Now I can’t decide what story to work on/not work on because after all it’s a busy time in my life (. . .) but now with the weather cold and the skies grey, I’m really feeling another story I’ve been wanting to hard-core work on. So here’s a profile for that. The original is at the site linked to below. I don’t want to link to it again cos it will do this crazy ass ping thing, like a monster.
Novel Title: Haven’t even named the narrator. . . but it’s being kicked around the office now under the name “The Great DLM Rip Off.”
Estimated length: The length of perfection my friend, the length of perfection. I’m kidding.
Your writing experience: I don’t actually know how to write but I talk into my dictaphone like it’s my best friend.
New genre? Or old favorite?: I ‘unno. Fantasy, urban fantasy?
Any sub-Genres?: I don think so.
Gonna publish?: Ha!
Cliches/archetypes you’re including (not necessarily a bad thing!): Stick it to the man and fake bums. Crazy peoples.
Cliches/archetypes you’re avoiding: Romance and why NYC rocks/sucks.
Theme(s): Stickin it to the man. The man is beyond death. The man is awesome.
What we (the readers) will learn: Some of the historic background of political machines and immigrants. Essentially, this is a story centered around a major power similar to political machines that jump immigrants fresh of the boat and give them soup! SOUP!
Main character(s): Unnamed narrator (f), Brendan, Abandon.
Secondary characters: Chance and Kip.
Protagonist(s): Unnamed narrator, Brendan, Abandon .
Antagonist(s): Chance, Kip, and all the other dead and alive.
Setting: New York City in the winter probably.
Rough geography: Manhattan ha ha.
Races/inhabitants: People alive and people dead, dead divided up by COD.
Fantasy aspects: The dead people.
Conflict: Our heroes as it were haven’t got an affiliation and are effectively up against the system. That’s man vs society. Then there’s the weather, so it’s man vs nature. And then there is like they don’t all get along with one another or the people of the system, so it’s man vs man. There are more but eighth grade English was a long time ago.
Obstacles in the journey: The greater power of the system. The environment. The problem of being dead and still unable to cope with problems.
Expected resolution: The man wins cos the man is the shit.
Having just trivialized my plot, I’m even more excited.
Totally grabbed this from this fabulous blog over here- so hope that’s cool. It’s for a sci-fi novel but I can adjust. Nanowrimo is comin and it ain’t lookin good for me. I’m trying to write a thank-you note right now and it is so not happening it actually is funny.
Novel Title: Hello Adam
Estimated length: Ha ha ha.
Your writing experience: Whosis?
New genre? Or old favorite?: Realistic ficshin.
Any sub-Genres?: Wacky trippy road trippin.
Gonna publish?: Ha ha ha. And then some Columbia alum will be like Bitch stole my plot and shitty syntax!
Cliches/archetypes you’re including (not necessarily a bad thing!): Road trip. Misunderstood young peoples. Insanity. Music. Sex drugs an rock’n'roll. And stuff. See themes.
Cliches/archetypes you’re avoiding: There’s nothing we won’t not do man.
Theme(s): The whole punk conception of romance. Movement.
What we (the readers) will learn: Passion is a fashion but some of us are stuck with one pair of jeans and it innint our fault. Reality ain’t shit. Moving is for what ails ya.
Main character(s): Adam.
Secondary characters: The Virgin fuckin Mary, Topper Headon, an an an- the hitchhiker guy and his posse. And Donny, Catalina, and the unnamed chick.
Protagonist(s): Adam.
Antagonist(s): Everyone else!
Setting: The highway between Los Angeles and some town in New Mexico that I made up.
Rough geography: That would be desert then? And asphalt.
Conflict: Adam’s gotta get somewhere in a certain amount of time. No biggie.
Obstacles in the journey: He’s not in his car, doesn’t have money, and is having trouble seeing things like road signs.
Expected resolution: Oh dude, I totally wanna kill someone off.
Totally solved the problem of Eric’s shirt by bringing in what we kids like to call symbology- just found out that Brian Setzer is a hard core racist! And that means that I can put back the “joke”/social commentary about the gardener and the IRS/IRA/INS. And that implies that Eric might be a little racist, even casually (like us all), and that helps further discredits the kid. That’s the new goal- discredit them all.
This was written the night before it was due for my Structure & Style I class, the Playwriting Unit. Not a fun night, but it got done. It’s essentially that crap story down there adapted for the stage, as it were- better characterization and so forth. This is draft one; I hafta punch up the character descriptions and fix other things. It was great fun to hear it read aloud by different people.
The big thing I got in class was- should Eric be wearing, instead, a Clash shirt? I think it’s too much, but there’s no reason whatsoever for him to be wearing a Stray Cats shirt except that he was in the short story form.
Here’s the preview, the rest is below the cut.
Two weeks ago, I’m up there at the end of Mass saying, (with drained enthusiasm) ‘Buy tickets for the Italian Federation Dinner. Be nice to Protestants, for chrissakes. Pick up a copy of the bulletin. They tell me Father Felix is a pervert.’ They all keep sleeping, then they read it in the paper the next day and then we get the phone calls.
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Since I did so well with this the last time around (. . .) I’m trying it out again. I’m trying to decide what story to use, see how far I get. Anyway, I got my snazzy little icon, so I know I’ll get like 50,060 words by the end of the month. I’m thinking of posting the progress here, along with the other stuff I’m working on. We’ll see what happens.
Abstract: Father Dorian and Father Francis decide to team up with Eric the caretaker to figure out who killed Father Felix.
The next day, a reporter came round to write a bigger and better piece on Father Felix. Dorian made a sour face from the doorway of the rectory kitchen, where he’d been leaning against the frame rolling a cigarette, and said, “He’s dead, so what?”
The reporter looked like he was going to stick that in the article.
There are a few problems with this fella- I feel that the reporter is short-changed character- and sympathy-wise, I feel that it’s a little too not PC, enough so that I don’t feel comfortable having not done my research (though I’m excited to go see Deliver Us From Evil, even though I’ll probably have to trek down to see it. . .).
This started out involving characters who have been in other stories- Dorian Cringe who is from a fantasy/urban/modern thingy, and Eric and Frankie, who are in a realistic fiction piece I wrote over the summer. I was writing this piece on Thursday night with the intention of submitting it to my creative writing class- I went- “I’m gonna write a mystery, and since I’m watching Father Ted, I’ll put priests in it. Duuur.” I went ahead and put in 2 existing priest characters, started writing, and it all went downhill and dissolved into a story with too much dialogue and most of that is bad jokes.
Every character is severly overexaggerated. I changed Eric and Frankie’s names to Anthony and Tommy, which looked too weird, so they’re back to normal again. It’s between changing the names or the personalities as represented here, and I’m unwilling/too lazy to do either. Everyone is a caricature of their character as presented in other stories, though Dorian isn’t as bad, he’s just more breezy. Eric is too spacey and goofy. Frankie is the furthest from his original character- he’s designed to be a calming presence, and here he’s just a helpless dude. This is set later in their history, when Eric has finally gotten a steady job working at the parish, so we could assume something happened to Frankie and he got all small and like a character in a Smiths song.
In all honesty, my main thing in writing this story was getting that Clash lyric in.
Story after break- feedback appreciated (I can’t figure out how to get rid of the e-mail req, so please leave it at the corresponding Xanga post- what a mess, right?!)
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