Outlining
Posted by nefchast on October 6, 2008
Have over 3500 words worth of background info written so far for the NaNo story. The outline is also started, with the first day’s worth written. I’ll be doing a detailed (think I’ve heard it used ‘Phase’ outline?) step-by-step outline, which should be the best for me with the work schedule I’ll have during November.
The story is Saryval, which I did have a sort of ‘intro’ written out and up on here before, but that’s been scrapped. The beginning is still similar, but starts while the MC is actually being transported to Saryval, leaving out the unnecessary Earth intro. The plot I’ve decided on (or haven’t decided on, it’s hard to say) is different from the original idea, and I’ve got some map making to do since I’ll be changing the original layout of regions. I do have names for my characters, the male MC is Markus and the female MC is Aisling. Other notes, hmmm, I’ve got–what I think is–all the races worked out in rough. There’s four of them: Seravya (what Aisling is, just a touch of vampire inspiriation in them–sunlight is bad for their skin, longer life spans, can feed on another being’s life force–in this case spirit/soul; most of this has to do with their region of origin which is heavily forested, they lived in the eternally dark lands beneath the canopy, their innate magical abilities are spirit based, both of those have lead to their increase in lifespan–as well as reproduction later in life), clockwork humans (for lack of a better name, think of a steampunk/clockwork fantasy borg and you get these guys. the society they live in is an empire, with an emperor that controls his people through different neural implants. while this sounds incredibly high-tech for some fantasy story, there is a reason! these people have an innate magic for metals allowing them to bend iron, steel, copper, tin and bronze to their will. what initially started as improvements to their military strength soon turned to controlling the entire population of the empire, it now works as a single entity, under complete control of the emperor. however, there are a few nobles and talented engineers that have been given a moderate amount of free thought in order to continue progression of machines and such), the Vernai (barbaric, highlandish, mystics and shape shifters. tribal society.), and the Nerot which are some kind of undead-ish, magically infused ancient beings that may still hold tremendous amounts of power (I don’t think they’ll be used much). Pretty happy so far with the progress, I really just have to come up with more secondary characters and sub-plots, then continue my outline so I’ll be able to just sit down and write when I have time.
