So, Brennon and I are wicked excited about NaNoWriMo. Well, I am excited paired with a squirmy anxiety about him out-writing me in this year's installment. To mentally prepare myself and stock up on advice, I'm already trolling the forums to scope out the competition. As always when I view these forums, I am struck by how much time people have to participate in this. Some of these people won last year's NaNoWriMo with 110K+ words. That's just insane. I mean, that's like 3K words a day. Who does that?
I'm still toying with ideas for plots and ideas for non-plots. Sometimes I think it may be easier simply to start writing and let the plot go where it will. When it comes down to it, if you let go of "coherency," there's really no hole out of which you can't write yourself. I mean, so your main character dies? Then they can explore the afterlife and find a way to resurrect. Or say your character and plot are dragging, with little to no direction and a boring as hell story... Simply make then board a spacecraft and turn it into a space opera. Or hell, just turn it into a musical. Maybe I'll write a novel that is insanely trippy and just make random shit happen without explanation. Could be fun and kind of ridiculous. Currently, I'm imagining a female protagonist with a pretty much blank personality. I was just reading a thread about Mary Sue's, which are characters that are incredibly talented for no reason but that they are the main character and they exhibit no or very few (and minor) flaws. They are generally well-liked, attractive and insanely cliched. I don't want a Mary Sue for a main char. So I need to either come up with a few believable flaws or I shall just make her a non-hero. I'm leaning towards this at the moment, maybe even making her the villain, though I don't know how convincingly I could pull off a novel centered around the villain.
But I'd like to make her maybe a bit like Nynaeve al'Maera - an angry, hot chick who kicks ass. Or maybe not. All of Robert Jordan's chars tend to be a bit Mary Sue-ish, so I may avoid that route. I'd like to write a story about an average person who skates by somehow but without gaining extraordinary power. But I think I do want to set it in a fantasy world, horse-fantasy as Brennon would say.
I can't yet decide whether I'd like my main char to be live in a city or the country. I don't really even know what sort of plot I'd like to do, but it could be fun to make her run around by herself in the wilderness for a while, make her run into some crazy shit and what not. I dunno, anyone have any fun ideas of who my char is or what I could do with her to start off. I'll probably just let the plot develop as it will, unless I can come up with something I like. I still want to write people into the novel like I planned last time. What say ye?
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Reminder: this isn't a competition between us. If it were, I'd win.
I think you should take my idea of last night and make her a sleazy porn peddler in horse-fantasy times. Her magic crystal shows images from 70's gay porn. That'll give you a chance not only to totally characterize a character in like, twenty seconds, but also the grounds to write bareback buttsex! Huzzah!
In all seriousness (not that I'm joking), picking a job for a character is one of the easier way to characterize them. Like a sewage treatment facility coordinator. You kinda know what that dude's gonna be like. Loves his Miller High Life, gambles on scratchers, etc.
Horse-fantasy, I think, requires some sort of outline, lest you get lost and become discouraged. But it's up to you. Either way, I'll see you at the 110k mark, baby.
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