Friday, October 31, 2014

NaNoWriMo #2

   So I've finally picked names, Greer Alexander for the girl and Henley Moore for the boy.
  Now that that is done, it's a lot easier to coherently explain my plot, and just so it's out there, the novel is going to be written in the third person.
   My story opens with a flashback, just a few paragraphs in which Greer is stuck in a house fire, and she is trying to get to her family, but those trying to put out the fire pull her out while she's screaming. In the middle of the screaming her eyes turn from a pale blue to a violent purple color, and the windows shatter. 
   It then switches back to present day (a year after the fire), where Greer is curled up into herself on her bed as Finn, her best friend and only person who knows what happened the day of the fire, is trying to convince her to get out of the apartment. The apartment is a small, studio space completely bare of any sort of decorations, the only thing really in it is her bed (no frame just a mattress) and a desk littered with papers. Greer completely shuts him down though, and tells him to go without her. She is left alone in the apartment. 
   From there it moves on to Henley, where he is working for his pregnant sister, Shay, in her flower shop, a job he loves, while he is finishing up his photography major. You see him interact with Shay as they close up the store, where they find a forgotten delivery that was supposed to be made that day, and then see more of his character as he agrees to deliver the flowers, saying it's on his way home even though it isn't- he always wants to make things easier on Shay.
   The inciting incident is when Henley makes the delivery. He climbs the stairs and knocks on the door, only to be opened by a disheveled Greer. He sees her long, tangled hair, bright eyes rimmed by dark circles, and thinks she's beautiful. He hands her the flowers and just smiles at her, which causes her to make a sarcastic remark, and he is immediately taken with her. She just bids him a goodnight and shuts the door though. 
   On his way out though, he runs into a sad-looking Finn, who is carrying a bag of take-out for him and Greer. Finn notices where he'd just come from and strikes up a conversation. They get to talking and exchange numbers when Finn notices the interest Henley has in Greer. They part ways after Finn promises to meet up and get drinks soon.
   Finn then goes home and you meet his roommates, Levi and Clay, who have been together since the three of them were in grade school, and he talks to them about the girl.
    The five events that build up to my climax are:

  • The reader learns about Greer's powers, and how she can't control it sometimes, and when her eyes turn lavender she is using her powers (she can start fires, make things move with her mind) 
  • Henley meets up with Finn and Greer, confused because he thought he was only seeing Finn, and they end up getting along really well
  • Greer and Henley fall in love, even though Greer is still very afraid and sort of distant, and her powers get more uncontrollable
  • Henley takes Greer to meet his family, Greer gets sad again and closed off after they return
  • Henley sees her sorrow and she tells him about her family, but not the circumstances that they died
    In my climax, Greer and Henley get into a fight, I'm not sure what about yet, but it will force Greer to lose control completely and start a fire, in which she and Henley get trapped in. Henley saw her eyes flick colors, but chooses not to think about it until later on, doing his best just to get them out of the fire while Greer starts screaming and crying and goes completely limp. They get out of the fire, and it dies off as soon as Greer is calmed down, but her eyes still haven't changed back and she is hot to the touch. 
    Greer is okay though, and after Henley gets her cool her eyes change back to blue and everything is fine. Except that now Henley is starting to understand, and that terrifies Greer so she runs away. 
     In the falling action, Greer shuts herself away again, not telling Finn what happened, so Finn assumes Henley did something wrong, and helps Greer hide. It goes through about a month of Greer shutting out Henley.
     Henley ends up getting through to Greer, coming with a big delivery of flowers, and they do make up in the end.
     My resolution isn't going to be the perfect ending. Greer is still struggling with  her depression and magic, but her and Henley are together and he is determined to stay with her throughout the process of her healing. The closing scene is going to be in Greer's apartment, with pictures now hung on her walls of her family and of Henley. The pair are going to be sat on the bed, with Henley asleep and Greer almost there. It's going to close with Greer's eyes turning a shade of purple right before she falls asleep. (Side Note: The falling action and climax still need to be fleshed out and this is just my idea of what's going to happen at this point. It will probably change by the time I get there.)
    So that's my story, or what is going to be my story.
~~~
Abbey Nichole

Friday, October 24, 2014

NaNoWriMo #1

     For this nine weeks I plan on doing NaNoWriMo, and I'm going in a completely different direction that I did for my 20% project last nine weeks. I feel like the poetry collection I came up with is very complete other than a few things I need to add and I'm ready to try something new.
     My story is going to revolve around a girl (I'm toying with names right now so yeah) who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Living in the city, she has a small, studio apartment where she spends most of her time, holed up trying to paint and trying to take photos but never really getting out of bed. The only time she really leaves the apartment is when her best friend forces her to spend time with him. She's depressed, and kind of giving up, at this point shes just going through the motions, sleeping, working, eating what she needs to. She's taken to smoking just to feel fire in her lungs and she's taken to not sleeping to get away from the nightmares. She's alone and she's falling apart.
    He's (like I said still trying to find names that I feel truly fit) tall and lanky and sunshine condensed into a single entity. He works for his sister, in a flower shop in his favorite part of Boston. He lives with his two best friends, who have been together since the three of them were in high school in a town by the shore, mainly because he's too broke to live anywhere else. He's happy anyways, because even as broke as he is, he gets to see the people he loves everyday, and he gets to make people smile.
    Like I said, he works in a flower shop, but he doesn't really do delivery; he usually just mans the register and tells people the meanings of different flowers, but one day they have a last minute request to be sent to an apartment down the road and it was after the delivery girl had left, so he tells his sister he can just take it because its on the way to his apartment.
   It ends up being delivered to her, ends up that someone sending her flowers for the one year anniversary of her families death, which he doesn't know of course, and she opens the door all dark rimmed eyes and messy hair and a sharp tongue and he is automatically taken with her.
   The story is going to follow these two as she tries to stop pulling herself apart and he tries to get her to let him in. While it is going to be about their love story, I don't want it to be one of those things where the boy saves the girl, and I plan for it to be more about her saving herself and him being there to hold her as she does.
   I'm thinking of setting my goal at 30,000 words. I really want to do my best to go over this goal though, and I'm excited to start writing. I think the hardest challenge for me is going to be not going back and revising, because I'm so used to going back and redoing a lot of what I had previously wrote before carrying on the story.
   I really need to start mapping out the course of my story in this next week, because even though I can see the whole story playing out in my head, it will help me organization wise to have in fully planned out.
    I think NaNoWriMo will be an interesting experience for me, and I seriously cannot wait to get started on this.
~~~
Abbey Nichole