nanowrimo_lj | Weekly Plot Help - Week of November 10th

I couldn't get started with NaNoWriMo untill tonight, because I was out of town away from computers or time enough to scribble it out either. :P So here I am, ideas in my head, and a strong theme and general plotline, and most everything I need to play catch-up...

...EXCEPT...

I can't think of a main/motivating reason for my Main Character. (augh!) He is running, scared or emotionally driven or emotionally upset... Driving out into the near-wilderness to seek out a relative's very isolated, and currently uninhabited Estate.

Why?

Did he kill his GF? That seems SO patheticly over-used. What other reasons can he HAVE, that he is so desperate to get to a place he hasn't been to in forever, and no one else goes to, that is SO far away...? The 'I have a body in the trunk' thing feels fakey to me.

Help? Whyfor is he driven to flee there? Did he DO something? Did someone do something to HIM? What would make a person so disoriented and yet so driven?

Ideas?

How about there is no good reason. We slowly watch his decline into paranoia and only realize later that there's really nothing going on with him except in his head?

Trying to keep my initial crew to about 150-200 people, and trying to narrow down just what kind of people I need aboard. My current list, and a brief synopsis, can be found here for anyone who'd like to help. Thanks so much!

I think music would be one thing as well and transport/travel and methods and such. And general activities [kayaking, skiing, snowboarding] and sports stuff. Maybe not just medical things but general scientific things [science student, I tend to think of science breakthroughs as important]

If you want to use a city, you should try not only modern maps but look at older maps of areas as well and compare things especially concerning the dates of any landmarks you'd like to keep or partially keep. One of the things I'm writing [not for NaNo but as a personal project] involves pretty much all the continents being reshaped and so on so I'm using maps that I've printed off and cutting out bits and shifting them around to reshape it. For the cities I want to set things in, I have roadmaps and satellite maps, all printed out with specific landmarks tagged [with little pins or tiny stickers] and I write out what I want to keep etc so I can keep track of it.

Hope that actually makes sense and might be some help. Even if you do your own fictional city, you can still take bits and pieces from maps and towns and pretty much adopt and adapt.

Good luck!

Agreed, the reason your male character isn't interesting you as much is because there's not enough conflict! :D

That fear of getting close should be REALLY played up. As someone who's dealt with it myself, I can tell you it can be cause for some serious drama... use it. :)

If the female MC's sister is really "spunky", I agree she should be pushing some of his buttons a little more. That might be a good way to go about it. Or maybe she's frustrated at him seeming a tad too distant for her taste?

Ahavah has a great idea. I'd go for it! :D

Awesome, glad I could be of help. :D

I have a story I'm working on that's a fantasy with an 1840sish frontier town setting. It's something like Rhode Island or Salt Lake City where the members of a religious splinter sect had to leave/thought that society as a whole was doing it wrong anyway, so decided to go start their own town somewhere else.

The plot of this second one, such as I have it, involves the infiltration of Greysfeld, the little haven-town by the faiakha, the race of magic-using shape-changers who live in the wilderness around the city and the lunatic human exile who's been putting ideas into their heads. A few of them take human form and hitch into town with him on a wagon train of goods coming into Greysfeld from another nearby-ish town. My MMC is very much an outsider even though he's lived in Greysfeld for around twenty years (he's a materialist atheist gay snob who isn't afraid of the faiakha, so he's really not making himself any friends there). He lived among the faiakha for a while himself--it's something they'll rarely tolerate, for a certain price--so he spots them right off and knows that they aren't up to any good. The antagonist spooks him right out too, because he also recognizes this sort of person and just how dangerous they can be. He means to say something about it to everyone else, but he's also a coward who doesn't want to have to explain how he comes to know these things, so he keeps his mouth shut.The Antagonist is charismatic as all hell--I think it might even be a magical ability he's using--so people in town start to really like him. Greysfeld is in a monarchical nation in which the big cities are ruled by a Regent who act on behalf of the king. Greysfeld is too small for one, which Antagonist brings up. A significant enough number of people in Greysfeld like him that it isn't any big thing when he decides that he ought to act as their Regent.

