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“Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse,” I said, sounding calm, probably inaudible in the midst of the screaming. “Inevitable. Wasn’t that how she put it? I told them. Warned them.”
-Taylor Hebert. Yes, I'm a proud Skittle.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
"There's one thing I want to make clear, before we start.
When Anita beat up the sabre-tooth, she used a baseball bat.
When the blogs picked up on this story they all loved the idea of Anita using a cricket bat. An english/indian girl wielding a cricket bat? Perfect! Very Shaun Of The Dead! Well. It wasn't. It was a baseball bat: I never once said it was a cricket bat. Baseball bat all along.
Sabre-tooth? Baseball bat.
The two men on the tube? Baseball bat.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
I am in it again, and I figured I would also post snippets here for people to read, critique, and beg me for more to make sure I stick to it!
So I present to you...
A Gifted Fate
Spoiler
Zek stared down at the sword in his hand, frozen by shock as he watched the bright red blood slowly trickle down the blade. It pooled against the hilt for just a moment before dripping off the edge to splash on the dusty road below. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen,’ he thought, unable to look away. ‘It was just supposed to be a simple robbery! All I had to do was pop out from behind the rock, wave the sword around in a threatening manner, and relieve some farmer of a few dented coppers. Really, was it too much to ask that at least one thing go right in my life for once?’
The man at the other end of the sword simply stood there and chewed on a piece of bread, seemingly oblivious to the half foot of steel sticking out of his stomach. A bit of cheese followed the bread, and when that was done he washed his snack down with a sip of wine from the leather skin hanging by his belt. The whole process took a few moments, but when Zek simply continued to stand there dumbfounded the man let out an exasperated sigh. “I’d be much obliged if ye’d be gettin’ on with it,” he said, his words and accent oddly archaic. “I don’t quite have all day for ye to decide whether ye’re goin’ to be stickin’ it in or pullin’ it out.”
Zek’s eyes slowly moved to look at his erstwhile victim, widening in horror as he realized just how badly he had screwed up. No wonder the other man didn’t seem bothered by being stabbed, he was huge! He had to have been at least eight feet tall, if not taller, and was as wide as two bulls standing shoulder to shoulder. Not an ounce of it was fat, either. The traveler was wearing little more than a pair of leather pants and boots, exposing rippling muscles to the warmth of the spring sun. An old bear skin was draped over his shoulders, but that was more to keep the straps of his bags from digging into his shoulders. The man had clearly been on the road for a while, for his chin had disappeared behind several weeks’ worth of whiskers, and his skin was caked with sweat streaked dust.
“First time robbin’ a man?” the giant asked, grunting with amusement when Zek nodded dumbly. He reached down and grabbed Zek’s wrist with surprising gentleness, and one good tug was enough to pull the sword free. He reached down with his other hand and began to gently probe the wound with his finger, shaking his head in disgust. “Damn, got me right in the ropes. T’will be the sad squats tonight, sure enough.”
“Just who are you?!” Zek blurted, taking a couple steps backwards and raising his sword menacingly. ‘Right, because that worked so well before,’ a voice whined in the back of his mind. ‘How about next time we tickle his feet? Maybe if he laugh’s hard enough he might find it a bit more inconveniencing.’
“My name is Gren,” the giant answered, batting the sword aside with his massive hand. “And I can be a good friend, or a worse foe if ye don’t be puttin’ that blasted sticker away.”
Zek’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “Gren? The Gren? Son of Ae, Slayer of the Gorbeast, that Gren?”
“Aye, so you’ve heard of me then!” Gren answered with a smile. “Not surprisin’, really, most folk have at this point.”
“But...but how?” Zek protested. Everyone had heard of the legendary Gren. He was supposed to be the mortal son of Ae, Father of the Gods. It was a story Zek knew well, one he had been told often by his mother when he was a child. Gren had been one of the greatest champions of mankind, slaying monsters and wicked wizards alike…and was supposed to have lived more than four thousand years ago, back during the Age of Miracles, when the Gods still roamed the world and mixed with mortals. Ae had been the only exception, preferring not to interfere with his children’s creations. Only once had he broken that rule, when in a moment of weakness he seduced Queen Aryabach, who bore him a son. She had named the child Gren, and to protect his son Ae cursed all others who would claim the name, striking down infants before their first hour and slaying all other pretenders. It was a common superstition, and until now Zek had never met anyone so bold as to declare Gren’s name as theirs. “You’re supposed to be a myth, a legend!”
