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It has begun.
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melannen, posting the warning note that this journal is now on NaNoWriMo standing. If you've friended it and no longer want my crazed ramblings cluttering your reading, please, please, defriend. I'm turning off my internal editor for this, so I'm not going to worry about quality or pace or anything like that.
On the same note, if you do want to read, friend! I'll friend back, and follow your nano if you're doing one. I will probably friend random NaNo journals with this account as I procrastinate, too. And I'm always very happy at comments of any sort.
However, I probably won't be posting everything here-- chances are a fair portion of the story will be pen-and-paper, and I'm not going to type it all up, so you won't be reading a complete novel. Anything I do type will be here, though, along with regular status updates, excerpts I particularly like, and whining. It will be mostly flocked, and I will make liberal use of lj-cuts.
Scared you away yet?
Well, here's what I'm going to attempt to write, the first four steps in my hybrid story-building system:
Label your story: The current working title has changed from "Consubstantiation" to "By Bread Alone". It's your traditional, old-fashioned faith-based alternate history vampire novel. (But Catholic, Protestant, Pagan, and Other friendly.)
Summarize it in fifty characters or less, counting spaces and punctuation: Bet learns to live with being undead.
Summarize it in exactly five sentences: In the aftermath of the wars of religion, an alternate Europe is facing the loss of all its certainties; and in a small Protestant town in Germany, a reclusive, religious young vampire is facing her own crisis. When a less ethical vampire seduces the Count and and begins terrorizing the town, our heroine's only friend talks her into an ill-considered attempt to end the threat, which only succeeds in convincing everyone that she is the culprit. She is forced into deep hiding as mob mentality sweeps the citizens, and even the town's last outposts of the new rationalism-- the doctor and the pastor-- are determined to trap her. Fortunately, she is able to convince the two of them that she is a good Christian and no killer, but this leaves her in an even worse position when, exhausted, starving, and driven half-mad beyond endurance, her will fails and she kills again; in despair, she drags herself to the door of the church and offers her life for the peace of the town. But her new allies have a lesson to teach her about faith, hope, and love; then, with a little help from the experts, they manage to capture the bad vampire and bring peace to the town.
Explain why this story is worth writing: Because it addresses, in character-driven, no-straight-answers sort of way, many of the questions which have been pouncing on me lately at two o'clock in the morning: Why do we live instead of dying? Why do we feel the need to try instead of just living? Is faith really the answer, and is it the only answer? Why does vampire fiction almost always ignore religion as a living presence when vampire myth is steeped in it?
I also have a Random Plot Element, courtesy of the meetup on Friday: A very good book. Which is probably going to end up being the Good Book. Or possibly The Hammer of Hell, the pastor's guide to persecuting the supernatural, although that one's not so much good as amusingly ovedone.
Spoilery character-arc summaries will be going up under f-lock soon I hope. I'm not doing any more plotting, however, as that tends to kill the story.
Also, to copy a disclaimer from Anne McCaffrey: Any of the above is subject to change without notice. q:
melannen, posting the warning note that this journal is now on NaNoWriMo standing. If you've friended it and no longer want my crazed ramblings cluttering your reading, please, please, defriend. I'm turning off my internal editor for this, so I'm not going to worry about quality or pace or anything like that.On the same note, if you do want to read, friend! I'll friend back, and follow your nano if you're doing one. I will probably friend random NaNo journals with this account as I procrastinate, too. And I'm always very happy at comments of any sort.
However, I probably won't be posting everything here-- chances are a fair portion of the story will be pen-and-paper, and I'm not going to type it all up, so you won't be reading a complete novel. Anything I do type will be here, though, along with regular status updates, excerpts I particularly like, and whining. It will be mostly flocked, and I will make liberal use of lj-cuts.
Scared you away yet?
Well, here's what I'm going to attempt to write, the first four steps in my hybrid story-building system:
Label your story: The current working title has changed from "Consubstantiation" to "By Bread Alone". It's your traditional, old-fashioned faith-based alternate history vampire novel. (But Catholic, Protestant, Pagan, and Other friendly.)
Summarize it in fifty characters or less, counting spaces and punctuation: Bet learns to live with being undead.
Summarize it in exactly five sentences: In the aftermath of the wars of religion, an alternate Europe is facing the loss of all its certainties; and in a small Protestant town in Germany, a reclusive, religious young vampire is facing her own crisis. When a less ethical vampire seduces the Count and and begins terrorizing the town, our heroine's only friend talks her into an ill-considered attempt to end the threat, which only succeeds in convincing everyone that she is the culprit. She is forced into deep hiding as mob mentality sweeps the citizens, and even the town's last outposts of the new rationalism-- the doctor and the pastor-- are determined to trap her. Fortunately, she is able to convince the two of them that she is a good Christian and no killer, but this leaves her in an even worse position when, exhausted, starving, and driven half-mad beyond endurance, her will fails and she kills again; in despair, she drags herself to the door of the church and offers her life for the peace of the town. But her new allies have a lesson to teach her about faith, hope, and love; then, with a little help from the experts, they manage to capture the bad vampire and bring peace to the town.
Explain why this story is worth writing: Because it addresses, in character-driven, no-straight-answers sort of way, many of the questions which have been pouncing on me lately at two o'clock in the morning: Why do we live instead of dying? Why do we feel the need to try instead of just living? Is faith really the answer, and is it the only answer? Why does vampire fiction almost always ignore religion as a living presence when vampire myth is steeped in it?
I also have a Random Plot Element, courtesy of the meetup on Friday: A very good book. Which is probably going to end up being the Good Book. Or possibly The Hammer of Hell, the pastor's guide to persecuting the supernatural, although that one's not so much good as amusingly ovedone.
Spoilery character-arc summaries will be going up under f-lock soon I hope. I'm not doing any more plotting, however, as that tends to kill the story.
Also, to copy a disclaimer from Anne McCaffrey: Any of the above is subject to change without notice. q: