Dear Characters (NaNo '13) - Part 2

((I'm at about 35,000 words with my current NaNo story and the plot's just over half finished, so it's time for another "Dear Character" post.))

Dear Adair (the Illusionist),
Watching you fumble through love is amusing, but don't you have, you know, a quest? And don't tell me you're still waiting on the next call so you don't know where to go. You have those magical maps, right? ...Oh, what the heck. I'm making you deal with this bunch of goofballs carnival performers (and you haven't even reached the delusional mime yet...), so I guess I can't begrudge you those little cartoon hearts you have floating above your head. ... or was that you testing out your magic again? Have you figured out yet that you can draw 3d things in the air?

Dear Blythe (the Protector),
Okay, at this point everyone knows that you're a girl. Everyone. I'm honestly surprised that none of them have let this fact slip yet. (And by "none of them" I mean "Sol". Hate to say it, Blythe, but your friend is kind of an idiot.) And Adair keeps not being able to breathe whenever you get in close proximity to him; if he turns purple, will you catch on that he knows your secret? (Wait, I already have a purple character. Scratch that.)

Dear Drake (the Charmer),
What exactly is going to happen to you when you get your magic back? Right now you're so very not Drake and the others like this version of you. So what happens when you go back to getting everything you want and making people do whatever you want because of your mind-control? When the rest see the real you? This could be a problem. By the way, I still don't have any hobbies or secondary skills for you. You better find some quickly or you'll end up expendable.

Dear Sol (the Lightbringer),
While Drake ended up with the "most unlucky character in the story" award, apparently you drew the short straw for the role of "adorable idiot" this time around. (I'd recommend breaking the fourth wall and asking Raff for pointers if you get stuck.) This may end up with you turning into the comic relief, but since you're all circus folk, that's a title you may have to share. And would you quit putting that silly hat on the cat? Where do you people keep finding these things??

Dear Etri (the Shadowwalker),
Please stop getting yourself lost in the background. I keep losing track of you! I know that's rather the point to who you are, mister not only hides in shadow but is a shadow, but you seem to be the brains of the group. Adair needs your opinions because he's not yet the ringmaster your brother jokingly calls him.

Dear Chantrell (the Melodist),
I'll be introducing you within the next day, so I suppose I should say hi and welcome you to the insanity. Just to let you know, that tiger is just Adair's cat. You'll figure this out when she goes "Mrrrt?" and tries to rub against your leg. You'll get used to Addy's illusions.

~Meri, the writer who is trying to figure out how she's going to juggle six characters with another one coming later. (At least two of you are jugglers. A little help here?)

Dear Characters (NaNo '13)

((I haven't done any of these "Dear Character" or "Dear Writer" posts for this year's NaNo yet, so it's time to remedy that! These are the key players at the moment.))

Dear Adair (the apprentice Illustrator-Mage),
Would you please please please stop thinking about food for five minutes? I know you're a teenaged boy, but geez, who thinks a pie will get them into a guarded location? You're cute, kid, even if you are kind of silly. I'm giving you an assignment that you'll love, by the way: find a new cat. I need this for a group writing prompt and I know you'll be sad about having to leave your three behind once you realize you're not coming back.

Dear Blythe (the would-be Blade-Mage/blade-dancer),
Are you finally beginning to catch on that magic is real? If Adair's sketchbook of moving drawings wasn't enough to prove this, I'm sure you can ask Etri how his magic works. Then again, he's a performer; he might not actually want you to know his secrets. But you know him better than I do since he's your closest friend and I just met him this week. What do you think? (And would you please let on to Adair sometime soon that you're a girl? I keep writing the wrong pronoun for you EVERY TIME. By the time I get used to calling you "boy" and "him", Adair will have figured it out and then I'm going to have to get myself re-accustomed to the correct terms.)

Dear Drake (the Blade-Mage/fire-dancer),
I'll get to you eventually, I promise. Maybe by Tuesday? While you're waiting, please think of some secondary skills and hobbies that you can fall back on when your magic is taken. Your life seems to revolve far too much around getting what you want because of your mind-control! Heck, even Adair likes to cook and Blythe knows something about healing and technically their lives are busier than yours. Not everything has to do with your magic, ya know. (And I don't think seducing people really counts as a hobby.)

