Here There Be Monsters
Wanted to take a minute to talk about an upcoming project… don’t ask me when this is happening, but I’m already pretty excited about the idea.
Some of my favorite books / movies are the ones that revolve around mental illness and or conditions of the psyche. The thing I think is amazing about them is that they take some that is cultural taboo to talk about openly, present it in an honest way, and help you to see the person with the condition as something more than their condition.
Examples…
Here we have movies about Body Dismorphic Disorder, Disassociative Disorder, and Under develop intelligence. Now regardless of how well you liked the movies, but if you hated I Am Sam we can’t be friends, just kidding. These movies all serve to put a face to a mental condition the average person knows very little about. There are plenty more, just wanted to point to a few.
So my idea for, Here There Be Monsters. I want to write about a child growing up in an unusual world. her/his world is all inside a compound. It’s a small universe for a child, but not an unpleasant one. They have all they need to survive, but as a child filled with natural curiosity they want to know what’s ‘outside’. As long as they can remember they have been told stories about the ‘monsters’ that live in the outside world, and the horrors that are all that is left of the world. Naturally you could wonder as a reader if the child is growing up in a post-apocalyptic world, and simply being sheltered from the devastation that lays beyond the walls of the compound. As the child grows they begin to question what they see through the cracks in the walls, and the infrequently deliveries of supplies. She/he sees monsters because that’s what they have been taught to believe, but what if the monsters are only monsters because that’s the way the adults in the compound see them, what if their minds are turning the world into the scary place they portray.
The idea would be to explore what it would look like to grow up in a compound of extreme agoraphobic adults. They see the open spaces of the world and the press of humanity as horrifying and something to protect they child from.
Right now I’m still working through the details, and how I want to explore the illness while also making it a story about child overcoming their own issues.
More to come…
-kurt
