Nathan Bransford - The Forums

This is one of those dreams that is already half gone before you even sit up. And did I have a pen and paper beside my bed? No!

The dream started with this violinist. And the rest gets a bit foggy. But I remember he (or someone) rewrites the story of the Titanic (yes I know overdone) from his POV as one of the musicians on-board. To cut a REALLY long and vague story short... this one scene branches into what I can only call a Multi Genre Mega Series of stand alone books. It started out as a simple true biography of a young man (with a golden violin) embarking on a 3 or 4 book adventure of a life time that ended with the sinking of the Titanic. In a new fantasy series, the golden violin becomes one of the objects of some treacherous quest to save the universe from some dark force. It all sounds cliché because I can't remember the specifics of the stories, only the feel of them (eg, the feel of the titanic story, the fantasy had a Wheel of Time feel to it and so on). Anyway the whole mega series ended up having dozens and dozens of stand alone books covering a heap of stand alone series. It covered true events, biographies, fantasy, Sci-fi, mystery and half a dozen other genres and styles of writing. What felt so brilliant about this "Mega Series" was how you could read any one book and be satisfied with just that. Or you might finish just one series and be really amazed. But if you read the entire collection you'd be totally gobbed smacked.

Something like that would be totally WAY OUT OF MY LEAGUE. But can you imagine cornering more than 3/4 of the book market with Mega Series like that?

That would be pretty cool - to take over the market with a huge mult-genre smash.

I've gotten lots of great ideas when I sleep. I think the imagination can really run free in dreams, and sometimes, it has some pretty good stuff to share.

I know what you mean about ideas that feel too big. I have a book I've thought about for years on and off. I don't know if I'll ever be a good enough writer to write it - buy you never know. I get better all the time with practice, and maybe.....someday......

This sounds suspiciously like how Stephen King left loose ends in his books for decades and then tied them all up together with "The Dark Tower". I don't know if he had always intended to do it like that--he might have talked about it at some point, but either way I'm not sure I'd believe him--but I'm pretty sure anybody just setting out to start something of that degree of complexity is going to be in over their head. That's not to say you couldn't do it; the main thing is to make sure all your work could be set in the same universe, then later pull it all together.

Other creators whose stuff could do one of these:
* The Discworld series could maybe be building up to something
* I've got this theory (and some day I may write a novel about it) that the Marx Brothers's characters--not the actors, but the characters Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo, and Chico--were international con-artists, and travelled the world under various (obviously fake) aliases to scam various people. It's hinted at through their movies--at one point an admitted con artist that Chico used to know asks him when he became Italian.
* Jim Henson. Hear me out...the Dark Crystal takes place in the ancient history of the world of, let's say, "Hensonia". Centuries later, occult-science teams for the Axis and the Allies each penetrate the dimensional barrier, and propose a union with the magical creatures beyond. The Allies' side agrees, and they come through; their magic turns out to be largely useless, and they enter the entertainment industry as Muppets. The Axis side scares them so bad they build a magical Labyrinth around their city to keep humans away; Jareth began life as a German magic-technician, gradually losing his mind to the magic of the realm. However, an underground network of caves has opened the doors to the magic realm once again, and the unsuspecting denizens are sneaking into our world...