It's a bit daunting posting these first-draft story ideas. There are some shortcomings as a storyteller that I've identified in myself, generally around characterisation, and while I would like to write story ideas and stories to get some exercise in these shortcomings it's doubly daunting because I know they aren't going to be very good.
It's hard to write emotional scenes, and I avoid them. It's hard to write viewpoints far from my own. It's hard to leave characters in bad states without helping them, so I don't do that. All these things are helpful and probably very important for good writing. I did a reasonable job on some characters in "Fork" and "Lotus", and much less well on the earlier novel "Forest".
I think that rather than fretting about not creating characters with emotional depth and a rich tapestry of colliding viewpoints, I can enjoy creating fun situations and maybe if it's less dramatically tense that's okay, I'm not publishing it anyway, it's a hobby.
Today I'll give myself a break from writing prose and sketch out an idea.
This story is about an echidna on a search through the streets of Sydney for the unicycling girls who ran over her icecream which she was using to attract ants. She is driven by ferocious anger, and her plan is that when she meets the unicycling girls she will spear each of their tyres with one quill, and also each of their ankles with one quill, and that will teach them.
Along the way she eats many ants and catches several taxis, buses, and trains. Most people she meets along the way are friendly but some require spiking. She is not a naturally grumpy echidna but she has very firm boundaries and wants things the way she wants things or it's the spike for you. Some are terrorised by her, and some confide in her and she responds with her wisdom which is that if you have a lot of spikes you can get out and about and not be afraid of anyone, as long as you don't mind not having any friends.
She lives for a while with a water dragon by the side of a swimming pool, where the pool owners worship her and take photos, but the ants run low and she moves on.
At last she finds the unicyclists playing a game of unicycle hockey, and she runs away with the ball with glee, only getting hit once with a hockey stick and it didn't hurt anyway.