“Well, there’s what I’m supposed to be and what I am,” Gren answered with a nod. “As to being a legend, that I am. As to being a myth, I’m quite real. As to the why of that, well, there’s a short story that’s very long to tell and a long story that’s very short to tell.”
Zek stared as he tried to understand. ”What?”
“Walk with me and I’ll explain,” Gren answered, motioning for the would be thief to follow him as he started walking down the road.
“What about me stabbing you?” Zek protested.
“First time tryin’ to rob a man, right?” Gren asked with a shrug. Zek opened his mouth to answer, but Gren waved him off dismissively. “No, don’t bother tryin’ to deny it. I can read it all over yer face. Ye could barely hold yer breakfast in after ye stuck yer steel in my belly. If yer a thief yer not a very good one, and that means yer either new or a sucker. Too young to be a real sucker though, so I’ll give ye the benefit of the doubt. Plenty of time for ye to mend yer ways, and I figure I can help at least one more poor soul on my travels.”
“Yer tr- I mean, your travels?” Zek asked in confusion, hurrying to try and keep up. He had to take three steps just to match Gren’s one.
“Aye,” Gren answered with a nod. “Been at them a while now. Sort of stopped keepin’ track of for how long. Just not worth the time or effort, and I’ve got more than enough memories to keep track of as it is. Good number of centuries, at the least.”
“But, how?” Zek pressed. “I was always thought you were just a story, like all the other Children of the Gods. I mean, none of them are walking around out there…are they?”
“That they aren’t,” Gren confirmed. “As for why I’m still here, well… That’s a bit of a tale. I’m sure ye’ve heard all about how my father seduced my mother, right?” He waited for Zek to nod before continuing. “Well, that wasn’t so uncommon back then. The Gods were there and did as they pleased, and that mean there were all sorts of divine rugrats runnin’ around causin’ problems. Old Ae, he saw what sort of mischief they could get into, and decided to put down a few rules before things got too out of hand. What it ended up boilin’ down to was that each child would get a Godparent, another God or Goddess selected as a patron to give them their gifts. There’d be a big old party, and everyone would have fun. To keep things fair, the gifts tended to be pretty much the same throughout. The ladies would be beautiful and smart, gifted with magic. The lads would be handsome and cunning, gifted with strength. And everyone ended up invulnerable. Couldn’t be stabbed or burnt, sick, nothin’. They’d live their full lives and die of old age, just like mortals did. They’d just be a little special is all.”
He paused for a bit to unhook the wineskin from his belt and took a deep pull. “Well, I was born. And Old Ae, he decided he wanted me to have a happy life, so he picked the happiest God he knew – Uncle Fornysis.”
“Fornysis?” Zek asked, completely puzzled. “You mean the God of Wine?”
“Sure!” Gren answered with a chuckle. “Uncle Forny was always the life of the party back then. Had the smartest jokes and the most entertaining stories. Only problem is, he was a bit of a drunk as well.”
“Not surprising,” Zek replied as he walked around a pothole Gren had simply stepped across.
“Nope, nor was it back then,” Gren agreed. “But he was the one Old Ae picked. Uncle Forny was absolutely thrilled. He’d never been picked for that kind of thing. Most of the others tended to pick their friends and allies, instead. It wasn’t that they didn’t like him, o’ course. He just…wasn’t very responsible. Might even by why Old Ae picked him. A few of the others were jealous of him, but most were happy for him.”
“Well, Uncle Forny was so happy, that he just couldn’t stop drinkin’. By the time he was supposed to give the blessin’ he had more wine in him than any dozen vineyards. So nobody blames him for what came next. He came up to my cradle, and started namin’ my gifts. That was when the problems started. See, he had decided he wanted to give me a sort of animal theme. So first he gave me the speed of the falcon, and everyone cheered. He gave the strength of the elephant, and they were thrilled. And that was when he ran into a problem. He was so tossed that he couldn’t think of any cunnin’ animals. All the Gods and Goddesses were there, and they were just waitin’ for the cunnin’, but it just wasn’t comin’. He was getting pretty flustered at that point, and that’s when he screwed up and declared that I’d be immortal.”
Zek frowned and shook his head. “So? Wasn’t he supposed to?”
