I'm taking the approach that I want to have a more detailed outline this year. I made a post asking for help with a block I got to, and I got some great feedback. Here's the post I made...
Plowing right along, plotting and outlining furiously before NaNo begins. This will be my 2nd year. Last year I had ideas for scenes I put on notecards and arranged them the way I wanted and wrote from that. Wasn't too terribly happy with it. Have written a few things since then in a "seat of your pants" style, but that didn't seem to suit me. This year for NaNo, I'm trying to have a complete plot outline before the 1st so I can write from that. One small problem; my plot is stalled.
Long story short, the book is Epic Fantasy w/a rough edge. The MC is a female who is going after an assassin that's part of a larger organization of assassins. She worked at a home for unwanted children in a largish village/town, an assassin came in, killed all the kids but one and kidnapped him. Noone would help her, so she took off on her own to find these guys. She came to a village, booked passage downriver to the nearest major city while picking up a teenage boy tagalong. They get to the city and get a room at an inn. He wants to help, she says no. He leaves, intending to try and pick up info anyway. She goes to the library, and when she comes back, there's an assassin in her room that attempts to talk her out of pursuing them (sort of a "it's too big of a picture for you to understand" kind of thing). She summons a trickster spirit (it's the 2nd time she's summoned him; she was warned to only do it once) to get more power. That's where I'm stalled. I have a rough idea for an ending, but I seem to be stopped right there.
Any suggestions? Ideas? Ideas or suggestions on how to come up wih my own ideas? Any help is appreciated.
I got back some very helpful suggestions. Here's what I've been working on this morning (I would have done more, but I was hampered by an hour long search for my wallet).
First, why did the assassin try to talk her out of pursuing them? Why not just kill her? There must be a reason behind that.
I’m not sure that does make sense. Possibly he can be someone sent by Ravyn to try and mollify his grief. And perhaps it wasn't an assassin. Perhaps it was a member of the opposing faction, or one of the good guys trying to help her.
Second, why was she warned to only summon the trickster once? What are the consequences of summoning it more than once? Because it becomes addictive. The more I think about this, the more I like the idea of Mahrna hanging herself after Naoren leaves.
- Why does this assassin simply talk to her instead of killing her? Is he potentially a more moral assassin than the one who killed all the children? Might she be able to get more information out of him or persuade him to see things from her point of view and maybe even enlist his help? What kind of people does this group of assassins kill? Good people? Bad people? Whoever their boss tells them too? the more I think about why the assassin would just talk to her, the more it doesn't make sense. Being a large organization, they're not going to really give a shit. They wouldn’t talk to her. They would just kill her, and she wouldn’t see it coming. As far as what they kill, who they are? They are a far-reaching organization, sort of like the “illuminati”
- Why did the assassin go for that one kid in the first place? Does the kid have some sort of abilities or special parents or something? What are the goals of the assassins or the people paying them? Noone is playing them, they are a branch of an illuminati-like organization. The kid is important to their goals, he may have some powers or something to do in the future, maybe a “golden child” type thing.
- The trickster spirit- what will the repercussions of her ignoring the warning be? How will she get out of whatever the consequences are? Jack gets his claws into naoren.
- When will the teenage boy show up again? Can he help her get out of whatever crap she brings down upon herself by summoning the trickster? Will she then accept him as a companion? He is the “golden child” of the opposition, or maybe a counter to the trickster
-What other characters might she meet that will help or hinder her on the journey? Who can she go to for information about who the assassin is, what he wants with the child, how he can be stopped etc? What does she expect to do when she finally meets him? Does she have any sort of training/power/skill that will help her face him or will it be more about having a ballsy personality and extreme will to succeed? She’s going to meet someone in the library that will help her in more ways than one. She doesn’t quite know what she’ll do when she meets him (and I need to illustrate this in the book). she has no training, it's gonna be a ballsy personality bolstered by insanity and power that she has no idea what to do with.
So that's where I'm at now. The nice thing about coming into outling from a sort-of "seat of your pants" discovery writer perspective is that I dont' feel like I have to adhere to the outline religiously. It's fluid and adjustable. And with the software I'm using (liquid story binder, well worth the $45.95 pricetag), it's very easy to do all that and have it in one place.
I'm fucking ITCHING LIKE FUCK to start writing. You can bet that unless my pregnant girlfriend needs something, when the clock strikes midnight and the month turns to November, I'm going to be typing away!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment