So, what are you writing about?

I'm not entirely sure yet. In fact, all I think I really have is the protagonist. My next step is to come up with the following:

1. A colorful sidekick.
2. Something the protagonist wants.
3. Something to go terribly terribly wrong.

Yeah, I'm still at the 'starting from scratch' stage.

I am continuing a novel that I wrote half of last year in NaNoWriMo. It was my very first attempt at any kind of fiction, and I got totally addicted.

It is called "The Aloha Moon". It's sort of Jane Austen meets James Michener...an historical novel that takes place from 1813 to 1823, set in Boston, on the brigantine Liberty, and in Honolulu.

It tells the story of Leah, a secluded misfit thirteen-year-old Boston heiress, who is married off to a meek missionary she doesn’t know and embarks on a dangerous sea voyage halfway around the world to Hawaii. She survives storms, a shipwreck, and attempted murder, finally falling in love with a Kahuna and becoming a businesswoman and counsel to Hawaii's Queen Ka’ahumanu.

I managed almost 58,000 words last year, which I subsequently edited back to a little more than 50,000.

I'm looking forwarrd to starting November 1 with a great outline, and most of my historical reseach done.

I am especially looking forward to the week-end coffee shop write-ins--I got so much done, and loved hearing what others were writingt about.

Good luck to you all!!!!

My buddy, Adel, is back and wants to tell her story. We had a long talk about last year's novel and she informed me that she imbellished quite a bit. Now she wants the truth be known. All she would tell me it that it involves an abandon manor and a piece of jewerly. Other than that, she will tell me no more until next month.

Some of these stories sound pretty interesting.

I've decided to be really adventurous and try to write two novels. Oddly enough, both are sequels to my previous novels.

Novel one is about a girl who finds out she's half vampire and runs away from her friends because she doesn't want to hurt them.

Novel two is about an exhibit about bodies that comes to a museum.

We'll see how it works out this year.

Last year I tried to write a steampunk novel... but I was trying too hard to make it too epic a story, I think, and it was hard to take it wherever I wanted it to go.

This year I think I want to go for more hard sci-fi, and nothing says free-form plot like a ship lost in deep space. Maybe. We'll see...

I -think- I'm writing something historical. :) I've been really interested in our economy and government lately, so I figured placing my story around the 20s would be sweet. I'll get to do some research that might work for school, too, yay.

Basically I have a foreign kid being blackmailed to steal a bank's president's daughter. If he doesn't, his whole neighborhood will be "blown up" (whether this is possible or not, said Kid isn't going to risk it) as well as the bank's president's street. This kid doesn't want disaster and any relations to police in America. He -might- be here illegally, or something like that. I'm expecting the daughter and Kid to fall in love, but I'll let that work itself out. :)

I'm also considering being inspired by Dumas' [i]The Knight of Maison-Rouge[/i] and changing history a little. :) Maybe the Great Depression is what is blackmailing the Kid. Hmmmmmm. Ideas...

Haunted house with my vampires. The cousin's house is near a graveyard so I can see some names and vibes from the locale.

My current rough idea is about a kid, maybe ten or so, who finds an experimental teleporter and gets sent to some unknown location. His parents completely flip out, of course, and devise elaborate methods of finding him. The child, meanwhile, finds himself at a secret military installation that does some unpleasant things, and he begins to unknowingly ruin their operations. Eventually a search party discovers his location, and must resort to their own child-like tendencies to find the child and escape safely.

I'm not sure exactly when this will take place, or the locations involved (my current novel synopsis talks about different planets) but it's just the right amount of direction to get me writing without running into walls too soon.

alright.
im concerned.

Am i the only one that doesnt have the plot all sorted? i have some vague ideas but nothing concrete.
I've definately not committed to any one idea.

Maybe im so non-committal that i wont come up with anything til 11:59pm on October 31.

Am i the only one in this plotless boat?

Relax, Chris Baty says "No plot, no problem!" right? Lots of people "pants" it November 1st.

