Looking at that blank page on November 1 was very sobering, making me realize just how unprepared I was/am to write this book. At the same time, simply staring at that white screen has made me think harder about what I want to write and the flaws in my plot.
I will be getting back to my daily SoC posts and plan to put a lot more into short stories, especially this train Idea that's been banging around in my head for a while.
Tonight I talk about the impending NaNoWriMo (TOMORROW/TODAY (Depending on when you read this blurb), and make a small, rough outline for my books beginning.
DAY TWELVE
Day twelve and day four of doing at least one entry of at least 1000 words a day.
AND I ALMOST MISSED THIS ONE. Guess why.
Me. My brain has been softly telling me “oh Thomas, tomorrow is NaNoWriMo! You will be writing so many more words than a measly 1000 per day. Take a break! You deserve it!”
Yeah. Screw you Brain, you and your silky lies.
So today I think I will write myself a quick outline of what I want to write. I honestly have no idea how much space each part of my book is going to take up, so I can’t really plan what I want to have written by what day. My simple goal is to reach 50,000 words. If I get to 50,000 words and I still have things to write, then awesome. My book is longer and I don’t really have to rush myself as much anymore (Although I should stay in the NaNoWriMo Routine to be honest).
Also, considering I plan to have a complete first draft of my book done by the end of November, I have hereby dubbed December PerNoReMo: Personal Novel Revision Month, in which I go over my first draft and REVISE! I don’t really see how I can put a word goal on this, so I will simply try to do my best at getting this done by the end of December because honestly you can’t rush quality.
Oh, while I’m on the topic of NaNoWriMo, I should mention that I will not be posting many SoC’s during November, seeing as I will be devoting myself to writing a book which I don’t think I want to post on the internet because of possible (incredibly unlikely but still possible) copyright issues. I don’t want anyone stealing my baby.
ANYWAYS, outline time.
I. Introduction
a. MC is a young man who lives on the outer rim of the winged nation
b. Has stayed home to help protect his family/village from wingless raiders
c. Lives a very disciplined life, very little time or desire to play
d. MC’s family is concerned about his sister who has yet to grow wings; sister actively shows that her actions towards the wingless are not for protecting others but simply because she dislikes them
e. Both of MC’s younger sisters grow wings within a short time of each other, One of these sisters MC is shown to be very close to
f. MC has few friends due to his no-nonsense attitude; one person actively follows him around attempting to get him to come out of his shell and enjoy life for once
g. MC is recruited/joins the army after some event (Possibly the destruction of his town). MC wants to continue to protect his family (They all survive, but as they are safe now, he wants to protect them some other way)
h. There should be a scene where MC finds out that someone had gone wingless. Family/MC/sister talk about how the situation was handled
II. Main Plot
a. MC is recruited into the army by SJ (Roman name), possibly his sister as well? (Sister would have to be older as well for this, in which case she will already have her wings grown)
b. MC and sister are sent to different divisions of the army, MC to Combat and sister to recon/messaging for her smaller size and darker wings
c. MC is taken under the wing of SJ, who shows an almost fatherly affection towards him.
d. We find that SJ’s son has been captured/killed/lost in a recent battle
e. MC asks to join SJ in war council meetings at the chance of seeing his sister more, but is unable.
f. Winged Camp is attacked by wingless force, MC is saved by his sister, also aids SJ in battle, gaining much respect from him
g. MC is asked to join SJ in a war council meeting
Okay sorry everyone but I need to go to bed. I know I didn’t reach 1000 words tonight, but I promise to make it up to you over the next month!
I think I got more than enough of my “Outline” made up for now. This skeleton will be there to help me keep on track more than it will be there as a strict “Do this now” Guide. I will write what my muse tells me to.
I look forward to tomorrow, and will try to give a small update once in a while on my progress!
Today I wrote another short story from a prompt, and did more thinking on the plot of my book and how I'm going to write it for NaNoWriMo.
DAY ELEVEN
I have no work today so I should be able to get two done today. I have a book I want to possibly use as a resource for my upcoming book so I may write on that for entry two, but for this one I’m going to be sorting through writing prompts and taking ones that jump at me.
Prompt: What’s stopping you
“So have you been thinking more about your future?”
