March 10, 2009 at 7:13 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: NPI, plot, story lines, word count, writer
I was working on a scene in my mind today. But I didn’t write it down. Instead I wrote more to the scene I was writing yesterday.
Word count today: 335. Total count: 8567.
And just to brag a little with the scene was thinking of all day, I’ll share a little bit.
He bit on her ear hard until he drew blood. “Stay human. Stay human.” He whispered indefinitely.
And that’s all! See ya!
March 7, 2009 at 5:56 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: characters, NPI, places, reading, research, story lines, word count, writer
It’s quite a habit of mine to write a little note here before I start writing, heh. Well, today is special, I’ve not been in such condition for a while now, so i’m curious myself how I’ll do. I’ve spileld more words in my personal journal than I’ll probably write for the story, but personal life has also to happen some time. So yes, I’m off to it.
Okay, now this is simply ANNOYING. I’ve been researching the story of Jean Grenier for months. And I thought I found all there was to find. Yet today I google it once more and what DO I find? Almost the exact location of where the village lies that I need, the name of the franciscan monastery and ALL the dates: date of the arrest, date of the court and such. Now, I’m not sure that this is even true. Who knows. Some reports are shorter, some are more detailed. Thing is, I’ve already cut and smoothed my story into the geography I made up myself and into the dates I made up myself. So I have two options: screw all the preparations I’ve made and make new ones. It would basically mean I’d have to scratch all I wrote about Château Margaux, because apparently the village lies somewhere else. Or I could stay by what I have so far and let the made up facts be the new truth. Damnit, what do I do? Researching a true story from 400 years ago is a hell of a job, believe you me.
Okay, I was apparently annoyed enough. I sat down and wrote one of the best scenes I’ve got so far. 1094 words. Total word count: 7118. I do rock. I really do.
March 5, 2009 at 9:47 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: general, NPI, plot, story lines, word count
Today it’s 2350 words exactly. Don’t know how many pages, because I wrote in different files. I said I’m gonna push it a little, though I’m not making an exceptionally tough writing session today. It’s actually normal for me to write that much. I did one and a half chapters today. First one was all the way through Henri de Lestonnac seducing Albertine. However, there isn’t much seducing going on, since he gives her a choice: give in to him or lose both her husnabd and son. The other chapter that I’m not done completely with is about two months later, how Jérémie is found dead and Albertine realises she’s pregnant. I’m somewhere in the middle of if now, the morning after. Tomorrow I guess I’ll have it easy, just write down what André, who just arrived, will talk about with other men. He wants to know who killed his father, and all that kind of stuff. I’ll see what happens yet.
It’s actually funny, writing this story. I have several story lines that go all separately until some point, so that I’m writing my way through the Albertine story. Next thing I can pick up is pretty much every other story I have, and me writing some scenes ahead doesn’t get in the way of me writing scenes for a different story line. My first book wasn’t lke this. There I had to watch myself damn well, I had to draw whole time lines to fit all the events into a tight schedule. Here I don’t really feel the need to do that yet.
Anyways, my total word count: 5666. Hm, if I write one thousand words exactly tomorrow, I’ll have a 6666, muahahahaha! Ahem. Right. I just thought to myself: what if I pledge to doing about 1000 words every day? Sometimes less, of course, but then making up for it the other day? By the end of March I’d have roughly 30000 words, basically a third or a half of the story? That’s be grand!
February 25, 2009 at 7:45 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: plot, story lines
I’m not really sure now to wrap up the beginning of the story.
