More Plot Mortar and Pre-NaNo Angst

Whoooo 'nother story idea. :D

Except this one is more vague than the one I'll be using this October as a warmup for NaNo. This one is basically building off of a little idea I've had in my head since I watched Clannad and was severely disappointed with how the ending was. It was so...anticlimactic.

So I'm stealing that weird "dead world" with the girl in it, and using it as the basis for this. This idea is probably going to morph into what I'll be using for NaNo this year, as opposed to my original ideas (Urban Myth and a couple others, but Urban Myth was getting the most priority in my mind).

It's not like I don't want to write Urban Myth and Eternal Flame (and I might even, after those are written, brainstorm up a fourth book that is about post-Highness Polly, post-Urban Myth Matt, and post-Eternal Flame Lia...though I might not). I might actually work on Eternal Flame (the one that's going to need the most worldbuilding and has the most amorphous plot right now) as if I were NaNoing it this year.

But I think I just don't want to write them NOW. I was originally planning on working on rewriting Highness first, anyway, sort of as a yearlong project I can work on when procrastinating on schoolwork. I was planning on starting work on it once Battlefield/Red was finished (AKA when the Battlefield story is half over...I will probably start work on Battlefield/Green during 2009 or maybe even use it for NaNo this year if I feel like it).

By the way, Red is almost finished, even though I'm only at around 51k or 52k. This is because I'm rushing like HELL through to the end (no pun intended). I imagine that if this draft even reaches 53k, I'll be unimaginably lucky. :P But whatever, it's just a draft. And this means I'll at least be able to say "hey, I finished another novel's first draft" without lying. :P It'll probably end at around 52k, though...but whatever. I'm cool with that. I still stubbornly say it's better than Highness.

Anyway. What was I saying? :3

Oh yeah. I remember now.

Okay, so I have this idea that involves a girl waking up in "a world that has ended". Basically a desert wasteland with the vague appearance of a ruined civilization. This is the "basic" world in the story, and she spends the course of the story (which might be more than one book?) traveling around through different worlds - since in the "ended world", they have these huge towers, and at the top there is a gate to another world. So the first story is about her in the "ended world" before she comes across one of the towers. Then she goes through the tower into another world, and spends a somewhat short amount of time there.

Like maybe there's a time limit for each world she visits - like a week? Maybe she can only spend a week in each world before she has to return. And to be able to come back to that world, she has to...do...something?

And she's looking for a way to permanently escape the "ended world" and go back to a place that, as she puts it, "actually has people".

...Yeah. Not like a saving-the-world story (coughBattlefieldcough) but more of a saving-yourself story (coughHighnesscough).

Except it doesn't fail this time. I'm sure that in the end, she will find a world she can stay in. :)

But other than that (and the fact that she has a possessed ring with a spider on it that is her "guide", but usually only states the obvious...though it gives her someone to talk to)...I got nothin'...

I might start worldbuilding for random worlds soon, and maybe come up with arching plotlines that last for about 10k-30k for each world. Then I can gather the arcs into cohesive overarching plots to put into a book/multiple books. I don't know if I want this to be a series or a two-part or three-part story (like Battlefield - two-part stories are annoying!)

So yeah.

Whee, worldbuilding! :P Maybe I'll steal the Eternal Flame world for one of the worlds for...um...gaaaah, I need a working title. HOW ABOUT..."The Ended World"? Yeah, whatever, that works. -_-;;;

Uh-huh. Plot mortar shells again, whooo.

Last point! It's not like I don't want to write Urban or Eternal (I really do! ESPECIALLY Urban, since I gotta publish it somehow), but I'll just write them later. After all, my promise to myself is that I have to have drafted five novels before I start worrying about quality at all. Rewrites, novellas, and scripts don't count. :P So I'm almost at two - I think I'll write Urban Myth after I've done those other three. ;) Since Matt and Sissy are the ones who stay in my head and make snarky comments about everything. ^_^;;

...That was a very long and rambling blog entry that didn't exactly accomplish anything...

Plot Mortar Shells

I just got hit by plot mortar shells. That's my new literary term that I just came up with just now (and it went through a few draft names, such as idea bomb, idea grenade, plot grenade, and then to plot mortar). Plot mortar shells are something unexpected and exciting, unlike real mortar shells, which sort of kill you. Or at least wound you. But whatever the outcome, it's unpleasant.

Plot mortar shells give you story ideas when you least expect them. Like a shell, the shrapnel from plot mortar shells goes in different directions, and, by chance, one of the small possibilities from the shell stabs you in the forehead. Then it goes into your brain, and you're stuck with the plot idea.

Sometimes you get hit by multiple peaces of the plot mortar shell, so you get lots of different ways of taking the plot. Sometimes you get hit by one piece of the shell, then later, you accidentally step on some more of the shrapnel while innocently wandering around the bombed area, and as it embeds itself in your feet, you get another take on the plot.

Whatever it is, it's exciting, and I got hit by some a few hours ago.

It started innocently enough - I was perusing the NaNoWriMo forums by chance, landing in the Life After NaNo subforum. Then I clicked on something with an interesting phrase in the title, "GothNoWriMo", where you can write 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k, or 60k (or another number, but those are the examples given on the Proboards forum for it). The 20k novella goal looked rather tempting to me, and after reading up on elements to gothic literature...

I found myself with a basic plot idea. I think the first thought I had was a slightly-new version on an old idea that's been bouncing in my head ever since I read about the Greek myths (particularly about Venus and Cupid, or something) in Sixth Grade. It was something like this:

A girl trapped in an old castle falls in love with the dragon that's keeping her there. But it's creepy.

Now it's something rather different.

