Subject: I started an original for NaNoWriMo...
Author:
Posted on: 2017-01-21 17:14:00 UTC
...but I'm not sure what to do with it now; it's such a mess of a rough draft.
Subject: I started an original for NaNoWriMo...
Author:
Posted on: 2017-01-21 17:14:00 UTC
...but I'm not sure what to do with it now; it's such a mess of a rough draft.
And now, reading the subject of this thread, some of you will think: "Well, no shoot Sherlock, what do you think this community is about?", but what I meant by it is, do any of you folks have any writing projects outside fan-fiction and missions? Your own universe with your own plot and characters? I know at least three of us (excluding me) that do, but I'm curious to know if we have more. So why don't we come clean and share our deepest, darkest aspirations? I'll start!
So, in my universe, King Arthur's brotherhood of the Knights of the Round Table survived until the modern day, and expanded into a sort of secret police force that serves directly under the Queen (or King) of England, protecting the country from various threats, usually of paranormal origin: mostly monsters, but sometimes psychotic cultists, magicians, etc.
As I happen to be very unoriginal, you can spot several inspirations, including The Dresden Files, Ranger's Apprentice, and The Order: 1886. At first I wanted to write a series centered around the magicians of my universe (being the magic nerd I am), but then I got the Knights in the whole mess and decided that their story will come first and later... who knows.
What about you guys? Anything we can share? Maybe somebody else will have helpful tips about the specific genre you're writing for?
I started writing this project for NaNoWriMo last year. I failed to reach even a third of the goal, but I'm still working on it, albeit slowly.
It might as well be fanfic of Hyun's Dojo with my own OCs, but I'm building an alternate world to compensate for the lack of solid canon.
...I don't really have enough to describe the story properly, I'm still working on the beginning act.
...but I'm not sure what to do with it now; it's such a mess of a rough draft.
I dabble here and there with different things (scripts, nonfiction, things written for role-playing purposes), but there are two universes that I focus the bulk of my attention on. The first is a contemporary setting with the presence of superpowers. They've been present in the world for ages (due to the interference of magical outsiders during the ancient era) but were amplified during the 20th century due to things like the Tunguska explosion and rampant nuclear testing. There are many historical differences, most notable of which is the second Russian civil war in 1987 which resulted in the creation of several nations run by supervillains. I've sketched out several different ideas for stories, but I often come back to the character of Jackie Wylde: a costumed criminal with a gambling motif operating in not!Philadelphia.
The second universe takes different elements of classic fantasy and puts them in a world with a tech level roughly equivalent to the 1910s. Autocarriages are gradually phasing out horses and carts, firearms and artillery have replaced magic and swords in the military, and global travel is becoming possible through massive airships. I've focused mainly on an elf journalist by the name of Telly Oleithanam. He's a bit like Dorothy Parker mixed with P.G. Wodehouse's Psmith.
Historiography essays, scholarly book reviews, and countless pages of research on gender, labor, and tribal sovereignty in the Pacific Northwest…
…and, of course, years of fiction writing, too.
I actually opened a Dropbox full of source materials a while back, but only a couple people were interested at the time. The 'verse was somewhat uncreatively dubbed "Starships & Sorcery," and the basic idea was that magic and post-light-speed tech (and highly specialized genetic modification, in some places) coexisted. Tech, in fact, was considered one of the major ways people could access high quantities of power. Essentially, the way magic worked was that all living things had some inside them, and channeling it was a skill. Some people did so through technology, but some people, of course, are not good at tinkering and engineering, so it was only a select group of people who had and actively used both skill sets, especially together.
The other sources of magic, though known to be so powerful that the risk of tapping into them was illegal in some places, and required great skill and usually very well designed machines in others, were planets and stars, which were known to have cores of immense power; stars emanate their energy, while planets have to be tapped into.
At this point, given the last little bit of trickery in the setting (and that my story has long since fizzled out), I've been thinking it would make a better tabletop setting than an actual novel. I know some folks who are extraordinarily good at those designs, so I might give that a shot in my copious free time*, one of these days.
*Ha! Just kidding.
Because of course. =]
Comedic look at university life with superheroes in it / Relatively dark take on superheroes who mostly go to university.
AKA what would happen if characters from your original fic and mine met.