My very first scene is how Emmanuel Prudhomme hunts down a man and kills him in a barn, which then burns down. it’s a demon’s deal, Emmanuel can’t avoid this. So he kills the man but doesn’t realise that in that barn a boy was hiding, Jean Grenier. Emmanuel didn’t really pay attention to keepng his aura down, so that the boy got pretty much a full impact of a werewolf’s demonic power, the one that screws with a person’s mind. ANd Jean wasn’t a stable boy to begin with, he was one of those that torture small animals. He’s 13 and rather retarded, not smart at all. So Jean begins to clearly lose his mind, imagining that the werewolf he saw is his master now and that he has to do as his master does. Kill people and ear their flesh. His natural cruelty combined with a werewolf’s effect drives him crazy. That’s the beginning. The next time Jean is going to pop up in the story is three months later. In those three months however, I have the rest of the story to unwrap. So far I’ve gathered all the little scenes I wrote into a line. RIght after that incident with Emmanuel and Jean I have a scene where Olivier and his fiancè have a talk. She (Aline is her name) asks Oli if his best friend Manu has some romantic interest. Oli realises that he doesn’t know that and decides to find it out. That’s the scene. The next one – and we’re still in January 1603 – features considerably more people. Oli, Manu and Nicolas walk together on the road between their village and Bordeaux to keep an eye on Anouk. Nicolas had dragged them along because he’s obsessed with protecting his little sister, while Manu went more than voluntarily, he values every minute in Anouk’s presence. However as they walk there, André appears. He comes on a traider wagon from Bordeaux and is on his way home to tell some big news. So he joins his friends and tells them that he had got a new position as the scrivener at the parliament of Bordeaux. Anouk, who just joins them, is all excited to see him. Olivier observes the group and notices a murderous glance Manu gives André, and the way he looks at Anouk. It begins dawning on him that Manu is in love with Anouk, who is in love with André, who has no idea. So on their way back Oli confronts Manu, who is surprised that Oli had found out. Later on André visits the Prudhommes to talk to Fabien. Manu doesn’t want to be near André, he’s just too jealous and torn. On the one hand André is his pack brother, they all grew up together, they are pretty much one family. On the other hand he is painfully jealous and can’t stand the sight of the guy. So he goes to Oli’s house, they talk about it, and in the end Oli says: Don’t do anything stupid, though. I suppose that’s where the idea comes from that crosses Manu’s mind. The idea of killing André.
All right, so far so good, but what next? WHat other story lines do I have? I have to start that whole Albertine – Henri story. I could make a scene about them the next one. However I’m not sure how to skip time in the story, I have many story lines and a lot to say, but time passes quickly here, I need to find a way to skip it in a smart way. Who do I focus on when I skip time?
On the André front there is nothing interesting going on in the parliament except his meet-cute with Francoise, until September, so there is almost no point focusing on him all the time. Well, I’m just totally not sure how to bring the scenes in the right order. I guess I’ll just write some of them down. Henri and Albertine are the closest theme to the time I’m in. I’ll try.
February 23, 2009 at 8:52 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: characters, dynamics, general, love, story lines, writer
All right. How long have I been away? Months. My last post here was from December 8. Well, in the meantime things have changed and I’m back. I’ve been in a bad chape back then I know. I just came to realise that this story feeps so personal because I have a werewolf personality in me. I’ve come to terms with that very quickly. But back in December I had an extremely tight schedule in my private life, which was going to stay that way until the end of the semester, end of January. So I made a deal with my werewolf: he will let me deal with my private life until I’m done with the exams and then I’ll let him do whatever he wants. And here I am. Since my holidays started in February, my creativity boomed.
What are my achievements so far? No, I’m not writing every day. For that the plot isn’t ready in my mind yet, so I’m working in my thoughts mostly. But:
I’ve been updating a bit about my success in my personal blog, so there are a few detailed things in there that I can’t be bothered reposting here. But here’s the result of my story work. (No, I haven’t only been printing stuff and pinning paper to my walls)
Mostly I’ve been working on my main character, André Bisson. He – like every other character in this story - has a last name now. So André becomes the scrivener at the parliament of Bordeaux around the beginning of my story, which is January 1603. Not long after that he meets a girl, Francoise de Bontecou. She is the daughter of one of the parliament councellors and a very lively girl, interested in what her father is doing, so she visits him in the parliament. That is where André and Francoise meet. And I’ve been working my way through this love story, just to get myself in the mood to write the whole story itself. I started writing a scene about them. Story goes that for a while André simply is in love with her form a distance, only seeing her when she visits her father. But one day he decides that there is no reason why he shouldn’t get closer, so he changes into the wolf and runs across town to her house. There he hides on her balcony and observes her as she has a fight with her mother and goes to sleep. That is when he for the first time discovers that she is interested in books about witches, demons and such. The girl shows a surprisingly sensitive side of her right away because she notices that someone’s watching her. He would be coming to her balcony in his wolf form often from then on and she would always be able to tell when she’s being watched. I wrote that first little scene and went on to the second significant scene. Yes, I just jumped around through the story like that, it was only a first try anyway. The next significant thing is that one night, when he is there, she comes out to the balcony and says somehting like “I know you’re here. I wish you’d show yourself to me. And I really wish you’d stop torturing me like that, André.” He is flummoxed that she says his name like that out of blue, which obviously means that she’s thinking of him, so right there he changes back into the human form (naked much, don’t forget) and shows himself to her. That’s the first night the two spend together, first of many. Now that is where I skipped again and kept the rest of my story in mind: André’s father dies, then the Jean Grenier process happens, then his mother dies giving birth to his little brother and tells him the truth about the baby’s blood heritage. Then Anouk is killed and Olivier with her, which all disturbs André very much, so that he decides to leave Bordeaux and live with the pack again, taking care of his brother and protecting the baby from the pack. Half-bloods are usually killed, that’s why he needs to protect the baby. So the day after the baby is born he goes to Bordeaux for the last time and asks Francoise to meet him. She – in worry about his absense lately – rushes to him. And there they have what HE thinks is their final talk. He needs to break up with her. She is nobility anyway, there is no way he can ever legally marry her. Plus he can never allow her get pregnant from him, he can’t produce a half-blood that would be in danger form the pack. But she doesn’t know that he is a werewolf, so he has difficulties explaining to her why exactly they can’t be together. At first Francoise is angry and says she won’t leave him no matter where he goes, so he gets angry and is about to leave. She calms down a little and pretends to say her last goodbye to him. She lets him go. He’s all heartbroken, takes the baby and leaves. She has a plan meanwhile. She has her servant follow him, while she packs a few things from home and follows the servant.