“That’s what a lot of people think, but no, he just didn’t know the difference,” Gren answered with a grimace. “See, I got the opposite from all my cousins. They couldn’t be hurt, but eventually they would die. Me, I can be stabbed, burned, even get sick once in a while. But I can’t die. That’s when the problems started.”
“What problems?” Zek asked, too caught up in the story to pay any attention to where they were going.
“Well, by then there had been several generations of Godlings born,” Gren answered with a sigh. “And just because their parents were Gods didn’t make the loss of a child any easier. A few wanted to bless their grandchildren with immortality as well, sort of as replacements for the ones they’d already lost, but Old Ae wouldn’t let them. He insisted that this was the world of mortals, and it had to remain in mortal hands. But every time a new Godlin’ was born, we’d all turn up, with me right there to throw it in their faces that while they’d have to say goodbye, Old Ae never would. So eventually, they just stopped have kids. And that was the First Age ended.”
“But surely people would still notice if you’ve been around all this time!” Zek insisted.
“Well, there be a few that know about me, that’s right enough,” Gren admitted with a slight nod. “But there have been more and more mortals with each passing year, and by now I’m probably the only Godlin left, and there’s far more than that of all you. One man, wanderin’ amongst millions? I fight a battle here, break a up a cult there. At first my feats seem incredible, but time passes and memory fades, until I was just unusually strong or perhaps not as outnumbered as I seem. Half the time I don’t even give my real name, just because then I end up answerin’ questions like these.”
“Then why answer them for me?” Zek asked.
“Because there is somethin’ I like about you,” Gren answered. “Now come. I need to see a man about a hydra.”
“A what?”
* * *
Little Harbor was just that. As far as small fishing villages went it was wholly unremarkable. It was home to a few hundred souls, all living in small stone houses designed to throw off the worst of the autumn storms. The largest building was the Mermaid’s Twinn, which served as both tavern for the locals and inn for traveling merchants. There were four major piers were the fishers unloaded their catches each day, and several dozen smaller docks where they tied up at night. The docks were decorated four times a year for major holidays, but right then they were completely vacant save for the empty boats bobbing at their moorings. There no fishmongers calling out prices, and no seamstresses repairing nets. The shipwrights had packed away their tools, and not a single fisherman could be found amongst the lines. Even the gulls had moved on, looking for more active ports to scavenge their meals from.
It wasn’t that people didn’t want to work. They just weren’t sure what to do about the hydra that had decided their docks were the best place to build a new nest.
The hydra in question was named Raeshel, and was a near perfect specimen of her species. She was more than forty feet long from the tip of her tail to the end of her longest neck, her scales were colored in alternating layers of red and black that seemed to ripple as she moved. Ten of her eleven heads moved with expertly coordinated graces as they ripped the planks from the docks and jammed them into the sandy sea floor around her. Every so often one of the planks would break, at which point the head would carelessly toss it away. Most landed out to sea, but a few found their way into the bedrooms and ceilings of unlucky villagers. Her eleventh head was singing*,
“Leviathan
Cresting the waves
Leading us all to the grave
Leviathan
Slaying all foes
Who dare to oppose
Tearing bodies limb from limb
Eviscerating on a whim!”
That was not to say that she was singing well. Raeshel’s voice was like two ships colliding in the night, and her habit of punctuating each line with a blast of poisonous gas meant her singing had produced just as many doomed souls. A sort of pale green fog had begun to linger about her, leaving behind the bloated corpse of any fish unlucky enough to wander into the area. She had also been singing for about five days straight, much to the dismay of the villagers who had remained. Her constant caterwauling kept them up at all hours of the night, and even the most hardy of souls found their grip on their remaining sanity to be tenuous at best.
Which explained how Zek had managed to find himself on the wrong end of a sword for the second time that day. The sword in question was an ancient relic of war, and whatever glory it might have once enjoyed had long since surrendered to the ravages of time, leaving behind a blackened and rust spotted blade held by a bent backed old man glaring at them through the thick lenses of his spectacles. Zakarya Fisher had been born in Little Harbor, had been raised Little Harbor, and would in all likelihood die in Little Harbor, come Hell or off key Hydra. As a young man he had worked on his father’s boat, where he had spent his days gutting fish from dawn to dusk. The smell of fish had become a part of his very being, and he wore it as proudly as he did the small gold chain that marked him as the Mayor of Little Harbor.