In that it has a large Superhumanities department and several active heroics clubs for people with powers, magic, and so on. One of them is, inevitably, the AntiHeroSoc, who are DARK and EDGY and WEAR LOTS OF BLACK and are mostly harmless, if a bit boring. =]
I tend to think of a project, start it, then think of a different project and start on that one. I'm not very good at finishing any of them. Thus, I have three or four "novels" that I should be working on instead of writing Overwatch fanfiction.
The first was a NaNovel from... two years ago? Maybe last year? I posted about it on the Board; basically, musical instruments and songs have magical power, with different songs doing different things and different instruments having different strengths. Violins are great at emotional magics, trumpets can knock walls down, that kind of thing. The actual plot of that novel was insipid, so right now this one is just a magic system.
The next one is more recent, and is about a Wrong Genre Savvy woman being tossed into a world of selkies, dragons, trolls, and Faeries. Basically, a twenty-something woman moves to Scotland to work as her mysterious uncle's housekeeper, and ends up becoming an apprentice alchemist, keeping magical creatures safe and brewing interesting potions. I like this one a lot; I think it has potential.
The third has maybe one page to its name and is only a week or two old. It's about an ensign training to be a starship pilot getting kidnapped by aliens who intend to sell her to a zoo or something similar. Not much to it yet, but I like it.
-Alleb
...but I'm terrible at worldbuilding; I work much better with a previously-established universe. ^^;
If you remember my You wake up in a forest post, you already kind of know what's going on with this one.
Basically, reincarnation is a thing, but instead of reincarnating on the same planet, it's on different planets, in different universes (technically 'pocket universes'; as Death explains, all thirteen worlds that people can reincarnate into make up their own single universe, but it's a bit too meta for the silly mortals' brains to understand. Yes, she knows about the PPC.)
Certain people, however, remember their past lives, and work to spread knowledge of the different magics and technologies in different worlds, but they're a very small group (only twenty or so) and have to work slowly to avoid introducing too many things at once... and then you have the villain, who discovers a way to rip through the fabric of the universe in an attempt to conquer all thirteen worlds...
Nothing set on stone yet, but is very anime inspired. It has mechas. And idol singers. And, despite that, a serious storyline and serious themes.
But I'd like to write a heroic fantasy novels series.
I've got two main ideas for now:
-Something inspired from the different way kingdoms worked in Asha (MMH V-VII), but with twists of my own (and few additions...). I got more than a little worldbuilding done there.
-For the basis, a classic setup 'Light' vs 'Dark', with their own magic system (or at the very least energy), and another, mixing shamanism and elementalism. As for the way this clash goes... Well, I'm being a bit inspired by MegaTen here, for those who know what I mean.
Most of anything worth looking at is here, in my dA account, if you're curious. It's all old now.
Every so often I get ideas, but the task of actually writing a whole novel seems way too huge anytime I think about it. It's not just the writing, it's the research and world-building and plot development and everything else.
So, er, if anyone is really good at sitting down and pumping out words, but needs ideas and direction, hit me up? I've got a couple modern fantasy plotbunnies I wouldn't mind sharing. One's got lunar magic, the other's got a supernatural SWAT team. {= )
~Neshomeh
I have two flagship projects planned, and I've been worldbuilding for both of them with plenty of significant characters in the works. Unfortunately, with Real Life being a pain, it's safe to say that I won't be able to actually write these works anytime soon, at least until I get a steady job as something to fall back on for when I eventually need the money to publish them both.
For the first project, I've previously stated that I have a project that started out as a mega-crossover but now involves tons of expies of fictional characters in a multiverse of my own creation. "Heroes of Yonder" is basically an AU of popular culture as we know it - instead of so many continua being separate, interacting only sparingly and within their respective companies, the vast majority of fictional characters in this universe can meet up in a "world beyond worlds"-type place, broadcast to the real world in the style of an MMORPG/MOBA mix that's essentially a real-time fanfiction generator (you can play as both your player avatar/a generated OC a la the Mii Fighters from Smash 4, or as an "instance" of a "canon" character). The main antagonists are entities generated by players that were automatically rejected by Yonder's screening system for character legitimacy but somehow end up in whatever worlds they were intended for anyway, with the characters having to somehow get rid of them. It's a bit of a parody of fandom in general and fanfiction specifically, though I'm trying to make it a well-written story in its own right; the fact that several of my PPC characters either come from or are planned to be integrated into this project is enough of an incentive for this particular goal, I hope.