Carlos sighed as he drove, his father in the passenger side seat of the car. This again?
“Listen Dad, I really need you to stop bugging me about this! I promise I’ve been thinking hard!” he sighed, “Just leave it please? I’ll keep looking into different jobs when I get home.”
“What Jobs are you interested in?”
Man did he have a way of asking the loaded questions. It looked like there was no quick out this time. Carlos glanced quickly at his dad as he changed lanes to the right, making sure not to make eye contact.
“I…you know I’ve been looking seriously at becoming an engineer I just…I don’t know for sure if it’s for me.”
“What’s stopping you?”
The car was silent for about a minute. Carlos wondered if the subject had died away. He reached for the radio, turning it on. His dad turned it off. Nope, the subject was still perfectly alive it seemed.
“Carlos, if you want to become an engineer then do it! There’s still time to apply to a university and join in the fall semester. Maybe you could meet with your uncle, He’s an engineer too!”
“Dad I” he took a deep breath “I don’t know if I should. What if it happens again?”
His dad looked at him as they stopped for a light “You mean what happened with you and Accounting?”
Carlos nodded. “I failed out of it. Twice. And now I’ve suddenly realized that it was never really something I truly enjoyed anyways! What if it just keeps happening to me?” His voice rose “I go into Engineering for a year or two and then suddenly I realize that isn’t something I want to do either? How long can I just keep stumbling from school to school looking for my ‘calling’ before I’m stuck working at a burger king for the rest of my life?”
His dad was quiet for a while “If you go into Engineering and decide you don’t like it then you can try something else! You’re only twenty years old, you have loads of time.”
“I don’t know…”
“Yes you do. But something is still stopping you. What is it?”
“Me.”
-------------------------------
This one jumped at me for a number of reasons. First, it’s nice and open. I had a couple of ideas, from a physical thing stopping a person/group from progressing, to something less tangible like what I just wrote up there. I guess another reason would be that the prompt really struck home for me. I have failed out of two different aviation courses because, ultimately, I never truly applied myself to the work. If I had done so, I have no doubts in my mind that I would be still in one of those courses, flying planes and being with my friends. But I didn’t.
After coming home from that second failed attempt I’ve really looked hard at myself and asked “Is this REALLY what I want”? And I realized the answer was no. I loved flying, sure, but the stress and everything else that came with the job was something I could never handle. I was never really truly honest with myself as I went through both courses.
So if you finish reading this by some miracle (because you’re awesome obviously), then I want you to come out with one piece of wisdom.
Don’t lie to yourself. Ultimately, no matter how good of a liar you are to yourself, you know when you are lying. Don’t live through your own lies.
So I guess I won’t have enough time to go to the library today so I can go grab my book. The book in question is called “The One hundred most important inventions” Or something along that line. My plan for this book is to use it as a reference for the different times that my three books will be taking place in. Maybe the first book will take place shortly after explosives are discovered, but if this is the time, what other things have been discovered by now? Are there guns? More complex machines? What is life like for this time period? Small farming communities spread all around with the rare city placed in some prominent place for people to gather? What about water travel? Is oversea travel possible yet? Is it necessary? Have people even really cared about traveling over the ocean??
Hmm this gives me a thought.
What if the Wingless see that the winged people will obviously eventually wipe them out with the advantage of their wings, and put all their resources into trying to find a way off the continent? I see this as a really good tie-in to the second book actually. In the second book, Wingless people could be on the verge of being wiped out. The winged people are a bit confused by the sudden large drop, and try to find out what is really happening to all these people, but they never find anything.
In the third book the main continent is a Futuristic Winged Stronghold. Nothing gets in or out of the entire continent without being spotted from miles away. Meanwhile, the wingless have spread over the rest of the planet, populating numerous small continents. Both peoples still obviously have the chance of having children who become either winged or wingless, but the fact that they are raised apart from the other people makes them much more likely to stay with the “trend”.
Another idea I had along these lines was that the Wingless people slowly move down into the caves of the continents, living underground. This sets up the plot for some fun situations and also brings us closer to where the Soul could be.
