece. But that everything has consequences.
Anyway, that’s my spiel on Woodstock. It continues to be developed. I’m working in a non-linear format as the story comes in, and I look forward to seeing where it’ll go.
Onwards!
-z.a.a.
p.s. While I am not necessarily ready to share a chapter draft or excerpt, I’m sharing a preliminary version of a character ideation sheet.