The most ambitious book I've ever thought of writing

leftbehind.com

I actually had the same idea a couple of years ago. And I actually got a bible and started reading and doing some stories like you said. Didn't work out. But, others have probably thought of it and I'm there is a book like it. For example, East of Eden by John Steinbeck revolves around the Cain and Abel story. So it isn't anything new.

this has already been done to death
did every one glance over this post?
[QUOTE=vidalia]leftbehind.com[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=ireLocus]Don't worry about it not being new. I mean, Biblicly, "There's nothing new under the sun..." anyways. (ecclesiastes I think) I say go for it. Write your story of Biblical proportions about the end of the world. Just remember to make it nothing like the Left Behind series, which is total crap. (Even from a "Christian" perspective) It's not literature, it's more like propaganda.

Hope to see you 'round the cult more, funbagz.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the pep-talk. And my attempt will be nothing like leftbehind! Mine will not be about the religions, but the stories behind them. I won't even play favorites between heaven and hell. I think a story is kind of boring if you make one side all good and the other all bad. because that's not how life works and I don't think the afterlife is all that different.

karbunkle you just enjoy shitting on my idea, don't you?:) but I thank you for the information anyways.

and some non-Christians don't even know what the book of revelations IS.

[QUOTE=funbagz]I only know of it by reputation. I cringe at how much research I will have to do.[/QUOTE]

... be careful, you might end up going native.

[QUOTE=ireLocus]*in best televangelist voice*

Oh, Remember, my son, Revalations is all around us-[I]uh[/I]. It's the end of the world, friend-[I]uh[/I]. It's GAWDS WRATH-[I]uh[/I]. You've seen the signs-uh, they're all around us-[I]uh[/I]. It's TIme to re-PENT-[I]uh[/I]. The LAWD waits-[I]uh[/I].

Just kidding. In reality, Revalations is an allegory as to what the end of the world will be like, it's not meant to be taken literally I don't think. You should read it sometime.[/QUOTE]

My (ex)roomate wanted me to read it. I have an aversion that is challenging to overcome, but I'm all for good literature.

The televangelist voice I imagined was Arsenio Hall from Coming to America. :)

... you guys are SO cute.

[QUOTE=funbagz]It just hit me one day. Why not write a book on the apocalypse. But bible style. With hundreds of short stories strung together, but all revolving around one plot. Hundreds of perspectives, hundreds of protagonists dealing with a singular theme. It would probably take me a lifetime to write, but I think it would be fun.

If I ever finish it, it would probably piss off a lot of the bible folk. But what doesn't piss them off?

So, what do you think? Is it a good idea?[/QUOTE]

[I]The Stand[/I] was King's stab at that. You can probably top him, he was drunk and coked out of his skull when he wrote that.

Clive Barker did better with [I]Imajica,[/I] but he's a better writer, generally, anyway.

The [I]Illuminatus! Trilogy[/I] wasn't necessarily and end-times sort of scenario, but it was on that scale.

[I]Cat's Cradle[/I] was a tighter, funnier end-time tale.

[I]Timescape[/I] is Gregory Benfords pedantic, long-winded example, though it's technically out of category as it's more of a near-miss with the end of the world.

In order to piss off any 'Bible folk,' (whoever they are), you'll have to finish it and publish it. The biggest thing Christian apologists will object to is wildly innacurate takes on what the Bible says being presented as fact. It's no different than gun enthusiasts who get a nervous tick when someone uses a '.46 Magnum' or some other non-existent gun. Or any other thing that's subject to fact-checking. Don't be afraid of research.

It's ambitious, but I don't see why you can't do it. I don't even know that length is dependent on the magnitude of the event. If you can come up with enough interesting characters who react totally differently to an end of the world, power to you.

But give the 'Bible folk' some credit. My brother is a minister with Youth Front (formerly Youth For Christ), has been for the ten years or so since he graduated Summa Cum Laude from Southwest Baptist University witha degree in Religious Education. He bought me 'Torture the Artist' for Christmas, and even had a sense of humor about my Amazon wish list including the [URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0972959823/qid=1104458263/sr=8-8/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i8_xgl14/103-7662977-1678258?v=glance&s=books&n=507846]Baby Jesus Butt Plug[/URL]. His only comment was that my wish list seemed to contain some pretty outre stuff.

I enjoy writers like Palahniuk, Elmore Leonard, Vonnegut, Clevenger, who can keep their stories tight. Steve Martin, too. [I]Pleasure of My Company[/I] is one of the better books I've read in recent years. But I also like Wolfe, Pynchon, DeLillo, Hardy, Dickens... It's okay to write at length if you have rich detail that is meaningful. What a lot of the end-of-the-world books I can recall have in common is they tend to have the length but do not have the complexity and meaning-laden detail. [I]Illuminatus![/I] definitely did, but it was more a book that ridiculed various eschatologies.

One of the writers on my 'to read list' is Umberto Eco, and if he's wrtten any tight, fast paced books, I haven't seen them.

You might consider studying the better Victorians for pointers. A lot of that stuff was serialized, and so had to stand as short stories even when linked up into a whole. The down side is redundancies and spoilers, but if you're writing it as a complete novel, you can avoid that.

Another good book to study for its mechanics would be [I]A Man In Full[/I] which draws heavily on Greco-Roman mythology in the place of Biblical references, and deals in detail with people at all ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. He ties them together in the way their actions have consequences for each other, the way they find salvation where they would least have expected it, the way the find trouble where they expected to find happiness, etc. Wolfe can be accused of a lot of things, but lack of ambition is not a characteristic of his novels.

My own novel will probably be fairly long, if not of Dickensian proportions. My goal is to make sure that all those words count. I can't recall ever thinking that Don DeLillo should have cut [I]Underworld[/I] down to size. Nor can I complain about the length of [I]V.[/I] or [I]Mason & Dixon.[/I] [I]Kavalier & Clay,[/I] [I]Fortress of Solitude,[/I] [I]Middlesex[/I] and [I]A Confederacy of Dunces[/I] -- all pretty lengthy, but excellent.

On the other hand, [I]Cosmopolis, The Crying of Lot 49,[/I] and [I]The Magic Christian[/I] are great novels that can be read by an average reader in an evening, or by me in two or there evenings.

As far as whether you'd finish it, that's uniquely your problem. I usually worry more about whether an agent, editor or, ultimately, bookstore customer would finish it. I think the best indication of whether it's a 'good idea' is whether you get disenchanted with it before you finish a draft. I've written opening chapters for probably a hundred or so novels in my life, but I've only gotten through a rough draft of one, which is in its third draft revisions, about to become a fourth draft. Part of that is me, I've got my ADHD treated, I'm older (and thus presumably mature in some way) and so on...

Mainly when it comes to big, ambitious works, I flash back to the movie 'Amadeus,' which I havent' seen in 15 years, but which had a couple of lines that just stuck with me. One was when the idiot emperor of Austria told Mozart that his opera (I forget which one) had 'too many notes.' The reply that there were exactly the number of notes required, no more or less, was a bold statement. Imagine if the President of the United States was also your sole patron, having the guts to lip off that way...

I guess if you're sure you're right, you're okay.

[QUOTE=vidalia]leftbehind.com[/QUOTE]
I was just going to say that....

Great Idea! Do itt