Right now, I’m thinking the soul should be either underground, In some massive crater, or on some remote island (Possibly Underground or in a crater (or both)). The Soul itself I’m thinking is going to appear to be a Large rock. Obviously it will look special in some way, but in the end it will simply be a rock. Looked at in the right way, however (Spirit-vision!), the soul would not be a rock but the physical body of the Young woman (Whom I have not thought at all about for a while now. her memory is getting a bit stale in my head, I better think more on her in the next couple days to keep her story fresh)
BEFORE NANOWRIMO I need to decide how much of the creation story I want to tell! My current thinking is that I should tell up to the Young Man deciding that his lover had died to create the planet, Leaving the book on a very somber note. Another option is ending their story on the young man/woman finishing the ritual, with no evidence on how the whole thing turned out yet, leaving the book on more of a cliffhanger.
I like both options, so maybe I will simply subconsciously decide on something as I write the story. Another not I should make is that I really want the story of the YM/YW to meld well with the knowledge we have in the main storyline. Maybe whenever we learn something in the Overplot, the Mainplot will have something to do with that? Or vice versa?
ANYWAYS, got lots of thoughts out on “paper” today, talk to you later!
I wrote a short "ghost story" today. I'll be posting the story separate from the SoC after this post for simplicity's sake.
DAY TEN
So I don’t really know what I want to write about tonight. Usually I come on here with at least a subject I want to type on or maybe a single little wisp of an idea. But today I have nothing. Well I have my tea, so that’s something.
AHA! I checked my tumblr and Lo and behold, a prompt sat there. I am to write what starts as a realistic fiction then eventually incorporates the appearance/presence of a ghost. I’ve never done a ghost story before so give me a couple minutes to think of an idea.
-
Rain. Caitlyn looked up from under her umbrella to the churning, grey sky. This felt more right. Looking down again, she studied the slab of rock in front of her.
Terrance Julian Waters
-
1918 – 2012
This was wrong. Everything about how her Grandfather had been stowed away in the earth was wrong. He deserved more. She remembered how it had been him who had helped her with her homework. It was him who had been there for her after her parents split. When he died in that accident, her mom and dad had cried, sure. But when she had asked them to have more written on his stone or for his grave to be placed somewhere away from the very back of the graveyard, they went on and on about costs and figures and money.
“You don’t really care do you” she had asked them “money is all you can think about”. Her mother had seemed appalled at the challenge “Of course we do Caitlyn! But we just…the money isn’t there. Even with what he left behind for us to use, this is the best we can do.” She sighed, “I know he meant a lot to you honey, but you have to understand”.
That hadn’t been the end of it either. As they drove to the graveyard, Caitlyn had stared at the clouds, praying for them to cry with her. But the sun shone. Even as she slowly followed the hearse, she noticed children playing outside, laughing. Everything about this was wrong. She was so sad and yet the entire world simply kept spinning.
She had come here today to put it right. As she cried with the clouds, a hand patted her shoulder. Turning around, she saw a young man, about twenty-five standing next to her. “He must have meant a lot to you” he said quietly. She turned her head back to the grave and bowed her head slightly. “Everything about this is wrong. His grave is at the back, hidden in the shadows of the trees, he was buried on a sunny day, and all he got was a simple slab of stone”. She and the stranger walked to a nearby bench, sitting in the rain. “He meant everything to me. And yet when it came to his funeral it seemed like I was the only one! My mother, his own DAUGHTER, couldn’t even bring herself to write a few parting words on the stone for him”.
“I need to show you something,” He said “come with me”. They walked through the cemetery to the center where a war memorial stood, tall, proud, and covered in the names of the men who had died. His voice was gentle “Is this what you wanted for him?” he asked. “I-well…maybe not as large but somewhere where he could be appreciated!” she sighed “maybe others would look and feel my pain”.
The two of them were quiet for a while, the young man allowing her to cry, the loss still fresh in her mind. Looking up, she asked “Why did you bring me here”. His voice was quiet, “This place is full of the bodies of the dead, loved ones who are no longer with their families and friends. But there are so many people in the world who will never be buried beneath a stone”. “This war memorial,” he said, gesturing to it, “Only contains the names of a small number of men who died in the war. So many more men have no grave to their name. But their memory lives on in their families”.
