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Hey everyone! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you stopped by. This week, we’re finishing out our series for the month of October! How crazy is that? November starts on Thursday—but I’ll be sticking with this series through the end of the week, so you’ll have to wait until next Tuesday to find out what November’s theme is. ;-)

This month, we’ve been talking about themes, legends, and myths that are incredibly popular in fiction (and have been, for a very long time). They’re things that can easily be modified to make amazing new stories, even though we’ve seen a lot of these things a million times before.

And today? Yet another that I haven’t explored yet, in my own writing. I really need to though.

#9: The Unknown

I partially debated not using this as a topic, because it could be argued that the unknown is in every single story ever. There’s always something the reader doesn’t know until the end of the book. That’s just the way stories go. But that’s not what I mean, really.

By the unknown, I mean using that unknown as a major part of a story. For instance, in the movie The Village, those we don’t speak of are an unknown factor, something that doesn’t exist in real life. It’s a creature, or a thing, or maybe it’s a person in a mask. We don’t know, and that’s what makes it fascinating.

It’s also done to death, between movies, television shows, and writing.

But I’ll have you notice that Stranger Things also focused on the idea of the unknown, and that it did so with wild success—and without anyone really saying that they’d already seen this story done enough times and didn’t think it needed to be rehashed in the method the writers had chosen.

So, obviously, it can be done to great benefit and great appeal. Which is why I wanted to bring it up as a part of this series.

As with everything in this series, even the idea of the unknown is enough to spark interest in a lot of readers, which is what makes it one of those themes that we writers should really take advantage of. Seriously. I need to do this. You should too.

This will always be a topic that interests readers, and if you can take your own incredibly unique spin on it, your story could be the next one that ends up being as big as Stranger Things or The Village. That could be you. All you have to do is find the right angle—and I’d love to help!

No, really! If you have story ideas and you want to run them by someone, I’m always here for you. I’ve had plenty of ideas in my day, and a good half of them were duds. I can tell you what’ll make a good story, and what might not have enough story behind it. And, you know me, I’m the author who loves to help other authors. Always.

[love]

{Rani Divine}