All this comes down to the last showdown scene. The werewolf pack has its own meeting place in the forest by the ruins of an old temple. There are also some witches there, who have their own meeting place there too. Witches and werewolves are more or less allies here. So it’s the night of a big meeting when the pack has to decide several very important things that has to do with the rest of the story. André brings the baby there and has to fight (probably more with words than physically) for its right to live. The servant had followed him to the village, but had lost him when the pack went to the forest. So Francoise decides to search for André in the forest and accidentally stumbles into the meeting. Which means: she steps unknowingly into the meeting of a whole pack of REALLY angry and REALLY anxious werewolves. She realises what he is, what’s going on, and he has to protect her against the pack with his life again. The scene goes on and on – I’ll be writing it when the time comes, but in the course of it they discover that Francoise is a witch herself, has that power in her. Other witches present agree to teach her how to deal with the power. The question that she asks André now is if a child of a werewolf and a witch is just as dangerous as a child of awerewolf and a normal human. He doesn’t know that, because there’s too little information on such things. So the two of them decide to find it out. He will write a book, which will contain all the things to know about werewolves that he discovers, and it’s the first real book about werewolves that’s gonna stay in the archives. This is where I come back to the VERY original plot I had a year ago. So this love story ends well, even if there is a lot of death and the pack would never be the same.
There are other story lines as well. But I’m not gonna unfold them all here right now. What I want to do now is to start writing the first draft. I’ve already had the very first chapter since September, I think, and today I wrote a half-page which follows it, starring Jean Grenier for the first time. It went quite well, too. Maybe I’ll just be able to stay with it and write a little every day and some day this year finish that book, too. Finish the first draft, that is. And I’m working, which is a great feeling. I’m really working on it.
November 3, 2008 at 9:32 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: character development, characters, dynamics, love, plot, story lines
That is the best advice I can possibly give myself. So maybe I should work out another theory about werewolf physics? I’ll think about that.
Right now I’m more concerned with other things. I didn’t realise just how easy it is, the motivation in this story. And nobody puts it better into words than the one and only, the best, Spike from BtVS:
“Buffy, shame on you. Why does the man do what he mustn’t? For her, to be hers.”
I always loved this one, but damn, I never felt it like I do now. It just so happened I was reading a fanfiction today, a really crappy one that I read just to read something bad and feel better about myself. In that fanfic, however, there is a moment… Okay, it really is a crappy one. About LOTR characters, in which Haldir and Faramir get paired up. Yes, teenage girl gay sex fantasy. I don’t read the sex parts, they gross me out too much, I have too much respect for David Wenham. But there is a moment in which the two of them sit by the fire and Faramir is worried about everything: Boromir’s death, his father’s madness and the way he treats him, the pure hatred, and the fact that Gondor is without any capable leader at the moment, and the only one in line is himself, Faramir. He’s really worried about all this stuff, while Haldir looks at him and wishes to wipe that frown of worry off his lover’s face. And I realised: this wish, this is what moves mountains, dries rivers, makes flowers grow in a desert. This wish to do something for the one we love. This seems to be one of the strongest powers in this world, along with the hunger for power and mother’s love for her child. Hatred also makes it to the top. So here it is, the easiness with which I can compose this story. Let’s play a game called Who loves Who.
Anouk loves André. But André doesn’t love Anouk. Manu loves Anouk, but Anouk doesn’t love Manu. Cerise loves Manu, but Manu doesn’t love Cerise.