“Who did you say you were again? And don’t be thinking you can be taking advantage of us because of yonder beastie. We won’t be having with any conmen or charlatans. She might not be able to sing worth a damn, but she’s good for getting rid of pesky bodies!” Zakarya cackled, his sword wobbling unsteadily. Zek might have found the old man’s attempt at being threatening to be comical if it wasn’t for the fact that the tip of the blade happened to be less than an inch from his Adam’s apple.
‘Best not make any sudden moves,’ Zek thought as he stared at the tip of the blade. The urge to swallow was suddenly both overwhelming and something be avoided at all costs. ‘Grampa there is clearly off his rocker. Not that I can blame him. Does that thing ever shut up?’
“Just some good men who heard you were having a spot of trouble,” Gren answered. Zek noticed that the demigod made a point of keeping both hands firmly attached to his belt. Apparently he didn’t want to risk making any sudden movement, either.
*With apologies and due respect to Alestorm and their song Leviathan
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Basilisk 6
Pilot of the Thing
I'm not evil. My morals just aren't the same as society's.
On a one man quest to beat the Star Wars Universe, using nothing but simple, plain, ordinary logic. Score so far: Me 593 SWU 450
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eldan
Mister Bark, you are a genius, Sir.
D'awww, shucks~
Quote:
Originally Posted by CarpeGuitarrem
Started on the bus this morning. "The world burned beneath the fierce southern sun." Or something like that, I don't remember exactly. But I got a decent paragraph down!
This made me think about a bunch of people riding on a bus driving through a barren landscape under a searing, enlarged sun in a post-apocalyptic setting.
So far I've got a little past 400 words and two characters: Sern, the main guy, who sometimes gets beaten up by a gang of thugs, and Cassie, a blonde woman with an eyepatch who drives an old, patched-up taxi.
__________________
Strawberries is thanked for being an awesome avatarist.
“Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse,” I said, sounding calm, probably inaudible in the midst of the screaming. “Inevitable. Wasn’t that how she put it? I told them. Warned them.”
-Taylor Hebert. Yes, I'm a proud Skittle.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
"The sun shone bright on an early autumn day. The trees were splendidly colored, the scenery picturesque. The car ride might have been pleasant if they weren't speeding along a rural highway at too-many-miles-per-hour."
1796 words done.
__________________
bees
You, too, could have a trophy case this intense! Participate in Iron Avatarist! Do it, or I'll start sending you drunken PMs.
Spoiler
I am not brave enough to say something outrageous and be serious. You'll be happier if you assume I'm joking.
Stoats legit King Arthur by The Succubus.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by Morph Bark
This made me think about a bunch of people riding on a bus driving through a barren landscape under a searing, enlarged sun in a post-apocalyptic setting.
It wouldn't work in my story, but that is an awesome mental image. Actually reminds me of Doctor Who (Planet of the Dead).
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
Well, might as well re-post this request for help with my project idea I made in the wrong topic/forum:
Quote:
Okay, I know it's a bit late to make this topic, but NaNoWriMo is coming closer, and I was wondering if you guys could help me with this idea for a novel I have. I have a lot of really great concepts and vignettes I want to include, but no idea how to make them fit together as a cohesive story.
Lemme describe the base of the story and the ideas I've got so far:
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Genre: The same genre as Dr. McNinja, IE, a action-comedy sci-fi/urban fantasy merger with no "masquerade" and heavy amounts of wierdness that nevertheless all keeps its own internal consistency and forms a cohesive mythos. Or, if you're not being charitable, an urban-fantasy equivalent to World of Synnibarr
Setting: A heavily fictionalized version of our modern world where super-science, magic, and stranger things run amok. D&d-style adventuring is not only an accepted and legitimate profession, but also legally regulated with its own somewhat-loosely-organized guild/union (though the legal framework would be kept vague as possible to avoid having holes poked into it).
More Specific Setting: A heavily fictionalized version of my hometown Tucson set in the aforementioned setting.
Starting Plot: Our heroes, a band of four adventurers, are low on cash and thus decide to head over to Tucson, the nearest moderate-sized city, to look for work .The book follows them as they take their various adventuring jobs, and the threads that connect them, amongst other things.
Main Characters:
Bill: A large, muscular African-American man with a pleasant, gentle disposition. He's considered the groups de-facto leader due to being the most sensible, with a knowledge of most practical adventure-y matters and a great deal of ingenuity and deductive skills.
