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Post by Celestial on Sept 30, 2009 16:50:09 GMT -5
I have a very busy November coming up, with my Highers and a very intensive school project. So, I've decided to make my life even busier. Awesome. <3 My plot idea is very basic and poorly researched. But I like how it goes. To sum it up, it is steampunk...in World War One. (I'm not sure if that defeats the entire concept of steampunk but I still want to try this.) It takes place in World War One Germany. A British engineer with a particular talent for designing and repairing steam-powered weaponry has been detained by the authorities and forced to help the war effort or he will be arrested as a British spy. He is sent to the Western front (Most likely Flanders) where he meets a very hot-blooded, mannish woman named Katherine Adler. She is the pilot of her own ornithopter and one of few women in the army, soley for her use in the war "delivering" bombs to the enemy's trenches.
They don't get along as she is completely different from the way he thinks a woman should act and doesn't hesistate to voice his opinion. And she, used to freedom from a very early age does not take well to being told what to do. But they must face the horrors of the war together. I also want to see what I can do with a Deconstruction and very little plot. xD This is going to be a fun NaNo and I'm ready for it. But I want to see what would happen if there really was steam tech in those days, what would happen. But I don't have very high hopes for this novel. Doesn't say it won't be fun. |
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Post by Kathleen on Oct 1, 2009 23:02:36 GMT -5
I like this idea. ^_^ It sounds very fun, and I love steampunk. ;3
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Post by Rikku on Oct 1, 2009 23:16:09 GMT -5
Oh, steampunk is great. =D And you could get some wonderful character interaction goin' on here. (And ornithopters=instant <3.)
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Post by Celestial on Oct 2, 2009 19:02:55 GMT -5
I like this idea. ^_^ It sounds very fun, and I love steampunk. ;3 Yay, somebody thinks my idea doesn't suck. <3 Oh, steampunk is great. =D And you could get some wonderful character interaction goin' on here. (And ornithopters=instant <3.) I have been thinking about a romantic Foe-Yay filled subplot but since I can write romance like a cat writes on a keyboard, I might pass that up. =3 |
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Post by Rikku on Oct 2, 2009 20:53:28 GMT -5
I have been thinking about a romantic Foe-Yay filled subplot but since I can write romance like a cat writes on a keyboard, I might pass that up. =3 I'd say go for it, and then, if it turns out horrible, you can turn it into humour. That's normally my backup plan if my character romances don't work out. xD Have them hate each other's intestines! Though that might not be such a good idea, really, if it's not intended to be a frivolous book. |
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Post by Celestial on Oct 3, 2009 11:25:36 GMT -5
I have been thinking about a romantic Foe-Yay filled subplot but since I can write romance like a cat writes on a keyboard, I might pass that up. =3 I'd say go for it, and then, if it turns out horrible, you can turn it into humour. That's normally my backup plan if my character romances don't work out. xD Have them hate each other's intestines! Though that might not be such a good idea, really, if it's not intended to be a frivolous book. Or better yet I can get it in rewriting. =D Because it isn't really meant to be funny in general...although a little humour could be nice. Oh all the whacky ideas. xD |
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Post by Celestial on Oct 4, 2009 14:28:38 GMT -5
Ok, I'm so going to do the romantic tension thing. xD If anything, it will give Catherine some interesting (as in, philosophical on the nature of the enemies etc. ) thoughts when they get British POWs. =3 I'm a fan of those kinds of things.
I've also worked out some things for the English (I considered making him Scottish but I'm more keen on English people than Scottish. ^^;; Sorry guys) main character. His name is Joseph Lawrence, the youngest child he is from an artistocratic family who sent him to study engineering abroad mainly to get him out of the way. He gets very touchy when people mispronounce his name, which creates problems during the initial talking between him and the German officials who tell him his position. He is not exactly the most open-minded person and generally things that he is not used to annoy him, which does include Catherine. He fixes her ornithopter (it has a name but I'm keeping it secret until the actual novel.) mainly because he likes it but he also feels a grudging respect for the aviatrix in her flimsy craft who flies above the trenches. And I'm sure I'll have him developed more. =3 So far I've mainly focused on Catherine.
This might be quite a cool NaNo. xD Better than my old one anyway. </famous last words>
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Post by Celestial on Oct 31, 2009 19:36:31 GMT -5
And so does it begin. My novel's beginning is rather boring actually, with Joseph going on about this uni days in Berlin but it does give the impression that this is an actual steampunk world. WW1 does take it all apart eventually, like it did in this world. Kinda pleased about what I have done, although the temptation to edit it is great.
