Post by Nakor on Apr 27, 2010 16:19:57 GMT -5
"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."—E.L. Doctorow
A thread for aspiring novelists (or successful ones) to share their goings-on, rant about how their characters REFUSE to obey them, their plot REFUSES to stay unknotted (darn things are like fishing line), how they love it when the coffee (or other preferred caffeine source) is done, and so forth.
Short story and non-fiction writers—and, well, any other kind of writer—are welcome too!
I'm still in the middle of working on finishing off my story from NaNoWriMo 2009. I got to 50k but then slowed down big time as during the month I had buggered up my wrist with an ulnar nerve strain. (Always, ALWAYS, take care to use the right posture when typing.) The story is sitting around the 65k mark now and is about 5-10k words from done. I keep getting stuck on parts in a rather large and spread-out bit of fighting in the end, trying to choreograph everything so that the timing works out and all the characters get at least a little limelight. Then I'm probably going to either go back and polish off the last novel I wrote—currently in second draft form—or run headlong into one of two new ideas I've been toying with.
My novel drafts and ideas collection so far (all fantasies):
---
Painted Souls: Siblings James and Cyndi are treasure hunters for their kingdom—people who explore ruins of the Ancient Civilization for the magical artifacts they left behind in the hopes of assisting their side of the war—and while on the Golden Isles uncover a pair of tomes that teach the method for casting actual spells, an art which had been lost ages ago. In a scuffle with rival treasure hunters from an opposing kingdom, they lose the black tome but retain the white. What they don't realize is that the white magic of the tome they kept drains the positive energy from the caster's soul to create its positive magic, slowly overbalancing the soul toward negativity—and that the black tome they lost does the opposite. They find themselves trying to stop the black tome from making it to their rival kingdom, something that they worry would escalate the war and the deaths it would cause, while James is being slowly lost to the side effects of the magic....
---
The Black War (working title—open to suggestions! lol): A ruling theocracy has discovered a land to the west far across the ocean, populated by barbarians using the powers of the Earth rather than the holy magics of light and darkness. Immediately they plan an invasion of the land to educate and convert the barbaric people to their beliefs and their rule. Black mage and rebel Anna leads an effort to assist her fellow countrymen in escaping the theocracy's draft and unfair punishments, doing her best with a small force to oppose the war from the shadows, but with only small impact.
Meanwhile in the Western land, Thalfon is returning from his training as a water mage to his coastal village where he intends to take up his father's profession as a fisherman. Upon arriving home, however, he and the villagers discover strange ships on the horizon—and a lot of them. As they draw close, they begin an assault on the town with strange magics of light and darkness the people of their land had never seen before, and Thalfon finds himself tied up in a war against a continent they didn't know existed.
---
Working ideas: (a) I was inspired by a line someone wrote in a thread on the NaNoWriMo forums, I forget what it was about, that went along the lines of "missing the ship to a great adventure." It gave me the idea to write a story about a group of people about to sail off to explore a distant land they had just discovered, but the main character misses the ride, or is kept off for some reason. In a desperate attempt to join, he takes a smaller vessel to try to follow, but ends up wrecked and washed ashore on the very lands his fellows were going to explore. After several adventures in the process of trying to find a way back, he eventually meets back up with his would-have-been fellow adventurers, who regale him with stories that they don't realize he played a star role in.
---
(b) This idea is really just a setting, almost a reverse-steampunk. If you've heard of steampunk this'll be easier to grasp. Where steampunk is nearly magical-like effects that come from steam-age technology in a Victorian setting, I imagined up a world where technological like effects come from magic in a modern-esque setting. A magical world so advanced that they have computers that are really just complex spells of light, truth and logic (and MagiTech Support), harvest druids instead of industrial farmers, planes and cars that move via telekinesis, and so forth. What I don't have is a story to go in that world yet.
---
So come, fellow writers and novelists, regale us with your projects and gripe with us about your disobedient characters and plot over a mug of your preferred beverage.
