Now that's a Novel Idea...

Okay my idea is for a gothic fantasy and like all good gothic stories it will be told from first retrospective view, so our main character will be looking back at the events that has led him to his current (very bad) situation. So the most of the story will be a flash back, if you like Also like many gothic stories, one section will be the main character reading the account of another which will lead him somewhere. So we will have a flashback inside our flashback!
And story, it's going to start with a murder mystery, which will lead my main character in to the dark underside of the cities largest, oldest and most respected university. From here he will go in to the cities underworld where the 'unclean' are thrown when they are found. Contact with the unclean is .totally forbidden so the when the main character makes a shocking discovery about the underworld and the city above it, who can he tell?
When he emerges from the underworld he is taken prisoner by the authorities he works for and hence he ends up in the dire situation he starts the story in.
The gothic feel to the story will hopefully help with the word count, since gothic stories tend to be very verbose and use lots of overblown prose!
Thats about all the ideas I have right now (and I've only got 8 days to work out the details!)

I plan to live forever, or die trying
--Vila

i'm going for a series of ten interweaving short stories about the tennants of a block of flats in bristol. and to make it extra special each story will be a distincly different genre:
sport- we all want to be footballers really, well what if they don't?
Thriller- a community support officer is framed for a crime he didn't commit
Horror- where do all the pets of the tennant of no17 keep disapearing to?
Childrens- how ever will Joshua Gatz, lift the curse off his parents. the one they call SKAG
Post-modern- Jordan Greggs' marriage is falling apart, will the indifferent passengers of the busses she drives be able to help
Romance- can a man fall in love with a woman he's never met, just from the smell of a customer satisfaction questionare?
Comedy- Kasey Kaiser is sick of being "the lifter", he wants to be taken seriously, but will the snobs let him?
Tragedy- (not sure)
Detective- the benefits-fraud racket dosen't get the media attention it should, then again there's a reason for that
Post-apocolyptic- (not sure)

thinking about calling it "Ten Stories Tall"

so it goes...

My novel is called 'Karl'.

The plot centres around a graduate in his early 20s who lives in Bristol called Karl. Karl is basically fed up with his life: fed up of routine, fed up of being single, fed up of only being able to get menial temp jobs, fed up of politics in contemporary Britain etc. He is generally fed up and bored. To cope with this his mind allows him to live two parallel lives: his real one and another fantasy one in his dreams. The fantasy one sees Karl drawn into a conflict between two rival crime groups fighting in the city. Aligning with one crime group Karl quickly climbs the ranks from average Bagman towards the position of boss, using this new dream world as a form of ecapism.

Karl originally believing these two lives are seperate begins to realise they are set on a collision course. His escapist world threatens to swallow him whole, leading him to make life-changing decisions.

Z Barker

Mine is called 'Revenge of the Killer Catholic Evil Machine'.

It's a love story.

I'm going to try a "Slice of Life" novel, I think - I have a bunch of characters with interesting quirks and messed up relationships and I'm going to put them on a holiday resort for two weeks and see what they do.

For this, read "I have no plot ideas."

"It's not easy having a good time. Even smiling makes my face ache."

I'm either writing about vampire, librarians and assassins, or I'm writing about vampire-librarian-assassins, I've not quite decided yet.

Here's the synopsis I wrote in my failed attempt to complete the Snowflake Method...

Thom, Marc, Briony, Isobel and Gary are a group of washed-up thirty-something drinking buddies, shocked out of their humdrum lives when Marc goes missing in mysterious circumstances.

An enigmatic priest offers Thom a chance to make contact with Marc by taking the two of them on a trip into Hell, and reveals a plot from the future to replace all faith with futuristic scientific fundamentals.

The remaining friends discover that their world is about to be destroyed when the plot fails and an ancient viking curse is disasterously enacted as a computer virus.

When their efforts to stop the virus result in Isobel’s murder, all seems lost...

Only supernatural assistance from an angry god and a betrayal from the future can rescue the friends and save the world from the ravages of Ragnarok.

How's that sound?

Failed the Snowflake too!

