NaNoWriMo 2017

Well, that was a fun thirty days :)

It was a lot less stressful than I thought it would be, and less stressful than the last few years were. The first few days were, however, a trial, because I was busy and I also couldn't settle on an idea that I wanted to write. 

On the list of ideas were:

- a fairytale about an Heir and a Witch and a Kingdom, in which it's either the Heir lives or a Kingdom dies, and a sacrifice must be made, and I realized halfway through plotting that it's basically just Overgrowth but way more detailed and then scrapped it for modification way way later.

- internet friends for nine years help each other through their respective problems, lots of drama and angst and humor; also one falls for the other, the other is as dense as a rock, just for kicks and giggles

- cyberpunk story about AIs getting robot bodies and going on the run; one of them makes a friend on the internet and then hides out in his house, another runs off and keeps causing trouble, one of them fakes their self-deletion and poses a waitress just because they think waiting tables and acting like a human is cool, one of them gets lost and keeps trying to eating human food out of curiousity, one of them is trying to contact the one posing as a waitress (because they appear to be the only voice of reason out of the others) to help herd in the others to not let them be caught

- incredibly extensively world-built story about a fisherman and a merperson - but not exactly

- highly successful villain writes a guide on how to be a good villain, a commentary on trends and tropes on villains

I bounced around from story to story for the first three days - I wrote for the fairytale one and the villain one on the first day (yes, both stories in the same day), and then the villain and the internet friends on the second day, and then the fisherman and merperson and cyberpunk one of the third. I ended up liking the fisherman one too much and managed to put together a shaky plot, but it was workable, and editing always comes later anyway.

I already had the world built months ago - at around April and May - all their deities and their places and their supernatural creatures, so navigating the world itself was easy. The plot was still hard to do since all I had was a world I would love to thoroughly explore, but the story was focused on the water creatures, but I can probably fix it later.

The basic setting is a world that's created by a pantheon of deities - elemental ones like fire, water, wind, earth; and more universal-concept ones like time, space, death, luck. 

These gods have their own created creatures who are gifted with abilities similar to the gods' element (e.g: fire gods creates fire sprites who are able to control fire), although there's several species of these creatures (e.g: water god has created merecreatures, water spirits, gigantic sea monsters, etc.). 

There are cities and towns who have taken on a god as their patron (the main setting where the story takes place has the water god as their patron, there's an area dubbed 'the lightlands' who have the luck god as their patron, and there's an area dubbed 'the fireplains' who have the fire god as their patron). 

Accounting for cultural differences, some deities may be referred to by the same name, or by a different name altogether. Sometimes, it's similar sounding names (e.g: in the main setting where the story takes place - a small nation called Selahi - the wind god is called Wona, but in other cultures, he's called Yona. Similarly, in Selahi, the fire god is called Makis, but in Ontanowa - the fireplains - he's known as Makis Rei). Also accounting for cultural differences, there may or may not be differences in how stories and legends about their respective deities.

In Selahi, their patron god is the water god Abzelmur; they revere and praise the water god even if in other cultures, they are only referred to as The Destroyer. 

I also might have pumped this story full of confusing in-world terms (e.g: the term for their gods here is Kaleni, plural Kalenai; and they have different names for their months and weeks and days and holidays and seasons, and have an entirely different calendar), and history can't be trusted because realistically, it's full of holes and misinterpretations. 

Also, the world might have ended once.

It's a lot to try and fit into a 50k story in a month, so I have a lot to smooth out, but it's good start! At least I actually started something. I often take a while to try and start things, and it's even more difficult to continue because my attention span is small and I tend to nitpick. This is why it's easier to write fanfiction for me because I get direct feedback. I'd love to get direct feedback for my original stories from my friends, but not a lot of my close friends read so, :(.

As for characters, there's also quite a lot to try and fit, what with an entire pantheon and all, and if I did try to force them in, it wouldn't be good. So I stuck to the first part to hit the 50k mark. Of course, this means I haven't finished the novel itself, and only one part of it, but it can (probably) stand by itself as a story. 

A Rough List of Characters The Probably Wouldn't Make Sense To Anyone But Me

The actual cast that showed up in the story itself is only a small bit. We have our MC and his family, the Merperson (Merpeople are called Meres in this universe), the wind god and a brief cameo from the time and space gods. 

• Seimar Analanya - the fisherman and MC; I didn't write YA so he's somewhere around the 25-27 age bracket, and I honestly can't believe I forgot to set his age until I wrote this post, wow.
• Mere - the Mere/merperson. As Merpeople are called Meres in this universe, this is what Seimar calls them. They have no name, as they don't remember if they had a pod who gave them a name.
• Kaleni of the Wind, Wona - the wind god, also known as The Trickster in most cultures. True to trickster archetype, many stories about him are of him trying to teach lessons through...usually harmful ways, although he's never gone as far as to actually kill someone, especially since that's breaking a huge rule that the Kalenai have set among themselves
• Sela Analanya - Seimar's grandmother; often seen scaring off religious fanatics who try to bother her and her family
• Chiri Analanya - Seimar's little cousin, a mythology nerd, might be psychic
• Kaleni of Time, Aksel -, the time god pretty chill, can de-age and age at will, thus confusing Seimar a lot several times, although he's pretty sure that's done on purpose. Seimar's never asked. You don't just ask a god why they're doing that.
• Kaleni of Space, Caste -, the space god, also pretty chill and insanely good at jenga, which isn't a surprise since space is their forte, teleports a lot and scares Seimar that way. Almost every Kaleni Seimar's ever met gets a kick out of scaring him, really.
• Teri Yakade - A friend of Chiri's
• Mrs. Yakade - Teri's mom
• Kel - one of the fishermen who help Seimar and his family during a freak storm
• Erik - another one of the fishermen who help Seimar and his family during a freak storm
• Kaleni of Water, Abzelmur - the water god, known in all cultures as The Destroyer, fabled to have destroyed the world once by a massive flood, feared in most cultures, revered in Selahi, this is cause for a lot of controversy and debates among religious sects.

I got sick in the middle of the month though, and I had to take a quick break, although I still managed to catch up and hit the goal on the 26th, then just went past by the 30th. The story is nowhere near done though, and I have a lot to smooth out, but I also have so many stories to try and finish and smooth out already. Hopefully, I'll get to all of them, and it'll be a fun time. Looking forward to actually doing something with this, and to next year's NaNo.

Guess we're back to our regularly scheduled screaming at Lullaby. :)

(p.s: still wanna write the cyberpunk; idk the first thing on how to write cyberpunk)