Following:
Cerise hates Anouk. Manu hates André. And no, I won’t make André be in love with Cerise to make the circle perfect. That looks too cheesy, really.
The names of André’s parents are Albertine and Jeremie (it’s supposed to be Jèrèmie, but I’m too lazy with the ` and ´.) and they need a last name. I’ll find it out later.
Albertine loves Jeremie and they’re married. Henri D’Auzenne loves Albertine (at least for now) but she does not love him. So he 1) seduces her partly by threatening, partly by sweet-talking, partly by violence, forcing her into an affair that goes far beyond a one night stand. They’re having sex for several months. 2) he has a plan to get rid of her husband, and so far it’s a plan, to which I’ll give some thought yet, but it will be realised. 3) has no particularly good feelings towards Albertine’s 19 year old son, no matter that he’s a monk in a monastery. 4) has his eye on most females in the village anyways, always up for more seduction. 5) is afraid of witches very much, which makes him Pierre deLancre’s bes ally. Did I miss something about him? Seems that he is one of my best villains, since he is tied up in the middle of the connections – knot. Now, he should probably have a wife… Since he’s a rich nobility of age about 50.
So there are at least two circles of motivation here. One that makes Cerise betray the pack and agitate the villagers against Anouk. And one that makes the Comte do evil stuff. Let’s get to Serice first. She is desperate for Manu’s love, which doesn’t really make her a whore or particularly evil or really low. That is all she is: desperate and hurt. They do say: Hell has no wrath like a woman scorned. But no matter how desperate she is, it’s no excuse and she will be punished for her deeds by the pack. I don’t know how, yet. There are many ways: either she will be cut off the pack and made a loner werewolf, with no right to join any pack. But that sets her free to betray the pack to the humans again, everybody understands that. They will all be in favour of killing her. And there will be enough werewolves willing to do it. Fabien, for the starters. He’s the leader and probably the only one who can really get away with killing one of their own. Then there is Manu, for all the obvious reasons. Then there also is Nicolas, who would turn the Earth for his sister and would be in terrible rage about her death. Then there are also Nicolas’ and Anouk’s parents, who’d also like to avenge their daughter’s death. And Also André, who is VERY agitated at this point of the story, what with a newborn baby on his hands, both parents dead, the pack forced to be up and running to leave the area, the clan wanting his baby brother dead, having witnessed Anouk’s death first hand, and she IS his best friend’s sister, so not exactly a nobody to him either. Maybe he even knows about her crush on himself. So there are more than enough werewolves willing to kill Cerise. Who exactly will do it and how exactly I will leave to them to decide. I think, though, that Fabien will speak the word of power and rip her throat out himself.
So here we go. Cerise does what she mustn’t for love. Nicolas also does what he mustn’t because he loves his sister so much: he bites humans, turning them into werewolves. Andrè… He isn’t in love, he is more of a politically important factor, and he does what he must. He takes his baby brother on and protects him with his own life. D’Auzenne does a lot of stuff he mustn’t for love, like killing Jeremie. Albertine tries to apeace the Comte by giving in to him, tries to protect her husband’s life, which diesn’t help. (I’m getting to a real body count here) Fabien isn’t involved into love situations, he is the one to keep cool, see the bigger picture, punish the wicked, hold the pack together, solve problems and fights. The only one who is left is Manu. (and I still keep forgetting about Olivier, I need a better role for him, I kind of like him.) WHat does Manu do for love that he mustn’t? That needs some serious exploring. First off: he surely never even as much as lays a finger on Anouk, carrying a torch for her from a safe distance. Sure, he does treat Cerise not very nice, but that’s nothing special. I think I need to explore his reaction to Anouk’s death closer to see what he is like, what he feels.
Did I say back in the day that Olivier is going to die with Anouk, as tragically? Hm. The plot thickens, literally. Maybe I should just give Olivier up and forget about him? He really seems to fail to fit into every part of the story except being the fourth in the friends circle: Manu-André-Nicolas-Olivier. Without him they look like that classic trio, which they shouln’t be, because they’re not the only three young werewolves in the pack. He’s for making the crowd… So I guess that’s where he would be. Making a crowd. I probably should NOT try and make a separate plot line for him, because I’ve already got enough. I really have got enough plot here. Especially what with DeLancre and Jean Grenier with their own side plot.
So, see you soon, guys in my head.
