Integrity--BC's NaNo (WORDS OMG LOOK AT EM ALL)

[Breakingchains]

I am soooo psyched to finally write this thing, especially considering how long I've been chattering on cryptically about it. I've got cool characters, something of a loose set of plot points (can't really call it an "outline"), sixty years of backstory, and hopefully, a solid premise that will not come across as a rip-off of anything in particular. I just need to make sure I don't plot the life out of the dang thing.

Since I'm super-cali-fragi-lazy and have already written out a synopsis on the NaNo website, I'm just going to copy and paste it here.

SPOILER: Click to show

Alternate Earth, 20XX. Without warning, the first known "super hero" bursts onto the scene in Chicago - a pyrokinetic immigrant named Barnabas Fay, who goes by the codename Flashpoint. Performing inexplicable feats of heroism, he becomes the city's darling within a few short years, and he paves the way for a dangerous new breed of celebrity. Superhuman vigilantes begin cropping up all over the world - and the public can't seem to get enough. These heroes soon form a tight-knit community, but before long, the seeds of corruption begin to sprout, and the first supervillains rear their heads. In response, Flashpoint and two of his trusted friends, Black Wolf and Snowshine, found an organization simply known as Integrity: a society of superpowered vigilantes, working together for the good of the entire world.

But after thirteen years serving humanity, Integrity suddenly falls apart at the seams when Snowshine goes rogue. Blind with rage, she murders several civilians and two members of her own team before Black Wolf is forced to bring her down. The beloved heroine dies, without anyone ever knowing what caused her to snap - and the incident breaks Flashpoint's will. When the government cracks down on vigilante activity in response, he hands the reins of Integrity over without resistance, and retires to live as a civilian. The group is dissolved and replaced with a new superhuman division of the US national guard; but not everyone is happy with the new arrangement, and Black Wolf disappears in disgust.

Flash forward fifteen years. Matthew Skeates is a bored and apathetic med student who has been quietly hiding wind-based superpowers since childhood. When the media breaks into a frenzy at the news that Barnabas Fay has died of a heart attack in the hospital, Skeates finds himself more deeply affected than he'd like to admit. As he quietly sulks over the death of his favorite celebrity, however, his obnoxious roommate and fellow superhuman, Stanley, has come across a piece of information that could change both their lives - news of a secret society of vigilantes operating out of New Mexico, which Stanley's been invited to join. Skeates takes some convincing, but when he finally relents, what they find is a remarkably well-organized group with a hidden base beneath the desert - and they have some surprises in store.

Now allied with a motley crew of superhumans from around the world - including a young, talkative mad scientist and his beloved shapeshifting blob of sentient nanotech (Jevonte Bloom and Priscilla), an ex-marine with an eerie control over electricity (Thomas Fierro, Black Wolf), and a middle-aged psychic healer with bipolar disorder and a disturbing past (Edward Faust, Remedy) - Matthew Skeates slowly realizes what he's witnessing: the rebirth of Integrity. But their activities are unquestionably illegal, and the government is not amused. On top of this, Skeates starts seeing signs that a disquieting secret lies beneath the group's brave, altruistic image, and a number of mysteries - the betrayal of Snowshine, the disappearance of a second-stringer supervillain that has remained unsolved for nearly 30 years, and the very origin of superhuman powers themselves - are all starting to look connected...

So... eeeeyup. SUPER HEROES. I bet you totally hadn't guessed I like super heroes. =D Integrity is kind of a tentative title - I'd eventually like to find something catchier or more evocative, but it'll do for now. (I sort of wanted to call it Flashpoint, but then DC came out with a big event comic called Flashpoint that people will be mentioning for years. And then BC was very sad. D=)

This NaNo will probably pose a number of special challenges for me, including but not limited to:
--- Not getting drowned in extraneous characters.
--- Keeping the plot believable, since super hero sci-fi is naturally big, loud and splashy.
--- Keeping it compelling as well.
--- Keeping the backstory from eating the story-story alive with ketchup.
--- Writing a mentally-ill hero in an accurate and sensitive way.
--- Getting in enough of the action sequences people expect from a super hero work without devolving into mindless BIFF-BAM-POW.

So. Eeeeeeyup. New territory for me. Let's see if I crash and burn in a spectacular explosion. (If I do, put it on Youtube!)

[Brooke]

It sounds cool! I've always been a sucker for super heroes. ^_^' Post exerts!