The format will be quite interesting and I have wanted to experiment with it for a long time. Chapters will either be written from Catherine's or Joseph's point of view, in first person. Since I don't want to skip out on either character but at the same time feel like this needs to be written in first person. Yeah. =3 Wish me luck. xDD
What's that? An except? You'll get one as soon as the authorities come for our hero. ^_~
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Post by Celestial on Nov 1, 2009 18:49:11 GMT -5
Oh lord Chtulhu the almighty, forgive me. I have shamelessly tried to boost my wordcount with a big long infodump about the evolution of steam power in my world. A note to self, never ever listen in to my protagonist's thoughts when I am on the train. Hopefully I have redeemed myself by lampshading how boring and stupid the whole infodump is. Still, I pity all who have to read that bloody thing.
I almost feel like modifying a WW1 song to create the NaNoers lament. But can I really afford to do that with two essays.
Yes, yes I can. I'll probably write it as soon as the guilt monkeys leave me alone which means that I'll have to do my essay.
...
" When this bloody NaNo's over"
No more novelling for me
When I get to 50,000
Oh how happy I will be.
No more typing words wildly
No more quotas to surpass
I will tell my school teacher
I have revised for your class.
I will go to bed early
I will live a quiet life
No more plots without a purpose
No more awful purple prose
When this bloody NaNo's over"
No more novelling for me
When I get to 50,000
Oh how happy I will be."
*booed off the stage*
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Post by Amneiger on Nov 1, 2009 21:13:48 GMT -5
Oh lord Chtulhu the almighty, forgive me. I have shamelessly tried to boost my wordcount with a big long infodump about the evolution of steam power in my world. A note to self, never ever listen in to my protagonist's thoughts when I am on the train. Hopefully I have redeemed myself by lampshading how boring and stupid the whole infodump is. Still, I pity all who have to read that bloody thing. My character has spent something like two pages examining a house and a room. xD So don't feel too terribly alone in that. |
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Post by Celestial on Nov 3, 2009 16:32:07 GMT -5
Oh lord Chtulhu the almighty, forgive me. I have shamelessly tried to boost my wordcount with a big long infodump about the evolution of steam power in my world. A note to self, never ever listen in to my protagonist's thoughts when I am on the train. Hopefully I have redeemed myself by lampshading how boring and stupid the whole infodump is. Still, I pity all who have to read that bloody thing. My character has spent something like two pages examining a house and a room. xD So don't feel too terribly alone in that. Filler FTW I guess? xD For Nano I guess that's acceptable. |
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Post by Kathleen on Nov 3, 2009 23:38:01 GMT -5
When will the authorities come for our hero? D= I terribly want an excerpt. ;_;
Anyway, cheers for filler! =D
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Post by Celestial on Nov 4, 2009 12:15:08 GMT -5
When will the authorities come for our hero? D= I terribly want an excerpt. ;_; Anyway, cheers for filler! =D They came and went. =3 It was December, 1914 when they came for me. I was sitting in my room playing around with a couple of gears on a model plane when one of my lecturers came. He did not look me in the eye; only ask me to come with him. Reluctantly, I put down the plane and went with him to an office. All the while, he did not speak or even look in my direction, just walk as if I did not exist.
Their faces were not those of people who wanted you harm. They were much worse; the faces of people who wanted you to do something for them. I approached them warily, watching every single twitch of their eyes.
“Hello Josef Lawrence,” one of them said in a sickening voice. I hated the way they pronounced my name.
“Hello. Why did you ask for me?” I said, trying not to sound too aggressive. The one who spoke laughed.
“Why, aren’t we impatient?” He grinned, showing off yellowing teeth. “Why don’t you have a drink first?”
“No thank you, I’m not a drinker by nature,” I replied, doubting they would have a bottle of anything stashed in here. The one with the yellow teeth shrugged.
“As you wish. Now, as to why we called you here...”he said before looking at the other man as if for assistance.
“Word of your fine skills with steam, cogs and gears has reached the Kaiser. He certainly needs everything he can get if he wishes to win this war. So you, Herr Lawrence, have the pleasure of designing Germany’s weapons of war” he said with grandeur as if he was bestowing me with a knighthood. I leapt up in anger, startling both of them. They clearly did not expect much fight from the meek-looking student.
“No! Do you think I would betray my country?!” I shouted at them, resisting the urge to punch them both. It would do more harm than good anyway. My punches were too weak to do anybody any harm. They regained their calm looks. The one with the yellow teeth looked me straight into the eye.
“No, of course you wouldn’t. We believe you are a very patriotic citizen of Britain. But ask yourself, Herr Josef, what a patriot would do if he was inside the enemy’s country. You are a student, a pursuer of knowledge, almost...above suspicion. It is the perfect cover”.
“For what?” I gulped, having all the fight drained out of me. But I already knew what they meant.
