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Last year while my piano was in the hospital, I wrote my first ever novela. It was a fun experience and I felt like the theme was original, which gave me joy.

Now I have another idea. Here it is.


New Story Idea 2/3/14

Tone-Deaf (Working Title only)

Imagine a world that does not have a concept of music. There has never been music, although maybe it gets referred to as some kind of mystical language that early ancestors spoke. But whatever it might have been, it has been completely lost upon modern society—and the majority of people actually believe that the "once ancient language" is nothing more than a myth, like the Loch Ness Monster or Santa Claus.

They must have no concept of patterns, then, because music as a system creates patterns—unique or repeatable—of sound OVER time.

Maybe they have never developed an understanding of time—their days aren’t days at all; people work when they need to work, and sleep or play when they don’t. Maybe only the true intellectuals are able to apprehend the concepts of ‘Before” and “After” on anything but a middle school level.

So what would happen when a young boy is walking along and he suddenly hears sounds coming from around him—a gas pump, a conversation, a car starting—in concert, interacting rhythmically? The rhythmic and melodic patterns that develop sticks in his mind and he tries to recreate them, using his hands, feet and voice. He demonstrates them for his friends, but most don’t hear anything but a random collage of the sounds…but sweet young Marilou thinks she almost can hear it, and that the boy might be onto something big!

How would they attempt introduce the world to music? What happens next? How many others have those capabilities, to hear what almost nobody one else can?

Is the setting the 21st century?

Where are Marilou and the "young boy" from?

You have to treat it like a new scientific finding. Get published in the journal of choice that is closest to this sound. New concepts have to seek out the early adopters. Your job is to create enough awareness in the places where you think you'll find another Marilou. She may hold the answer in how she spends her 'time'.

There should be some overlord persecution once people realize the power the protagonist holds.

Perhaps a level of restriction upon unsuitable sounds.

The world you are imagining is EAI and it is run by the cruel tyrant Jon Abbey and his erstwhile lackey Brian Olewnick.

A. Kingstone wrote:Perhaps a level of restriction upon unsuitable sounds.

That hasn't stopped Kenny Gorelick.

Probably an alternate universe, on a world like Earth. And if I pick up on this thread of mine, it's my hope that I do approach it from a scientific view, at least at first. There will be scientists who hear the patterns but can't decipher anything, and thus they will think of it all as the emperor's new clothes. But a few will get a whiff of a beat, and we will see how that affects them.

I don't want to turn this into a story about oppression--music hasn't been hidden by the rulers, it was simply never discovered/uncovered. Still, the naysayers might get a little nasty.

And no slow dancing!

I will certainly have to be a better writer to pull this off than I was in this thread, Monte. The idea is more science fiction than anything else--music hasn't been repressed, just never imagined or discovered. Society without music, even without pattern recognition in sound...that intrigues me.