What story should I write for National novel writing month?
Question:Okay, I found out about this cool activity where everyone signs up and tries to write a novel(la) (at least 50000 words) in one month (November)
I have always wanted to write, and I have a few main core ideas that I have in my head, I love all my babies and I can’t really decide which one would be a good fit for the competition (for lack of a better term, no one is “competing” per say) I know its bad to get ahead of myself before I write anything at all but I can’t help thinking about it. here goes.
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So here are all my ideas.
1. The Powerless- (Young adult/Sci-Fi)
Everyone on earth has super powers except for the main character, by twist of fate he ends up becoming a vigilante masked hero.
(This is a HUGE project of mine, the one I have put the most thought into so I kind of want to really work on it. Like I said, I know its not good to get too ahead of yourself but this would be part one in a 5 book series in my head. So I don’t think this is it)
2. The Machine- (Sci-Fi/Time Travel)
A group of high school students discover a time machine and after some abuse it they must deal with consequences that come with it.
Was what I was going to do originally beacuse its the freshest idea in my head, but there are just too many characters for a novella.
3. Witchpact (Urban Fantasy/Young adult)
All that wicken/witchcraft stuff that Goth kids in highschool are into turns out to be real. A normal guy accidentally gets involved in a summoning spell gone wrong and a demon is brought forth. In order to defeat the demon one of the witches makes a pact with the hero making them both very powerful…but also enslaving her to him. (but not in a bad way, he is a good guy…at first.) They deal with the rules of the pact and other magical forces in the world.
This is very influenced from anime I watched when I was younger and the concept originally started as a way to force me to practice writing female characters (of which their are a majority of in this) beacuse I was having trouble writing women in my other works. This is not a romance book, It has a real plot underneath the magic and monsters.
4. UNTITLED Pulp Sci-fi adventure
A fugitive on the run for a crime he didn’t commit. He has to make his way from Prison on Pluto across the solar system to Mercury.
The problem with this one is that I really want it to be a very hard Sci-fi story, very factual and realistic. (The trip would take more then a year) and It would be a lot of research to get all the physics and stuff right.
These are the four main stories that have been in my head. In writing this question I think I may have already answered it though, I think I’m going to go with Wtichpact. The website even says that this is just for fun and I would hate to rush stuff that I really take seriously like Powerless or the Machine. Witchpact started as an exercise anyway and even if I did write it its probably the least marketable of my ideas to real publishers (God and the Devil get involved). So at worst I could put it up for free to advertise my writing prowess.
But I would still like opinions.
This entry was posted on Friday, December 3rd, 2010 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Time Travel Romance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The first idea is your best one. Time machines are so overdone. Anything with witches is tedious. Fugitive on the run sounds like the movie Fugitive set in space.
The first one was the only one that stood out as something original. And I think you could make it work for NaNoWriMo.
ETA: There’s no point in doing NaNoWriMo if you see it as a joke that you’ll waste a bad story on. That’s not the spirit of the project. You’re supposed to see if you can write a serious, professional level novel in one month. Otherwise you’re just playing around.
I think that the first story sounds most like you will stick with it for the whole month.
I’ve been doing this every year for five years and I’ve found my best strategy is to not pre-think anything. On midnight 11/1 I just fire up the computer and type the first sentence that comes to mind. Then I write from there.
I have friends that spend a month pre-planning to write, but for me I prefer the freedom to just up and go and not have any idea what I’m writing about or where I’m going until I write it and go there. I like to surprise myself.
Here are my last few starts, written on the spur of the moment with absolutely no fore-thought:
2006 – The grass cracked beneath Mitchell’s feet as he walked. The sound was crisp and clean and rare. Such thick frost rarely came to Ardmore, Alabama, so when it did, Mitchell liked to get out in it.
(I did wind up tossing this one and starting fresh on day 2, but that’s the only time it has happened.)
2007 – Mornings were not Joe’s strong suit. Needless-to-say, this led to no end of coffee jokes throughout his life. If it wasn’t “Hey Joe, you look like you need some joe, Joe!” then it was “What’s the matter Joe? Been decaffeinated?” One particularly annoying co-worker at the insurance firm where Joe worked liked to begin each week with a joke about Joe’s “beans” and end each week with a bad pun involving “a cup of Josephine’s beans.” Joe was never quite sure what the man meant.
2008 – Candy had never been happier. It was a Saturday, an A-Team marathon was on TV, and she had just enough Molly McButter for one heaping bowl of fresh popped popcorn. It was below freezing outside and the hardwood floors were cold against her feet. She’d looked everywhere for her slipper socks, but the cat had drug them off somewhere and hidden them. She had started a fire, though, and bundled up in a large Oakland Athletics blanket her ex left behind when he moved out last summer. She had just grabbed the remote when she heard a knock at her back door.