[Breakingchains]

Woot! I shall, once I get around to writing any scenes that are interesting enough to post. xD

(Incidentally, nice avatar. xD)

Okay, so. As of last night, I had pretty much already decided how 90% of the story was going to go. And it was boring and bland and mostly transitions between like three cool scenes total, and I didn't like it.

Then as I was falling asleep, I suddenly thought, "Whoa, if I change just these two eentsy-teensy little things at the beginning of the story, it will TOTALLY CHANGE EVERYTHING." So now the whole story has spun off in a very different direction and I'm sitting here with the same synopsis but running down a completely different rabbit hole with it.

A week before NaNo.

I've gone bonkers. =D

[M is for Morphine]

Sounds like you've got an awesome sort of serious take on the superhero genre going on. It seems similar in tone (but not in plot) to Watchmen. Looking forward to it!

[Tam]

...I just wanted to let you know that this sounds amazing. xD; It seems likely to have a very good blend of cynicism and altruism, and like Teow said, it's an interesting serious take on the genre, which is becoming a rarer and rarer thing these days. I'm really looking forward to seeing more on this story. <3 Good luck!

[Breakingchains]

Thank you, guys. ^_^ It's good to know the premise sounds interesting - I hope I can hold it together enough that it doesn't melt into a puddle of mush in the actual writing.

On the... less serious side of the story: currently in my notes, we have a small, benevolent, twiggy-looking extraterrestrial girl who can't speak human languages and is continually scaring the crap out of Stanley by virtue of the uncanny valley/his repressed fear of facehuggers. Huh.

[Breakingchains]

Eight and a half hours until kickoff. @___@

I wanna write this thing sooo bad, and at the same time, I'm worried I'm going to get about 10k in and then fall flat. There's this one particular place in the story shortly after most of the characters have been set up and introduced that just looks like it's going to turn into boring rambling, and I'll need to weave something interesting in there or it's just going to be either (1) a mad scramble to figure out what happens next before I fall behind, or (2) worthless "blah, blah, blah" for pages and pages until something happens.

Aaaaand here I am worrying at length about plot structure when I told myself months ago that I wouldn't even plan anything in advance. RAGE.

... I should really go do something productive until kickoff. >_>;

[Breakingchains]

As it says on the NaNo front page right now: "Let the wild rumpus begin!"

I have kicked off the first scene with a flashback of Barnabas (Flashpoint.) He is sneaking into a military compound, searching for documents that will remain taunting-ly unspecified for half the book, and has a friend (Edward/Remedy) dictating instructions to him by radio - but le gasp, somebody's tampered with Ed's intel and maps.

Havoc ensues, Barney gets shot at, and then there is military-speak, and then there is a creepy-as-all-heck alien. =D

An excerpt will probably come tomorrow or later today, once I've finished the bulk of the day's writing and have time to pick something/polish it slightly. Current count: 2.3k.


EDIT: I have 4k! That's as many as four... k!

SOMEWHAT MORE INTELLIGENT COMMENTARY WILL COME AFTER I HAVE SLEPT.

[Breakingchains]

DAY ONE REPORT:[/size]

Thanks in part to divine intervention and in part to having absolutely no life, I was able to write straight from midnight though 7:00 AM for 4k. I then said "I do declare," swooned dramatically onto a couch, woke up somewhere around dinnertime, and made it to 6k just before midnight.

This is FUN. The characters are arguing, plot threads are revealing themselves, the whole thing is being amazingly well-behaved and coherent and good. =D

A handful of short character profiles for some of the major players:

SPOILER: Click to show

Matthew Skeates
Matthew is a longtime Integrity fanboy with a decent-sized collection of merch, though the group was disbanded when he was still very young. He has also been hiding wind-based powers since childhood. Despite looking up to such an illustrious group of heroes, he has no desire to be a hero himself--he has a basically selfish nature, and little use for cheering crowds.

As such, Matthew has never really trained his powers; in fact, he's barely touched them since he discovered them, leaving them almost useless. But now Stanley's talked him into running off to New Mexico to join a new group of vigilante "heroes", who he's sure will turn out to be complete nutcases. (Unfortunately, Stanley doesn't quite grasp the concept of "invite-only"...)

Matthew usually prefers to keep to himself, focusing on his hobbies and studies, though that's difficult with Stanley constantly in his face. He tends to hide what he's thinking under a veneer of cynicism and snark, and seems unenthusiastic about running all over creation in spandex to save people from supervillains and burning buildings--though given time, he may turn out to be more of a hero than anyone expects.



