A Deluge of Ideas
No one who writes can ever be accused of not having an idea, no matter how much we sometimes think we don't. We could probably throw out ten in a day - assuming you aren't expecting quality ideas. The trick is to pick through what sounds interesting and figure out what can actually be written.
I think this is generally my downfall with novel-length stories. I go about writing them completely differently from fan-fiction or short stories. With a short story (or fanfic) I know exactly what the plot is before I write it, where I want it to go and generally how I want it to end. If I didn't have those details I wouldn't be writing it! However, with novels ... I usually get a vague idea, refuse to do any planning, and then try to write seat-of-my-pants and meet the NaNoWriMo deadline.
Which, since 2005, HASN'T WORKED. This school year, for me, is all about trying to change what doesn't work. For the next two months, that will primarily be my writing. In hopes of figuring out which I will plot out by the time I've finished this post ...
I have these three ideas:
01. The Cop-Out, tentative title: (The) Shades of Jazz:
A woman who loses her mother moves into a house in her mother's hometown. Once there, she comes in contact with a ghost who was a booze smuggler during Prohibition, and was murdered (along with her family) in the very house the woman is now living in. She finds solace in her loss by bonding with the ghost, and eventually helps the ghost and her family move on.
I say this first one is a cop-out because, technically, I've already tried to write it. It was the idea behind my angst-ridden 2008 NaNo Novel, which had a perpetually angry and drunken protagonist. It took me a very long time (read: TWO YEARS) to realize that the reason why I only wrote 3K words that year - most of it description of the house - was because I hated the character. I was depressed and confused and angry, and all of that came out in the FMC. It was a clear marker that I shouldn't have been writing but trying to fix myself.
The idea, though, has the potential for being a really interesting paranormal romance. If I actually write it from the ghost's perspective this time.
02. A Group of Vampire Hunters, tentative title: From The Shadows or Roses Aren't Red:
A group of young renegades fight vampires in Wisconsin, convinced that all bloodsuckers are inherently evil. The lead female hunter's viewpoint is challenged when they raid a clan and she meets children and their protector. Allowing them to escape the slaughter puts their protector - the daughter of the head of the clan - in the hunter's debt. The hunter attempts to change the minds of the other hunters, finding an adversary in their leader. The hunter must choose between killing her leader or killing her new vampire friends.
The last bit is open-ended because I'm not entirely sure where I want to go with her character - I don't know her yet. That may even be something I don't know until I start writing.
I feel like this idea has a lot of promise. One of the things modern vampire fiction lacks, in my opinion, is a range of vampire goodness - either they are all good, or all evil, or the mixture is radically skewed so that the "bad" vampires become caricatures. That's no fun for anyone, and it is my own personal opinion that "Twilight" would not be as mocked as it is if it had better villains - good villains shape good heroes. (Stalking aside, because I do agree that that shit is RIDICULOUS.)
I always liked the idea of Buffy's Scoobies or Blade's Nightstalkers, but I think as a whole the story would be more humanizing without the super-hero at the forefront. Just regular people trying to make a difference in the world.
03. A Crime-Solving Duette, tentative title: Gaslight Fugitives (Book 1):
A woman finds herself adrift after a string of bad luck forces her to drop out of college. A random attack in her home by an eldritch creature - and the random woman who zips in, saves her, and leaves without an explanation - leads her to investigate. She finds that her bad luck isn't luck at all: soldiers from an alternate universe are trying to sever her ties to her own universe to convince her to join their cause. The purpose being that she is meant to fill her alternate self's place, who has recently died in battle. She agrees temporarily, but does she decide she will return to her own world, frustrated with fighting; or will she embrace it as a solution to her problem?
Haha, "eldritch". I had to. It is also REALLY HARD to distance between alternate universe versions of someone when that someone doesn't have a name yet. I also have no idea how she would feel once she's there, considering I haven't built a character yet.
My largest problem with this scenario is that I'm afraid it will become either one of two already-running (and much beloved by me) television shows - Supernatural, or Fringe. It reads like a mixture of both.
Also, the main character is intended to be a sleuth/detective - she's the brains, and that's why they need her so badly. The problem with this is I have never read a strict detective story - always a story that is about something else entirely, but has people trying to puzzle something out. I worry about my ability to do it accurately, lest I become like Stephenie Meyer who just wrote about vampires and didn't do enough research, pissing off many a vampire fan. (Although, hearing her talk about it, some of her decisions make sense - specifically no fangs and no sleep, despite them being darlings of the genre. I think she just didn't write them well enough to convince her text-based audience.)
This would require the most world-building, because there would be a whole universe to design that the main cast would spend most of their time in. The previous two are both urban settings with supernatural elements, which would allow me to skip world-building (almost) entirely.
