virus: Top 10 Ideas for Viable Fiction: adapted from Karl Menninger

zaimoni@ksu.edu
Wed, 15 Jan 1997 23:08:54 -0600 (CST)


Here they are [rephrased slightly from section: Persistent Fantasies of the
Unconscious, "The Mind", by Karl Menninger, published 1925]

[In extreme form, of course]

1) Jehovah complex: "I am God!"
2) Jesus complex: "I'm here to save the world, and I'm going to hurt *bad*."
[relative emphases may vary]
3) Sacred vs. profane love, and the 2 kinds of women
4) Extraordinary birth, complete with royal/elite lineage
5) Patricide/Matricide/Fratricide
6) Guilt complex, with propriation required--or else
7) Sadism/masochism
8) Contamination by X
9) The Artifact--the key to ruling one's world, if not the world
[cf. "When I Become an Evil Overlord", courtesy of Drakir]
a) I need it
b) I have it, but could lose it
10) Rebirth or Reincarnation

I believe both Steve Atkins and David Pape explicitly asked about these.

=====

My longest-running character [Tharlyci Degira] uses #'s 2 and 4.

My second-longest running character [David Kanner] uses #2, and is after
someone using #'s 7(draining city blocks down the sewer) and 9b (with a
bio weapon).

=====

I must remember to port my fiction to the Web soon--it helps if I have a
competent wordprocessor [courtesy of Christmas!!]

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////