Hee's my own paragraph thingy

Jack is a new Lieutenant in the British Army who, after joining up to do something in his life, is sent to the Republic of Congo to teach the local forces for their battles against anti-government militias. There he meets another Lieutenant Miles and a series of disparate characters, all facing the threats and challenges on their new environment but also struggling with life goals, modern life and growing up. During their tour they have to face a contentious election result, an attack on an orphanage and a militant uprising. They go home changed and older, and hopefully some of them wiser about their role and goals for the rest of their lives.

That sounds like an amazingly deep novel to attempt during Nano. You have my respect sir!

'An interesting character' - Russ Dallen (Bristol and Bath ML)

'Just as weird as the rest of us' - Chris 'The Skoot' Hill

I got all the way through the snowflake once and then realised that I just didn't like any of my characters. Had I just sat down and wrote them they probably would have been more fun.

'An interesting character' - Russ Dallen (Bristol and Bath ML)

'Just as weird as the rest of us' - Chris 'The Skoot' Hill

I was beginning to have second thoughts about my idea and now I've read all of these other great sounding ideas, I think I might pull one my last minute change of mind, which I seem to do every October 31st (one year it was November the 2nd I changed my mind!)

I plan to live forever, or die trying
--Vila

That sounds completely freaky, because *my* main characters were going to be Briony and Isobel too! I'm totally shocked and amazed that you've chosen the same names...

I don't have many plot ideas though. All I can think is that they might both be new to wherever they're living ((which may or may not be Edinburgh, but I'm not sure)), and they're gonna meet ((maybe in a cafe, where one of them [probably Briony] works...)), and they're gonna become friends, and they're gonna realise that they've both got ((fairly un-world-shattering but significant at least to them...)) problems that they've been trying to hide from... and together they're gonna decide what to do about things.

I can't see how this is going to stretch to anything like 50,000 words, even with a whole lot of flashbacks and rambling about the past and day-to-day things, but hey...

I've got vague thoughts of an alcoholic cyborg in a dystopian future trying to stop an alien conspiracy. There, first step of the Snowflake method: an alcoholic cyborg in a dystopian future tries to stop an alien conspiracy. Now to go Google about alcoholism.

Alternately, I could expand that fantasy thing I did last year by another 50,000 words, which has the advantage of requiring less additional research but may well be cheating. That one is basically a dark sorcerer trying to find a meaningful life and/or get revenge for his (obligatory) destroyed home. It gets more complex than that but this is the sales pitch, not the Wikipedia article. :D

I'm finally starting to get a clearer picture of my novel to be.

I've always known it was set on a different planet, but I'd assumed the residents were more or less human. In fact they're going to be kind of avian humanoid instead - mostly human but with a few subtle differences I need to work in.

Tens of thousands of years ago, this planet was on a much wider orbit and had a day and night cycle like our own. Now, after a couple of astronomical and man-made occurances I won't go into, it's tidally locked and in a closer orbit, so one side of the planet is bathed in intense light and the other is in perpetual darkness. Because they evolved at a much lower light level, infant and juveniles of the native race cannot tolerate the daylight side, but adults crave the light and spend all their time there, returning to the darkness only to deliver their children. As a result, the juveniles are largely independent and have developed a culture of their own - until they hit puberty when they start to feel the same inherently selfish cravings as their parents and go through the physically and mentally painful adjustment from one world to the other. Not every child survives the transition.

Samuel is a guide - living in the twilight zone amidst the ruins of the ancient, global civilisation. As a youth he sacrificed his own rite of passage and chance to enter the light in order to take over from previous generations of guides and help others. Now an old man, he has to decide whether or not to go through the ordeal of trying to go through the adjustment himself or live out his life in twilight.

The story will focus on his emotional journey, and his changing feelings about the cultures on his world, but the first third or so will be about his decision to retire, followed by his selection and training of his successor, Jason. Part of that training will involve a series of expeditions into the twilight, both to the ruins, and to meet other guides, including two women who have been lifelong friends of Samuel and have differing opinions on the decision ahead of him.

After that I'll just wait and see where it goes. Should be... interesting.