Quimi

Today's challenge is supposedly about plot hooks: taking the what-ifs from yesterday and using them to find ways to integrate the "speculative element" with your story. I have just a few problems with this:

1. I am a little confused between yesterday and today: to me, what-ifs are the plot hooks.

2. My speculative element is pretty integrated. I mean, I have a priest fighting demons with mystical crystals and a magically-whistling sidekick, what more do you want? Sure, it's a blurry line between magic and religion in this story so far, but still, it's already crucial.

3. I had a really great time at the Arts and Jazz Fest this afternoon, and thus have very little brain and energy for coherent thought.

So yeah, phoning it in today. At some point I will go back and delineate ways that Paori and Vester et al might try different magics to solve problems and/or make things easier, with various exciting results, but for now, I'm just going to jot down a few interesting ideas that came to me in the past 24 hours (yes, even though I can't brain with intent, my brain still keeps going):

~Me (last night to friends): How evil would it be to put key information in an ancient tome when the only MC who can read is mute?
Friends: Deliciously evil. :D

~Me (listening to random DragonForce song this afternoon): This is a cool song, too bad it's too upbeat for my mutelight playlist. Oh well, guess I'll save it for the sequel— WAIT WHAT SEQUEL?!

~Me (watching A Bug's Life tonight and remembering the stories she came up with in high school that started as Bug's Life fanfics until she discovered the concept of OCs): You know, it'd be really awesome if Flynn's ruined city happened to be one of those from the AC in Paori's world— WAIT, SERIOUSLY, BRAIN?

I swear, my brain just mashes bunnies together like a chef throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks.

....and that metaphor made a lot more sense in my head. Which probably tells you something.

*will be back to taking this seriously tomorrow* As serious as I get, anyway. :P

Today I'm supposed to pick one area (history, economics/politics, language) and spend a little time expanding it. Okay. I'm gonna do it right today. I might even do two areas if I get really ambitious. But I'll start with language. Fifteen minutes, go!

( Read more... )

Whew, that was even more than I expected. Awesome. :) I think I will still do economics/politics, though, if only because it's the first time that churches have been mentioned in the exercises, and I know that religion has to play a bigger part than one little hermitage-turned-temple.

( Read more... )

Whoo, two for two! Booyah!

Languages! My favorite! *will try to restrain herself for the sake of the post, at least* >.>

( I make no promises. )

Not sure how far to take this post— I could go on all week, most likely. But I think I have a few more ideas of where to take it, at least.

Today's challenge is about recent history in my 'verse. Like the last hundred years or so. Once again, did not quite follow directions (and may have accidentally done tomorrow's assignment, too), but I came up with most of this while digesting my aunt's tasty Chocolate Dessert in her porch swing. And I'm happy with where it's leading me, which is what counts.

My first hang-up came when she said to list dates like death of a king, major wars and so on. I have a strong sense of this continent not having kings or kingdoms, possibly not since the ancient cataclysm that shall henceforth be known as the Division. (If it wasn't already; I'm not going to go back and check my old posts right now. Onward!) If you've ever read Bujold's The Sharing Knife series, I think it's kind of like that setting: a destroyed empire in the barely-remembered past, but now just farms and villages and independent towns, growing into a new civilization. And I couldn't really come up with any wars or other major conflicts; none really connected with my characters' stories, and it didn't really seem right to just randomly tack a war onto a year— OH HEY THAT'S WHY THIS ASSIGNMENT GAVE ME SO MUCH TROUBLE. *lightbulb*

Well, that's something to consider later on, I guess. At any rate, even without consciously realizing the source of my hangup, I managed to figure out a few things by connecting them to something I already knew I had: magic crystals.

( No, really. )

*reserves the right to repeat some of this tomorrow, if applicable*

I knew the map was coming up today, so instead of waiting until bedtime, I looked at the instructions before work this morning and worked on it during my conference period. Yay for free time used productively!

