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[writingvixen.livejournal.com]

You asked, we delivered.

Week Two Plot Help thread.

Go forth and use your noggins to help fellow nanoers out.

Comments

[athenesolon.livejournal.com]

Thank god.

This weeks been ok on plotting. As I have a basic template in the original Beauty and the Beast fairytale most of it has been working pretty good. My biggest problems to work around are that the character "Gaston" (so loosely based on the Disney version that he's getting a new name in re-writes) is a dandy that that's really screwed with how I approach not just him but his relationship/courtship of Belle. I guess my problem is more what is a "dandy" and how would Belle NOT be interested in this version while still being interested in the dream prince/Beast?

[aurumsisters.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if this helps or not. I always pictured Gaston as being pretty arrogant and that being the reason Belle doesn't really like him. He's pushy and thinks too highly of himself in a way that isn't charming.

I'm not sure if that helped any.

[catherinedove.livejournal.com]

A "dandy" in Regency times was a man who was far more interested in himself, in his clothes, in looking good and being cool, and in being the envy of all his peers. Might that help?

[eat-brains.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you've done it already, but if not you should check out the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy

There's some pretty good inspiration there.

[acm28.livejournal.com]

I have an outline, I think I know what happens eventually, but I don't know what happens in the immediate future.
Our heroine is dressed as a man so that she can follow a group of missionaries around pre-christian Denmark and see the world. One of the missionaries (who is gay) knows, one is an idiot, one is a jerk, and one is the Designated Love Interest. Meanwhile, our heroine's childhood friend is at home, sad that she left and being emo over the fact that he loves her, but he will probably never see her again.
I need to get the missionaries out of the woods and into a town, which is easy enough, but I need another day of traveling for them to get there, and I can't just skip over it (there are other things that are going to happen during the day). Any ideas? What could I do with the childhood friend?
And how the HELL do I keep it from becoming ridiculously cliche?

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

You could juxtapose the two - she's "picking her way over boggy ground, annoyed that every bloody stream they have to cross has a pile of mud to negotiate, things would never have been this bad at home", guy at home is "grumbling as he picks his way through the mud in the courtyard, annoyed that everywhere he needs to walk has been churned into a muck and dung mix by the animals, and he imagines she's gaily tripping through flower-lined dells in the sunshine."

[ink-kee.livejournal.com]

okay so! my novel has a pretty heavy RPG influence and each of the main characters fights using a certain type of art. the MC uses visual arts (painting, drawing, etc.), character #2 uses writing and words, character #3 uses music, that sort of thing.

what I need help on is other art forms. I was thinking of blacksmithing (a "lost art") or maybe acting? I thought I could think of more but I'm strangely stumped on this one.

[athenesolon.livejournal.com]

Dancing, glass-blowing, wood-carving, Blacksmithing (I think it's a REALLY good one personally), Sewing/Embroidering/Weaving (or fabric arts), pottery-making, cooking (at least I consider it an art),

[athenesolon.livejournal.com]

Oh and Acting's a REALLY good one too BTW in my opinion.

[thisdaydreamer.livejournal.com]

Chainsaw sculpting? ;)

Yeah, I like blacksmithing and dancing, too. Or fire dancing (http://www.fire-dancing.com/fire-poi.php).

[orbg.livejournal.com]

Stuck on my people running from an infection creating an apocalypse (makes people go nuts) They just keep running, trying to warn people, and getting attacked. Where can I go?

[thisdaydreamer.livejournal.com]

Maybe they realize that one of them is infected. Or they find a place where the inhabitants are somehow invulnerable to the infection. Or some of the people attacking them aren't infected, but trying to protect some secret related to the illness - like a cure they want to make money off of or use as leverage to get what they want.

[albreda.livejournal.com]

They could run into another group of non-sick people, and have really good reasons for banding together, then find out that they are really cannibals or something,so now do they not only have new allies, they have another enemy.

>:)

[alessandriana.livejournal.com]

Ughhhh my novel is absolutely kicking my butt. So, I've got two characters who meet up in the middle of a journey to a magic school. This is fantasy, obviously, set in a pseudo-medieval world, and this journey takes up the middle of the novel-- however, I am having a horrendously difficult time thinking up things that happen on the way.

So far I've come up with: bandits attacking, creatures attacking, dealing with bad weather, finding food, and finding places to sleep (since they have absolutely no money). However, these all feel really cliche to me-- and also, this is not really a fighting novel, so I was hoping to avoid the bandit/creature angle. Does anyone have any better ideas of what they could do while traveling?