Now, this story just powered up out of nowhere and ran over the nice story for which I had a synopsis written and a final scene sketched out. It's an offshoot from an ancient draft of my current non-NaNo novel in progress so I have a vague idea of where the story goes, but even parts I know have big vague patches in the middle of them. The part after Antagonist comes to town and makes everyone like him falls right into the middle of one of those. What I want to happen, ideally, is something in the vein of Stephen King's "Needful Things," where everything seems okay at first, nothing major happens except for little wrong things gradually, creepily building up until there's just too much Something Wrong to ignore. Unfortunately, I have no idea what those things are. I know Antagonist is basically a lunatic revolutionary who got sent away from one of the major cities for stirring up trouble there. He wants, in his own screwed up way, to make things better for people. So he would be doing things that really do improve on Greysfeld's standing in the world and at the same time just sneaking not-so-good things by people. Unfortunately, I have no idea what any of those things would be.

MMC is basically a buyer for the general store and tavern--he's from the city that's The Big City in this part of the country, so he knows more about doing business with the urban merchants from whom the stores get their supplies than do people who've lived in this wee little town a hundred miles from anything all their lives. I had the sudden idea to send him away on business for a week or three (all their travel is by cart, carriage, and horse; and I've figured it at roughly four weeks to get to the nearest real city and back) and have things be notably weirder when he gets home. I'd been planning to set a chapter break there, ending one just before MMC leaves and picking up the next one of his when he comes back.

I'm worried, though, would that be leaving too much important plot development offstage and in "as you know, Fred" conversations? I do have my other main character I can leave in town, but I might send her off with him since I don't know what happens while he's gone and I'm not sure I could keep minor changes in a small town from either getting boring or taking up way too much space in the plot.

Alright, I'm basically just lost with everything.

My plot summary that I put on the NaNoWriMo site is: "Five years ago, Brian, Lea, Susan, Vanessa, Neil, and Seth got to New York, ready to make their dreams come true. Brian, wanting to become a novelist, Lea, a painter, Susan, an actress, Vanessa, a clothing designer, Neil, a game show host, and Seth, a dancer. Four years later, Brian still hasn't gotten past the first line, the only place Lea's paintings are any worth are in her apartment, Vanessa dropped out of design school, Neil never made it to the television, and Seth is still dancing on street corners.

Now, Vanessa's in the hospital for a suicide attempt, Lea and Susan are stuck in their own ruts, Brian's been fired, and Neil and Seth are struggling to try and convince their parents to suck up their homophobic ways and come to their upcoming wedding.

Things are changing faster then any of them had planned. But maybe that's not such a bad thing."

It's all from my MC, Brian's, point of view. And it starts off with them all in the waiting room of the hospital for my other character, Vanessa. I have the first part done, where Brian walks out of the hospital without telling anyone where he's going and goes to the bar to drink his problems and thoughts away.

But where do I go after this? I need reasons that Brian's been fired, (he works at an office. Think Dunder Mifflin from the Office type) and I need more PLOT. If anyone's willing to read what I have, and totally BE MY SAVIOR and give me a hand and a few tips and plot ideas, I will be your best friend and give you lots of virtual hugs.

...help? Please?

Hello everyone,

I am having trouble with what genre my fiction novel falls into. The plot has futuristic elements like AIs, lots of techy talk and computers, but there's also an other wordly fantasy part to it that goes beyond that, like a paranormal higher being kind of thing. I'm stuck between science fiction or fantasy and there's action in it, too. Do authors pick their genre based on what the novel has the most of?

Hiya,

Well, according to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I_of_England), Queen Elizabeth was Queen of Ireland and England from the late 1500's to early 1600's and at that time, The Renaissance & Reformation in Northern Europe and Italy was going on.

Some artists from that time are El Greco for short (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), Mathias Grunewald, Albrecht Durer, Marcus Gheeraerts did a portrait of Elizabeth actually, Pieter Bruegel "the elder", Caravaggio (one of the big names), Artemisia Gentileschi (she had some controversy as a female artist), and I can go on forever but I don't know exactly what the time frame you want is so I tried to aim around the time Elizabeth ruled and was alive.