Caitlyn looked up at the young man again, “But how will the world remember someone when their families die, when their families’ families die? Their name will never be uttered again, lost! A loving man like my grandfather deserves more! How could you think that a grave has no point?” she seethed, the anger felt good. “If a person is worth remembering,” he continued calmly, “their memory will be reflected on those they love. They might not live on in name, but their memory could live on to change a nation”.
She turned towards him, about to retort, when she took a closer look at his face, her sadness and anger quickly replaced by shock and fear. The young man stood, “My time is up. Goodbye, Caitlyn”. A raindrop fell in her eye, she blinked, and he was gone.
The wind howled anew, the rain was starting to fall harder, almost as if in response to the lone girls startled cries into the sky. Finally, spent from fervently searching for the young man, she knelt in the wet grass and wept. On the wind, in the faintest of whispers, she swore she heard a voice.
“I love you”
Okay um……………
I hope I didn’t make anyone cry there. I doubt I did as this was my first story like this but if you read that and enjoyed it thank you so much!
To be honest, the story feels a little clichéd, but I don’t care. I like the way it went and I’m sticking with it. If I wanted to be a bit more anal, I could go back and edit a bit, maybe make it so it doesn’t repeat itself quite as much (It feels a tiny bit repetitious). Also, halfway through the story, I was tempted to make the Dead family member not a grandfather but a young child, perhaps a sister. But that hit a little too close to home for me.
Maybe that would have made it better? It definitely would have made the story more emotional, I wouldn’t of been able to stop myself.
Pumpkins SoC: DAY NINE, Day ONE of the RtaM PART TWO
BECAUSE ONE WASNT ENOUGH FOR ME TODAY. TWO IS WHAT IM FEELIN.
In this small session I describe my room to you in all its messy glory.
DAY NINE 2
You thought I was done didn’t you?
Nope. I may have said that I wanted a minimum of 1000 words, and in that last session I wrote about 1400 words. So what? I’ve got spare time on my hands until I have to go to bed, so why not use this time to write more words towards my goal of one million? I am currently at 9,657 words in this SoC document, that’s just shy of one percent of my goal. I have a measurable amount put towards my goal already! There’s no stopping me.
I enjoyed that last description, so I’m going to do another one. This time, the room of yours truly. I won’t spare any of the gross details even though, honestly, my room’s a mess.
The first thing you notice is the slightly musty smell. It’s not exactly an unpleasant scent, but it’s definitely there and making itself known. You hear the constant droning of a laptop to your right, the fan much louder than most laptops you have heard. The sound of footsteps and voices overhead tell you that you are on one of the lower floors of the house. Taking a step, you notice that the floor is hard. Not like most other floors, all floors are hard. This floor feels completely solid. Very little sound comes from your single step. Opening your eyes, you see a moderately sized room. The walls are a chocolate brown with the faded faces of wolves wrapping around the room underneath a small ledge at about the height of your middle. A very fine layer of dust covers the small television to your left, and most other things you look closely at. The light wood bed, up against the far left wall, shows a cream colored undersheet with a light blue comforter on top, both ruffled and thrown to the right side of the bed. Clothes cover a good section of the grey floor, the bed, and the night-table. Most of the clothes looks clean, but there is a small pile of very dirty looking clothes covered in mud, and looking rather crumpled. A guitar in a black case leans against the television, its stand lying on the floor beside the bed. Across the room, you see three windows looking outside in three directions: straight-left, straight, and straight right, only the window on the left is not covered by blinds, but little can be seen through it due to the darkness outside. A soft hum reaches your ears from the room to your right, a blowing of warm air accompanies this sound and reaches the room from a small vent in the ceiling. The main piece on the right side of the room is the desk with the laptop on it. The main desk is covered in papers, books, small trinkets/memorabilia from past experiences, pens, and of course the laptop. The shelves of the desk feature a number of pictures of smiling people, young and old. Three old soccer trophies and a bell-alarm clock with the face of mickey mouse and its two bell-ears missing are the features of the top shelf.
RtaM means Race to a million. Yeah, my goal is to write a million words. and you are all coming along with me on this crazy stupid ride!
Today I rant about myself and how I can never motivate myself to become the best. I write about a really cold front porch and the rain.