Mutelight has been mostly a story focused on three boys, and while they will travel a lot, they won't be crossing every inch of the world, so first I focused on the main part of their continent:
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e105/KayQy/mutelightmap1.png
The purple starburst in the northern mountains is Paori's temple/cavern/mining town where the story starts, with a few more towns along the rivers, some semi-nomadic settlements along that big northern lake (Vester and Sylver's home), a hopefully-not-random holy place on that island there... (and no, the cliffs are not really the Cliffs of Insanity. That's just a filler name. Really. >.> ) I had fun figuring out how the winds would blow from the NW to get rain to the northern central parts, but not the south, and so on, though I still haven't quite figured out what's on the east coast. "Here be dragons," maybe. It's not a very big continent, though. And I decided it's very seismically stable, aside from whatever created the canyon that diverted the southern river. That way all my crystal caverns are protected! XD

And though I don't plan on taking them off the continent (unless they have a sequel to the original plot that I don't even know yet), the rest of the planet might affect them somehow, so I sketched out some rough ideas:
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e105/KayQy/mutelightmap2.png*
Paori's continent is the squashed music note in the top left corner, all by itself. The other three continents (no, I'm not really going to call them Urbania, Suburbia, and Trash Heap, it's filler, I swear. And I don't know why Suburbia looks like a doggy head. >.> ) are more or less one big empire; they either haven't discovered Paori's continent yet, or they're too busy quelling insurrections to deal with a puny insular continent so far from them. Or maybe they're afraid of crossing the Starfall Islands: apparently there's a local belief that the volcanic eruptions are stars growing out of the earth and shooting into the sky... hmmmm....

Well, guess that's enough map-babble for one day. *cookies to those who read through it all* I did come up with one last thing on the way home, though it's nothing to do with maps: I was thinking about how I felt this was kind of an apocalyptic tale, yet still close to home, and I wondered, "Are they going to be fighting for a new beginning, like Narnia, or to protect the status quo, like Good Omens? Are they saving bodies or souls?" And then, as if the God from my story spoke to me herself, I heard, "I am not a God of division." ^___^

*graaaaaah, don't know why the images themselves won't show, even though I'm supposedly using the right code, but oh well, the links work and I need sleep. *will stab technology tomorrow*

(*note: nothing to do with the band Third Day. Though I'm probably the only one who thinks of them when those words are capitalized.)

And the link works today! \o/

So, pull out your list of climates from Saturday and look them over. You should have a bunch of climates, maybe even places, and a word or two describing how you feel when you're there.

Well, it's time to make your first real decision about your novel. What kind of mood do you want it to have? See, we're going to set your novel in the kind of climate that contributes to its overall mood and theme.

Mood, huh? Well, when it comes to Mutelight, I've already got a mood more or less figured out. So far it's an epic, mystical tale, much more serious than most of my other bunnies. A few down-home cozy elements, keeping its focus on the few main characters rather than a cast of thousands, but also its fair share of existentialism and possibly-apocalyptic drama. And I almost feel like I'm cheating today, since I already know so much of it is set in the mountains and caverns, and some northern forests, but even so, here goes. *pulls out list* *puts back list, pulls out other list* Day 1, not day 2, right. >.<

*nods and hmms* I described mountains as 'exhilarating', so they definitely work. (Though now I realize I should possibly visualize a little greenery on these mountains, and not just stark rock. I mean, the starkness can be there, but I don't think there'd be that large of a human settlement above the treeline, you know? They have to get their food somewhere...) Mountains are epic; probably why so many epic fantasies include some. Though most fantasies simply see them as an obstacle to overcome, rather than home ground... I could play with that a bit. *suddenly has character development! Characters gain 25 XP! Characters reach level 2!*

Forests also work (though not rainforests), they really give me a sense of peace and calm, yet with something potentially lurking behind a tree, either for good or ill. You could hide anything in a forest....

And while I hadn't considered swamps before, the fact that I labeled them 'mysterious' seems promising. I guess I mainly think of Florida/the south when I think of swamps, but they can be in cooler climates too, right? And I also love the limitless mystery of the ocean; I don't think it'll be a major setting itself, but a good coastline, or very very large lake, so it can be along the edges, hinting at things unknown...