“A spy,” the yellow toothed one confirmed my thoughts. I sat down; the implications of my situation hitting me like a train. They had cornered me.
“Alright, I shall co-operate with you. But at least let me send a letter to my family!” I said to them, my shoulders slumped down and my eyes studying the patterns of the wooden floor. To be honest, I didn’t care about my family. I just wanted some kind of freedom.
“No, I’m afraid you could easily give away valuable information about our Fatherland if we let you,” one of them said. I couldn’t really tell which one. They were interchangeable.
“Nothing?”
“No” they chorused in unison.
Everything suddenly fell apart for me. In that very instant, the war had come out of the headlines and made its way into my quiet workroom. It infected every single one of my models and oozed between the pages of my sketchbook. A disgusting, honeyed grin of friendship was presented to me but it was one I could not reject if I knew what was good for me. It was as bad as treason or defection except I was getting nothing out of it. Except of course, my life.
“Alright, I’ll do as you please,” I said as quietly as possible. I had given up and sunk into a homesick misery. I had never felt homesick before. The possibility of never seeing my dear Britain again had brought up three years of being away in the space of a few minutes.
“Wonderful!” the yellow toothed many exclaimed as if he had arranged a night in the bar with a good friend, “A car shall come to pick you up as soon as possible. You shall go to the Ypres front as soon as possible”
I stared up at them, my eyes widening. They never said I had to go anywhere. Besides, I could design everything here and build it if they needed that so much. There was no need to transfer me to the front lines where they could so easily lose me. The possibility that they did not need me really was not one I considered. They seemed to want me quite badly, judging from the way they had threatened to frame me as a spy if I refused their offer. There was something else.
I wanted to ask them but by this time, they had already left. I was alone in the office, the chair uncomfortably warm already. Slowly, as if every single one of my joins was burning up with pain, I got up and stumbled back to my room. I felt drunk although in reality I had not had anything to drink for a long while.
My life had turned upside down. I tried to think of a less melodramatic way to phrase that but somehow it just did not come into my mind. The future of this war seemed uncertain and the old prediction of it being all over by Christmas was crumbling faster than a biscuit trapped between two gears in a clockwork device. I looked at the plane sitting on my desk. Before, it had been something I did for fun. Now, this was something I had to do if I wanted to keep living. Such a change of circumstances angered me so much. With a cry, I picked up the plane and threw it against the wall. It exploded in a blizzard of cogs, gears, springs, coils, pistons and bits of coal I used in the miniature engine. They formed a black streak across my whitewashed walls.
Immediately I regretted doing that. As if picking up a wounded child, I held the wreckage of the plane. Carefully I picked up every single little bit that I could scavenge up from the floor and carefully pieced it back together. One of the wings was badly mangled and part of the body was broken. I made it a new one, all the while cursing myself for letting the one thing I love suffer because of my anger. If they wanted to take everything away from me including my joy at creating steam devices, they would find that an impossible task. I wanted to make sure of that. No matter what I saw at Ypres, I would try to remain myself.
An ugly hatred manifested over the next few days while I waited for the car to come. I began despising all who put me into this predicament. There was never such hatred in me before but then again, I had never been in such a situation. My hatred encompassed Serbia, for starting this war, Austria-Hungary, for being provoked but most of all, Germany and everything German for the failed plan, for attacking Belgium and for getting me involved. My hatred drove my work instead of love.
The car finally came. By the time it pulled over outside my workroom, I had already packed everything I needed. That way I could check that I had all my tools and things during the time the driver thought I was packing. I looked out of the window. The man was fairly young and wearing the German army uniform. I suspected he would only take me as far as the train station. The car, a rather cheap-looking thing, was engineered a bit like a train only smaller and more streamlined with the engine at the back so that the smoke did not blow over the passengers. Unfortunately for that design, the car behind them was not so lucky. Many of them had been equipped with filters to clear out the particles of smoke but those created waste problems. The car now had tubing leading down to bags of smoke. It looked fairly ugly but at least it worked. I hated that kind of attitude. A device should be both beautiful and practical.
Maliciously, I had the driver come up and look for me, just so that he could carry some of my bags. The man struggled under their weight but not as much as I would have hoped. At the time I wished I had put my models into those bags and made him carry them. It was childish but it was all I could do to work out the frustration building up in me.
We drove to the station without any strange events. The driver was a man of few words, which suited me just fine. We had nothing to talk about anyway. The two men next to me, presumably sent to make sure that I didn’t do anything rash looked just as devoid of conversation as the driver. I just resigned myself to sketching out a design for another one of my fantasy creations. I believe it was a walking fortress balanced on several small legs. It was a thing of beauty but I could only imagine how much coal, manpower and steam would be needed to keep such a thing running. More than would be practical.
