NaNoWriBlo: There Went Nothing

It's almost the end of November and, thus, NaNoWriMo. I can't say I didn't try, but trying doesn't equal succeeding. I could say I didn't make it because I didn't have the time, but I did. I could have used the breaks at work, or the weekends... there's tons of opportunities I could have used.

The truth is, I got sick of the plot and my writing in this. I'm going to keep the setting and the characters, but I'm most likely going to ditch the plot, or at least rewrite it. The general setting stays, but it needs some tweaking to make it actually look like something other than generic somethingsomething.

To Drop

I'm definitely not going to keep every aspect of the plot. It might just be me, but it feels too safe and cozy. I don't feel like anyone's life was actually at stake at any point. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, though.

The writing itself, aside from a few parts, has to go, too. It's horrible, full of padding and drips with clichés. I think that mostly happened because I was trying to :words: my way through the whole thing without knowing what I should really do.

To Keep

I feel like keeping Betsev-4 as part of the setting, but I should expand more on the main character's home planet. Damn, it doesn't even have a name, yet. I should also expand more on the characters there before actually going to Betsev-4. Maybe I'll introduce a few new locations.

I'll also keep the general aesthetics, but I'll change some things. Flying traffic in the city might be cool, but doesn't work if you don't have protection for the buildings. Suburbs are most likely not full of two digit floor skyscrapers. There's going to be a difference between inner city traffic (it's still going to be hover cars, though) and things that go off planet. These are all just examples of things I realized I should change. But the setting itself is okay.

I'll try to keep the characters, too. I'm not sure I can give all of them a role, because that largely depends on where I go with the plot. But Zackory and Ron, as well as Zackory's brother and his girlfriend stay. Yuka stays too, and her presence is one reason why I think the home planet deserves more screentime. She just drops off the screen when the story goes to Betsev-4.

And I'm definitely keeping the vampires, because vampires need to be cool again.

And Finally...

I thought I had enough of a plot, but I don't think I actually did. I made things up as I went, but I made the mistake of rushing through my existing ideas too fast. That left me with meandering scenes of people talking about the same thing over and over again, basically moving in circles. But well, lessons learned, setting gained, characters gained. In a way, it's still a win, even though it's around 25k words short.