Tabula Rasa

A blank page is menacing. Every time we sit at our desktop to write something new, that empty whiteness stares wide, its solitary cursor laughing with each and every blink. The only way to quiet that mockery is to fill the blank slate with our ideals, thoughts, anecdotes overheard at Applebee's, and characters that we knew from high school creative writing. Ultimately we betray ourselves. Writing tells us much about the writer as the world they envision tells us what to beware. Read George Orwell's Animal Farm, but read it after his Homage to Catalonia. Watch Joss Whedon's Dollhouse and see what happens when a human mind can be filled with both everything and nothingness. Stories of dystopia are the norm, as they serve to guide, warn and map paths that could otherwise lead to insanity. Dystopia offers something fearful to the reader -- a future to avoid.

As a writer, one could look to fill that blank page with fears, regrets and emotions. Happiness and bunnies are cute, but what purpose do they serve the audience? What are you most afraid of?