But I can start writing soon! And this year, I WILL finish the story. (Maybe. I hope. If I'm lucky.) That's usually my real aim – not to hit the 50k, so much, but to actually have a finished story at the end of it. A finished story that I hope isn't too horrible to read.
I've been reading through the NaNoForums for the past couple of days, to get back into “that frame of mind” – the “Nanoisms” thread is quite amusing, but I'll never understand how people can be that desperate for words that they leave all their typos in. I mean, “lock up your inner editor”, sure, I get that – but to refuse even to corretc correct all your typos and just retype them, uni untl untli until you get them rigth right, jsut just to increase your word count?
I've done a couple of other little prompts to get my brain turning. I need to sort out my synopsis to upload to the Nano site at some point before the end of the weekend. Oo-er.
I'll put the rest under a cut,to save f'lists...
Your story in 20 words or less:
Lovelorn former robot must survive unfriendly werewolves, and try to save a whole quarantined planet from a killer disease.
How much would your story change if it wasn't s.f.?
I suppose in a way, this is going to be such a “soft” sci-fi in the first place (someone described theirs as “foam” sci-fi, which I think mine also fits. “It's got a rigid enough structure, but it's soft to the touch”), so it could quite easily fit into a variety of other niches. The most obvious I guess would be fantasy, or horror.
Fantasy? Well, there's the whole “magical transformation” thing, which probably does actually fit a little easier into a world where magic exists. Rather than a viral disease, it could be a curse, turning people into animals. Instead of curing the disease, it could be a mission to get into an armed fortress and break the curse. The bee-people could easily be re-imagined as fairies or pixies or something; they're already small, with insect wings, and I always imagined fairies would have quite an alien sort of mindset, as they're... well, not human. XD (Fairies were always something a little creepy, something to be scared of, before the Victorians got their hands on them.) I'm just not sure what Blink would be, haha. XD Perhaps an abductee from another continent? I guess you could still have a confused, unwilling visitor from an alien world in a fantasy novel.
How about horror? Well, it's set in a dystopian, derelict city, populated by a handful of survivors of a deadly disease, all but one or two of whom are (in some way) were-creatures. Werewolves are one of the staple ingredients in horror stories, ne? I suppose the whole abduction and false imprisonment theme fit, too, and so on...
Utterly unrelated, but... why do people keep talking about “apple cider”? I thought that was, you know, cider's defining feature, that it is made of apples? It's like “female lionesses”, all over again.
Also unrelated, there's a group of about 4 girls sat on the benches on the green just outside my flat, and they're having a conversation by shrieking at the top of their lungs in favour of just... talking normally. I'm going to yell at them to shut up, in a minute. >:(