Hope you enjoy this (if anyone even reads it)
DAY NINE
I think this is the start of something big. I have decided that I am going to write one million words. I don’t know HOW I’m going to do it, but I am. I will, of course, include the word count from anything I write (The upcoming NaNoWriMo included of course!), and I plan to start writing more short stories/poems/places in here as I go, anything to get to my goal of One Million. It’s an insane goal, and it might take FOREVER to get to, but I want it.
Many of you non-existant readers are probably wondering where this came from. I started this SoC thing maybe a MONTH ago and only have nine entries. How can I possibly hope to ever reach a million?
Well here’s how it happened. I was looking into what it took to become a professional writer. One who’s skills would be readily paid for. One site, on the very first bullet, said “Write one million words”. There was, obviously, much more to that bullet, but the one million words statement was its core. The article compared constant practice in writing to the constant practice of a concert violinist who’s skills were marveled at from miles around.
This is going to sound clichéd, but I want to be the best at something. I want there to be that one thing that I do that makes people stand back and say “Wow”. That is my goal. I recently took a keen interest in writing, and am even planning my own SERIES of books, but I have NO experience in writing. I have been lamenting to other people around me about how the prospect of writing a book is so daunting, so scary, because I have no experience writing books or even that much of anything to be honest.
So now I’ve decided to stop complaining and start doing something about it. So I have never written a book before. So I want to make this series the best series since Eragon or Harry Potter. Great. BUT I HAVE DONE NOTHING TO PREPARE MYSELF FOR THIS. For some reason I have this stupid idea that writing a book will just come naturally to me. Sure, I can think of ideas. I can make a plot that makes anyone I tell it to impressed and want to read the books. But can I actually write the things? When it comes down to it, can I really put the pen to the paper, cut a little slit in my heart, and let my blood flow onto the paper?
This SoC has now become my life goal. I WILL become the best writer I know. I WILL become a published author of MANY books. I WILL make this whole writing thing a routine to the point where not writing at least once a day will feel like not eating breakfast or not changing my clothes in the morning.
I WILL reach one million words. JUST YOU TRY AND STOP ME.
Currently I work five days a week, very late into the day (I often get home at 7pm), so for now I will be mostly sanctioned to writing sometime between 7pm-11pm on weekdays. On weekends I have much more freedom (most of the time, I do work some Saturdays), so I should be able to output twice as much on a weekend day than a regular weekday! So be it.
From now on, I will write no less than One thousand words a day. That really isn’t that much, but it’s only my minimum for now. As I continue with this, I may force a higher minimum on myself. Currently, if I were to write an average of one thousand words a day it would take me one thousand days to reach a million. That’s 2.74 years (2 ¾ years). I can live with that. Over these next three years (I’m going to say three for simplicities sake) I will become the best writer I know. I will look back on these ramblings and smile at the improper syntax, poor use of commas, and poor paragraph structure. I will also look back on this day in particular (October 28, 2012), and smile, remembering it as the first day of my climb to becoming someone to be admired.
I’ve never really been truly admired for something. I’ve always wanted to be, to the point where I would actually make up stories in my head where I had super-powers or maybe a very special ability. I have imagined myself as a spy, a super-hero, and so many more amazing things, wondering if I would ever be someone SPECIAL. But here’s the kicker. As I grew up, I never did anything about it. Even up til now, I;ve never been TRULY motivated. For instance, today while I was reading this article that inspired me, I almost GAVE UP. I almost decided that writing was no longer for me. “Too much effort!” my brain screamed at me.
NO MORE.
I have HAD IT with giving up. I have HAD IT with never TRULY applying myself.
I WILL BECOME THE BEST, AND THERES NOTING I CAN DO TO STOP IT.
Thomas Richard Kuipers is on his way to the top world.
And there’s not a single fucking thing you can do about it.
Now, I just had the urge to stop typing, to put my little “See you later!” with – Thomas at the bottom. You know what? No. I’m not done here. I keep talking about how I want to try ACTUALLY writing something, so here I go. I’m going to ACTUALLY write something that’s creative, not just me spewing ideas at a computer. I am going to legitimately write this shit down.
I think the best way to start describing places is to actually go somewhere, so I’m going to go out on the porch outside and write what I See, hear, feel, smell, taste. I’m going to tell you all what the ATMOSPHERE is like. Interactions I have with people.
