Nanowrimo: Superhero urban fantasy
Dec. 10th, 2018 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackWoo, I did nanowrimo! Well, not quite, but I did about 25,000 words between November and maybe a little head start in October. I continued a story which had been knocking around in my head before.
I learned a lot which I think I've already talked about elsewhere, mostly I should invent vivid characters and use them to sell the premise. So I'm quite excited to try that on some shorter stories and see how it goes.
But what about this story? Well, superhero urban fantasy, partly inspired by LitRpg although I don't describe it to people like that because the connotations aren't as positive.
A large alien macguffin appears in pieces scattered across london. The same thing has happened in other large world cities the last decade. Everyone who touches them gets superpowers but (as earlier cities learned the hard way), lapses into a coma eighteen months later. Unless, you touch every one of the different pieces, in which case the game ends right then, you're coma safe, but everyone else succumbs immediately.
This leads to a lot of conflict, and superheroes from one city often plan to work together as a team, but then fall into conflict later after all.
Macguffin shards not touched by people activate something non-human nearby instead, turning it into a monster, which can be benign but often rampages, fighting these is something superheroes are often called upon to do. There's often some sort of theme, e.g. in Tokyo, giant monsters, in London, monsters dwelling in an underground labyrinth across the city.
The protagonist Dennis get a straightforward "blast it" power but immediately starts thinking how to exploit it most effectively. He fights a couple of monsters I love including the adorable CRUSHBOT-9000, meets another super, meets a whole group of supers slowly coalescing into a team, clashes with some other supers, and eventually about half way through the book the situation starts to settle down into a stand off between:
* A slight majority of London supers, members or loosely affiliated with one super team hoping to resolve the prisoner's dilemma situation amicably, including most of the protagonists, and becoming recognised by civil authorities as an authority on all things super, and have a giant mansion where they act like rock stars
* The Raven Woman, who thinks she's a god, scarily infests everyone dreams, and has coopted other powerful supers to work for her
* The government, trust us, get registered, work as auxiliary police officers, we have a plan to fix the coma thing, need to know, you don't need to know, no, none of the people we've disappeared have been "disappeared", oops, forget we said that
* TBD based in the labyrinth
A lot of this gelled as I was writing so what I have is a bit inconsistent with the tone and worldbuilding which came later. It has several high points I really, really enjoyed writing, but I'm not sure if it's worth working into a consistent whole or not. If I can I would love to at least fix the formatting and gaps in the first half so I can show people, but I'll keep you posted.
I learned a lot which I think I've already talked about elsewhere, mostly I should invent vivid characters and use them to sell the premise. So I'm quite excited to try that on some shorter stories and see how it goes.
But what about this story? Well, superhero urban fantasy, partly inspired by LitRpg although I don't describe it to people like that because the connotations aren't as positive.
A large alien macguffin appears in pieces scattered across london. The same thing has happened in other large world cities the last decade. Everyone who touches them gets superpowers but (as earlier cities learned the hard way), lapses into a coma eighteen months later. Unless, you touch every one of the different pieces, in which case the game ends right then, you're coma safe, but everyone else succumbs immediately.
This leads to a lot of conflict, and superheroes from one city often plan to work together as a team, but then fall into conflict later after all.
Macguffin shards not touched by people activate something non-human nearby instead, turning it into a monster, which can be benign but often rampages, fighting these is something superheroes are often called upon to do. There's often some sort of theme, e.g. in Tokyo, giant monsters, in London, monsters dwelling in an underground labyrinth across the city.
The protagonist Dennis get a straightforward "blast it" power but immediately starts thinking how to exploit it most effectively. He fights a couple of monsters I love including the adorable CRUSHBOT-9000, meets another super, meets a whole group of supers slowly coalescing into a team, clashes with some other supers, and eventually about half way through the book the situation starts to settle down into a stand off between:
* A slight majority of London supers, members or loosely affiliated with one super team hoping to resolve the prisoner's dilemma situation amicably, including most of the protagonists, and becoming recognised by civil authorities as an authority on all things super, and have a giant mansion where they act like rock stars
* The Raven Woman, who thinks she's a god, scarily infests everyone dreams, and has coopted other powerful supers to work for her
* The government, trust us, get registered, work as auxiliary police officers, we have a plan to fix the coma thing, need to know, you don't need to know, no, none of the people we've disappeared have been "disappeared", oops, forget we said that
* TBD based in the labyrinth
A lot of this gelled as I was writing so what I have is a bit inconsistent with the tone and worldbuilding which came later. It has several high points I really, really enjoyed writing, but I'm not sure if it's worth working into a consistent whole or not. If I can I would love to at least fix the formatting and gaps in the first half so I can show people, but I'll keep you posted.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-11 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-11 11:45 am (UTC)