As usual, I have roughly 9,873,407,654,870,923 ideas for projects running around in my head. I will sometime record voice notes for the different ideas while I'm working (it's tough to write while driving, but a voice memo...). Sometimes I even have the focus required to transfer those voice notes to written notes in Google Keep. (Side note: I LOVE me some Keep. If you like Evernote, but want something faster/simpler, I can't recommend it highly enough.)

Anyway. One of the myriad of project ideas that keeps floating to the surface (especially when listening to writing focussed podcasts) is that of writing a Patch novel. It would be a kind of 'origin story' - telling readers how he comes to be the character than many of you already are familiar with. But he's still young. He's probably in his late teens at the start of the book. By the end? He's a werewolf vigilante.

It's the 80s. With the whole DARE campaign (and others of its ilk) in high swing, drug 'pushers' become his primary source of income.

With that basic structure in your mind, I've been working on a list of things that I would like to incorporate into the story. These aren't plot points, or story arc, or... well, they're just elements that I think would help to make my story stand out. In  most cases because I haven't seen these elements anywhere else.

• Patch won't know he's a werewolf. This is usually an element (in most of the wereworf stories I've read anyway) that is glossed over. The character will say something like "I keep waking up with blood on my mouth the morning after the full moon. Holy shit! I'm a werewolf!". Except here's the thing: If that was to happen 'in the real world'? There's no way you would assume you're a werewolf. Werewolves don't exist. You would come up with a large number of (perhaps even more terrifying) reasons, but you would not think you were a werewolf. I kinda love torturing Patch, and this is likely to be a good source of material for that.
• The audience won't be able to say for certain if Patch is a werewolf or not. If I write it correctly, Patch will come up with reasonable enough explanations for things, or there will be enough 'evidence' that maybe he's just really fucking nuts. Well, he is, but maybe that's all that he is. Maybe.
• Patch won't know what he's doing. He's a kid. He'll be up against some very bad human beings. Things won't go well. He'll make a LOT of mistakes. Again - most stories I read, there's a training montage, and suddenly our hero is bullet proof. Ummm... no.
• The villains won't be 2D. This is one which I have seen done well elsewhere, but it's important to me. Mostly because I've never accomplished it properly elsewhere. I've always written about Patch as an outlet for my... aggression. As such, I didn't really want to think too much when it came time to write. That tends to have meant very generic bad guys. This would be a serious effort and thus a little thought/planning is well called for. This brings me to:
• Life is not black and white, but almost entirely shades of grey; Patch, in his youth and ignorance, however, only sees black and white. Again with the idea of realism in the characters, I want to make young Patrick into the brash "I know what's right, dammit." sort that I was in my youth. He's got a lot to learn in a lot of different senses.

There are a bajillion more, but this is a start for the list. Of course now that I'm trying to think of the long list that has been in my head all day, I can only come up with 5.