If you had asked me what my NaNoWriMo project for 2020 was going to be back in July, I would have given you nothing except a mildly panicked grimace. Whereas in past years, I have had an idea kicking not just months, but usually years in advance, this time, I knew I was short on them. Thankfully, I was not short on initiative, because in August, I hatched a plan.
I was missing the creativity and unbridled limits that come from writing pure Fiction, something I hadn't taken up the opportunity to write for what was, essentially a couple of years. My 2019 NaNo project was a personal Memoir, while the year before that saw Fiction, yes, but in the form of an adaptation, one that came with its own set of limits. Truthfully, I hadn't written from-the-ground-up, only-mine-and-mine-alone Fiction since the previous year, 2017, when my NaNo took the form of a series of short form Horror pieces. It's been quite some time since I pondered the idea of writing a full-length Fictional novel.
So, I spent my July embarking on a secret project: collecting as many strange and exciting writing prompts as I could find in ready access on Pinterest. I decided that in throughout the course of August, I was going to try and write a prompt a day of pure fiction. With every entry, I hoped to generate at least 500 words of text, as well as a working title and blurb for what form this hypothetical book might take. Granted, this project was doomed from the outset: I was already contending with a wedding in the extended family, the prep work for which I was eagerly involved, and at least half of the month would be spent in a completely different state with my family.
Long story short, I didn't get to my 30 fiction pieces... but I did get to 20! And instead of the simple parameters I'd given them, they ballooned up and out, to 1,000+ words for a complete scene, titles that I already found compelling, and blurbs that felt readable even then, in their bare bones format. Now, instead of stressing over an absence of ideas, I suddenly found myself grappling with a surplus.
Thankfully, my younger brother was game to serve as a secondary sounding board. He came up with the next step: I would pick my top ten, then my top five, and after I was confident in my choices, I would send them to him to review. I was actually able to winnow my way down to four... when the unthinkable happened.
It was in rereading my favorite choices that I began to clue in on the fact that two of them in particular might not be so different after all... in fact, they might just be a part of the same story! Crazy enough, my brother - at this point many, many miles away from me, pursuing his Musical Education degree at an in-state college on the other side of Washington - independently came to the same conclusion when reading through my entries, too. All of a sudden, the choice seemed clear: the hybrid story of the two plot lines and characters I'd charted back in August, would become the basis upon which a whole NaNo project would stand.
Which introduced an entirely new concept to the table: this new, fun idea, was a Fantasy novel. I've never written Fantasy before.
I make it a point of personal preference that every project I undertake is something new and exciting for me... a chance to stretch my boundaries and learn something new. I've written Thriller, Satire, YA Contemporary, Horror, and Memoir... but Fantasy was a whole other animal in comparison.
But it also has a lot of personal significance for both me and my brother, as one of our favorite genres. Playing D&D with college friends is the closest I'd come to engaging with it directly before; the rest of my experience comes from a life of loving books, movies, and TV shows that take place in these far off, fascinating places, engage with creatures and forms of life beyond the stretches of human experience, that rely on complex systems of magic for which there are rules, and foreign diplomacy for which there must be a colorful and strange map hidden in the front endpages.
Fantasy, as my brother and I responded to each other, was hard.
But it was already there: the seeds of an idea germinating in my head, sending off shoots of character ideas and plot twists and the visions of a vaguely-Basquean castle towering above a bustling city marketplace, and the silent, strange woods behind a venerated school of magic. I knew I had to carry the story forward.
Working Title: Ferdy Fernsby and the Jewel of the City
It was the chance of a lifetime: a chance to get off of her farm, away from her overreaching stepmother, and into the wide world, where someone with money might find a use for her particular skill set. While lockpicking, stealth, and sleight of hand might not be a strong argument for employment in the boonies of farm country, they were absolutely an asset in the glittering city of Armarhia.
If only Gemma had been the only one who had gotten the offer. An enigmatic and furtive backer had set the challenge – steal the jewel that protected the castle – to a whole network of rogues that spanned across the entire city. Now, the only group of people she’d felt included in in the past, had become her direct competition, racing to see who could reach the castle and the jewel first.
But – unfortunately – Gemma isn’t completely on her own. For some reason, Jac has attached himself to her side, claiming an alliance that Gemma isn’t in any kind of mood to honor. However annoying having a rival rogue tagging along may be, it beats traveling alone. You never know when you’ll need to trip someone in front of a charging bear, right?
Together, Gemma and Jac have to traverse the city, find the hidden jewel, steal it, and deliver it to the hands of their secretive, unknown employer, before anyone else can… unless, of course, they kill each other on the way. But with so many others looking to take on that task themselves, they might as well work together… especially when the jewel ends up being much more trouble than any of the rogues had ever expected.
Ferdinand Fernsby was raised with the knowledge that he was destined for greatness. But there’s only so much magic you can learn growing the melons in your family garden, and drying out the laundry with a gust of wind… that’s why his mother bought him a placement at one of the most prestigious magic schools on the continent, far away from his own home kingdom.
But while Ferdy has spent his days imagining endless libraries, fascinating classes, and connecting with the realm’s other most talented up-and-coming magic users, he in no way bargained for his unexpected classmate: the chaos-prone prince, Louis. While he struggles to keep up in his studies - combatting bullies and helping his accidental friend along the way - he finds out that it’s not just Louis’s own grasp of magic that’s going haywire… a malevolent force seems to be threatening Armarhia itself.
