Category Archives: Others

Themes and Variations: A NaNoWriMo Tale

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There is a particular fictional media figure that I have a long and multi-faceted fondness for. I won’t go into any detail, because Intellectual Property, Sweetie (as you shall see). Let’s just call him Boy Adventurer.

Several years ago, a good friend of mine was starting up a new TTRPG, using the fine Masks game rules. In the setting that goes with those rules, the players are high school aged super-heroes of various sorts — which can mean anything from traditional heroes (whether of the mutant powered or just highly trained normal folk) to aliens to tech-based to whatever you want. On one level, the powers don’t matter, because the game mechanics and goals all center on dealing with the life of a teenager, and having super-powers, and making decisions, and going to high school, and balancing prom and homework and your super-powered dad’s expectations and the Cosmic Planet Eater showing up during finals week.

Awesome stuff. So I adapted the Boy Adventurer to work in that world, aging him up, filing off a number of the obvious serial numbers, changing some fundamental things about his life, but still, being able to play the Boy Adventurer.

It was a hoot. It was tremendous fun. And I don’t think I’ve ever journaled so many cut-scenes for a character before (and, mind you, I often go overboard with that).

And, after a year or so, I retired him to NPCdom, and instead started running his arch-nemesis-but-redemption-story-kinda-maybe-girlfriend, who was quite non-canonical to the original Boy Adventurer tale, kinda-sorta, but who had been a major part of the Boy Adventurer (in this iteration)’s life growing up.

And that went on for a while, with tons more journaling. And then the game wrapped up (in a most satisfying fashion).

And then, some months later, in November 2019, I started writing Legacies, taking another IP-scrubbing pass at those two characters as my NaNoWriMo work. And I cranked out about 50K words, about half the first book of a planned trilogy (yes, I know).

And I’ve been running that through a Writing Group since then, which has prompted further changes from the preceding versions / canons.

And another friend who was in the game has been doing up some cards for a super-hero card game, taking the versions that were in our TTRPG sessions and scrubbing them of that setting’s IP.

And yet another friend who was in the game (and who journaled cut-scenes at least as much as I did) is writing up the Further Adventures of the in-game universe characters.

So, as I sit down to NaNoWriMo this year (having skipped last year), I have running through my head:

  • Boy Adventurer (the original inspirational IP Which Shall Not Be Named)
  • Boy Adventurer and His Nemesis Girlfriend as played in the game.
  • Boy Adventurer and His Nemesis Girlfriend as written up in NaNoWriMo 2019
  • Boy Adventurer and His Nemesis Girlfriend as they’ve evolved through writing group feedback.
  • Boy Adventurer and His Nemesis Girlfriend as Friend 1 as adapted them for the card game.
  • Boy Adventurer and His Nemesis Girlfriend as Friend 2 has taken their in-game story further.

Themes and Variations can be fun. Just … change things up enough that you’re not just ripping something off.

Which is a lot of different versions to keep straight. And, as the Boy Adventurer’s name has now changed twice (once from the original inspirational IP, again when I did the first NaNo story), I still find myself writing the wrong name for him (and for her) as I do further writing.

But I also put it forward as a lesson for writing: being willing to use — with changes — previous material from other media (both inspired by things out there, and things you’ve created) is useful.

Don’t just rip-off others, or repeat something you’ve already done. But inspiration (and adaptation) can come from a lot of places. Don’t let your inner voice tell you that you have to be utterly original and working from de novo with every tale. Every story, at some level, has been written. The challenge is, not to write a new story, but to take an existing story, and truly make it yours … and, in your own way, better.

The Case of the Slick Scriptwriter

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De offers some marvelous advice around her current project/assignment: writing short radio mystery scripts. Much of it sounds applicable to a lot of writing projects.

First, write down a one- or two-sentence description of your story–the mystery rather than the solution–as if you were writing the hook for a book-of-the-month club. Come up with a catchy title.

Then write down the names of the characters, drawing lines between the characters indicating their relationships. Each character has to have connections to at least two other characters. Come up with 6-9 characters. You don’t have to use them all, but stretching the number of characters will help you stretch the possible relationships.

Decide what the solution to the mystery is. Because the characters are so intertwined, it should be easy to drum up a few red herrings.

Write a 1- to 2-sentence description of each character. Focus on relationships and conflicts, but include at least one trait: gentle, boisterous, mutters.

Give yourself 10 scenes. The first three scenes are the beginning; the situation must become much more serious by the end of the third scene. The next six scenes are the middle; the characters try to find out what’s going on (or try to prevent each other from finding out). The last scene is the resolution. You will often find there are two mysteries. The first mystery is the who-dunnit, that is, who killed the victim, who stole the jewels, etc.

The second mystery is one that matters, and it’s usually the reason behind the first. X killed Y because Y stole his fiancee fifty years ago. But why now? Because Y’s wife, the former fiancee of X, told X that Y has been beating her for years. Both mysteries must be addressed in the last scene. The solution to the first mystery must be known to at least some of the characters: the truth brought to light, or hidden by choice. The solution to the second mystery should, if possible, retain a sense of mystery. What
made X kill Y? Revenge? Love of the finacee? A sense of justice?

Then start over…

Nice. It sounds like a fun (if exhausting) project.

The Storytellers

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Here’s a fascinating article on the myth and folklore of homeless children in Miami.
It’s horrible, in many ways, yet fascinating to see how the mythic elements of our own culture blend with those of these children.

On Christmas night a year ago, God fled Heaven to escape an audacious demon attack — a celestial Tet Offensive. The demons smashed to dust his palace of beautiful blue-moon marble. TV news kept it secret, but homeless children in shelters across the country report being awakened from troubled sleep and alerted by dead relatives. No one knows why God has never reappeared, leaving his stunned angels to defend his earthly estate against assaults from Hell. “Demons found doors to our world,” adds eight-year-old Miguel, who sits before Andre with the other children at the Salvation Army shelter. The demons’ gateways from Hell include abandoned refrigerators, mirrors, Ghost Town (the nickname shelter children have for a cemetery somewhere in Dade County), and Jeep Cherokees with “black windows.” The demons are nourished by dark human emotions: jealousy, hate, fear.
[…] Folktales are usually an inheritance from family or homeland. But what if you are a child enduring a continual, grueling, dangerous journey? No adult can steel such a child against the outcast’s fate: the endless slurs and snubs, the threats, the fear. What these determined children do is snatch dark and bright fragments of Halloween fables, TV news, and candy-colored Bible-story leaflets from street-corner preachers, and like birds building a nest from scraps, weave their own myths. The “secret stories” are carefully guarded knowledge, never shared with older siblings or parents for fear of being ridiculed — or spanked for blasphemy. But their accounts of an exiled God who cannot or will not respond to human pleas as his angels wage war with Hell is, to shelter children, a plausible explanation for having no safe home, and one that engages them in an epic clash.
There’s some amazing writing ideas in this syncretic mythos, as well as gaming ideas. Not to mention a call for help that’s difficult to ignore.