The Beginnings of a Novel

The outline for the new book is going very slowly ...

Let me explain the general idea of the book. This is in the Archetype series, none of which has gone to developmental edit yet. A little background: Archetypes are near-immortal beings who are tasked with holding humanity's cultural memories. If the Archetype for an ethnicity dies, all of the people whose patterns they hold die, so that an entire ethnic group (and, more likely, a large group of people of mixed ethnicity that includes that group) die.  This is why Archetypes have been held apart from humans and each other.

My series covers the interactions between one particular renegade family (unique in that Archetypes don't generally have family bonds) and humans. The humans have their own uniqueness in that they have been gifted with abilities by (depending on who you ask) Gaia, the Maker of the Archetypes, God, or genetic enhancement.

The story I'm writing, tentatively called Gods' Seeds, involves two threads that will come together as the story develops. But here's a first attempt at synopsis:

The Council of the Oldest, the ruling body of the Archetypes, has announced that humans' genetic and cultural memories will be gradually divested back to their humans, as humans have been found fit to retain them. Meanwhile, a young woman on Earth named Leah Inhofer sees horrific visions of Archetypes battling each other, with thousands of human casualties resulting. The Archetypes grow restless, knowing that their reason for existence is being taken away, and they will take desperate measures to keep this from happening. The conflict draws battle lines between Archetype and Archetype, and Leah must find the strength to stand between the two -- or watch the decimation of humanity.

****

There's a lot of writing in-between this paragraph and a novel. There's character, there's subplots, there's relationships between characters. And there's a lot of words -- about 80,000 words on average. That's why I'm going to write an outline, to help me find my way through the plot of the novel.

Wish me luck, and let me know if you'd read this novel!

Prepping the Next Story Part 1

I will be writing for NaNoWriMo this November. I think I explained this phenomenon before, so jump to the next paragraph if you've read this before: NaNoWriMo is a worldwide writing committment, where the participants commit to 50,000 words -- which is well on the way to finishing a novel. In thirty days, 50,000 words equals 1,667 a day.

I started participating in  NaNoWriMo because I've been known to easily abandon hobbies and free time activities. It runs in the family -- my mother had an attic full of bolts of material, often purchased on sale, and scraps of velveteen and brocade that she planned to use someday for a Project. Mom's projects, like mine, were never small,  and like me, Mom expected to start a project at expert status. As an illustration, the scrapbook for my wedding sits unfinished, and Richard and I just celebrated our tenth anniversary.

NaNo changed that for me -- primarily because it gave me a Big Audacious Goal. I could say "I'm going to write a 50,000 word book" to my friends and they'd say "OOOOH!" And then, having committed to the goal, I had to actually write it to save face. And then, at the end of the month, I had a book I had to take seriously and start learning how to edit -- that, as you know, has taken a while. And now I have the discipline to write over and over.

This year for NaNo, I'm going to start writing the "dirty commie gypsy elves" book that I'd conceptualized twenty-five or so years ago, which has neither gypsies or elves, nor are they dirty.
How do I start?

I've done this before -- I start with a loose outline of major plot events, which looks like this:

On the left-hand side at the top is the outline for the book. I have the chapters added, with six titled, and the first chapter with its subchapters named and visible. The cards in the middle are the synopses for each section.  There are some commands at the right I will set up later.

That's what I will be doing for the next couple of days, so that my book has some time to percolate in my mind in October after I edit another book.   Wheeeeeeee!