I want to write a Carl Barks style adventure story for my NaNo this year. You know... treasure collector goes on mad-dash quest to find lost/forgotten treasure, which takes him to the deepest darkest jungles where he meets up with all sorts of strange native tribes, grabs the sacred artifact, and barly escapes with his life. The Indiana Jones series of movies was based on Carl Barks' stories btw. Carl Barks stories (written in the 1930's and 1940's) are action packed and loads of great fun.
This year I'm doing an Adventure~Fantasy
(I think....may change mind by the time November gets here... last year I had everything planned out a month in advance and than threw it all out on day 2 of NaNo and did something totaly differant!)
I'm thinking Carl Barks style adventure set in a fantasy world backdrop. I'm planning to send my hero off after a "lost treasure", and have him end up in the deep jungle where there's a lost civilization that is totally cut off from the rest of the world and is totally differant from humans as we know them. Not sure yet if it'll be a "magic realm" or not.
At the moment, I set mine in the middle of a lush green jungle, probably South America or PNG but not sure yet. I was thinking that maybe their city was in a volcanic valley, where the mountains were so tall and so forbodin (rumbling and spouting lava) that the people never dared leave the vally, while at the same time outsides thought it was just on big volcano so never went into the valley. That's how I'm planning to isolate my city anyways.
I was thinking of having an oracle of some sort in my story, but I don't much about oracles. But I was thinking of having some sort of "holy building" in the center of the civilization, with a priestess of some sort where folks go to seek advice.
What's your take on this? I'd love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!
Is there anyone here this year who is writing (or has written in the past) an adventure story of this nature? Have you got any advice to offer?
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56,135 / 50,000
Oct 4, 2007 - 14 12
I recently started a fantasy adventure/epic of my own where my main character is a female elf treasure hunter of sorts. I've got about 15k done of it so far... but I'm sure it's a bit more fantastical than what you have in mind!
Your idea sounds like a blast! I wish I had some concrete idea to build in for NaNo. Instead, I continue to bounce from genre forum to genre forum hoping something comes to mind!
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"You're pretty good with words, but words won't save your life."
ScriFry '08: Hit or Miss (winner)
NaNo '07: Finding Allison Wu (winner)
ScriFry '07: Making Chase (winner)
NaNo '06: T
25,021 / 50,000
Oct 4, 2007 - 21 29
sounds like you've got a great start. when november starts, jump off from there, and feel free to go wherever it takes you! but don't forget that jungles have monkeys ... and monkeys are hil-ar-i-ous.
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SF 07: Wind Machine (complete)
Nano 06: Finders Key-pers (winner)
Nano 05: Dixie Strange and the Infinite Staircase
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75,201 / 50,000
Oct 19, 2007 - 04 34
I've been throwing this idea around for a while now. Other than what I wrote in the opening post though, I have no idea where I'm going to take it.
Normally, I write more fantasy. I usually write about darker faeries, esp. Sirens and Phookas. Generally my stuff goes into more horror than fantasy, but it's set in fantasy realms. So this year's NaNo is going to be a big change from my usual style of writing.
Oddly though, what I read and what I write are very differant. I love to read action, adventure, and sci-fi, yet I write fantsy-horror. Go figure. This well be my first attempt at writing adventure. I hope I can do the genre justice.
I just got out a book about Amazon rainforests from the library.... oooh! such lovly pictures! all lush and green! and little animals and birds and retiles and flowers. Everything is so beautiful, I don't know how I'll be able to describe those things good enough.
I've been changeing genres on my author info every few days... first I feel like Sword &Sorcery should be fantasy right?
But than I think fantasy is more medival stuff and dragons and such, and I'm not doing that, so than I'll switch to adventure, you know, sword fights, loin cloth wearing warriors, action, should be adventure right? Than I get reading the adventure forum to see what others are doing, and think... huh? pirates? ninjas? knights? am I the only one here doing a Conan style book? So than I switched it back to fanasty....
next day though I got to thinking... I'm basing my story in ancient Mayan cutlture right? I studying the Aztec and Mayans and Incas and Olmec to build my fictional world by, I'm useing Mesoamerican religions and shamanism to base my socercy stuff on... it's leaning an awful lot towards historical fiction, so I change my genre to historical fiction.
Than I start reading the historical fiction forum and I realise these guys think that if you make Napoleon sneeze on the wrong day, than your story isn't historical any more, and while I'm basing a lot on real history, I've also got these demonic-fearie-like villains that came shamelessly out of a Brian Froud book and my whole civilization never existed in the real world at all, they were just based on the real tribes of MesoAmerica, and aren't realy those tribes themselves...
so, now my story is listed as fantasy again, but Sword and Sorcery is where is should be and NaNowriMo just doesn't have that genre, and I don't want to put the "other" genre on my author page. oh well.
I have never written S&S before, this'll be my first time.
I've never read a S&S novel, I'm sorry to say, but I love the Conan the Barbarian movies and comic books, Xena is one of my fave shows of all time, and as a kid I used to watch HeMan and SheRa, plus I'm a huge fan of Carl Barks stories (not S&S; jungle quest/lost treasure stories... Indiana Jones was based on one of Cark Barks' stories). So that's the type of story I'm planning to write. Starts out as a jungle quest for a lost treasure that leads the hero to lost civilization, lead by evil villain and than moves on to being a S&S type story from that point on.
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