It’s only from an overheard conversation that he learns about the bounty on the jewel that protects their kingdom. There are plenty of forces who’d be interested in seeing those walls fall vulnerable, and Ferdy and Louis aren’t about to let that happen.
Now, the two boys are on a race against time to fix magic and save the kingdom… if they ever make it back to the castle at all, that is. Not only are other magicians and neighboring armies are out looking for them, but that’s not even mentioning the treacherous landscape that stretches between here and home.
And to think, all he wanted to do was go to school!
So, on Day One of NaNo, I set myself an easy compromise. Just write a couple of chapter's worth of outlines, I reasoned. You can build off of them in the future. It's no use getting started without knowing where you were going. And it went well! In fact, it went so well, that the next day, instead of getting bogged down with writing an opening scene or something, I decided to continue simply writing my detailed outline instead.
After a couple of days, I found myself encountering the same madness that had made an appearance in my August prompts: my couple of paragraphs a day, had suddenly gained enough detail and nuance to warrant three or four pages per chapter. I wasn't really writing a novel - there was no description, barest hints of dialogue - but suddenly, my work was looking more and more like I was really committing to the outline, the story flow, the escalation of the plot. By the end of the first week, I felt like I had made the right choice; by the end of the project, I felt like if there was ever a NaNo project of mine that could be a real novel, it would be this one.
Notes from Writing: What's in a Name?
An offshoot from my brother's conversations about Fantasy Being Hard, was a more specific set of qualifiers: Fantasy Names are Hard in Particular. As someone who has no patience for lackluster insertions of high-scoring Scrabble letters into Fantasy genre names at whim - ie, Nyx, Zephyr, Veraen, etc. - I felt like I was stuck either playing to stereotype, or unable to connect characters with names that suited them appropriately.
In this way, my biggest foible, in writing Fantasy was - at least at the start - generating names that sounded significantly "other," but also made sense. So, I began to rely on a longstanding practice of mine, which I trot out not only when I'm writing in this genre, but in general: I become a movie director, and try to "cast" someone from the real world - or a similar character from another fictional work - into my own project, someone close enough to the character I'm trying to name so that the mental image maintains its clarity.
For instance, when writing in 2016, I needed a general, everyman sort of character, who would find himself in extraordinary circumstances in a satirical world; he became "Guy," named partially for the character from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and partially because he became, literally, just some Guy. Another character in the same story was a hit man, someone who would occasionally become dark and prone to introspection, someone found in suits and sunglasses, but who still carried an innately redeemable storyteller's quality; because of this - and the fact that he was, at his core, a hit man for hire - dubbed him "Cash," like Johnny.
In a Fantasy world, this came in clutch. The names feel at home in the world I created, but aren't always what you'd expect, and find their origins in a wide and ranging myriad of media, celebrity culture, and occasionally, gardening tools.
- One of my main characters - a disaster prone Prince - originally started life as an "Albert," as I tried to cast around for a suitably gawky, clumsy name, that still preserved a connection to royalty. However, he eventually became "Louis," which feels a little more on the pedestrian side, yet which has ties to French royal lines. The change came because, as I continued to write him, he began to remind me of elements of a character from Disney's Meet the Robinsons who goes by that name.
- I needed a dual set of competitors to work against two of my heroes; thereby, the two most prominent members of the Rogue's Guild came to be named "Peta" and "Duwain." Peta is an athletic and calculating powerhouse, who still manages to fit in nicely with the satin skirts and delicate manners of the elite... and she's named after one of my favorite professionals from Dancing with the Stars. Duwain, a colossal, muscular, imposing menace, who isn't afraid to use his stature against his enemies, is, of course, taken from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
- For just one chapter, I needed a character who could serve as a vehicle, for information, for movement, for a sense of pushing the plot forward. So, his in-story use matched his name: because of his appearance as a dockhand and in-world experience as an expert trafficker of stolen goods, he was dubbed "Barrow." You know, like a wheelbarrow, which is used to cart stuff.
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| Hold me to this next year: I've beaten NaNo six times now, but have yet to tackle that elusive mistress called "consistency and sleep." Maybe it's not so much seeing if I can do it, but seeing if I can do it while also maintaining a regular and healthy bedtime. |
So, I finished a few days early... almost a week, actually. And for the first time for a NaNo project, because of its status as a general outline, I have been able to complete a full story arc, getting the whole thing, the way it progresses, down on paper. I haven't had that before... none of my other projects ever progressed to a place where I felt like it could feasibly have a completed ending by the time I finished it, even if the ideas were 60% there. But this year, it did.
And you know what? Fantasy is hard. But it's also fun, and rewarding, and the sort of thing I love for a real reason.
Unfortunately, as of right now, I have to put the project to the side. Because while I love and enjoy spending my time building a world and characters, writing snappy dialogue and flowery descriptions, and putting all of those particular puzzle pieces in place, I also enjoy reading some, too. And being that after this nuclear-runoff hellscape of a year, I am nearly 20 books behind on my Goodreads Challenge, that's what I'm choosing to focus my attention on, instead.
But my story is waiting for me to come back. So are characters, waiting for me to fill their world with colors and mouths with conversation. It's just going to have to wait for January for now... which means that 2021 is already shaping up to be a pretty good year, in my book.
(And because I just said that, it's time to knock on wood 'til my knuckles bleed.)
Did you take part in NaNoWriMo this year? What's your favorite tool for coming up with character names? Let me know, in the comments below!
It was great talking fantasy with you Savannah. I am positive it will turn out great. Congratulations
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