He's soft-spoken and nice, which can end up getting him into trouble at times. Mainly dresses in a plaid shirt, blue jeans, a leather vest and a cowboy hat. Dual wields .44 Magnums as his main weapons (Explained by his muscularity and the setting running on action-movie physics)
Xill: A grey alien from one of the New Mexican alien-inhabited-towns established after the (far more extensive than in our world) Roswell crash. He's a magic user of great ability and repute, but this makes him shunned by his people who gave up magic hundreds of millenia ago in support of Science.
He met with Bill during an incident in New York where he was maintaining a bookstore and Bill was taking a job trying to foil a FreePlumber (Think sewer based conspiracy-theory masons) plot to rouse all the rats of New York into a single powerfully-psychic rat-king. One thing led to another, xill started adventuring with bill after that incident, and now they're almost inseparable best friends.
Xill is somewhat skittish and paranoid due to a lifetime of various unpleasant magical incedents, but he is ever-faithful to his friends and an almost encyclopedic (though long-winded) source on all things mythic. He has posesion of the mysterious Iron Wand of Indiana from another mission, able to control and shape metal with incredible ability in addition to its excellent properties as a magical focus, but Xill is still trying to get the hang of how to use the damned thing.
Valerie: A woman with a gymnast's physique, she is the daughter of a prominent Privateer (Essentially a pirate, but with legal support via the adventurer's guild). She's loud, crass, crude, bombastic, libidinous, perverted, slightly nutty and overall a very-over-the top person. This is both her greatest advantage and disadvantage, for while her risk taking and willingness to think out-of-the-box can be an asset, it can also be a big 'ol hindrance.
She usually dresses i na striped shirt which she rarely ever washes and a pair of lose pants, with a bandanna covering her short, blonde hair completely except for a little bob on the front of her face.
Her swords are named "Subtlety" and "Tact" as a swipe at a guy who said she had neither of these qualities. She can swing 'em hard enough to chop through a block of solid concrete and she fights with them usually via hit-n-run strikes. She's also a big fan of B-movies and comics.
Bishikama 9001: Created as the perfect assassin-droid by the Japanese Rent-A-Ninja Corporation, he made the mistake of falling in love with his (male) trainer. When said trainer was slaughtered, he ran away from the corporation to wander the world as a ronin, eventually ending up in the U.S. with bill's group. This backstory's pretty incidental to the story, but I thought it'd be nice to know.
He looks pretty much human, avoiding the uncanny valley via an excellent rubber-y skin covering. He looks like what he would call a bishonen and everybody else would call a god-damned-prettyboy. He's very good at his job of stealthing and slashing when he's not trying to be fancy or beautiful about it. Unfortunately,
Is kind of over-dramatic, and loves to say everything in the most purple-prose romance-novel type speech possible. Despite finding her uncouth and vulgar, he is secretly attracted to Valerie in spite of himself (yes he is bi, he was designed that way on purpose for versatility via infiltration).
Story Beats/Concepts I want to put in:
-The heroes' main base of operations being a hotel in the middle of the great wash called The Kactus Kabaret, specifically designed to rise like a boat when the Wash is flooded.
-A mysterious woman who shows up at the hotel looking for her father's killer (Whose identity I haven't decided on yet, perhaps the Duke from down below), who happens to behinding from almost everyone that she's a bizarrely deformed mutant with horrible claw hands, eyestalks, and secondary tentacle-arms amongst other things. She's Bill's love interest.
-An amnesiac alien whose flying saucer they accidentally cause to crash would spend a fair amount of time recovering in the Kactus Kabaret. She's from a race of millitant conquerors who use technology/bioweapons very similar to B-movie tech/monsters, and looks like a sexy female version of Ro-Man. Xill struggles ethically on whether or not to tell her the truth about this as she slowly recovers her memory, even as he struggles to reconcile his attraction to her with himself despite their races historically being ancient enemies. The phrase "I cannot, but I must" would be uttered more than once through this story arc.
-A recurring pair of David Icke-style Reptillians* as minor characters searching for something of theirs that escaped
-An encounter with a creepy Polybius machine.
-A Silent Hill style "Otherworld" in Old Tucson Studios, made comical due to the characters casual reactions to it, as that sort of thing is a common phenomena in-setting (Ones mentioned include The Hotel California, Lake Really Goddamn Eerie, The House Beyond the Rock and Gregory House).
-A group of fae and obake living at the Tanque Verde Swap Meet after being banished from the other great Fae enclave in Tucson, The Valley of the Moon.