In addition, I also need to somehow reveal my two characters' secrets to each other. Jay has the kind of magic that means that when he tells someone to do something, they Do It. (Basically Compelling Voice (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CompellingVoice).) Myra is a girl dressing as a guy, and also can conjure shadows. I can't think of a good way for these secrets to get revealed except in the middle of battle-- which, again, I'd like to avoid. Ideas, anyone?

[thisdaydreamer.livejournal.com]

Who says that an encounter with a creature has to lead to a battle? And maybe another one of your characters is telepathic and knows the secrets of the others. Or the guy with the compelling voice has to use it to save Myra.

Not so much a plot help but....

[cattyhunts.livejournal.com]

I still can't think of a name of my murder suspect. He's from Australia, but he's also lived in London. Right now, he's a professor at UCLA, and has dated the victim of the murder. I've kinda based him on Nicole Wallace from Law and Order: CI

Re: Not so much a plot help but....

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

Rough age mid-30s, intelligent enough to have gone to Law School - any particular ethnic background? If straight Anglo, here's a pile of my friends' names roughly around that age, suitably jumbled: Ian, Neil, John, Luke, Daniel, Dean, Keith, Andrew {there's a ton of those}, Tim, Martin, James, Paul {far too many of them too}, Ben. Pick just about any anglo surname and you'll be right.

How does a nice man tell the woman he wants to marry that he also likes to sleep with men?

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

London 1932. Enid is a young lady who has brought herself up from an orphan with little education, she's gone to secretarial school, now has a good position working for a barrister specialising in property law. She's 25.

Robert is an ex-army captain who is in love with her. Aged 42, he's currently got some money - not Peter Wimsey levels but certainly enough to marry her.

Trouble is, he likes men as well as women. And he doesn't want to hide it from her. He wants to marry her, but he wants to have the freedom to occasionally (discreetly) see one of his "other interests" from time to time.

She's spotted the bookshelf of dubious books (The Well of Loneliness, The Green Carnation, etc) so I'm slowly giving them a chance to discuss that some people do things "differently". But in 1932, this was still dangerous territory.

How does he tell her about his preferences, and how does he negotiate that freedom without freaking her out completely? The only thing I can think of is her being glad there wouldn't be another woman in his life, and no illegitimate children, but that just seems rather contrived.

Ideas?

Re: How does a nice man tell the woman he wants to marry that he also likes to sleep with men?

[albreda.livejournal.com]

Honestly? He probably wouldn't tell her at all. He'd likely go on hunting trips, or such, with his 'friends', and be very devoted to her when they were together, partly out of guilt for hiding this from her. Alternately, he could acquire a home for her in the county that she could retire to in the summer, and then travel back and forth between her there and his lovers in the city.

She'd likely be delighted that she had such an attentive and loving husband. Couples of some wealth were often separated for weeks at a time in that era, so no worries there.

[fifmeister.livejournal.com]

I'm getting Week Two'd pretty hard over here. D: My MC is a mercenary in a...not so nice organization. In essence, they're pretty much a gang--ruthless, greedy, fine with casual murders, etc. So part of my problem is that I don't want my MC to come off as a completely reprehensible criminal. I'm fine with her being a hard-edged, morally gray renegade type, but not the kind of person who would gun down someone in the street just because. (She's the protagonist after all, she has to be at least somewhat sympathetic!)

So, because of my MC's discomfort with the way the gang operates, a major plot point has her leaving the gang and basically switching sides--she's going to join a vigilante group that's been trying to take down her gang from the outside. My problem is in trying to make this switch believable. The major issue is that she's been in the gang for about thirteen years, so a) realistically speaking, there's really no way she could have been involved that long without getting mixed up in some really nasty stuff, and b) why on earth would she be getting uncomfortable and wanting to switch now, after such a long time with the gang? I've been trying to think up a way around this and I feel like I'm beating my head against the wall.

[thisdaydreamer.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that she might switch if the group she's a part of does something really reprehensible, especially over her voice objections.

[oxfordtweed]

Technically, since I started in week two, I'm still first-week.

I'm not so much having plot issues, but issues that are just as annoying. I'm so not clicking with MMC's daughter, which is making her a pain to write. Blah.


Here's something I could use a bit of help with, though. MMC has just recently proposed to his girlfriend, and I want to describe the marriage ceremony when it gets to that point. Any and all ideas for what should be part of the ceremony are welcome!

I should mention that he proposed by way of handing her his copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was open to a page on commitment ceremonies, while they were at a cafe at a spaceport which had been built on an asteroid that orbits Barnard's Star, which is approximately six light years from Sol.

