NaNo Prep...But a Pretty Bauble
Oct. 8th, 2006 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marfiskNew book for you all to follow...
Okay, this time I'm starting almost at the very beginning of the process. At some point this collection of process posts will demonstrate that each one has a unique beginning, but the process after that starts to look a bit similar.
This novel is titled But a Pretty Bauble and came into being because I was reading an article in the Atlantic Monthly about the Saudi royal family and the potential risk to the world oil supply because of the instability within the royal family now with the leader's health failing.
It was an interesting article, but very few of the elements ended up in the story I'm going to tell. My mind drifted onto the whole romance trend of the sheik and kidnapping into the desert. On the other hand, maybe it ultimately had more of an influence than I'd thought.
But a Pretty Bauble is about a spoiled princess who gets thrown in the middle of a political conflict between nomadic tribes and her father over a gem mine. She has no idea how critical this resource is to both groups, but when kidnapped, soon learns that the situation is not what it appears and she is the only one in a position to stop a conflict that could end in genocide.
Oil = gems
The pleasure-loving Saudi princes = our main character at the beginning of the story
Ailing health = the nomads way of life
Is it a conscious metaphor? No. However, piecing it together here for you, I see I subconsciously absorbed more elements than I'd thought, and for all I know, this story may have been pulling itself together for years.
The upshot of it was a 1100 synopsis that I then forgot about completely once written. NaNo approached and I had no idea what I wanted to write. It was starting to bug me a lot. Then I happened to brush my gaze over The Atlantic Monthly again and remembered it. Since, I've increased the preparatory work to almost 5k through a character building challenge on FM and this novel has fallen into first place in the running for my NaNo project.
The challenges with this are many. First, the main character starts out as a spoiled twit. With that description, you might guess I worry about reader interest, but we'll see. She's more deluded than nasty so... Then just to make things interesting, the next character of focus is not the one who will become the love interest but rather the love interest's big brother. I haven't decided who gets a true voice and it may be determined by who is present in key scenes. The political, romantic, and other tangles in this novel are enough to make me tear my hair out...which means it should be a blast to write.
So anyway, from idea to planning, this is the process I followed with this novel. The next step is to outline, something I'm supposed to start today.
P.S. I started gathering scenes for the outline. I have maybe 5 and they are out of order and scattered. Almas is definitely the main POV, but the others are still up in the air.
Okay, this time I'm starting almost at the very beginning of the process. At some point this collection of process posts will demonstrate that each one has a unique beginning, but the process after that starts to look a bit similar.
This novel is titled But a Pretty Bauble and came into being because I was reading an article in the Atlantic Monthly about the Saudi royal family and the potential risk to the world oil supply because of the instability within the royal family now with the leader's health failing.
It was an interesting article, but very few of the elements ended up in the story I'm going to tell. My mind drifted onto the whole romance trend of the sheik and kidnapping into the desert. On the other hand, maybe it ultimately had more of an influence than I'd thought.
But a Pretty Bauble is about a spoiled princess who gets thrown in the middle of a political conflict between nomadic tribes and her father over a gem mine. She has no idea how critical this resource is to both groups, but when kidnapped, soon learns that the situation is not what it appears and she is the only one in a position to stop a conflict that could end in genocide.
Oil = gems
The pleasure-loving Saudi princes = our main character at the beginning of the story
Ailing health = the nomads way of life
Is it a conscious metaphor? No. However, piecing it together here for you, I see I subconsciously absorbed more elements than I'd thought, and for all I know, this story may have been pulling itself together for years.
The upshot of it was a 1100 synopsis that I then forgot about completely once written. NaNo approached and I had no idea what I wanted to write. It was starting to bug me a lot. Then I happened to brush my gaze over The Atlantic Monthly again and remembered it. Since, I've increased the preparatory work to almost 5k through a character building challenge on FM and this novel has fallen into first place in the running for my NaNo project.
The challenges with this are many. First, the main character starts out as a spoiled twit. With that description, you might guess I worry about reader interest, but we'll see. She's more deluded than nasty so... Then just to make things interesting, the next character of focus is not the one who will become the love interest but rather the love interest's big brother. I haven't decided who gets a true voice and it may be determined by who is present in key scenes. The political, romantic, and other tangles in this novel are enough to make me tear my hair out...which means it should be a blast to write.
So anyway, from idea to planning, this is the process I followed with this novel. The next step is to outline, something I'm supposed to start today.
P.S. I started gathering scenes for the outline. I have maybe 5 and they are out of order and scattered. Almas is definitely the main POV, but the others are still up in the air.
I'm hooked!
Date: 2006-11-07 01:46 am (UTC)Good luck on NaNo!
Maria
www.mariazannini.com
Re: I'm hooked!
Date: 2006-11-07 03:15 am (UTC)To your questions, the princess is the main character, though she's got some growth to go through before she becomes pivotal in a self-directed way. As far as the century, actually this was pulled into a fantasy world with the nomads based on absolutely nothing as far as I can tell (well, maybe a people that popped up in a short story years ago that is begging to be a book) and the princess' people are loosely based on Turks with an emphasis on loosely.
As far as century, since it's a fantasy world, the timing is irrelevant, but society-wise, they're heading into steampunk time frame with the introduction of cannons and rumors of a flying machine, though that's not a big portion of the story.