Dear Sol (the Light-Mage/fire-breather),
Umm... sorry for making you my baddie's next victim? You were one of the first drained, so assuming you don't try to light any more fires magically for a few days, you'll be fine. Please tell Adair this so he stops freaking out that he's the cause of all these innocent people getting hurt. Oh, and don't try fire-breathing for a few days, either; without your power, that would be very very painful.

Dear Etri (the Darkness-Mage/fire-eater),
I really love you and your brother even if you aren't main characters. I'm going to be giving you guys a quest of your own so don't think I'll forget about you when the MCs leave. Until then, I think you're going to be dragged into a search by Blythe because you're a little better at sneaking into places in the dark than she is. (Speaking of, do you know that she's a girl? One minute I think you do and are just keeping this a secret, the next I think you're as clueless as everyone else.)

~Meri, your writer who is having way too much fun with this artist and carnival performer theme but who also wonders why you guys all seem to like fire so much

A letter left behind at the start of Adair's journey

((At this point in my NaNo, Adair leaves a note to his teacher when he gets his quest and sets off in the middle of the night. I haven't found a way to fit it into the story yet, so I figured I'd share it here. The boy has no idea what he's in for. Back in a few days, only going to the next town, hahaha! Almost two years later, half a world away, he won't even know where he lives anymore. Keep thinking you'll be back tomorrow, kid. You'll need that optimism.))

Dear Master Cole,
This is going to come out of the blue, but I need to take a few days off. I'll make it up, I promise. I think I figured out what happened to the map I drew for my journeyman-assignment. The person I met who was acting strangely the other day was the watchmaker- you were right. Last night he and a fortune teller- I can't recall what she said her name was- helped me figure out that the reason I've been feeling so odd is because someone is using my magic through the map and that someone is probably the person who is draining mages. It's all very weird and I'm not really sure what the map has to do with the attacks, but I'm positive this is true. I know someone is using my magic and I didn't get a chance to disconnect myself from what I had drawn before it was taken, so that must be it. Anyway, I'm going to go see if I can get it back somehow. The fortune teller said I would have some help, but I'm not sure who that'll be yet. She said she'd explain this better to you in the morning. I should be back tomorrow or maybe the day after; I think I just have to go to Greenveldt to sort this out.
~Adair

PS Please have Katie watch my cats for me while I'm gone and ask her not to let Vermillion get into my paintbrushes. (He keeps trying to chew the bristles off. I don't know why. He never did this before.) Tell her I'll draw her some more dancing kittens if she helps.
PPS. Oh, and have her try to keep Chartreuse out of the bedrooms. She keeps bringing in dead mice and leaving them on my bed. It's gross. ... Chartreuse does, I mean. Not Katie.
PPPS I brought my sketchbook and some tools, so while I'm away I'll work on something. I promise I won't slack off and I'll work extra hard when I get home.

NaNoWriMo '13 outline and character ramblings

NaNoWriMo '13 is off to a pretty good start! Assuming I can get some words written tonight, I'll be on par to pass 10k. I have a pretty good idea for my NaNo since I spent part of this week working on an outline, but right now I'm procrastinating because I'm about to start the action. Now that my protagonist has his quest, I'm not really sure what the next step is. He seems to be pretty good at bumbling into plot where I least expect it, so he should lead me through. I hope. Go, Adair, go! Find the two who will help you! And find the plot which is hiding around here somewhere, while you're at it. ;)

I'm really happy with how I'm doing my outline this year because, knock on wood, it seems to be keeping me on track. I think that was my problem with last year's NaNo and why, a year later, I was still fumbling my way through the first draft: I didn't have a good outline. I'm using color-coded sticky notes in my writing notebook:


-Blue: my plot
-Yellow: missing parts of the story I still need to work out
-Purple: quick references to my characters and their tasks and basic info (Adair's my main character, Blythe is the secondary main, and Drake is pretty much on par with Blythe, but comes in later. I still need a name for my baddie...)
-Orange: assorted minor characters and their type of magic
-Pink: tasks/plot points that I'm looking to add at some point; either I don't know where they go, they span the story, or they relate to more than one character.
It's arranged so the top blue line is the start of the story (about 9000 words so far), the middle two rows are middle, and the bottom row is the end of the story. I know Scrivener can do something like this, but I'm a really visual person so I work best with something physical I can hold.

