Weekly Plot Help - Week of October 27th

[alison-sky.livejournal.com]

Wow, by Saturday NaNo will have begun and we will be heading into the craziness. Are you ready?

... come on, that was weak. ARE YOU READY?!

*grins* Ok, that was better.

Anyway, here's your plot help post for the week. Simple as always.


Add a comment with the help you need. Don't be shy. We're all writers here, and you never know, someone might give you a new plot bunny to add to your NaNo.

Reply to others and help them. You might be the one holding that bunny.


And just be awesome :)

Comments

[standgale.livejournal.com]

It seems to be more fun for me to think up ideas for other people's stuff than for my own (probably cos I feel free to just come up with anything). I'm glad I produced some interesting ideas for you.

Re: Need quite a number of things- fantasy novel

[jedi-bria.livejournal.com]

I'm doing some work with elementals (although with elves) as well so I've concidered the various quarks that go into it.

I always considered it as elements complement eachother and in most cases need eachother to co exist. Water can be on it's own but in order for nature and storms to work it needs wind. Earth needs water to survive and wind to carry seeds. Fire needs earth to burn and wind to gorw, that sort of thing. With those you'll find opisites, the greatest being fire and water. Although mixing water and air make a deaddly combination for storms, thus destroying earth as well as fire. Earth quakes disrupt the very land, including where water runs and how air flows, etc.

I'm a bit unclear if your Fire Wizards are good or bad, but if you set them nutural but are general rivals of the water wizards, perhaps they can chose a side. Perhaps they cause a fire to happen that upsets the Earth wizards or do something that puts them at odds with one branch but alines them with another. Perhaps they cause desctuction that cose sea to dislike them and that pulls water into the conflict. OR there's a conflict that's created by the sea wizards that goes poorly for the fire wizards thus causing the fire to popse water and the side against them. I'm not sure what combination will work, if any for your story.

IF your wizards are arguing, perhaps the different factions make themselves known and in doing so something disasterous happens caused by one or two groups of wizards causing them to leave their home. This also draws lines between factions and sets up possible battles (if you wish) and while some may remain nutural to the argument might pinpoint a new oposing force / for the nutural party will be forced to side upon.

I like your idea of ice wizards being different from the sea, yes simular but it seems like tehre would eb good back story and possible plot movement if you fractioned the water element to two forces (either made stronger or weaker by this)

I hope that helped.

er... help!

[natane.livejournal.com]

well, my main character and her little brother get attacked by werewolves, which kill her parents and turn her little brother. my first chapter is the murder scene. whee!

they run away to... some random city [i was thinking chicago, but don't want to get too detailed if i might get my facts wrong]. she works as a waitress. he sits around and sleeps a lot. about every two or three weeks, he transforms and she takes him down to the park near their house to run around. they become friends with a guy who works with her and his little sister, who is about a year younger than the little brother. absolutely no romance there, just by the way.

then... omg... they find out that the little sister and the boy are werewolves. and that they knew the little brother was.

i've got a big psychological plot going on. i know what i want to happen up to this point. but then...

should the police come looking for the children [there is suspicion they may have killed the parents, or have been kidnapped]? should they move again to escape them? this is my most interesting plot idea.

but then... how does it ever calm down enough that they don't have to keep running? i want the book to end semi-peacefully.

or maybe move again to join a werewolf community? but there, again, is the problem of them still having to be technically on the run.

i just can't see them permanantly living in this city, hiding from the police with her doing waitressing. i have no conflict after they find out that the boy and sister are werewolves.

i don't want to turn the second half of the book into some sort of twilight thing, either. the main character and boy aren't going to be to that point of their relationship yet. and the kids are too young.

anyway... some flights of fancy would be nice. thanks so much...

[jedi-bria.livejournal.com]

I've got a dystopian fantasy in the works set in a Steampunk world. Basically the elves have lost their abilites over the last several generations and now are little better than humans. Humans and elves have mixed a lot too so some people have elven blood and don't even know it. The only thing that really marks a human from an elf is pointed ears and sometimes hair or eye color. Some elves still have their abilities but they're lessened from what it used to be and they're scooped up by the government at an early age Jedi Acadmey style. These special elves are the elite fighting force for the government.