2009 – Renfield clicked the secondary lens into place, loosened a screw on the side of the frame, and pulled his table lamp closer. Even at this increased magnification the etching–worn flat by the handling of a thousand hands–could only barely be read.
“An old piece indeed, this one.” He turned the coin over in his hand and back again, watching the patina’d copper catch the light just so. “Near as I can tell, sar, the coin says ‘God has favored us’ in the old language on the one side and has a single seven star on the other. Common once, I’m told, sar, but an odd design for this day and age.”
“You know what it is, then?” the tall man said. He thrust his palm into the light.
Renfield looked up at him, his right eye near three times its actual size behind the layers of glass. “Not exactly, sar, but I seen a similar piece once before.” He glanced back at the coin, flipping it one more time before dropping it in the tall man’s sweaty palm. “Was a young man who come in, some years back.”
“How far back, tinkerer?”
“No matter, that’s not the point.”
“Pretend it did matter,” the tall man said.
EDIT @ cirque de lune:
“There’s no point in doing NaNoWriMo if you see it as a joke that you’ll waste a bad story on. That’s not the spirit of the project.”
I disagree. The spirit of the project is to write. No more, no less.
For me, I find it more inspiring and helpful in establishing writing routines than as an attempt to produce actual, polished work.
The website’s own “about” section says:
“Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing.”
I mean to each his own, but the value I personally find in NaNo is in not writing ANYTHING I’ve thought about at all. I do use it as a blow-off story opportunity. Then, in December and January, when I’m on a writing high and I’ve re-established routines, I return to the stories I do care about and intend to finish “for real” again and find myself more productive for the experience.
Well, if you want to take it serious you can. It is also about having fun, but why would you even try to write a novel in a month if writing weren’t fun for you?
I think that it might be good to write Powerless, and since you take it seriously, edit it after you’ve gotten it written. The main point of NaNoWriMo is to get you to write it so that it’s in a state that you can work from… If you never write a first draft, you’ll never be able to edit, you’ll never be able to rewrite.. and if in the future you want to get published, that will be impossible if you never even write anything… So the point of it is basically that you stop wasting time thinking about it rather than writing it and start writing.
Other than powerless, I also like the idea of Witchpact. Though it does seem a bit like a cliché, it also has some things that seem really interesting. Also, if you are seriously only writing to get published, don’t worry about it involving God and the Devil. Most things actually do… Many of the books I’ve read have a lot to do with those, actually.. I don’t think it makes it any less marketable unless you are marketing to young children or extremely religious people who would find it offensive.
If you sign up, I’d love to be your writing buddy.
(You can never have too many writing buddies! Unless you have a lot that you don’t talk to… because that’s not the point of having writing buddies…) I’m SarynEmilie over at the site. If you ever wanna chat, I’m always glad to talk about anything that involves anything.
Witchcraft makes the most sense logically and logistically. You can alter the storyline when coming to the end of the month in order to close it out, you can make the word count by adding scenes and including more fights or reduce sections by limiting characters. You don’t have to think to much as you can follow the basic cliches that go with the fight of good against evil and the covenants of your magical world. You can set up rules that can’t be broken or allow all heck to break loose.
The great thing with this story is that it can be edited when you’re done with Nano and added to. It could have a second short that explains anything that wasn’t adequately reviewed in the manuscript (plot-holes). It also allows for you to have some fun with it, while working a very marketable and viable short. (e-publishers are always looking for witchcraft shorts and novellas)
I like the time machine one, there are so many possible twists to the plot that it could be paced really fast and interesting.
But the one you seem to fancy most is the first one, so that’s probably the one you’ll end up writing.
I tried to have a go at nano remo a couple of years ago, but wasn’t happy with the result of my feverish scribbling. Hope you have better luck.
I’ll respond to each idea.
1. The superhero thing is overdone, maybe write a story about a criminal.
2. Again, really overdone with every time machine movie ever made. Why not a space-travel machine?
3. Most Goths are either atheists, agnostics, or one of the Judeo-Christian faiths, so get over that assumption, right now. Also, magic & monsters are overdone, maybe make it a story about ESP instead, or one where the character doesn’t realize they’re losing their mind.
4. This one is fine, because you want it to be realistic. The fact is that a year in space would be hard on someone, especially if they’re on the run. Also, space is big, but are there a lot of ships flying around out there? How does he manage not to get caught? What does he do to survive: food, warmth, transport, entertainment? Detailing the journey of a year as a fugitive would be a good break from your typical fugitive story, where everything is solved in about a month. Richard Kimball for instance, actually evaded capture for years. It will take some research, but the best writing is the most believable.
No offense but the concept of your first story is really similar to this manga called Mx0.
here’s a link to the summary.
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mx0/
Though I’m sure that although the starting plotlines are similar the actual stories are really different. Oh yeah, if you do plan on ever writing your story “powerless” do NOT read Mx0 at ALL!!! You will get influenced!
Other then that, you ought to go with Witchpact if the contest is a casual one!