The return of the weekly plot help thread!

[alison-sky.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know you've all been waiting in eager anticipation for this thread to start up, and now you don't have to wait any longer!

So, for the new kids in the community, here's the basic gist:

This post goes up once a week. In here, you can ask for help on your plots. Each week I start a new post. You can keep asking for help each week, but try to ask for something new each time.

Also, if you want to get help, you also have to give it. Which means that you take time when you can to go through the help "requests" and see if there if anything that jumps out at you that you want to toss a suggestion at.

One of the beauties this community has is the willingness to help each other along in our 50k goal. And here is the place to do it.

And of course, that said, here's the BOO part.

With the thread means that these types of posts are no longer allowed to be individual posts in the community. So if you see one go up, feel free to leave them a comment and point them to the current week's help thread and the rules. I'll catch up with them eventually, but that kind of help (which alot of people are already doing for intro posts) is really appreciated!

So that's it. Feel free to start getting plot brainstorming down before NaNo, and help one another out. :)

Comments

[tauriosiris.livejournal.com]

hmm maybe they were scattered on the continent now known as North America, but one was then moved from there afterwards (maybe a crucial part) and was in say Australia. Could be a subplot in how/why it was moved, and getting it. Then it wont all be contained within the US and you can get some variety, while padding your wordcount with a little more backstory & extra travelling & escapades involving kangaroos. Maybe it went with the across later with Botany Bay or something :) Or maybe it was moved for fear of it being found when the Mayflower came over.

[foxtrot-sierra.livejournal.com]

Who cares how the sword got across the ocean. It's magic. I would say limit yourself to the US if you've never been out of the US. Hell, limit yourself to your city if you haven't spent a lot of time out of it. Otherwise you'll be stumbling over how public transportation works if you're from a city with big interstates, or you'll be stumbling over how big interstates work if you're from a city of public transportation. The only reason to visit faraway and exotic real world locations is to give the reader a "feel" for them. If you haven't been there, you won't be able to give them a "feel" at all. But you WILL give the reader a feel for places YOU actually know and have been to.

Compress the story down to a single sleepless day to keep it exciting. I'm picturing a daylong life-or-death treasurehunt all through my metropolitan area and I think it would be pretty exciting.

The plot is the hero's journey: his goal and his internal flaw, coupled with the negative force, that keeps him from getting his goal. The turncoat girl can be the subplot. Give her a sympathetic reason for being a turncoat and sprinkle it throughout the story in dialogue, flashbacks, & monologues, so that when she reveals that she's a turncoat it's a surprise, but not out of leftfield. It's almost like she's pre-emptively apologizing for betraying the hero.

A hackneyed example makes my point. She and the hero visit someplace and she says "my grandpa and I visited here once." Later, while they're bored on a bus or something, she says "You remember my grandpa? Well, he's really sick right now." Later, she says "Do you remember my sick grandpa? Well, the worst of it is we got into this really bad argument before he got sick, and he might not know that I love him." Then when she betrays the hero, she says "I'm sorry, but I'm not letting my grandfather die thinking that I hate him!" Then when the hero convinces her to come back to his side, she lets go of whatever it was the would save her grandpa. Later, she catches up with her grandpa and apologizes, and he says he always knew she loved him, and he dies happy, and her arc ends.

Oh, and the Dark Ages were just an invention of the Renaissance to make themselves look better. That's why there was slavery in Ancient Rome and in Enlightenment Europe but not in-between.