So, seriously. Anything goes.

[albreda.livejournal.com]

With this towel, I thee wed? ;)

They could try to track down Zaphod to officiate, but only get Hal!

Fun concept - post an excerpt sometime!

[ftemery.livejournal.com]

I just stole a plot right out of the headlines, altered it of course, but it sure helped with my mind going blank saying, wow man, I wonder what's going to happen next?

[oxfordtweed]

If he's sliding into addiction, then he's likely to start throwing blame. It's totally not his fault. I think, depending on how irrational you want to have him, it would be entirely conceivable that he would find some way to blame the tarot reader when unfavourable stuff starts happening to him as result of his addiction.

[albreda.livejournal.com]

My MC is a Tarot reader. She has a client whose boyfriend is sliding into addiction, and in a violent way. How can I get him to go after the Tarot reader??

[lost-zeppo.livejournal.com]

Maybe her advice led the client to leave her boyfriend, and the boyfriend blames the breakdown of their relationship on her?

[heartsick]

I need quotes. I have a character who refuses to explain why he is in a "bad" situation and instead references things from pop culture that could have gotten him into trouble.

Example: "Why are you here, Springer?"
"I shot a man in Reno. Just to watch him die."

Trouble is...I'm not very well versed in pop culture and am having some serious trouble coming up with other quotes.

[nebulia.livejournal.com]

It might be funny if he just uses that one over and over again. BUT.


I fell into a burnin' ring of fire (Johnny Cash)

I fought the law and the law won (lots of people, made famous by the Bobby

Lawyer fucked me. I'm innocent. (The Shawshank Redemption, but I don't know if that's really pop culture enough)

I shot the sheriff. But I didn't shoot the deputy. (Bob Marley)

I'll get back to you if I think of some more. :)

[lost-zeppo.livejournal.com]

The Doctor and company have all went into hiding in a cave, and now need to set up some kind of trap for the mantis-like aliens who are going to be coming for them eventually, so they can knock them out and steal a transmat module to progress to the next stage. Except, I'm not sure what kind of trap they could set for the creatures, with just the post-apocalyptic survival gear gathered by Shinji, and the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. Can anyone give any suggestions?

Also, as a side note: in the actual confrontation Amy is going to be hurt, so she and Rory can be left out of the action for the rest of the episode while Shinji and Asuka earn their stripes by helping the Doctor.

[nebulia.livejournal.com]

So I have introduced the main characters to each other and the reader. But there's all this space between the beginning of the main plot and this introduction. What do I fill it with?

[fearlessfirefly.livejournal.com]

I hope people are still visiting this thread cos I need help like woah.

My female MC and my male MC need to meet up and I can't think of anything that doesn't feel contrived/forced/stupid. She doesn't want to see him because she's been told to kill him, but he wants to see her and thinks she may be dead. Male MC is supposed to be a political/grassroots rabble rouser of sorts - the kind of rabble rouser that pisses off the establishment and men of science IDEK.

Oh, and it's 1987, but my female MC is from the future. Like, 2015 or something.

Any help would be lovely ♥

[jediknightmuse.livejournal.com]

Okay. My NaNo is fantasy, and I'm having trouble figuring out one of the main things of the plot.

My main character, Thalia, is an exiled princess and has been on the run for eight months and has been traveling with a sword-for-hire (that she didn't actually hire for herself) named Grim. She ended up reuniting with her twin brother in the first chapter. Tyren, her twin, is also an exile, but he was exiled seven years before this takes place. Here's a part from my NaNo that'll help explain what the villain's motives were (at least partially, and temporarily...I'm not 100% in love with this explanation):

“Seven years ago, Nythen found out that I had magic abilities. At this point, my parents were . . . unable to do anything to stop him when he exiled me. I knew I had to stay as close as I could, though, so I did. When I heard that things were getting worse in Elrian, I knew something had to be done, so I decided to find my sister. When I found Silas first, he told me that she'd been exiled,” Tyren explained, looking from Thalia to Grim.

So basically what I'm trying to figure out:

1. Who is Nythen to the twins?
2. How would he have had the authority to exile the prince and princess of a kingdom without being related to them- i.e. their uncle?
3. If Nythen essentially needs the twins to find a sword that belongs to the heir of the kingdom (because it apparently has magic abilities in it o.o) why would he have exiled them (the only reason I can think of is he didn't know yet that he'd need them)?

I THINK those are the only things at the moment, but I think there's some other stuff, too. Any help would be greatly appreciated because I think it would help with my word count. >.>