Stanley Beckett
Stanley inherited super-strength from his father, who was once a macho, meat-shield hero called Adrenaline. He's loud, boisterous, and overenthusiastic about just about everything; whereas Matthew hides his feelings under a layer of snark and an off-putting attitude, Stanley wears his heart on his sleeve. He has a tendency to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time, ask too many questions, and push people's buttons without even realizing it--which means while he's got a whole lot of friends, he's made just as many enemies.

Stanley craves the spotlight, and seems to think his powers make him heroic by default. He can be unbelievably insensitive, has a low tolerance for discomfort, and has a strange tendency to crack out his super-strength rather than take the 1.5 seconds needed to use the doorknob. Despite this, he has a strong moral compass and genuinely desires to do good for the world... he just hopes to get some cheering crowds and camera flashes along the way.



Barnabas Fay, Flashpoint
Flashpoint is usually cited as the first active super hero. Originally from Seychelles, his family moved to America when he was 12. He had always had an affinity towards fire and energy, but didn't realize the extent of it until he accidentally set a classmate's backpack on fire; realizing that he couldn't control his powers when angry or upset, he quickly learned to suppress extremes of emotion, becoming stoic and laid-back.

However, years later on a trip to Chicago, he witnessed a violent crime that stirred up old feelings of rage--and for the first time in years, he set somebody on fire. This time, however, it was all caught on a fuzzy cellphone camera--and though he fled the scene, he achieved infamy overnight when the video went viral. When the news media picked up on it, he came clean about his powers and identity. Despite some initial legal trouble, he went on to become the first known Super Hero, adopting the codename Flashpoint.

Fay was friendly and sociable, with a tendency to look at the big picture. He adored his fans and had no aversion to media attention, despite the government's unease with the entire concept. He was known to treat missions like a game, laughing and joking even when something went wrong and coming up with remarkable solutions on the spur of the moment. But when Integrity's core group of three was torn apart by Snowshine's actions, his spirit was crushed...

Or so it seemed. *dun dun dunnnn*

TL;DR: "One's a jerk. One's a doofus. One's supposedly dead. They fight crime!"

I'll put up an excerpt tomorrow. Getting back to the actual "writing" part, now. =D It has been a very good day.

[Breakingchains]

I suppose it's excerpt time. *gulp*

Fair warning, this has had next to no polishing.

SPOILER: Click to show

"Limited edition collection: Flashpoint! Snowshine! Black Wolf! Flintlock! Sugar Glider! Adrenaline! All fully poseable!"

Matthew grinned weakly. The merch was campy, that was for sure. He held the box of action figures in both hands, turning it over and over—it was a little worn with time, but he’d taken good care of it all these years... right up until just now, when he blunted that stupid corner. All six heroes' autographs were scrawled across the surface of the cardboard—rare, considering how hard it was to find them all in one place, much less convince somebody like Black Wolf to come out of the shadows long enough to sign anything. Still, everyone remembered him as part of the glory days, one of the greatest heroes of all time.

But now those glory days were over. Black Wolf had disappeared when Integrity broke up, apparently disgusted with how things had turned out; Sugar Glider retired; Flintlock was dead; Adrenaline was living somewhere in secret; and Flashpoint, too, was now dead. And Snowshine…

Snowshine was the cause of the whole blasted mess.

Her figurine smiled beautifully inside the box, sporting a bright blue cape and staff, her heroic little face preserved forever in plastic. He looked away--and instead turned his focus to the blunted corner, trying to figure out how to pop it back into shape without damaging the item further. But then he heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, and his last name being shouted at a full roar, echoing through the hallway outside:

“Skeates! Skeates! Holy crap, Skeeaaaaates!” Stanley didn’t bother with the doorknob, bashing through the door head-first like he thought he was the incredible Hulk and sending a spray of bits of wood from the doorjamb. “Oh my holy freaking sweet merciful God, Skeates!”

Matthew picked a stray splinter from the door frame out of his hair.

“Hello, Stanley,” he said.

“It’s awesome, it’s huge! You gotta… listen, I… there's this…” He stopped short, giving Matthew a glare. “Stop looking so bored!”

“Stanley, why do you have to smash something every time you get excited?”

Stanley blinked, turning to look at the door, and cocked his head to one side as if it was the first time he’d noticed it.

“Oh. Huh. Um…” He hesitated a moment, then scrambled over to it, shutting it and shoving the doorstop in. “Forget about that for a second! You have to hear this!… C’mon, quit playing with your dolls!”