I've already removed two of the question mark ones and replaced them with blue plot stickies, so this seems to be working! It's also helpful that they're on sticky notes because that means it's easy to replace them when I decide to change something up. :)


And while I was procrastinating today, I played around with that avatar generator again to try to get a feel for the main(ish) character I don't know well yet. Drake won't be showing up in my writing for probably another week (a few days at least), but I'm very much itching to write about him! Right now all I know is that he's Blythe's former teacher- and soon to be current teacher since he has similar magic to what she's just now discovering- so he's a little older than Adair and Blythe. He used to go by "Drake Dualdagger" when Blythe knew him a few years ago, but I'm getting the suspicion that he's now calling himself "Firedrake" because of his current draconic and fire theme. I also know his magic is mind-control, he's cheerful, kind of mischievous and a little morally ambiguous, and while Blythe prefers swords and the occasional dagger, his style of dance/magic is more likely long daggers and lit torches.

(I also have a version with swords instead of torches.)

This avatar isn't quite what I had in mind, but it's close; he has a very theatrical appearance for his stage presence, so this isn't even as over the top as he'd look. (He has red dragon scale tattoos covering his arms and his hair is partly dyed, but the color on his face is just paint.)

Okay, I've procrastinated long enough. Time to get back to work!

~Meri

Cover art and summary for my '13 NaNoWriMo

November is fast approaching so today found me frantically fumbling around for a synopsis/summary and cover to add to my NaNoWriMo story's page. I had finally stumbled on my title earlier this week when my writing-partner-in-crime mentioned the phrase "unexpected inspiration" in an email; turns out that not only is my female main character the muse of my protagonist, my partner-in-crime is my own personal muse! ;)

Anyway, with a title now in hand, I was able to put together some stock images in paintshop to make a cover. It's not exactly what I had in mind, but it's as close as I could get with free images. I'm pretty happy with it, though! This year I went with paintbrushes as the theme because Adair is my artist-mage. (I'm still referring to him as an "artist-mage", but in the story it'll probably be "illustrator-mage" because technically all of the mages in this story are artists in some way.)





(At some prompting of Wrimos on the forum who know more about graphics than I do, I darkened the font. This looks nicer, but the brighter blue is more the tone of the story- otherwise it just looks too serious.)

Summary/Synopsis:
In a time where magic is suspect and mostly kept hidden behind other occupations, Adair is a carefree apprentice Illustrator-Mage with the ability to make what he draws have the semblance of life, often at the most inconvenient of times. When a wealthy patron arrives at his master's door to request a map, insinuating that it needs to be more than a mere drawing, this commission is passed on to the teenaged apprentice to serve as his final test towards his promotion to Journeyman rank. Little did Adair realize the man's true motives for this request.

As the map's new owner seeks out more mages to exploit in his quest for power, Adair feels a tug from his creation to follow. This pull leads him to a carnival where he meets a mysterious sword-dancer just coming into his own magic- and who Adair soon begins to suspect isn't what he appears. Much to his amusement and relief, Adair gains the help of this young dancer, his performance company, and a few other clandestine mages they meet along the way.

In order to free himself from what his creation has become and stop the harm its bearer is doing to an unwitting population, Adair must put aside his daydreaming to become the hero his unlikely muse is inspiring him to be.

-------------------

I may edit this slightly, but it works until I actually write said story (because who knows what may change along the way?). I still have an outline to finish this week, but I'm definitely looking forward to November 1st!

Edit: And one of my friends awesomely tried her hand at my cover and I like this version much better. The brightness is much more the tone of the story than the darker version I had come up with. :)


~Meri

Another new character for NaNoWriMo '13

I still haven't come up with much more in the way of plot ideas for NaNoWriMo next month (*whistles* Here, plot plot plot...) but I have figured out who my other main character will be: Blythe Bladedancer. Blythe is a blade-mage (title subject to change when I think of something better than "blade-mage") and he can actually say that as a kid he ran away to join the circus; he has spent several years touring with a carnival in his quest for fame. The surname is accurate as he dances and spins the blades both as a performance and to work magic. Blythe looks something like an assassin or ninja, but that's just the dramatics of his stage persona.