I tried it one year. I woke up November 1st from an amazing dream about an empathy drug, and felt compelled to throw out 3 months of outlining and planning to write about it. The story turned out nothing like the dream. I wrote pages and pages of ugly violent stuff when I was stuck and I hated how dark it was, but I hit the 50k mark. When I reread it a couple of years later, it turned out I had a good solid horror short story...if I ever sit down to edit it. My writing is more focused when I have some kind of plan, but pantsing was a great exercise in making stuff up.

So, don't sweat not having a plot. Just keep your writer vibes wide open this month. Take note of wierd things you see and hear. Then on November 1st see what comes out.

I don't know what I'm writing about this year.....

Some candidates:

1) collection of stories about people wanting to "change their lives" due to temptation of greener grass.
2) western (inspired by seeing the movie Appaloosa).
3) ????

I'm still thinking about it.....

...leaning towards option 1,

My first year I had a vague idea of a character, decided to put the story in Central America, and that it would be some sort of spy thing. I focussed the first day on giving the guy a strong voice and then just winged it. Over the years I've had varying degrees of 'plan' at the start, but the last two years my plan was so ambitious that it actually hurt me. Last year I abandoned my story ten thousand words in and just launched off on the backstory of one of the side characters. The writing got a lot better at that point.

This year my 'plan' is much, much, simpler, just 'a bunch of interesting people have a problem'. The rest I'll just let happen. You can see where I'm at with character sketches on my profile page. I need to work out how the carp is going to fit in...

No worries about quality this year, that's for sure!

Jerry
Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas
Jer's Software Hut

I can't think of a novel I would want to NaNo yet (I have a few that are too near and dear to my heart to NaNo with), so my current plan of action is to do a few shorter stories I've had biting my brain. The first, which will end up being closer to a novella, is about a goblin mercenary whose arm was stolen by a mage when she got involved in clan feuding that was very much more serious than she had thought it would be.

A fun modern fairytale located here in San Diego areas. I have my characters well thought out and have it set up with a wild range of screwballs that come and out of the story line. This has been bubbling und my skin for many years and I have got to get it out there.

I think I'll be writing the final installment of myteen fantasy trilogy. Or I may try something new... Not quite sure what I'm doing yet.

I have this sprawling fantasy world that I've been building for about a decade. I've constructed distinct cultures, government systems, religions, economic relationships, and histories of warfare and conquest. I've toyed with various made-up languages and casts of characters and fictional animals. I was fully planning on using this year's NaNo to actually sit down and write something taking place in this painstakingly detailed setting I've crafted.

So, of course, I changed my mind a couple of weeks ago.

Now, I'm planning to write a sprawling adventure story taking place in a crazy fantasy world loosely based on the geography of Europe, Africa, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It's a roughly steampunk setting populated with pretty much every imaginary creature I've ever thought was interesting. It will involve airships, elves, vampires, technothaumaturgy, centaurs, living goddesses, and martial arts. I'm purposefully keeping myself from doing too much planning or world-building -- I want this to be sort of off-the-cuff and as-I-go. Overplanning has derailed my attempts at NaNo in the past, so this year I really want to just take a vague idea and some familiar characters and let the plot and the world form as I'm writing.

Nope. I have no characters, no plot, and no problem! I plan to go into this year's NaNo with much less structure than last year. I spent SO much time on plot and character, then abandoned it all toward the end.

I have a couple vague ideas right now, and I'm sure one (or a combination) will emerge in the coming days.

