Broadcasting Brain

Between listening to Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica podcasts and reading this very cool post by Merlin Mann about creative story arcs in content creation, I’ve really come to realize that I really like the idea of making stuff, particularly from a design, planning, and plotting level.

I wonder if there’s a job out there called content architect or content engineer?

I’ve tried writing both fiction and non-fiction. I think I have become a good non-fiction writer; don’t think I’m doing great, awesome or amazing stuff yet.

Writing fiction, good stories with strong characters, moving plots, and overall literary goodness… that’s a bigger challenge for me. And yet creating strong fiction seems like a much more satisfying goal to me. I think I’m in love with the idea of universe building.

How about you? Don’t you love a good story? Ever think about all of the background work that goes into it?

One of my pet projects that I had shelved for a long time was to develop a treatment for a science fiction TV series. It would be a remake of a 1970s show and, honestly, I’d be attempting to do something very similar to what Moore did by remaking Battlestar Galactica. That does worry me a bit because it would just be derivative, and wrong, to copy his formulas and methods too much.

I also have another idea for an original science fiction series. It’s languishing. But, to be fair, so are a number of my other creative ideas.

I read an interesting post at In the Mirror which asked the question: why do you write?

This is what I had to say in response:

The short answer is that I write because I have things to say to an audience.

The somewhat longer answer is that I write because I see it as a necessary step in my growth as a person. Writing is an exercise in self-actualization to me. I was a content consumer for most of my life and I’ve thought about it enough that I’m wanting to create my own. So I do. I also have a dream of being good enough at this and sufficiently networked to make this a much more significant part of my life, including making it a big part of my livelihood.

Plus it’s fun to make things.

So now you have my thoughts on this. How about you? Why do you create content, if you do? What is it that you’d like to create?

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