-An evil cyborg named Chop-Shop who is trying to create a small army of robots using parts from the Airplane Graveyard where he's set up shop.
-A running gag of the god Coyote, in human form, sending forth truly bizarre "random encounters" from the shadows to baffle the heroes. these would have an effect on the plot and a big payoff near the end.
-A date scene between Bishikama and Valerie at a chinese restaurant that becomes more and more silly as the scene goes on, and goes really nuts when the forgotten Native American demigod beneath the building wakes up.
-A running gag also of Channel 4's Skynet camera system (I did not make this up, they really do call them Skynet here) growing to hate mankind.
-A minor evil mage named the Halloween Kid (With a gimmick of using enchanted Halloween props) who the characters deal with very early in the story, who comes back much nastier later in.
-Bill having to negotiate a peace between the many Resident Evil-style biomonsters escaped from Raytheon's bio-weapons department to eke out a living in the aforementioned Airplane Graveyard who just want to live in peace and Raytheon's tiny (as in, it consists of two people) Bioweapons department (because every Millitary corporation has to have one) who want what they consider their property back, and are sending out their parent company's experimental "Mr SWAT" drones to try and capture or "liquidate" them.
-Raytheon's missile department experimenting on a cursed object from the Lost Duchman Mine.
-The heroes having to protect a werewolf-based** strip club on the outskirts of town from a meglomanaiacal mutant from the Sorta-Forbidden Zone (formerly Known as New Jersey) who calls himself The Duke and has a grude against the club's owner.
-The main villains being two Qlipoth*** in human form who are, in one way or another, behind a large chunk of the bad things in the book and trying to use Tucson as a testing ground for a plan to turn the entirety of North America into a blighted wasteland.
*The Reptillians in this setting are just like the conspiracy-theory ones, except for the fact that they're laughably incompetent at their job of conspiracy-mongering, only really a threat when their creations go out of their control.
** There are a few different types of Werewolves in this setting, such as the ones who are granted their mysterious power by heredity or at the whim of the weird and ancient Wolf spirit and can turn into fully sentient but non-speaking humanoid hybrid forms (The ones that work at the strip club are this type), the Lon Chaney style ones; who transform every night during the time the Wolfsbane is blooming and whose murderous rampages are actually all collectively pupeteered by a very nasty individual of the former werewolf type, the ones who've made a deal with the devil to turn into giant flaming hell-wolves when they wear a special wolf pelt, and Wannabees; who are fursuit based ones similar to the former except they are powered only by their own insanity, far more comical looking, and much more powerful and dangerous.
***While demons in this setting are your typical fallen angels, Qlipoth are far nastier anti-angels created by Angra Maynu, god's evil counterpart. Yes, this setting does mix mythologies a lot
-------
So yea, you've got an idea of the bits I want to include and how big my concept is, but I'm having trouble fitting them together as a cohesive whole due to its size and amount of stuff I want to include, especially tying in the villains pulling the strings to most of the bad stuff happening.
The story' structure would be relatively episodic, but with an overarching story arc and various running plotlines tying it together, like a lot of animated TV shows nowadays. So do you think my ideas are good and can you help me tie the crazy together?
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
Haven't done very much yet but I've managed to get an outline of how I want the book to go, sections to read up on and the intro:
Spoiler
Introduction
There is nothing quite so dangerous as to be faced with your heart's desire.
Humans are remarkably resilient creatures. We can endure extremes of heat and cold, we can survive without food for up to a month and show extraordinary courage in the face of danger. Yet when we are presented with something we truly yearn for, we abandon caution, reason shuts down and we become no better than a mouse seeking the cheese from a trap.
It is said that there are seven deadly sins – lust, envy, greed, sloth, pride, wrath and gluttony. In truth, all these sins boil down to one thing; desire. Desire for love, desire for wealth, for admiration or revenge. Desire drives us to acts of greatness or depravity and to seize what we wish for. Desire, it could be argued, is the core of human nature.
It is also our greatest weakness. When you know what someone desires, you have a tool you can use against them, It becomes a way of manipulation and control, when you offer just enough to lead your victim on with promises of more until the trap closes and they are within your power.
Desire is a potent tool, even when wielded by mere mortals. Suppose that there was a creature that knew exactly what you wished for, a walking embodiment of Desire itself. Such a being would be beautiful beyond mortal comprehension and would hold phenomenal power over us. It could be as kind or as cruel as it wished to be and yet even if it sought to hurt us, kill us, claim our very souls, we would willingly seek it out, just for the promise of being granted our heart's desire.