I'm not 100% certain I'll be participating this year. I want to, but it depends if I can get enough brainstorming in over the next week.
Basically, I'm going to try to finish "The Life and Times of an Evil Henchmen", which some of you may remember from way back in '05. I know, technically NaNoWriMo is about STARTING a novel, not ENDING one, but as long as I'm writing, I think I'm being true to the heart of NaNoWriMo. The problem is I need to have a much more concrete idea of what's going to go on before the end of the book this time around, but I'll do my best. ::Crosses fingers::

I was going to write about this little boy whose parents are killed when he's a baby. When he's 10 years old he finds out he's a Taxidermist and goes off to WogHartz School of Witchcraft and Taxidermy. While there, he has a series of unfortunate events that reaches a climax when he fights the soul of the wizard who killed his parents. He overcomes the wizard with his kick-butt taxidermy skills and saves the day. I was thinking about calling the boy Parry Hotter.

But then I found out some lady in England stole my idea, made everyone a wizard and took out the Taxidermy. So now I don't know what I'm going to write about. But, I have a feeling it's going to involve a well, a Collie and a boy names Timmy.

Seriously, I don't know what I'm going to write about right now.

I got an idea from reading the Twilight novel New Moon, when Bella asks what would have happened to Juliet if Romeo bailed or something like that? What was Paris to her, and what would he become? I've got a really good beginning brewing in my head just need to outline the first few chapters right now, so I have that to help me when NaNo starts.

so, i am no longer in a plotless boat.

i thought i'd share :)

Its called (for now) "Of the Desert and Desertion"
A woman (Dora) who feels imprisioned by life leaves her home in Congress, Arizona for a weekend away with her friends but never returns. She leaves behind 2 (maybe three) children and an alcoholic damnation-sort-of-christian husband (Adam but goes by Crow). Her instability and guilt plague her wherever she goes. she meets people she is alone and on. At one point, upon the death of her father, she cuts off her ring finger as an homage to her father and as a way of further freeing herself from her husband.
Congress, Arizona was once a thriving community had a gold mine was a big deal now its pretty impoverished and dead. its boring and old and broken. And also, Congress Az cause i've been there and in the surrounding areas, so i can really picture it.
The ring finger - Her father had lost his ring finger some way (i dont know how yet but an accident where it got cut off). This is something that she associates with him and theres more somehow there but i cant figure it out yet. I think its like a physcial reminder of what she has lost. Then theres the cutting off the ring and the ability to ever wear it and thats probably more of the reason but its so wrong and twisted and that she tries to make it more about her father entirely. i dont know. im still working on it. its somehow like a warped twisted cutter.

Am hoping for a story of the road, about loss and hope and how they are somehow, sometimes the same. Am thinking like a new genre - Southwestern Gothic.

A friend of mine in grad school told me a story once about how another friend was working on his roof when he slipped on the ladder, snagged his wedding ring on a protruding nail and fell off the ladder. The ring-- and his finger -- stayed on the roof.

Michael Moore's movie Sicko talked about another guy who also had a carpentry accident and had to choose between re-attaching his middle or ring finger (insurance wouldn't cover the reattachment of both digits). Moore's line was "...because he was a romantic, he chose to reattach his ring finger..." Don't know if that helps, but maybe real life can give you other ideas for the father-loses-finger scene.

Best of luck with the novel!

Wow Watermelon Sugar, when you come up with a plot you don't mess around! I like the idea of Southwestern Gothic. :-D

Is everyone ready for Saturday? I can't wait.

I am working on my second novel.

It is about a small group of people that have experienced differing violent tragedies and wake up in an unknown place. Each individual is guided through a series of simplistic tests that they must face alone. Once they have all come together they are inclined to believe that they all are, in fact, in Purgatory and are faced with different tests in order to determine their afterlife destination. After a series of plot twists, however, they are informed that they are actually part of an experiment that links patients in a vegetative state together through neural networking frozen in a lucid state.

It's just a tiny sample of the elaborate braiding of plot contained in this ridiculous organ of mine...haha

Okay, I now have something like an idea (thank goodness). (Pardon me in advance for getting wordy - this has been a long time coming).

