Welcome to the haphazard posting of the world/plot/story-building for my 2016 NaNoWriMo Novel! In which my Fictives and their Writer attempt to shape the rough outline of a story from the void. All of which will probably be tossed out the window when November 1st hits, but… that’s half the fun, right? 😉
This is shameless MuseFic, so there will be snark and world-building and lots of spoilers. Of course there is also a very good chance that the November story will ignore most of the spoilers, so it’s probably a 40-60 chance at best.
You have been warned…
Post Wordcount: 777
Total Wordcount: 777
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“It’s that time again, isn’t it.” The Muse looked up from her tablet with a yawn, pulling herself away from her impromptu couch-based marathon of Stargate. “Let me guess we are going to pull yet another unfinished project from the archives–”
“Nope!” The Writer interjected cheerfully. “Blank slate this time. New world, new people, but we are 100% going to have an actual story by the end of November this time.”
“You say that every time.”
“I mean it every time!” The Writer cleaned off her desk by moving the piles of paperwork to the floor where they joined the archeological dig that was her workspace. “I’m just not sure what to write this year… at all.” She looked at the now clean desk and then down at the floor. “It would be nice to finish things, but that way leads MuseFics.”
“I like MuseFics.”
There was a silence of medium length.
“So…. we’ll compromise and MuseFic now.” The Writer stoically looked away from all the half-formed stories and focused on her nice clean blank desk. Of blankness. “So what now?”
“Depending on which previous year you want to use as basis, either we do nothing and then flail around when November 1st rolls around or overplan like a crazy overplanner… and then get bored with the idea and flail around.”
“Right, so middle of the road it is. The Lazy Snowflake Method.” The Writer doodled a sleeping cat in the margins of her yet-to-be-notes. “I got this.”
“And by ‘got this’ you mean you still have no idea what to do next.” The Muse put her tablet away with a sigh and fished out a margarita from in-between the couch cushions. “Pick a genre maybe? Or a type of story?”
“I will never understand how y’all convinced that couch to be a pocket dimension.” The Writer gave the offending furniture a look, but it stoutly ignored her. “And, meh, dunno… ” she looked at the NaNo icon, “space?”
“That’s a setting, or a place between settings, actually. I can’t think of any space-related books where there isn’t at least one planet involved. You still need a type of story, assuming the genre is science fiction or science fantasy.”
“Survival in spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!” The Writer doodled dramatically. Which is totally a thing.
“…This is going to devolve into humans trapped on an alien spacecraft in an unknown part of the galaxy isn’t it.”
“Possibly?”
The Muse was pretty sure the couch didn’t contain enough alcohol for this. “That has been done before! SO. MANY. TIMES. Technically you already did that once with In Dreams of Trees.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t do it again.” The Writer shrugged. “It’s not like I’d end up with the same story twice, not with as crazy as Dreams got.” She started sketching out the general outline of a massive ship with some humans for scale.
“Fine, so what’s the end point of the book? They figure everything out and go home again? They don’t figure anything out and resign themselves to life in the unknown?” The Muse could definitely empathize with the second.
“They figure everything out and get the choice to go home again.” She doodled in some aliens. “Heck if I know what they’ll choose at this point though. I don’t even know who they are yet.”
“So how do they get on the ship– was it on purpose or by accident? Or is this going to be something like The Sundering where there’s bits of both.”
“Accident. They go to sleep someplace and wake up someplace else.” There were now doodles of saucers abducting cows. “Dunno how or why yet, we’ll figure that out as we go.”
The Muse hesitated, she could maybe work with this. Maybe. “Is the ship dangerous?”
“On purpose? No. But there are other folks running around on it and there’s been damage over the eons, so… yes? A bit at least.” The Writer looked down at her lumpy giant spaceship with something akin to accomplishment.
The Muse sighed. “Look, I’m having a really hard time with this. It’s just so…”
“Overdone and cliche? Well yeah, that’s the point.” The Writer looked up from her doodle notes. “I want to write something sort of silly this year. Like That Don’t Impress Me Much or When Good is Dumb. I want it to be gloriously epicly cliche and I want all of the people in it to be somewhat genre savvy. It will be an awesome adventure of awesomeness and will make no apologies!”
“Alright, alright, one fantasy epic set in an alien spaceship coming up.” The Muse fished another drink out of the couch. “So what comes next?”