So yeah. Technically I've mainly restated stuff I already knew about this world, but some of the whys and hows are already clearer. Woo! \o/

*may need to give herself a pre-10PM deadline on these things, seriously*

What do you mean, I haven't been on here in months, I don't know what you're talking— *cough* >.>

So, KD's doing this 30 Day Worldbuilding Challenge ( http://www.web-writer.net/fantasy/days/days/01.html ), and I decided to join in. So I'm about to have the busiest week so far this year. It's only fifteen minutes, right? And I could use the creativity exercise.

Ha. We shall see.

( This would be faster if I weren't trying to be all fancy posting it and stuff. )

Lot longer than 15 minutes, but I was perpetually distracted.

I've had trouble writing female characters for a long time, and often prefer writing male MCs. I've dismissed it as a tendency for my female characters to feel too much like Mary Sues, but I think now that this is either inaccurate or lazy, or both. And it seems like I'm creating fewer and fewer female characters lately. (Not that I need an equal gender ratio, but when my reason for making a character male is because female feels too "flimsy"....) So I'm going to go back to the basics, list some of my favorite female characters and heroes, figure out what I love about them, and then..... match it up against my subconscious objections to writing female characters, I guess?

This may wind up with me on the couch, headshrinking myself, but hopefully I won't have to delve too far into the sociopolitical mire. We shall see. (Oh, and there be spoilers ahead, though I'll try to be careful.)

( We'll see just how feminist a blogpost about women can be. Or can't, maybe. )

I could ramble on about stereotypes, and fallacies and expectations, and books I read as a child, but I'm really tired, and I semi-promised not to get into sociopolitical carp. And I'm really tired.

1. Start with Betty Crocker's recipe for coconut pecan frosting.

2. Have one person mix together evaporated milk, sugar, and butter while another person separates the eggs.

3. Person A starts chopping onions for spaghetti sauce while waiting for butter and sugar to melt.

4. Person B notices that butter is melted, and stirs until it thickens.

5. Person B realizes that frosting is not thickening because they forgot to add the eggs.

6. Add eggs to hot saucepan.

7. Desperately try to get the saucepan off heat before it's too late.

8. Switch to frosting from a can.

*sighs* At least this was technically edible (unlike the time I tried to make brown sugar glaze with Crisco *shudders*). And we won't go into the garlic bread flambé.

Last night, I wrote another prompt with my characters Pat and Hwan Ji. And I realized that, counting the newest prompt, I have written 46 prompts with these two over the past two years. Along with 3 different beginnings, and a smattering of notes, for a total of 21154 words.

.........Why is this not a novel yet?

Seriously, I need to do something with this thing before it reaches critical mass and collapses in on itself and becomes a plot black hole. It's already showing signs; my more recent prompts are starting to contradict some of the earlier ones. And I really love these characters, and their admittedly malleable plot/concept.

However.

They have competition.

There's last year's NaNo, Oddity Hall, which I also love, and would dearly like to finish. Ideally before the next NaNo. Unfortunately, I'm in the Mirey Middle, and while I'm still slogging away, it's very definitely slogging. :(

There's Mutelight, my sort-of-high fantasy involving a young priest who has lost his voice in a world where magic and miracles must be sung or spoken, a couple of boys that teach him to whistle, and the demons that want them dead. Or something. This one's only a handful of prompts/scenes so far, though it's asking to steal some ideas from the allegorical epic I'll probably never write. (Advice from the latest Writing Excuses podcast encourages me in this direction.) It's shiny and pretty, and all purple and blue and grey.... that last probably makes no sense to anyone but me. (PHJ is blue and black and green, while OH is ...orange, mostly.) It's up there in the competition for Next NaNo, which is coming upon me all too soon.

And then there's the new bunny that attacked me in the shower the other night, about a genie and the girl he's forced to protect. Little more than the concept, but new enough still that the OMG SHINY hasn't worn off yet. (It's a lovely golden color, even.)

And this is just what I've poked at in the past week. We won't even get into the various zombies, wizards, fairies, aliens, superheroes, children, and so on that are waiting their chance at my brain. (Yet.)

I may have to fall back on the old "dump-them-in-the-arena-and-see-who-survives" gladiator test. Though I've never actually used that test on stories....