To make any sense of it, you have to have a bit of a feel of the two authors that are my inspiration, Carl Hiassen and Elmore Leonard. From Hiassen's wikipedia entry:

"Hiaasen's Florida is a hive of greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, dumb blondes, apathetic retirees, intellectually challenged tourists, hard-luck redneck cooters, and militant ecoteurs. It is the same Florida of John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee, but aged another 20 years and viewed with a more satiric or sardonic eye."

Leonard (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Rum Punch/Jackie Brown) is best known for his brilliant dialogue, gritty stories, and sparse (yet nearly perfect) writing. In particular I'm thinking of Tishomingo Blues (a stunt diver takes on the 'Corn Bread Cosa Nostra' at a Civil War reenactment) and Pagan Babies (involving a Rwandan priest/cigarette smuggler trying to fleece the mob).

Anyway, the type of thing I'm looking to write is: (a) full of dark humor and absurd situations, (b) the situations are just plausible enough to be taken seriously (c) the characters and I will take them seriously (d) they will be dark but (e) they will also be over the top enough to be funny to the reader (but not the characters).

I need, most of all, the right combination of main character and setting so as to allow the crazy to happen.

My setting is Vegas, and my main character is a bachelor party planner. During one of her parties, the best man gets killed in full view of the entire room. This will set several things in motion: (1) the main character will erroneously think she was the target, and flee, (2) all of the witnesses, who each hated the deceased, will claim to have seen anything (3) sending the police on a search for the missing witness (the protagonist), meanwhile (4) a vicious business consortium, with whom the best man was involved in a conspiracy to blackmail local officials realize that their now-dead accomplice had the blackmail information, and start thinking that the hero now has it (so they are after her two). I may even have (5) the officials who were being blackmailed figure out that something is amok and muck up the works.

Sure, it is not pristinely plotted yet, but it satisfies me because there seem to be a lot of opportunities for crazy things to happen.

I'm continuing a novel I started writing about a year ago, but have only written about 15,000 words so far. It's based at a fictionalized affluent San Diego Catholic High School in the late 90's, and revolves around the school's six most popular students. Each of the six provide the student body with something they can't do without, whether it's drugs, sex, pills, secrets, loans, or steriods. Not caring about the effects they have on their fellow students, the six of them live a life of luxury without any concern for anyone but themselves--because they're too busy dealing with their own problems.

Totally awesome subject matter!!!
I attended and graduated from UNI in '00 so I totally know the background of those kind of people.
I hope to sample a chapter or two from your work.
Good Luck!!!

This year is a piece of cake. I'm writing an autobiography. There is enough sex, romance, emotions and just plain weird crap that I actually need to stop myself each day or I'd just keep on going (I'm trying to stifle myself at around 3 - 5K per day). This is SO much easier than the short stories and romance novels I've written in the past because I don't really need to "create" I can simply "remember" and type like crazy. :D

I'm at work right now doing some research on different private schools around the county, hoping to find a few that I can meld into one perfect, fictional high school for my novel. Here are some of the parameters I'd like to set for it:

Coed, grades 7-12 (separate sides of campus for junior high, grades 7-9, and high school, grades 10-12)
$40,000 a year tuition
500 students total, or about 80 students per grade
75% Caucasian
Strict uniforms

I found some amazing old photos from the 20's of Our Lady of Peace Academy in Normal Heights. Although it's an all girls' school, I'll just make it coed for the purposes of my book. The reason I'm going to make it my setting? It looks like a miniature Hearst Castle. Which is perfect, because when Orson Welles went to film Citizen Kane, he couldn't do so at the real Hearst Castle, so he went to Balboa Park in San Diego and used the Spanish architecture as a fill in for the famed Xanadu.

I had no concept when I went into this one, but it has turned into a contemporary fantasy/black comedy. A guy and his roommate grow suspicious of their odd neighbor, they break into his house, and one of them discovers a book of magic. My protagonist is not especially happy with his life, and only now that he has the power to change it does he fully realize that. He starts off doing little things, but nothing he does works out quite the way he wants, and he spins out of control. I intentionally didn't pre-plan, but I don't think it'll have a happy ending.