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Proof that avataring standards in the Playground have reached an all-time low:
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
~1,700 words of stumbling through an intro with the first main character so that he can meet the other main character. I left him stuck in a duct made of obsidian and he's pressing against the sharp edges of the exit.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
I should probably start keeping a list of character names and such, so I don't forget who's who and what. Even though right now I still only have 3 characters in the story so far, and one of them hasn't been conscious yet.
__________________
Strawberries is thanked for being an awesome avatarist.
“Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse,” I said, sounding calm, probably inaudible in the midst of the screaming. “Inevitable. Wasn’t that how she put it? I told them. Warned them.”
-Taylor Hebert. Yes, I'm a proud Skittle.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
It was extremely hard to get writing, even if this story isn't from scratch. But I managed to scrape the daily word count and I even went past a little.
I'm at an especially hard point of the story. This isn't any less work than starting from scratch.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
Manged to make more progress today, accomplished my words and in a briefer time than yesterday. Right now I've only written the introduction and part of the first chapter so it seems like there is a lot left to write which is good, I haven't even come close to the action yet.
If you're ever in a situation where you can't survive, go for the broke and fill all of creation with chickens. Just imagine the reaction of people halfway around the world when every square inch of space in their world is suddenly and completely full of chickens.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
2604 for day one. I'm about 1/3 of the way through what I'd pre-planned. I suspect it'll get harder to maintain the page count after that gets used up.
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Sometimes, the knights are the monsters
The main problem with the world? So many grownups, not enough adults.
Pain is nature's way of saying you're not dead and the other guy is.
Current Project: Building a new superheroic campaign for the new generation of our old gaming group.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
I'm at 1400, and the only thing keeping me writing is a poetry idea I learned recently: pre-writing on a topic until actual fragments of poetry start to come out. Looking at what I've written as pre-writing with little bits that wouldn't have come out any other way helps keep me going.
To aid in this, I decided that I couldn't be looking at the page last night. If I'm looking at the page, I'm editing everything I write straight away. If I have my eyes closed, I know the keyboard well enough to write anyway. Plus, you know, darkness brings the mind of the writer closer to the oineric wellspring of myth.
And that's why my roommate thought I was writing in my sleep last night.
__________________
-build that wall and build it strong-
Kasanip - best artist; Rarity - best smile; Thanqol - good Question
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhoeKun
Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
Quote:
Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom
Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kasanip
I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dervag
It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
Didn't even get past 400 words yet, not for lack of ideas, but due to the fact that I was so damned busy with my job for the Aztec Press (The Pima Community college Newspaper) that I barely had time. I'd gotta catch up today dangit.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
700 words tonight. Bit blah on the text, it was mostly filler but got me past a bit of writer's block (the rest was revising an eye-gouging scene, so yeah).
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
All right. Three chapters and 2,521 words into this and I can safely say that my inner editor is irritating as ****. I spent about an hour revising a single fight scene. Still, this is pretty darn good for starting almost a day late.
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I am a:
Spoiler
Two-handed martial reach weapon. I do d10 weapon dice, weigh 12 pounds, and belong to the Axe group.
Many, many thanks to kpenguin for the amazing avatar.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
Alright.
You know what?
I'm busy as ever. And I'm already a day and a half behind.
#$&* it.
0
Now, I already have a started work. I'm currently 12,132 words into it. So I'm going to start my counting from that baseline as 0.
Let's do this.
__________________ Quote of the [insert timeframe here]: (Week? Perhaps! Year? Also maybe.)
"Those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown worlds...may then with the fair white wings of Imagination hope to soar further into the unexplored amidst which we live."
-Augusta Ada Lovelace
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
I wrote a bit less than I should have tonight, but I did it quickly and finished a chapter so it's really a bit of a wash. I might write more but for now I figure it's a decent amount written. First two chapters done, though the first is just kind of an introduction.
If you're ever in a situation where you can't survive, go for the broke and fill all of creation with chickens. Just imagine the reaction of people halfway around the world when every square inch of space in their world is suddenly and completely full of chickens.
“Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse,” I said, sounding calm, probably inaudible in the midst of the screaming. “Inevitable. Wasn’t that how she put it? I told them. Warned them.”
-Taylor Hebert. Yes, I'm a proud Skittle.
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Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
or is that a bit contrived for the character you're writing?