The train I got onto was a fairly ancient one, perhaps maybe seventy years old. I was alone in it, aside from the two men. There was nobody to talk to and since my luggage as well as sketchbook had been stowed away, I had nothing to do.
After that, it's filler for about 1,000 words. xD (If you want another except, there's one on my NaNoWriMo website profile, this one from Catherine's point of view. Can't imagine why you would.) |
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Post by Celestial on Nov 6, 2009 15:44:25 GMT -5
I honestly don't feel like writing today.  Besides a painful neck, my head also aches like the devil. Plus this section requires me to actually do some research (Second Battle of Ypres FTW?) and is in general fairly boring. I'm considering skipping it altogether. On the bright side, subplots galore! I've worked out how I'm going to write the Joseph/Catherine 'ship and the deal with Ramiel's engine. Genre Savvy has also been transferred to Catherine instead of Feathers (who was going to be the funny lampshade-hanging cheerful kid. Now he's that minus the lampshades. Still fairly Genre Savvy if he wants to be.) Also worked out a couple of subversions but they are major spoilers so yeah. =3 I'm also going to make a very audacious move and modify the Battle of the Somme to include zeppelins...with explodium since hydrogen was the way to go back then. It's not going to be pretty but at least I'll get to show off the epicness that is the Ramiel. Also, some creative imagination and no research because of altered timeline. XP Win-win. (Battle of the Somme would be a bugger to research since it was so bloody long and so much happened. ) And don't ask me why I have so much planned. xDD My classes are boring. |
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Post by Celestial on Nov 7, 2009 16:35:37 GMT -5
I need to procrastinate on my essay. So here are the plot ideas, snippets and random bits of junk for my NaNo I have planned. Be warned, some of them are spoileriffic and some of them are fairly mature. - The secret of Ramiel's engine is never found out. The Colonel takes over after Joseph fails to get close to it. He also doesn't make it, on account of Catherine never letting him. She would have let Joseph though because she liked him. But he doesn't want to and has no obligation to.
- Joseph does fall in love with Catherine, much to his disappointment. But he can't bring himself to tell her and upgrade their relationship as he is very puritanical and doesn't think it is right that he should be in love with a woman like her.
- Feathers dies during this world's Spring Offensive. When he dies, things head south. ;_;
- Feathers is also shown to be backward. We never find out why but everyone doesn't want to find out as he is the only source of happiness as the war becomes more depressing.
- His cheerfulness is a genuine part of his personality. If he didn't have this thing with his mind, he would have been as much of a genius as Joseph. But he is still very good ground crew.
- Turning point is at the battle of the Somme. Then things begin going downhill.
- In the bar scene, Catherine goes off with some soldier and much to Joseph's disgust (and implied jealousy), he assumes that she's gone off to do some NSFW stuff. Not so.
- When she repeats this behaviour, from her point of view we are told that she goes away and uses this time to do maintenance on Ramiel's engine. She's not a Really Gets Around person.
- Also Joseph goes out to her and looks as though is about to say he loves her but doesn't. He's the Hamlet of love confessions. xDD
- The Somme with be fought with zeppelins. July 1st attack will be a failure due to the fact that all those zeppelins go down and burst into flames. Despite this, eventually the push is a success and for a brief moment, there is hope for the British side. Then the Germans bring in their own fleet of zeppelins. Epic ensues. And massive casualties.
- Then there is a potentially squicky scene where, for one, I'm glad that Joseph was raised in a Victorian society. Catherine is so exhausted she collapses as soon as she steps out of the Ramiel and Feathers, being the only one there, brings her to Joseph's house until she wakes up. He does look at her...oddly but berates himself for doing so and goes outside so he doesn't think such thoughts again. I have standards thank you
and trauma from End of Evangelion.
- We get hints that the Colonel has somebody special to come home too after the war. It turns out he made a promise to his brother before going off to the military academy.
- As the Germans are pushed back, Catherine goes to fight as well as she can in an attempt to try and push the allied forces back. This ends up being a pointless sacrifice (why, I'm not dropping an anvil on your head, why? >>)
- At the end, Catherine dies too. Joseph never confesses his feelings to her, much to his regret. They share one kiss before they die.
- The novel ends with petrol-powered American planes circling overheard after they had shot down Ramiel. Joseph is covered in blood and his brother (one of his only three brothers who survived the war) is next to him. It is implied he lost everything. Downer? Yes.
I'll add more when I think of them. ^^ |
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Besides a painful neck, my head also aches like the devil. Plus this section requires me to actually do some research (Second Battle of Ypres FTW?) and is in general fairly boring. I'm considering skipping it altogether.