Back on the NaNo circuit...

[blackthornglade]

I was rummaging through my info page when I ran across my little NaNo ticker. From 2005. Has it really been *that* long since I've written? Looking back, it must have been, but...that seems like so long ago. And such a different world. So, I went back and read my Bound by Blood stuff, trying to decide if I wanted to pick it back up. And realized it

Comments

[elfwreck]

Can you really take characters out of the setting they evolved in, though, and plunk them down into the new story without a major overhaul or without changing them pretty drastically?

Would you like links to several dozen fanfics that do exactly that? There's some terrific Snape/Harry "Alternate Universe" stories out there.

But, how do you come up with an entirely new world that doesn't overlap on what's already been done?

You don't. You build on existing tropes, and put your own flavor into them. "Modern vampires" was covered pretty well by Rice... but that doesn't mean Anita Blake is just a derivative work.

If you like list-making, you come up with sets of traits of supernatural creatures: traditional/mythical, Author X, Author Y, and you.

So many ways to have an apocalypse in this day and age that sets up tensions that make good reading.

FWIW, I adore post-apoc F&SF, and think there's never enough of it. Especially fantasy-oriented post-apoc. I would love to see existing tropes expanded with several hundred new books, and

[jalilifer]

Could you just sort of hang out inside my head for a little while in case I decide to start writing again?

;)

[aeddie]

The Church is a front for a vampire cult. Traditional characters like Van Helsing were actually sent out to stamp out rival cults.

[johnpalmer]

I've always thought there was something that could be done there. Come on, you have this guy who dies and then comes back, and then, his followers are "infected" with the same strangeness.

[aeddie]

Communion is actually feeding off of the parish priest to keep the parishioners in line. The parish priests feed off the bishops and cardinals.

It would certainly weed out false conversions.

[jalilifer]

And why is this so much like pulling teeth when I used to be able to write pages and pages a day?

...............

I don't if it applies to you, but for me, the inner critic is one loud mother fucker. Pardon my French.

As to your question, yes, it is possible to build a world of "modern/advanced bubble-cultures all connected by...teh intartubes/technology?...living side by side with rampant destruction, mutagens, creatures like zombies and the sluagh...without that modern portion finding cures, cleansing the environment, or otherwise putting half of the world under their control and fixing it", if you choose to do so, and tell your inner critic/analyst/naysayer/OCD tendencies to shut up long enough to dive in and just start writing it.

Lately, my inner critic/analyst/naysayer/OCD tendencies have been stronger than the writer in me.

I definitely feel as though I have lost something. :(

[brock_tn]

I dunno, I was toying for a while with some modern fantasy murder mysteries set in Nashville, Tennessee. The premise included the idea that the Sidhe and the Dwarves and all of the other legendary creatures are sill here, they're just well concealed on the fringes of society. If I were looking for a werewolf in Nashville, I'd probably start in the trailer parks along Dickerson Road. It's the sort of neighborhood where people don't ask too many questions, so as long as the werewolf was careful about who he ate, he'd likely escape notice. The line-dancing craze that hit country music a while back was a cultural cross-fertilization picked up by humans hanging out in elf-bars. Mosh-pits and slam-dancing are oddly Dwarvish in nature. And so on. Never actually did much with the ideas, as it's the writing part that's hard for me, but there you are. And there's a serious fantasy novel in there too, which explains how the protagonist of the above wound up living in both the Seen and Unseen sides of the city.

maybe someday.

[corielena]

You can also write a series. Focus each on one specific group, or two. Mentioning the others, but going into little detail.

Present each one from the POV of one specimen from each race, you know? Done a certain way/s, each book could stand alone, but together they'd form this new world of yours as a more cohesive whole.