Day: November 1, 2019

We enter the story mid battle. There is a war raging between a horde of what appear to be barbarians and the armored legion. The legion appears to be winning the battle. We see the scene from above and it is unclear who our protagonist is. He resolves himself shortly, a flag bearer for the left flank. He sees something–feels more than sees– and tries to raise his flag to worn his group but his commander forces the flag down and tells him to never give orders without his heed. moments later a horde of beasts (of some sort) comes crashing through the flanking woods and crashes through their ranks. There is much destruction and the army, once winning is now facing loss. Someone cries that this is magic and from the main body of the force a counterspell is prepared.

Our protagonist fights to remain alive amidst the onslaught and in the madness he feels a sense of power filling him and it is such power that keeps him moving and fighting and strong enough to survive when others die. The counterspell hits and scatters the beast horde and the soldiers are able to turn the tide and win the battle. It is at this point that the main body of the force rides in and someone notices him.

That notice ends this chapter.

Some Thoughts:

1. It seems the kernel betrayal for this story will be a familial one. This person who sends our hero on the mission does so as part of a larger exchange to have her own brother released from captivity. Notes of Henry the V to be sure, but every great work borrows and I argue that this may be quite good, though not at all great.
2. For every channeler like our yet unnamed protagonist there are ten who are his opposite. When magic is cast it is drawn up out of them and turns them into something ugly and terrible. Not sure how to work this but once a certain amount of magic is cast the tide tips and the ones afflicted become sickened in a new and terrible way–perhaps a zombie way?

For the next month I will be participating in NanoWrimo, the National Novel Writing Month event. I will be working on multiple pieces of writing. Some are covered by NDA and cannot be discussed here, but this space will be extra useful. I will be attempting a never before Ten Minute Novel!

I am working to decide if I am going to do the prose on the blog, the outlining, or aspects of both. We will all see how it turns out together. My hope over the long term is to chart the progress of a novel on a blog and use that as a teaching tool in the Your Year to a Novel vein. This specific novel is being developed as I write. I am starting from scratch in tonight’s blog.

So, what are we writing?

I want to try a fantasy. I have a vision in my head of a world where magic exists only as a clunky mechanism whose cost is so extreme that few dare to practice or engage it.

Our protagonist is a channeler, one that can use magic within his body but without external effects. These are rare people. They are often known as ‘the touched’. This is a world that believe is Gods and is torn in their understanding of magic as the will of certain Gods on man and in influencing certain outcomes.

The plot is simple: Our protagonist is enlisted to send a message across enemy lines to a spy high within the enemy army. That message, which our protag does not quite understand, will trigger an assasination which will trigger a retaliatory attack, which his ‘side’ is prepared for and will defeat easily, thus launching the two sides into a war they’ve been avoiding for almost 800 years.

I’m not sure about the time frames here, but I like that the protag is behind enemy lines and dealing with the reality of a nation of people who are much like him but absolutely nothing like him in some ways. I also think that his triggering the assasination will also cause him to want to stop it, fail, and then want to try to expose this lie that shapes the war.

Tomorrow it begins…