A thread for aspiring novelists (or successful ones) to share their goings-on, rant about how their characters REFUSE to obey them, their plot REFUSES to stay unknotted (darn things are like fishing line), how they love it when the coffee (or other preferred caffeine source) is done, and so forth.
Short story and non-fiction writers—and, well, any other kind of writer—are welcome too!
I'm still in the middle of working on finishing off my story from NaNoWriMo 2009. I got to 50k but then slowed down big time as during the month I had buggered up my wrist with an ulnar nerve strain. (Always, ALWAYS, take care to use the right posture when typing.) The story is sitting around the 65k mark now and is about 5-10k words from done. I keep getting stuck on parts in a rather large and spread-out bit of fighting in the end, trying to choreograph everything so that the timing works out and all the characters get at least a little limelight. Then I'm probably going to either go back and polish off the last novel I wrote—currently in second draft form—or run headlong into one of two new ideas I've been toying with.
My novel drafts and ideas collection so far (all fantasies):
---
Painted Souls: Siblings James and Cyndi are treasure hunters for their kingdom—people who explore ruins of the Ancient Civilization for the magical artifacts they left behind in the hopes of assisting their side of the war—and while on the Golden Isles uncover a pair of tomes that teach the method for casting actual spells, an art which had been lost ages ago. In a scuffle with rival treasure hunters from an opposing kingdom, they lose the black tome but retain the white. What they don't realize is that the white magic of the tome they kept drains the positive energy from the caster's soul to create its positive magic, slowly overbalancing the soul toward negativity—and that the black tome they lost does the opposite. They find themselves trying to stop the black tome from making it to their rival kingdom, something that they worry would escalate the war and the deaths it would cause, while James is being slowly lost to the side effects of the magic....
---
The Black War (working title—open to suggestions! lol): A ruling theocracy has discovered a land to the west far across the ocean, populated by barbarians using the powers of the Earth rather than the holy magics of light and darkness. Immediately they plan an invasion of the land to educate and convert the barbaric people to their beliefs and their rule. Black mage and rebel Anna leads an effort to assist her fellow countrymen in escaping the theocracy's draft and unfair punishments, doing her best with a small force to oppose the war from the shadows, but with only small impact.
Meanwhile in the Western land, Thalfon is returning from his training as a water mage to his coastal village where he intends to take up his father's profession as a fisherman. Upon arriving home, however, he and the villagers discover strange ships on the horizon—and a lot of them. As they draw close, they begin an assault on the town with strange magics of light and darkness the people of their land had never seen before, and Thalfon finds himself tied up in a war against a continent they didn't know existed.
---
Working ideas: (a) I was inspired by a line someone wrote in a thread on the NaNoWriMo forums, I forget what it was about, that went along the lines of "missing the ship to a great adventure." It gave me the idea to write a story about a group of people about to sail off to explore a distant land they had just discovered, but the main character misses the ride, or is kept off for some reason. In a desperate attempt to join, he takes a smaller vessel to try to follow, but ends up wrecked and washed ashore on the very lands his fellows were going to explore. After several adventures in the process of trying to find a way back, he eventually meets back up with his would-have-been fellow adventurers, who regale him with stories that they don't realize he played a star role in.
---
(b) This idea is really just a setting, almost a reverse-steampunk. If you've heard of steampunk this'll be easier to grasp. Where steampunk is nearly magical-like effects that come from steam-age technology in a Victorian setting, I imagined up a world where technological like effects come from magic in a modern-esque setting. A magical world so advanced that they have computers that are really just complex spells of light, truth and logic (and MagiTech Support), harvest druids instead of industrial farmers, planes and cars that move via telekinesis, and so forth. What I don't have is a story to go in that world yet.
---
So come, fellow writers and novelists, regale us with your projects and gripe with us about your disobedient characters and plot over a mug of your preferred beverage.