Wait a second. What I also need to have a look at are the dynamics of the group of friends. André, Manu, Nicolas and Olivier. I will need to have a look at all the dynamics, so let’s start with this one. Since there are many werewolves in the pack, there are also many young ones, of that same age, around 20. But these four guys kind of grew up together, in the same village, so they’ve been friends forever. And then the time came when André had to leave the village and go to the monastery, so the other three friends combined their forces to make sure André doesn’t fall out of the werewolf life. They go visit him sometimes, howling together at the walls of the monastery at nights close to full moon. Whenever he comes to visit, they take him for a run – something he enjoys immensely, since he can’t be a part of the Great Hunt. So their general attitude towards André describes as “close friendship with no second thoughts”. His relationship towards the three is the same: they are his best connection to the pack and he loves his friends dearly. That is the easy part. Now here comes less easy one. Manu and Nicolas. Manu is the oldest one in the group (25-26?) and Nicolas is the youngest one (17), so generally they probably wouldn’t even be that close, if there wasn’t one huge thing they have in common: Anouk. But Manu does everything to keep Nicolas from knowing about his feelings for her. Manu is a silent partner when Nicolas teases his sister, follows her around to protect her and so on. And then there is Olivier. He is about as old as Manu and he is his real best friend, one who is confided in Manu’s secret love. He knows, but he doesn’t tell Nicolas, because it’s not his secret to tell. So Olivier and Manu sometimes do their own stuff, just the two of them. They’re both grown up werewolves and have more power than Nicolas, more advanced. They share the knowledge of the “werewolf tasks”, to which they both have already been sent. Tasks when they had to kill people they didn’t know on some demon’s demand. Nicolas hasn’t been sent on such mission yet, so he doesn’t know that part of being a werewolf yet. Too young. So Oli and Manu are more grown up, but not all that much. And I think that Oli and Nicolas have no particularly intense dynamics between them. They’re maybe the least friendly ones with each other in the whole group. Now, Oli also knows of Cerise’s feelings for Manu. Question is: is Oli in love with Cerise? I really, REALLY don’t want him to be, because that would be just in some stories I’ve already read.
Just a side question: why is nobody in this story gay? It’s my second story already and still nobody turned up to be gay. I don’t count the perverted demon from my first book, that’s not gay, that is demonic. So is Oli maybe gay and in love with Manu? Probably not. Oli is 24, so he should have a girlfriend as well. Can I PLEASE make that one just a regular girlfriend with no drama and strings attached? Except maybe the Comte lusting after her as well? Lemme name her Aline. So Oli and Aline are to be married. When do people get married in those times? At the time when the harvest is done, so in the autumn. And what time of the year do we have now? It starts off in November and goes on for a while, so maybe they’ll have a whole year until the next September or October to get married. Aline is 21 and very beautiful. Dark honey hair, soft forms, sensual lips, big grey eyes. Oli got very lucky with her. The rest of his friends are too caught up in something else to have a normal love affair, so Oli pretty much has the free choice of every girl in the village, if only he likes. Because Oli is a very good-looking guy, too. No, he won’t be like the blond sex-god Oliver Queen from Smallville. (After all the time I still can’t believe his last name is actually Queen. Why not call him Oliver Queer, then? Or Oliver Bent? Another Spike quote: ”Randy Giles? Why not call just me Horny Giles? Or Desperate For A Shag Giles?”) My Olivier is a great deal shorter and not really blond. A lighter share of brown hair, but not the platin-shade like Manu, rather a rich, deep colour.
I see this post becomes very long already, but hell, I have better things to do today than being here, that’s how I know that being here is the only good thing I can do. Don’t ask about logics of that one. The question is: how is it about sex in the werewolf relationships? I was just wondering if Oli and Aline are screwing each other before they get married but I got the answer before I even finished asking. Of course they are! They’re werewolves, after all, not simple villagers, or shy religious children. They’re both old enough to have a normal sex life, and so they do. Not openly, though. They have to blend in with the villagers, who probably still say they shouldn’t have sex before the wedding. So Oli and Aline are having sex privately. Check. At least someone has a normal love life here, I was already worried that everybody in this story is twisted.
I need to wrap this up or I might just go on forever. The next thing to look at, though, will be the dynamics between André and his parents, as well as the parents with each other. What other dynamics are there yet to look at? The Cerise-Manu bit is intense, but clear. There is the André-Fabien relationship, which has its own itneresting points. Then there will be Grenier-DeLancre bit, and DeLancre-werewolves. I pretty much need to find out how ALL my characters feel about each other. There is a damn good reason why I love writing so much. I live for this stuff. I breathe it, it makes me happy, so happy I almost cry sometimes.