I am going to take you to my front porch. Let’s go, shall we?
The first thing you sense is the soft falling of rain. The street is more or less quiet aside from the soft, almost rhythmic pattering of the rain and the ruffling and sighing of the nearby tree swaying in the wind. A dog barks in the distance, a single shout. Listening closer, you hear a constant gurgling of the rain-pipe spewing water at a lazy pace. The cold around you starts to set in, the warmth you are so accustomed to from the inside almost completely seeping from your body, making you shiver slightly and at uncontrollable intervals. Your bottom and your feet are especially cold, the feeling of them starting to numb away considerably. You take a deep breath in through your nose, the soft scent of slightly decaying leaves and rain mingle in your nostrils, their potency dampened by the cold and the wet. You open your eyes. Before you, you see a moderately, single standing maple, a solitary street lantern lighting the far left side of the leaves, betraying a golden sparkle among the drops of water clinging to the foliage. Breathing through your mouth, you taste little behind the cold and your recent meal of sausage and vegetables. The houses around you are mostly dark, a single, nearly missed, light softly illuminates the curtains of a house to your forward left. Another two homes add their light to the light of the lantern, barely illuminating the court in front of you. Behind you, a warm glow from the inside of the house invites you in. Your father periodically glances at you through the front window, wondering just why you have chosen to sit on the cold front porch in the rain. Your fingers have lost most of their feeling, your nose is starting to run, and the shivers are coming more frequently.
Perhaps it’s time to go inside.
As it was rather cold outside, my concentration may have drifted a bit from the writing. Perhaps if I were to write in/about a….warmer…environ I would write something a bit more convincing.
Anyways, this has been a very interesting first session. I look forward to the future of this document and cannot wait to see the mythical number at the bottom of my page.
Alright tonight I talked more in depth on the Female character and did some outlining (With a good amount of talking sideways for more development of the ideas!)
Tomorrow is Saturday so I might get two done. who knows?
DAY EIGHT
Alright let’s get right into this. First off, I’ve been thinking a bit on the female character that will be seen with MC. In prior thought, I was thinking of her as someone that MC saw as a good friend, while she wanted him as a romantic partner. Recently I have been thinking that it would be so much better if she was either a full romantic partner OR his sister.
As a full romantic partner, we get to see a lot more of MC’s loving (Non-familial style) nature, and the fact that she gets captured by the wingless or detained in some way, and then held captive by the winged makes her story that much more of a heart wrencher.
The same thing goes for if she is MC’s sister, but in this I see her capture as a great excuse for MC to go and visit his family to break the news of her capture. Perhaps his mother is the one who gets MC to promise to watch over her?
Another thing I have been thinking on is the entire world as it is. I have a pretty damn rough map at the moment, and its pretty likely to change but a map is a map. As I type, I’m thinking that the first book (at the very least) should be pretty easy to contain to one main continent, seeing as Oceanic travel would be impossible for the people of this world at this early of a time. In the later books (book three especially, considering the tech-level I am considering for it) the entire world will be populated but that’s a bridge I’ll cross when I get to it.
Anyways, for the first book, I am thinking that the wingless will mostly be living among a large mountain range of some sort, great for hiding cities in and being hard to navigate without being seen. It also makes it easy to put the main wingless city In some huge crater-like place with cliffs stretching over top. Thinking of this now, the wingless main city would probably be somewhere in the middle of the mountains, with many wingless towns along the way.
This is starting to give me great vibes for how I will actually TELL this story!
OUTLINE TIME?
Beginning:
I have been thinking that a scene starting with the observations of a wingless man who is shortly brought under fire by the winged would be cool. This wingless man would be rather short lived or at least run away (somehow) fairly soon after the winged soldiers come in. The reason I think this would be cool is It starts with a wingless person, the reader wonders at why the book is called “Wings” and then suddenly BAM, winged people attacking the wingless camp. This is also where I plan to introduce MC as a skilled fighter and possibly his sister as a great strategist, making them a fantastic team. (Okay so the girl is his sister now, got it). Maybe it would be better to introduce his sister AFTER the battle showing her being praised for her grand plan in taking the wingless camp down.