My MC's brother is an inventor employed by the government to come up machines to do the work that used to be taken care of by the elven abilites.

My MC has just arrived in the capital city, which is set up in as totalitarian government with abundance amounts of paper work and ways of tracking people without microchips. (This aspect has been fun to create actually). She was an airship pirate but has been forced out of the sky for a time. She and her brother are elves but she actually has access to her abilites and is quite powerful, which is something she's been hiding from the government. Her brother has no abilities.

She holds the key to unlocking why the government is so controlling and what they are actually trying to hide. The abilities arn't really gone, they just want everyone to think that they are. There are others like my MC out there but they haven't found a way to make their move. However, my MC gets exposed and makes the first initial stand which spurs things into action.

I'm sort of stuck at the moment. I've gotten my MC into the city and she's just met up with her brother I know that I need to start the chain of events to get the plot going but I feel like I need some more world building stuff to do as well as relationship stuff between the siblings (who haven't seen eachother in years). I can't just throw her into the element that will get her caught (which is one of her brother's inventions).

I think I need her and her brother to go though the city for something, that way I can do a little world building without overloading the reader and work on their relationship but I'm not sure where to send them and for what? Any ideas?

:D

[ahavah]

Hey! Wondering if you're still interested in being buddies? Would you like to friend me? How many words did you get today?

Re: :D

[twirly.livejournal.com]

I have.. 67! LOL. Been resting up today, but going to write a ton tomorrow since I'm not doing anything. I might do some more at work tonight since it's an easy evening, but we'll see. :)

Re: :D

[ahavah]

Many thanks! I'll look forward to getting to know you better. I'm glad you still want to be buddies. I need a NaNo buddy.

I went to our regional kick-off party today, and I got 420 words written. It's all crappy backstory that I don't even plan on using in the novel, but it's all word count! It needed to get done since my preplanning didn't. LOL I'm going to try to get closer to the daily word count before I go to bed, but I'm like you and plan to do a bunch of writing tomorrow. We're doing a "5,000 or Bust" write-in, so hopefully I'll get ahead tomorrow.

Good luck with yours!

[shadowpoet89.livejournal.com]

I find the same to be true as well - if it's someone else's story I'm quick to be like 'oh, you know what would be cool - if this and this and this happened.' It's probably easier to me suggestions if you're not aware that you're the one who's going to have to write that, lol.

Where Is This Road Trip Going?

[direcorrector.livejournal.com]

Well the lunatics have taken over the asylum. Once again my characters have decided without my consent where my novel is going. :P So far I just have the back stories of a bunch of characters who are all in various parts of the country. (Wisconsin, Las Vegas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Upper Michigan, and one Alaska native who has been seeing quite a bit of the country...) All of the characters, for reasons unknown, have all decided they need to leave home and drive to a different part of the country. Usually west. Some of the characters you know their motive, some you don't. My big question is...what common purpose could draw all these people together?

[direcorrector.livejournal.com]

Maybe they discover they have control over something they didn't before? Like they can force animals to obey them. At first it's just fun making Fido do tricks but it gradually gets more sinister.

Penelope who?

[situationgirl.livejournal.com]

Hiya everybody. My MC is named Penelope, and I wanted to incorporate some elements of the Grimm Brothers' fairytale about a Penelope, but I have only a vague memory about her being devoted to a lover that she could only talk to through a small hole in a stone wall. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

I've done some internet searches and all I can come up with is Penelope the wife of Odysseus, Penelope the Christina Ricci movie (which is probably the closest, but I want the original), and the Penelopiad which is a Margaret Atwood retelling of the Odyssey. These are not what I want.

Does anybody know where to look? Does anybody have a compendium of Grimm's fairytales they're willing to peruse for me? I used to have one, but it's about 1100 miles away now.

Any help is wonderfully appreciated.