The other project I have planned is "Magizoic", which addresses and makes a decon/recon-fleet of one of the few things Heroes of Yonder won't cover, the Mons Game genre. Combining this with my love of speculative fiction, this is basically an AU future fic of Earth itself, where magic (and mana, its essence) is a thing, in no small part thanks to leakage from portals to the various elemental planes that cross over at the stellar coordinates of Earth, and a series of calamities has caused it to infuse the entire planet and all life upon it. Accelerated evolution, genetic and alchemical tampering, and alternative evolution have resulted in a wide variety of magical monsters known as Manazoids. In typical Mons genre fashion, combat with Manazoids is a worldwide sport, and one of the big highlights is a once-a-decade Olympics-style tournament - but the plot is kicked off by one of the countries participating suddenly imposing a punishable-by-death ban on Manazoid combat, with handlers of these creatures for that purpose being killed on sight. It's up to the main characters to escape the country, then figure out why, and finally undo this fatal policy and the world-destroying plot behind it - all before the tournament itself begins... in the country in question.
If anyone wants to talk to me about these particular projects, or lend their assistance with worldbuilding and character/plot ideas, please let me know! I'd be happy to get feedback regarding them both, so I can make these projects as great as they can be. :D
Honestly, the only two big things I'm currently "writing" are novelizations of my Pearl and FireRed Nuzlockes, and the FireRed one's on hold while I revise a bunch of chapters/progress in the game. I keep getting ideas for a modern Zelda AU where Link is a Chinese-American girl, but I haven't really done anything plot-wise with that either.
I think my problem is that I have too many ideas and not enough time management/confidence to write them. I should get more serious about my writing...
Currently on my 5th (I think) attempt at writing a dark (ish) superhero novel. You can see my previous attempt as my permission piece (Which I believe is still in the archives somewhere).
Basically it's kind set off of X-men, with new genetic strands giving a bunch of young people powers (the whole science behind it hasn't been fully worked out yet). But the world is a lot more xenophobic than today and so it''s perfectly legal for people to kill these new Powered if they are 'attacked' by them, and huge camps are set up focusing around enslaving and capturing/killing these Powered. The majority of the Powered who are free have subtle powers that aren't immediately obvious to the eye. I'm thinking of trying to write three books in the series with the overall view getting lighter as the series goes on as more hope is introduced to the world. The first book is going to focus on the six protagonists (they're not really heroes, they're anti-heroes at best) who are trying to live their lives as normally as possible by day, and improve the situation for all Powered by night. Oh and they're all Students, none of the Powered are older than 25-30. The antagonists (the majority of whom are more like anti-villains than outright villains normally) are a similar bunch of Powered with slightly more extremist methods who are being controlled through their leader/telepath who is also the 'daughter' (or possible clone of the mother) of a CEO of a large company (who will be the Big Bad of the book). I've got the ideas for the first book all planned out I just have yet to start writing it up.
It originated as a sort of personal project, but now I've just sort of rolled it into a school project, as a major work kind of thing. I mean, it works in this particular case, as it's only really meant to be a single short story.
I'm writing a dark, absurd cyberpunk comedy. The world is unofficially (everybody is generally too embarrassed to admit it) ruled by the monstrous bureaucracy that is the High Tide corporation, whose focus is equally split between things like shoelace manufacturing, and planning the construction of orbital lasers.
The natural human body most of us came pre-packaged in has been totally outdated, what with being packed with all those diseases and easily ripped skin and with not having even a single implanted cupholder. Bodies hold all the sentimental value of very complex scooters, the only difference being that you need to buy new ones more frequently because, really, who makes scooters?
Having broken parts is considered negligent, and is illegal, punishments going from fines to proper imprisonment. Even going insane is illegal - it's easy enough to just buy a new brain, isn't it?
The internet has evolved into Axiom, a constantly running AR display. Things like street signs, ads - a good portion of peoples' appearances - are managed by the overlay.
Even war itself has been defeated by the advancement of technology, service in the military having become little more than an office job, as a result of advances in drone technology. How lovely!
The actual plot involves a soldier called Neil Wong losing his connection to Axiom.
He sees things that are very specifically designed to not be seen, and has a generally hard time of it.
I, er. Still haven't figured out a good title for it.
So, y'know. You title-masters out there looking for practice, or some such.