So after the two most main characters are introduced, I think it would be good to also introduce at LEAST SG and possibly SEED. Actually, no. Seed needs to be saved for a bit later. Perhaps for after MC comes back from the mission. Yes, I think that would be better.
SG actually could be introduced in the beginning of the book, a great way to show him mentoring MC in battle.
After the battle there will probably be a couple other things (I can’t just barrel around from one exciting thing to the next or I’ll burn the book and its reader out and I really don’t want that). Some things that I am (right now) thinking of are: MC surveying the winged city/camp that he is currently based out of, getting a letter from his Parents talking about his siblings, how one of them has been running off a lot lately, parents are worried about them not growing wings, another of his siblings grows wings at a young age? These thinfs really help lend to the showing of “Good people have wings, Bad people don’t” which is really important for the reader to understand early. It also helps show how the process works, with the children starting with some sort of mark (I am thinking a body-wide skin marking that is 100% distinctive in some way, perhaps some other marking or physical difference).
Anyways, after all these great things get done and MC has some development under his belt, MC is going to get his mission. Perhaps he will have to do some traveling to get to where he is to be given the mission, giving some insight to the reader on the regular lives of winged people, but that’s beside the point here. The mission/promotion is given by SEED or maybe SJ (not sure yet, I think this might be a better place to introduce SEED though), and MC is allowed to choose a group of men to aid him on his mission. He chooses his sister almost right away of course, and some other trusted men that he has fought beside.
After the mission is given, MC and his group have their wings removed. Lots of info can go into this, Including how this method was learned I’m thinking there was a wingless messager intercepted that was delivering this method of wing removal for possible use on winged captives], how the group feels about HAVING THEIR WINGS REMOVED [this is kind of a huge deal in this culture, as to be without wings is to be no better than the wingless], and how they will be treated as heroes for their temporary sacrifice and how much closer they will be to the destruction of the wingless people after the mission is complete) .
Okay so I stopped typing for like an hour there but I got lots written so I’ll put this down for today see you tomorrow!
WOW! I have done a full seven days of this now (Not in order though don't judge me I'm trying). Today I write LOADS about characters in the first Wings book!
DAY SEVEN
Alright so since I started this (Probably like 2 weeks ago now…) I have made SEVEN of these. I think I’m getting better at doing it every day, but I guess we’ll see what happens when its not the weekend anymore……………………….
ALRIGHT. So (Same two letters as the first paragraph I made wtf) I need to start working on CHARACTERS for the Wings series. Characters and continued thought into how an entire culture/planet would be affected if its people were split into two sub-groups (In this case, winged and wingless). Some things I have thought of include calling a winged person wingless a HUGE insult, and the exact opposite for Wingless people, seeing being called “Winged” as a compliment (In the later books as the wingless people transition away from being fueled by hate to being fueled by love). There are some other things but that’s getting off the real point of this SoC.
Main character for the First Wings book: A soldier of the winged army. He is dedicated (some would say to the point of obsession) to the war effort, his goal being to protect his family from the Wingless and their horrible tactics of attacking winged towns instead of meeting the winged on the field of battle. He is seen as humorless, boring, and rather hard to get along with for anyone outside of his family. He is incredibly loyal and will never go back on his word, to the point of disobeying orders from a higher-up in the army to save one of his men.
Possible names: Lyle, Zeke, Levi, Dan, Jerem, Saul, Kent, Doran (Exile), Lev (Heart), Hugh (Heart), Obi (Heart), Christopher (Heart)
I am heavily considering naming the books Along the lines of Wings: Heart, Wings: Mind, and Wings: Soul. These three titles really play well with the themes of the three, with a Change of heart in book one, and mind at war with itself in book two, and a search for soul (both MC’s and the world soul) in book three.
Now for some characters I haven’t even started writing for yet! Woo!
Main characters supporting character: Friendly, also quite dedicated to the war, admires MC for his dedication and constantly tries to get him to like her as more than a friend but these advances go completely unnoticed by him. Is very convinced in the ideal that Good=Winged and Bad=Wingless, to the point of (Eventually) acting as a bad person simply because she has lost her wings. Much more level headed than MC (Will stand back and observe a situation for a while before heading in, MC is much more likely to jump in at the first sign of conflict).