I don't know that this helped me narrow anything down, so much as flesh out plot ideas for all three. Which doesn't really help in the long run. Input?
I think this is generally my downfall with novel-length stories. I go about writing them completely differently from fan-fiction or short stories. With a short story (or fanfic) I know exactly what the plot is before I write it, where I want it to go and generally how I want it to end. If I didn't have those details I wouldn't be writing it! However, with novels ... I usually get a vague idea, refuse to do any planning, and then try to write seat-of-my-pants and meet the NaNoWriMo deadline.
Which, since 2005, HASN'T WORKED. This school year, for me, is all about trying to change what doesn't work. For the next two months, that will primarily be my writing. In hopes of figuring out which I will plot out by the time I've finished this post ...
I have these three ideas:
01. The Cop-Out, tentative title: (The) Shades of Jazz:
A woman who loses her mother moves into a house in her mother's hometown. Once there, she comes in contact with a ghost who was a booze smuggler during Prohibition, and was murdered (along with her family) in the very house the woman is now living in. She finds solace in her loss by bonding with the ghost, and eventually helps the ghost and her family move on.
I say this first one is a cop-out because, technically, I've already tried to write it. It was the idea behind my angst-ridden 2008 NaNo Novel, which had a perpetually angry and drunken protagonist. It took me a very long time (read: TWO YEARS) to realize that the reason why I only wrote 3K words that year - most of it description of the house - was because I hated the character. I was depressed and confused and angry, and all of that came out in the FMC. It was a clear marker that I shouldn't have been writing but trying to fix myself.
The idea, though, has the potential for being a really interesting paranormal romance. If I actually write it from the ghost's perspective this time.
02. A Group of Vampire Hunters, tentative title: From The Shadows or Roses Aren't Red:
A group of young renegades fight vampires in Wisconsin, convinced that all bloodsuckers are inherently evil. The lead female hunter's viewpoint is challenged when they raid a clan and she meets children and their protector. Allowing them to escape the slaughter puts their protector - the daughter of the head of the clan - in the hunter's debt. The hunter attempts to change the minds of the other hunters, finding an adversary in their leader. The hunter must choose between killing her leader or killing her new vampire friends.
The last bit is open-ended because I'm not entirely sure where I want to go with her character - I don't know her yet. That may even be something I don't know until I start writing.
I feel like this idea has a lot of promise. One of the things modern vampire fiction lacks, in my opinion, is a range of vampire goodness - either they are all good, or all evil, or the mixture is radically skewed so that the "bad" vampires become caricatures. That's no fun for anyone, and it is my own personal opinion that "Twilight" would not be as mocked as it is if it had better villains - good villains shape good heroes. (Stalking aside, because I do agree that that shit is RIDICULOUS.)
I always liked the idea of Buffy's Scoobies or Blade's Nightstalkers, but I think as a whole the story would be more humanizing without the super-hero at the forefront. Just regular people trying to make a difference in the world.
03. A Crime-Solving Duette, tentative title: Gaslight Fugitives (Book 1):
A woman finds herself adrift after a string of bad luck forces her to drop out of college. A random attack in her home by an eldritch creature - and the random woman who zips in, saves her, and leaves without an explanation - leads her to investigate. She finds that her bad luck isn't luck at all: soldiers from an alternate universe are trying to sever her ties to her own universe to convince her to join their cause. The purpose being that she is meant to fill her alternate self's place, who has recently died in battle. She agrees temporarily, but does she decide she will return to her own world, frustrated with fighting; or will she embrace it as a solution to her problem?
Haha, "eldritch". I had to. It is also REALLY HARD to distance between alternate universe versions of someone when that someone doesn't have a name yet. I also have no idea how she would feel once she's there, considering I haven't built a character yet.
My largest problem with this scenario is that I'm afraid it will become either one of two already-running (and much beloved by me) television shows - Supernatural, or Fringe. It reads like a mixture of both.
Also, the main character is intended to be a sleuth/detective - she's the brains, and that's why they need her so badly. The problem with this is I have never read a strict detective story - always a story that is about something else entirely, but has people trying to puzzle something out. I worry about my ability to do it accurately, lest I become like Stephenie Meyer who just wrote about vampires and didn't do enough research, pissing off many a vampire fan. (Although, hearing her talk about it, some of her decisions make sense - specifically no fangs and no sleep, despite them being darlings of the genre. I think she just didn't write them well enough to convince her text-based audience.)
This would require the most world-building, because there would be a whole universe to design that the main cast would spend most of their time in. The previous two are both urban settings with supernatural elements, which would allow me to skip world-building (almost) entirely.
I don't know that this helped me narrow anything down, so much as flesh out plot ideas for all three. Which doesn't really help in the long run. Input?