Stanley was always this juvenile. Matthew sighed and stood up, putting the box back in the closet.

“Okay, I'm listening. What’s the big news?”

A huge smile spread across Stanley’s face as he kicked his wet shoes off into a corner. He dashed into the middle of the room in his visibly-damp socks, and struck a pose—hair dirty, tangled and dripping water all over the carpet, flexing like a bodybuilder, smelling faintly of motor oil as he announced at the top of his lungs:

“I’m gonna be a super hero!”

Matthew paused, staring at him blankly. His mouth twisted around as he struggled to keep a straight face; and Stanley just stood there flexing, his stance not much different from Adrenaline’s pose in the box on the shelf, gazing off into space with this noble, heroic look as if waiting for thunderous applause…

...Yeah, this is a pretty early scene. Stuff will get quite a bit more serious later on, but for now, we have... Stanley bashing in doors with his forehead. xD

[Breakingchains]

DAY TWO REPORT

Oh my gosh, you guys, I can't believe how much I've already got done. ; Seriously. Almost every other year, it's been about 4k at this point... and I'm at 12k. Two days in, more than a fifth of the way done? Like, what?

I keep thinking I really need to take advantage of that word buffer, though, if I want to actually finish the manuscript within one month. This story is going to need a whole lot of space, and probably a whole lot more space than 50k. I can't go getting complacent and taking 5 days off. xD;

Today was a little bit tough. Yesterday's work was mainly stuff I'm okay at, and which I find fun to write: emotional moments, creepy description, and uncomplicated action sequences. Today's was... stuff I'm not as good at: heated conversations, much more complicated action sequences, and more mundane description. I found myself lingering over each line a lot more, simply because these are dang hard scenes for me to pull off.

I'd like to hit at least 16k for day 3, if possible. More character profiles will come soon, excerpts will come as I feel inclined to share. xD

[Rikku]

*reads through this*

... I wish I had read through this earlier because this is fun. <3 Ooh, action and cool names and suspicious goings-on, yesplz! I like Stanley. And am impressed by the depth of this. And also just sort of vaguely pleased-by-proxy for you, 'cos writing that much and that happily is definitely a good sign. <3 You've got a story you love, here, and you're loving writing it, and that's glorious.

[Breakingchains]

:3 Eeee. Thanks, Rikku!

*ahem-hem*

DAY THREE REPORT

18k!

I've written 6k/day, three days in a row, which is quite possibly the most concentrated productive streak I've ever had in my life. ; Honestly, I'm mostly able to do this because I have no job and few real obligations and am a fairly fast typist, but the very fact that I'm not procrastinating, not getting bored or overwhelmed, and my hands are holding up is just a miracle. xD;

And it still feels like I've covered so little actual story. ;_; I'm almost 40 pages in, and my dudes have just barely joined the titular organization. I'm not doing any intentional padding; everything I've said feels pretty necessary to the narrative, at least right now--but I still think I might end up doing a fair amount of cutting when the first round of editing comes along.

Either way. It's still fun and still holding together and making sense, instead of exploding. Which is awesome. =D There was a fun crowd scene with Stanley, Priscilla is hilariously scary, Jevonte is being irresponsible, and Black Wolf has finally shown his face!... Except not, since he wears a mask. But yeah.

If I could hit 20k tomorrow, that would be awesomesauce. :3

[Brooke]

Oh my gosh! That's amazing! *steals brain and word count*
I need a three day buffer for the youth retreat I'm going on. xD

That's just awesome dude. *brofist*

[Breakingchains]

x3 Thanks, Brooke. You guys are really encouraging.

DAY FOUR REPORT

Bwuh. Bwah. Wah?

25k? As in, 50%?

Bwah? O.O

=DDDDDDDDD

I told myself last night I'd get in bed by 1:00. Then 2:00. Then next thing I knew it was 5:30 and I had another 2k. Hooray for self-discipline.

Today's scenes were fun, and stuff keeps popping up about these characters that I didn't know. Seems Matthew actually wanted to be a hero as a kid, but when the incident with Snowshine happened, he got cynical about the whole concept. Now he's having a big, fat crisis of "Wait a minute, what the heck am I doing here!?" and has to rediscover why he wanted to risk his own neck for anyone else in the first place, because nobody goes out and punches superpowered lunatics just because they're nice like that. He has to find his own motivation, his own drive, or he's just drifting pointlessly along with someone else's.

Then there's a scene that involves flamethrowers, gunplay, and hitting people over the head with rocks. =D Yaaaay!