The vibe I’m going for with this character is someone who is dedicated to the war as much if not a little bit less than MC, while being very, VERY, sold on the whole good=winged bad=wingless thing, probably more so than most people (although this idea is pretty much globally accepted by both groups). She is a dedicated friend to MC and volunteers to join him on his mission to the wingless city, only to be captured/detained in some way at the end of the deadline and loses her wings for good. Next time we see her she is fighting AGAINST the winged. MC tries to talk sense into her, to get her to come back to the winged, but she sees herself as a wingless, bad person (now that she has lost her wings), and he is forced to either kill or capture her.
MC’s Father: Actually, my dad asked me if I could implement HIM into my story in some way and I though what better way to do that than to make him actually MC’s Dad? MC’s dad is going to be very similar to my Dad. He is very dedicated to encouraging MC to do whatever he feels is right, often goes off on speeches (in which he repeats himself many times) and can be a bit annoying at times (Sorry dad). Overall, he has good intentions, but is also kind of persuasive (subtly [perhaps even subconsciously] tries to get people [MC in this case] to do what he thinks would be best). Again, very SUPPORTIVE.
Some General: Aha wow did I really call one of the main good/bad guys in this book “Some General”? Okay. So yeah, SG is going to start as a man who sees MC’s talents and watches over him as MC moves up in the army. Eventually, SG is one of the main factors in MC getting the huge important mission and the promotion that comes with it. In the early stage of the book I want him to come off as a kind of father-figure who is there for him in the army. In the LATER stages of the book, SG (Seriously, watch me make SG’s name start with S and G that would be hilarious watch me do it I swear I’ll do it) starts to come off a bit weird: He disagrees with MC going back to save his men; He denies MC visitation to (That one girl) when she is captured; and even goes as far as saying that (said girl) is no better than the wingless people that MC kills in any other battle and had no reason to be captured.
Eventually I want MC to have to fight SG over/in the wingless city that has been setup to be destroyed. MC kills SG, has his wings disabled, and saves most of the city.
INSERT/SEED: Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man.
This guy is going to be fun. See, I want this guy to seem kind of important, but not really. He is (In this book) such a very good person. He is dedicated to the war and protecting all Winged people. He constantly talks of the world as a better place when all Wingless people are destroyed, but is much more of a side character with just a couple ofseenssceansseans(okay holy shit I just misspelled that three times) SCENES to his character. Again, GOOD PERSON. Everything he says/does he does for the good of the winged, but there is a very slight shady undertone to him, especially in the way he talks about the destruction of the wingless. As the books progress, this character will continue to pop up, but in continually more active roles and slowly showing more and more of his actions to be fueled by HATE for the wingless instead of love for the winged, to the point where in the third book this man is so consumed by hate that he seeks to destroy all life on the world to stop the cycle of good/bad. He will, of course, accomplish this by KILLING THE WORLDS SOUL (Aka YW). Still working on how to kill the immortal spirit of a planet, don’t rush me I have three books (OR DO I? I KIND OF WANT TO SET THE KILLING METHOD IN THE FIRST BOOK BECAUSE FUCK YEAH SUBTLE PLOT ITEMS THAT NO ONE NOTICES?)
But yeah, in this book he is to be a great person, motivated by love, with slight shady undertones.
These are all the most important characters I (Currently) want in this book. A couple of them kind of feels shallow still so a bit more work should be put into them but this is the beginning of the flesh/musches being slapped onto the skeleton so yay!
There obviously will be a lot more characters in the book other than these four but they are more….side characters than really important ones. Some of these side characters are going to be the men that go with MC on his mission, so a bit more character will probably be put into them because I want people to cry when bad things happen to them because I am actually a really horrible person and I live off the tears of orphans (okay no I don’t but you know what I mean).
Also apparently what I have written today is around 1350 words, which is pretty close to 1,666 words (the average # of words needed per day to finish NaNoWriMo) so I think that I might be able to do it! Wow and to be honest it didn’t really take THAT long to write this much.
This is me being overly optimistic for NaNoWriMo. Watch me as my soul drains away in the writing of my novel. YOU JUST WATCH.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANYWAYS, this has been a good session for today I think, so this is me SIGNING OFF!