...Or should I say "her persona". I really wish I'd been able to get that avatar to look more androgynous because Blythe has spent most of her life pretending to be male in order to be in the career that she's chosen. This story is taking place 150 or so years previous to my other writing; if her true gender had been known, it's unlikely that she could have become what she wanted to be- and trust me, she wants to be famous.

She'll end up teaming up with Adair on his quest, so he'll be one of the few who catches on to her real gender. Eventually, if she's away from the part of the world where she's working to establish herself, then I think she's going to spend time wearing something like this just for the novelty of being able to wear something else for a while:

I'm thinking that in this garb, she'd pick clothes that flow dramatically with her movements, whereas in her "boy" garb it's more form-fitting to better show off her skill by not causing a distraction. (This has nothing to do with the gender being the deciding factor, just that she wants to try something new. She could just as easily have a flowing cloak or robe or something as a male.) I can definitely see her getting a kick out of proving to men she meets on the road that, yes, she very much knows how to use those blades she carries. Messing with Blythe is probably not a good idea. No matter what she's wearing, though, her arms will be free of sleeves that would tangle in her weapons. The potion bottle isn't actually full of a potion: that's enchanted dye/paint. Since it's from Adair, who knows if it'll actually work or not, though. ;)

I'm going to be spending the next two weeks trying to sort out some idea of plot and personalities for her and Adair (and figure out if they need a third to help them on their quest). I'm not usually drawn towards sword-wielders, but I love the idea of Blythe. I mean, getting to say "One of my characters really did run off to join the circus!" is something that probably won't happen again!

~Meri

Unlocking a new character for NaNoWriMo

"Another new character?" I hear you say. (Or at least I would hear that question if there were more than two people who read this blog. Since both of them know my writing plans, all I'm getting are some vague nods from their directions, lol.) I'm going to be taking a bit of a break from my year-long struggle with "In the Cards" (my epic mess) to write something else during NaNoWriMo this year and since I desperately need some time away from Seph (I love you, dude, but you're really getting on my nerves hard to write), I'm moving as far away as possible. Well, geographically speaking I'm staying in the same area for part of the story, but I'm moving back in time about 150 years.

There will be a few new characters (two? three? Who knows! NaNo is the time for crazy, anything goes chaos!) that go along with November's story, but in this case I'm just sharing the protagonist who I unlocked first (and made using this generator). Meet Adair Conroy:

If his name rings a bell and he looks a little familiar, there's a good reason for that: he's the ancestor of both Cyneric and Phillip. (Which is kind of funny because at the time of his story, he's all of about sixteen and the thought of descendents would make him flee in a panic. So shhhhh, no one tell him that he has great-great grandkids.) I'm still fumbling for the first glimmerings of plot and characterization, but he's an artist-mage tasked with facing the baddie who made an incredibly brief appearance in the prologue of The Acolyte's Map. That evil map? Yeah, you can put some of the blame on Adair, although he's claiming that he had no idea what he was doing. All he wanted was a patron to buy him some more paint and canvas. Honest! How was he to know how his drawings would be twisted?

This is pretty close to how I picture him- looking similar to his descendents, but garbed a little differently for a different time period. And splattered with paint and ink, of course. At his belt is a scrollcase where he keeps some of his precious paper and that isn't so much a sash that he's wearing as a bandolier; he stashes some of his art supplies into that, as well as his belt, to keep them near at hand. He does this not just because he's constantly sketching, but because they're keyed into his magic.

That's all the detail I'll go into right now, but I'm sure I'll ramble more as NaNo approaches, probably with even more parenthesis. And I realize that a lot of my avatars at the top of the page go to sparse bio pages. My goal between now and November is to at least finish the bios of the characters I already have.

...That and, ya know, figure out how an artist is able to stop a baddie from usurping a throne in a kingdom that's halfway across the world from his home. Technicalities, right? ;) I love the start of NaNo season! So many crazy ideas circling your head at once and none of them make any sense. Aaaahhh. *breathes in the smell of new pens, notebooks, and chaos*

~Meri