Project: Mouse Story

When I started reading more at the beginning of the year the goal was to get back to writing more. It was my love of reading that got me into writing in the first place. So I decided that I was going to read more, write about what I’m reading and work my way up to writing more stories myself. Just like I hadn’t been entirely not reading, I have been working on stories in bits and pieces but I want to be more consistent about it. If you have been looking around this website at all you may have noticed that I added progress bars to the sidebar for my current writing projects. As you can see I am still working sporadically on rewriting my YA fantasy novel Underfoot, and I’ve started planning an “Untitled Mouse Story”.

The idea came to me when I was thinking about stories I loved as a child in reference to stories that I could tell for my children. I thought about Redwall and the countless hours I had as a child and young adult living in that world with those friendly woodland creatures. Initially I thought that there wasn’t much to be done in the genre of anthropomorphic animal fantasy that hasn’t already been done, but then I remembered that it is silly to think that way and of course that are plenty of things to explore and it doesn’t really matter if it gets compared to Redwall anyway so I started to think about the things that I liked about that world and the things that I could do with anthropomorphic animals and came up with a few ideas for a setting that I really liked.

I wanted to have realistic size differences between the animals and more animal-like characteristics as opposed to the diminished size difference and largely anthropomorphic nature of Brian Jacques animals. I wanted to play with the sense of wonder and scale that could evoke. I realized that this would make the world more brutal and dangerous than Jacques setting, as the natural predators to the smaller animals would be truly terrifying from the perspective of the prey, but I also liked that so I started coming up with ways that would shape the world. In the process of Google image searching for inspiration I stumbled upon Mouse Guard a comic that sounds like it takes a similar direction to what I was looking for, with a whole mouse country protected by a dedicated collection of guardmice defending it from outside threats. I really liked the way the art looked and there was also a Mouse Guard tabletop RPG where you play a Mouse in the Mouse Guard (which sounded awesome so I bought it because I have a weakness for collecting tabletop RPG books, someday the kids will be old enough to play with me, someday.)

I haven’t had a chance to read any of the Mouse Guard books yet so I don’t really know how they play out, but I still want to play around with a setting in the same vein and I don’t believe anything like Brian Jacques strange insistence on not reading anything for fear of being influenced by it (which probably explains how every Redwall book ended up being very similar). My understanding of the creative process leaves room to borrow and modify concepts others have used and to create in a larger context.

So I stared drawing up some ideas and figuring out a direction I wanted to go with the concept. I am leaning towards making the setting reminiscent of the American frontier because I thought that would fit the blend of wild and dangerous but still with some civilization that I wanted too evoke. Also because I had an image in my mind of rat inventors running a industrial foundry where they experiment with machines and create weapons, traps and other mechanical devices. I want to lean towards the animal side of anthropomorphism, with grasping hands and tool use, but probably not much in the way of clothing or upright walking.

So far I have a main character who is a mouse named Veil who leaves the more civilized land to come to the frontier to start a new life with his two childmice and finds that he has exchanged the familiar dangers of living in the city with the new dangers of living in the wild and he has to learn how to make it work while still keeping his family safe. Veil discovers a rag-tag band of heroes trying to protect the settlers from carnivores and other dangers and becomes the first mouse to join their ranks. Its going to be an adventure story with animal heroes fighting against stronger foes and surviving through perseverance, ingenuity, and cooperation.