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…