So, does anyone actually have an idea what they're going to write?

I don't, really. I have a vague idea for something hideously pretentious about writing (I told you it was vague; that is the idea), but nothing solid. Hopefully I'll work something out before November. Or while I'm writing.

This is the synopsis I have posted on the website.

Me wrote:

The Archivist
Alexandra Cruz is still trying to get things rolling after college, so to help fill in the gaps, she takes a job as an archivist for the Ag department at her local university.

On her first day she finds herself, not organizing the archives, but battling a ferocious hoarde of angry pixies bent on ruining her hair. But when Alex wins the fight and finds herself back where she started, she discovers that progress has been made. Each time she returns to the archives she finds herself drawn further and further into to a fantastic world where the stakes are much higher than loosing a few old publications from the records. And much more dangerous. What happens if she looses a fight? Or if her bosses find out that their archives are home to more than just cockroaches? But once this world has been discovered, can Alex really just walk away?

Granted, there are more characters than just Alex, and a fantasy kitchen sink of stuff to encounter, but that's the starting point.

I have a very solid idea, or at least one I've been thinking about for a long time. Set in a generic fantasy background, the novel will chronicle the rise and fall of an evil overlord, from his point of view, mostly. It won't be first person. I'm getting so tired of all the first person craptastic novels out there.

Kel, I absolutely love your summary; it sounds like something I'd want to read. Maxi, same for you, that sounds like an awesome idea.

I'm probably going to go for first person craptastic; it's a little easier to write quickly that way. I am hell-bent on winning this.

Well, the first person POV can be done really well, especially if the author is really in the character's head and it's not just a self-insert. Even the "big name" authors have a tendency to do that. Especially in the stupid "paranormal romance" section of the bookstore.

And thanks. Since he's an evil overlord, I decided to make him a powerful magician... so I've been working on the system of magic in my head, as well as how did he get in a position to take over the world/country/whatever, and WHY would he bother. The world, I guess, I'm not really worried about. Everyone seems familiar with Generic Fantasy World (and I guess if I'm strapped for a name for it, I'll call it Generica); one just needs to establish the general "rules" for it, and you're done.

WANTSTA READ KELS STORY

I've talked about it before; God is dead. This is what happens next. (I have some more standard fantasy ideas knocking around, in case that idea turns out to be unworkable.)

Archangel Uriel has been thrown out of Heaven, and to earn his way back he has to find to protect a boy who is actually Jesus, reborn, from the evil people and demons that one to kill him. Spoiler: he is not really an angel and the boy is actually human.

So the religious fiction version of Don Quixote?

An HP Lovecraft-esque novel about the somewhat crazy protagonist's struggles with his literal demons. Or more like ghosts, really.

It's going to be a Crap-toberfest.

Miss Prince wrote:

So the religious fiction version of Don Quixote?

I'd never thought of it that way before, but yes.

I really have no ideas for NaNo. I could try restarting the Ace Combat 5 fic that I was working on last year and was so rudely interrupted by shipping out to BMT, but I'm thousands of miles away from my PS2 and a copy of AC5.

I'm also trying to poke away at another fic at the moment. >_>

I'm torn between two stories right now. One is a sort of superhero story (think Legion of Subsitute Heros but a bit less useful) and another is my attempt to do a "arranged marriage between two guys!" that makes sense and is intresting.

I have three ideas, because I am indecisive.

1. Lovecraftian cyberpunky space opera epic where a bunch of mercenaries and space-pilots get caught up in a mad scientist/ex-magical girl's well intentioned plan to free an Eldritch Horror from its imprisonment by an Ancient Conspiracy.
2. Fantasy intrigue/war story where city-states built around magic-emitting rocks initially solve conflicts through tabletop wargaming (to prevent actual wars), then later through actual war. Then someone figures out how to steal the magic-emitting rocks. Then someone figures out how to break open the magic-emitting rocks. Then It Gets Worse.
3. Massive parody-deconstruction of fantasy romance cliches starring a princess who wants to wear dresses rather than use a sword. She runs away from an arranged marriage to seek a fabled kingdom ruled according to the principles of true love. Along the way she meets a werewolf who tries to imprint on her, has an up-close-and-personal encounter with the mixed-bathing and friendship ritual customs of a rather more free-spirited country, and tries to get pseudo-Luke Skywalker to peep at her bathing under a waterfall but gets ogled by pseudo-Obi-Wan Kenobi instead. Then the kingdom of true love turns out to be a dystopia and she falls in love with a misanthropic revolutionary.

No. 3 would probably be the easiest as it's closest to the other parody stuff I've written recently. No. 1 is the toughest as it requires the most worldbuilding, but I could use NaNo to rough it out and then sort the details out later.

Also, everyone else's ideas sound pretty cool.

I have been batting around this idea for a while.

Ruth Hammer is your typical cubicle monkey; quiet, fast and with seemingly no life of her own. But the truth is that she is an outgoing, straight talking pagan woman with a love life to rival many of today's movie stars. Everything is going fine until the man who works across from her winds up dead. The victim of what appears to be a freak accident. But as the investigation goes on, the accident turns out to be any thing but a freak occurrence. The Police close in on Ruth when more people who have had intimate dealings with her start dying in increasingly bizarre ways. But when the truth is revealed, the culprit turns out to be someone who is out for revenge against the woman who ruined his life and he will stop at nothing to see his vision of Justice done.

