[CW] Preparing for NaNo: Loglines

I may create a meta black hole by doing this, but I've never been one to back down in the face of potentially world-breaking devastation: I am about to blog about a blog blogging about a blog.

Twitter nets me some interesting tidbits now and again. Today it coughed up a neat little post--two posts, actually--by one Tami Moore about cheat sheets and loglines that were immensely useful for planning my NaNo project.

Even more props to Miz Moore: the posts were concise, which is ideal given my tendency to get distracted by shiny things, small invisible objects, and drafts of both the first type, and the air type.

"Loglines are teasers. They tantalize. Hint at something incredible. Take root in their target’s brains and make them ITCH to read the book they’re talking about."

I love making people's brains itch. Do go on.

"They’re also ridiculously daunting for the writer who is trying to distill their 100,000 word novel into a travel-sized package."

Daunting? Wait a minute, hold the phone. You mean this will be work?

I wasn't deterred for long (only about 2.17 seconds, if I recall correctly). My desire to see whether I had enough information about my plot to make a successful logline far outweighed my desire to continue sitting around, creating a miniature intellectual void.

The original logline formula for this exercise came from Miss Snark's First Victim.

"When [MAIN CHARACTER] [INCITING INCIDENT], he [CONFLICT]. And if he doesn't [GOAL], he will [CONSEQUENCES]."

I set to work and here's what I got out of it:

"Abandoned by the rest of her search party in the middle of the Bironian steppes, amateur psychic archaeologist Roberta Skellis must continue to hunt for her older brother and his missing excavation team alone. Just when her explorations yield what could be the most important discovery of the age, a competing archaeologist and his crew threaten to scoop her victory right out from under her feet. Roberta must choose between her brother, an unexpected admirer who is not what he seems, and the discovery of a lifetime in a grueling race to the finish."

Now you all know the basic plot and I'll look like an ass if I chicken out; I think that's how these things are supposed to work?

Tomorrow I'll be working on my cheat sheets. Roberta needs a bit of fleshing-out and my antagonist needs a name (among other things). Tami's blog is definitely going to be on my reference list for the next month or so!

What's your logline?

RL: December! A month of stuff.

December! It is here, it is cold (relatively speaking) and pretty much the second half of the month is going to be spent traveling and with friends & family. Hooray!

RP seems to have hit a tiny bit of a lull, but not to worry. I'm going to get off my ass (figuratively speaking) and write some today. If that fails, well, there's still lots more to archive.

WoW is scraping the barrel to keep my interest right now. I'm tired of the content that's available and have very little interest in some of the things that usually keep me entertained between major patches and expansion, such as alt-leveling and gold-making. All that I really want right now are the stories, the meaty little interactions between characters and the moving forward of their supposedly exciting lives. In a world where everything's always hovering on the edge of catastrophe, you'd think things would be a little crazier.

Then again, one of the surest ways to prevent falling apart during times of extreme duress is to maintain your daily routine.

Some storylines that I'll be working on soon:

Ambika. Bika's still trapped in a elf's body and is none too happy about it. I need to write up Yayo'jin's meeting with her to begin moving forward.

Ysani. Yissy is playing tug of war with her conscience right now. Spending countless hours on a joint engineering project with Fenniel and Firael has her wondering if she's missing something in her relationship with Keilos. She's young and still learning what compatibility means. Is there ever a truly right answer?

Libby. Our favorite obsessive-compulsive druid is still happily distracted from impotency woes by her pet geek. Having Fenniel around gives her life focus. Learning to live with both companionship and intimacy is an enjoyable challenge, but she's not sure where to go from here.

Skulley. Laying low for the most part, Miss Adelaide (and no, you may not call her that) may be in for a shock if anything comes of her little foray into the Stormwind prison system. She is a dot on SI:7's radar, and what happens next will depend on whether they dismiss her or not.

Astrani. You haven't seen her in this blog, which is understandable considering she's all but retired. However, there's a story for her in the works and it promises to be a very interesting one. Sorry I'm being vague, but it's going to be awesome and you'll want to be surprised. Everyone loves sekrits, right?

I have two cups of coffee in me now, and I've caught up on my reading. Looks like it's time to get to work.

Blood in the gears

I'm working out a bit of Lamis's character, and it's hard, but I'm finding that it's being helped along by my own starey, unstable mood (to be honest, the two may be feeding off each other, growing into something bigger than they would be alone). I am not sure if this is a good thing, but it makes me both happy and sad to see my tough-shit DK in such a vulnerable position. She hasn't let down her guard this much since before she died, and even then I really couldn't say how long it might have been. She is not in the habit of lowering the drawbridge. Her moat is a mile-wide churning bottomless froth filled with slithering beasts more maw than body, and this is because Castle Lamis is made of glue and tissue paper.

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Returning to the days when she first began her spiral, I pick up signs of the coming break. The inability to sleep, dark circles under her eyes. Dealing with guild sins (or going long out of her way not to deal with them) drains her, puts cracks in her defenses, revealing old wounds she locked away rather than bare them to the sun to heal. Suddenly old trouble is right under her skin, and she feels his presence in her dark hours, smirking at her decline. Of course he is happy to see it; she deserves this for daring to think she can make it in this world without him, without any part of him. She deserves it because she cried, she deserves it because she begged. She deserves it because she cringed whenever he put his hands on her. Ysani would have known to tell a story, or dance a twirl across the room, or laugh infectiously in his dark and handsome face. Lamis does not know to do any of things, and so she must suffer.

She suffers for what she doesn't know.

He calls her baby, tenderly, this is the voice of making up, of apology, of benevolence. He humors her, helps her. He wants her to be what pleases him. When she is not, he is silent, a shadow with fists and hard, angry feet. He knocks her down to hear her cry. He makes her bleed. Her cries are never answered until the storm is past, and soon she learns to be as silent as he when the storms begin. Her acceptance only frustrates him, she ought to smile to stave off the blows, not take them endlessly. One day she is gone, and he allows it. She is impossible, she is wrong, she will never be what he wants. She isn't worth chasing.

It is a new beginning for Lamis, and she finds her inner discipline echoed in the soothing pulse of the Light. Here is her refuge, here is her rebirth. She builds her walls here in the halls of the holy, taking strength in the force of her devotion. The Light takes her love and gives it back even more beautiful than it left her; the Light never kicks or humiliates her for stumbling at prayers, for choosing the wrong word or gesture, for speaking when she ought to sing.

This is her loss, the mindless gravity in her core that steals her sanity. The loss of Light, the break in communication. She longs for it but it is severed from her. Her love will never again be returned to her, gilded and inspiring. Her life is a bitter ache, a joke without a punchline, full of pain and enemies who thoughtlessly prod and tear at what remains of her tattered heart. She closes the door.