There is still a girl, and she's trapped in an old castle. Except, instead of being isolated there with only one person to talk to (or, in the old version, one dragon), there are a lot of beings nearby - they're all monsters, though (except the spiders - they're normal spiders). She's not falling in love with whose keeping her there, though, since he's going to kill her (and he thinks she's his dead daughter). Instead, she falls in love with the first monster to understand her, due to the fact that she only speaks French (and a little English), and they're all Japanese.

My goal is to actually end the first draft around 20k words. I want to get better at making my thoughts concise, and I actually want to FINISH this novella within a month. I may or may not later take that idea and expand it into a full-sized novel later...

But, hey, the first college app is due the day after the last day of GothNoWriMo. A last-minute addition to my current list of literary accomplishments (two novels, a screenplay, an illustrated novella/"light novel", and some contest-placing short stories and poems) couldn't hurt, now, could it? :P And I really, really, really like this idea.

Currently, I've even chosen all the key characters and minor characters. I have the main romantic couple (the French girl - nicknamed "Azami" by the monsters - and the monster she falls in love with - Hakutaku!!!), the "evil" old blind man who may become a ghost or monster or something (Yamaguchi Ryouichi), the dead daughter who may or may not actually take part in the story (Yamaguchi Sumiko), and Azami's other friends: the kind-hearted Karakasa, the rather sweet pack of mekurabe, the sympathetic Ningyo, the almost homocidal Nekomata, the ecologically-minded Kirin, the guard Otoroshi, and the enigmatic Itsumaden. And, of course, the spiders, since everything I write has to have spiders SOMEWHERE.

Some of them might get cut to keep the story's first draft short, though. Karakasa, the mekurabe, and Otoroshi are STAYINGSTAYINGSTAYING, and Itsumaden will be in the story, too, but his "screentime" could get scaled back. I do want to include Ningyo, Nekomata, and Kirin, though. :( And I sort of want to include a hainu, too...or more monsters! I discovered an awesome encyclopedia-type site about Japanese monsters, which is realy helpful. 

The Obakemono Project (Click it and look! It's really cool! And I'm 99% sure the monster on the homepage is a hakutaku!)

So yes.

And I can't decide between two original names for the French girl (before they all just start calling her "Azami" due to the fact nobody can pronounce her real name or think of a good nickname from it). I either have Juliette-Agathe Lambert or Jacqueline-Audrey Lambert. Heck, I don't even know if I can pronounce those names. "Azami" is so much easier. :)

...I just hope I can always keep an air of tension or creepiness (THIS IS WHY I WANT NEKOMATA, SO HE CAN EAT CORPSES OR MAKE THEM DANCE), and not make it sound like (gulp) fanfiction.

Blegh.

Oh, and by the way, the production title for this story is Thistle Flower! :)

Creative Writing: A Definitive Count

Okay, so I did an "official" count of all the creative writing stuff I've done since the beginning of the year.

I *think* I did 8 pieces of "random prompt" little short...things, and I also wrote two poems. So that's 10. I also wrote 2 things (a poem and a short story) for Humanities, bringing the count up to 12. Then I counted three pieces for the Humanities project, which gives me a current total of 15 written pieces.

Whoo, that's four more than I originally thought! :P

BFS Update: August 10

Mrr. I have some other posts I should probably put up here, but how about (yet another) BFS update?

Oh yeah - and JulNo. Obviously, I found myself with a huge wordcount debt with about a little over a week left of the month (I think I was over 20k behind). Somehow I managed to hit 50k on the 31st like I planned (yay, I won), but it involved typing between 4-5k (and one day of 7k) for pretty much every single day I wrote (which was all but two or three?).

However, the draft is not done. There might be 10k left to write, maybe even up to 20k.

And the even more annoying thing is that this seems to be a two-part - maybe even three-part - story. So that means that once I have this draft done, I'm only HALF done. No epic final battle scene for me yet. D:

But yeah. That also means I'm not halfway done with my 2-drafts goal! Sad...I'm going to try to finish "Red" before school starts, though. We'll see if I can do it. :P Definitely will try to finish it before NaNo, though. I also want to rewrite Highness...REALLY want to rewrite Highness. I just want to have another novel draft done before I go back to my "baby".

Anyway, without further ado:

Key:
- Not Started
- In Progress
- Completed
- Failed

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - I have 50k of Red, and still that 17k from Travels back in February. Still need to get crackin' on this one...I guess...but yay, JulNo! I won!
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Previously done.
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 10/100 workouts - I just got back from vacation, and am trying to get a routine back. Blergh. Number is an estimate...
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - On track - and for the past week or so, I've been writing HELLA surplus. Probably because I was on vacation, and I needed to rant. :P
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 11/50 pieces (edit: 15/50), 5/12 accompanying images - Just wrote another one! I'm sticking with my previous estimate, by the way. That means I have to write 39 more little short things and draw 7 more images for them before the end of the year. Aiiaa. D:
6. One contest + one submission - Previously done.
7. More socializing - 21/40 events - I was on vacation, but while I was away, I hung out with my friend who I only see once a year! Twas fun. And my friend and I hung out yesterday And I did some after-school stuff with friends during summer school. The number is still just an estimate, though. Halfway point. Whoo! :P
8. "Progress" - Previously failed.
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - It's...summer? Summer homework and college apps don't count right now! Although, I finished my homeWORK, and have been working on apps, so now I just have studying and stuff...but it's still summer...waaah...
10. Summer job - Previously failed, and currently hating on the people who DO have it. (Angry face.)

Total:
- Not started: 1
- In Progress: 5
- Completed: 2
- Failed: 2

Haha, nothing actually changed, color-wise. :P