I got this from my textbook "Janson's history of art: The western tradition, seventh edition" if you're interested in looking for a book about artists. It's a great book because it also tells you about the history going on at the time and about the artists.

Hope I was helpful. Good luck. :D

Hi there,

I read your summary, and I think maybe the conflict you're facing is that you don't have a clear goal for each character. It seems like each of your characters are facing different dilemmas in their lives, so I'm assuming that the end goal of this story is how each character moves past these obstacles and finds happiness?

I'd say the best thing is to write a character outline - with their personalities, who they connect to, what their initial problem is and the goal you want them to reach by the end of the story. Then you can work on the details of how they each either reach the solution or don't reach it at all depending on their reactions to these obstacles. Another thing, is each character has their own idea of happiness and can handle these life problems differently, so maybe a car might make one of your characters happy but not another, ya know? Looking up character types can help, too or personalities- that way you can better handle how your character acts with that type/personality as a "template" of some sort.

Ok. I ramble. Sorry lol. :D As for why Brian's been fired- he doesn't really need a reason actually. If this is a story about New York (which I unfortunately happen to live in, damn city), then it could simply be the bad economy if this is a modern day story. Just today I read the newspaper about them raising metro card prices again- to 3 bucks and gas money and under staffing places like fire stations, and so many companies like Circuit City closing down stores or companies letting large amounts of employees go, especially after the stock market crisis we've been having here lately on wall street. A character doesn't always need a direct reason for something to happen because sh*t happens lol, and sometimes it can't be controlled.

Does this help? O_o I hope. :D

Okay, I have another problem. Anyone who is good at science, or computers or something of the sort may be able to help.

There is a part in my story where my characters will be thrown into a prison cell, but by using the materials on them (they were thrown in carelessly at the time, one of them with a smart noggin and was able to sneak something inside), break out because the lock is an electric lock that opens with an electric current.

I know you can use a light bulb, some wires, and batteries to create a current to make a bulb glow - will that work if let's say, it was a cell phone battery (or does it have to be a regular battery?), metal bed springs (which of course my characters can't touch or they will be electrocuted), and the light bulb in the prison cell? And somehow by applying it to the electric lock, they can pass the electric current to open it?

I don't know if anyone can help, but any links or help from someone who has a better understanding of electricity than I do, I will greatly appreciate your help/tips. Thanks in advance.

Wow... considering that we find out at the end of the story that he's been Dead all along... that's INCREDIBLY creepy. It would leave the readers fishing for what he DID... and less interested in details that might betray his condition. (cackles evilly) Oh M'Gawd, I think you're onto something big there!

THANKS!!

Quite a pleasure. I think that actually works out even better, because I hear being dead can fuck your shit up.

Hee. THIS.

My MC's parents just died. He's eleven. He ahs no other living relatives. I need a name for the Oprhanage he's gonig to. Situated in Tulsa, OK.

I really want to have my entire novel be a convo between my MC and his shrink. The catch is I wanted the shrink's only dialogue to be through the title of my chapters b/c therapists do more listening than talking. The problem is my character can't give very vivid descriptions through dialogue... any ideas to remedy this?!

i think genres are usually defined by the readers and what spin editors want to put on the book. But from this little description I would call it scifi simply b/c of the futuristic elements.

Ooh okay, that makes sense! Lol :P

Thanks for the ideas!

Right, conflict! *facepalm* Duh. Okay, thank you! :)

Ah. All right. I was thinking sci-fi, too. Thanks for the tip. :D

Weekly Plot Help - Week of November 10th

NaNooooooooooo...

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Generation Ship Inhabitants

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Re: Character help?

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Re: Seattle and Los Angeles Help, Especially Japanese and Hispanics

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Genre Problem

Re: calling history buffs!

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Science/Tech plot help?

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POV help...sorta

Re: Genre Problem

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