How to train your dragon and world building

One of the movies I've adored in the past few years is How to Train Your Dragon. It wasn't pixar, or disney, so I don't think it came out to huge announcements, but I've since watched it several times and every time I marvel at the imagination that went into this story.

A viking world, in which the vikings fight dragons. And perhaps the dragons aren't all bad. As a concept it's pretty simple, and it could translate into so many genres, Fantasy, YA, even romance.

And as new ideas fight for space in my head and the sense from the conference that anything is possible, I come back to the simplicity and imagination of this movie. There was enough there from popular culture that the writers didn't have to explain the world too much. We all know vikings to some degree and we all know dragons, and from there they expanded on the ideas, by giving us classifications of dragons, and a school for dragon fighting and a hero who is smaller and weaker, but smarter than those around him. Simple and smart, yet imaginative.

And those have become my guidelines for the next WIP. Simple and smart, but imaginative. If I stick to that guideline, I'll have a book I'm excited to write, and really, at this point, that's all I care about.

On an entirely different note, anyone watching Tru Blood? I am really enjoying it, because it feels campy this season. They are the opposite of simple, as seasons move on, they keep introducing new elements, fairys, witches, were-panthers, and sometimes the stories feel a little too crowded. Simple is harder, simple is Mad Men during the last season, where they distilled the storylines and characters to a few concepts. Right now Mad Men trumps Tru Blood.