Well, I obviously didn't keep up with my blogging last year, even with NaNoWriMo, which was my intention with this blog. I made it about halfway to my goal last year, 26,000 words, and the story fell apart. I think its salvageable at some point in time, but I need to rework the history of the world. Even if the reader never gets it, I need to know what happened. There are too many plot points that rely on the history of the world and the town in which the book takes place.
This year I am using the Hollywood Formula as an outlining tool to get as much prep work done before November as possible. Though the formula is really meant for script writing, it adapts well to a novel development. There are certain things that need to happen at certain times in each act; it really focuses the story. Everything is character driven, which is great for a 50K story. I don't think this particular formula would work for Epic Fantasy, but for an adventure story, it serves quite nicely.
For now, I've named the book The Relic, though I don't expect (or want) to keep that title. But the relic is a major plot device and hook of the story, so I suppose it works for now. I wanted to explore the idea of someone returning home after a prolonged war overseas. What would that be like in a world that didn't have telecommunications? What issues would that person deal with?
There's no over-arching conflict there though. So I used the elements of the main character actually getting home to be my vehicle for conflict. So this becomes the story of a journey, a chase, and ultimately a struggle for the throne. How's that?!
I'll try to keep up on the blog this time...but we both know that's not going to happen.
Had I not decided to follow this blog last year, I may have completely forgotten about NaNoWrMo (is that right?). But as it is, I have been itching to write some anyway, and now that Nov. is around the corner, maybe I should try to plan some for it. Last time I don't think I even approached 1,000 words as I did not prioritize it...and, who are we kidding? I'm not going to this time either. ;)
ReplyDeleteThey key is an actual outline. If you give yourself a goal beyond just a word count. I have an outline template based on the Hollywood formula I can send you...its pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteThat would cool. I started listening to Writing Excuses with Hollywood Forumla, but it wasn't as detailed as I thought it would be and so didn't seem as helpful. Maybe I didn't dig deep enough.
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