Quote :

Three sisters and their families spend three months living in a recreation of 1959. How will 21st-century folks adapt to life without cable TV, computers, microwaves, or MP3s?

The oldest sister has two girls, a fifteen-year-old Goth wannabe, and an eleven-year-old who's addicted to pink sparkles. And they're both going to parochial school for the duration.
The middle sister has a six-year-old boy who's been homeschooled up till now. He's going to public school for the first time in his life, and she's worried he won't get along with the other kids.
The youngest is my MC, and she gets a love interest! He's not officially part of the project, but he's very into that era and even dresses the part. And he looks good--if he'd just lose the Buddy Holly glasses.

EileenK98 wrote:

Quote :

Three sisters and their families spend three months living in a recreation of 1959. How will 21st-century folks adapt to life without cable TV, computers, microwaves, or MP3s?

The oldest sister has two girls, a fifteen-year-old Goth wannabe, and an eleven-year-old who's addicted to pink sparkles. And they're both going to parochial school for the duration.
The middle sister has a six-year-old boy who's been homeschooled up till now. He's going to public school for the first time in his life, and she's worried he won't get along with the other kids.
The youngest is my MC, and she gets a love interest! He's not officially part of the project, but he's very into that era and even dresses the part. And he looks good--if he'd just lose the Buddy Holly glasses.

Seriously? Sounds like the idea for a bad reality show.

I have no idea what I want to write about. Probably something craptastic. I haven't written anything in forever and a day.

OK, I've now jumped on a fourth idea, one based on Norse mythology which I mentioned in the urban fantasy thread a while back. More details (and a request for mythology-related advice) here.

I was going to write a steampunk mafia story about a crippled city watch captain, some ruthless thugs-for-hire, a crazy painter with hella issues and a dangerous alchemical project gone bad - and I've still got the story on my to-be-written list for sure (I mean, steampunk mafia - how could I not, you know?).

But then I listened to a spoken word poem, and got this plot-bunny practically chewing at my brain, and then it turned from plot-bunny to full-blown novel-idea, so now I'm going to write something completely different. To quote my NaNo profile:

Quote :

It's Raining In Chicago
Where do our dreams go when we forget how to sleep? Running on
coffee, cigarettes and the diesel fumes from his Kenworth, Zach Glover
has not slept properly in years. When the girl he picks up at an
all-night truck stop leaves her old Polaroid camera in his passenger
seat after he's given her a ride home, he finds a new hobby - snapping
shot after shot of the America no one else pays attention to, and
mailing them to her.


Unable to write back, she tacks them up on a map of the US, tracking
his progress and letting the photographs become a way to ease her
loneliness.

The last sentence sounds all wangsty, but she's not, really.

So yes. Insomniac American longhaul truckers, polaroids and faaaaar to pretentious themes about going home and finding yourself and silly things like that.


... I'm totally watching Convoy and Smokey and the Bandit under the guise of research.

I have projects due in the middle and at the end of the month, it's application season, I'm preparing for a conference I'm running, and I have articles and presentations to prepare. A smart person would go about NaNo with the same comfortable characters and just do an easy story. Blah blah college life blah blah relationships blah blah taking over the world.

I never said I was smart. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Instead, I'm debating two different projects (for lack of any better way of putting it). Neither are novels in the strictest sense. One is a mock writing guide, a smart-ass answer to all those writing handbooks out there, using my characters to do the talking for the frustrations I need to get out while grading. For example, I'd be using an airheaded character's rambling to talk about shitty sentence structure or a pedantic scientist's obsessing over details to cover comma use. I'm thinking of calling it The Short Angry Grad Student's Guide to Writing -OR- "Don't Piss Off the Person Who Grades Your Papers."

The other is also a rather ill-tempered take on all those saccharine cancer survivorship stories out there, and there are far more of these than realistic ones. I loathe all those happy-sappy stories that make it seem like once treatment ends, everything goes back to being sunshine and kittens. No long-term side effects, no psychological traumas, no nightmares or panic attacks, just bland but pleasant normality. And after years of people telling me that I should add yet another volume to it, I've decided that there's only one approach I'd be happy with: honesty seasoned with slightly sarcastic humor. It's based in reality, but delivered in a storyteller style (which is how I'm justifying it for a novel-writing event).

I'm honestly torn between the two at the moment. Like I said, they're not exactly novels, but they're what I want to write at the moment, and it's been a little while since I've worked with anything not written in either verse or script form. So these are what I'm going with.

Well, that's some diverse ideas going on. I'm just writing a young adult novel about how fandom leads to death and destruction. Except not always.

I think I need to work on my summary.

Some kind of sprawling D/s Hell's Kitchen inspired m/m thing.

Quote :

Fata Secuta
Kevin came onto the show determined to win and forget about his fellow contestants. Well, except for Dave. Kevin notices him. Possibly too much. And in unsettling ways.

Done in close third-person [Dave's].

Or, maybe not.

If -in my one hour of computer access on weekdays- I can actually write, I've decided it'll be a really boring 40K fic about Thunderbolt maintainers. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Penguin, why don't you write by hand? It's kind of romantic and fun.

Update on my planning status: me and a friend have agreed not to even think about what we're going to do until November 1st. He thinks it will make the experience more "pure". I think he's a crazy motherfucker, but I'm not exactly going to cross a crazy motherfucker.