I’m getting myself ready for NaNoWriMo 2019, and I thought I’d keep a log of the process. I haven’t participated before, and I also haven’t written any fantasy (my chosen genre for this year.) This will be an interesting month all around.

I’ve decided to write a YA fantasy story, with magic and dragons and all that jazz. My normal fare is sci-fi; while fantasy doesn’t seem too far off (after all, it’s often “Fantasy & Sci-Fi”), it’s going to be an unusual process for me. I usually don’t plan out my plots or character development ahead of time; instead, I come up with scenarios and let them play out. This results in rather poor overall cohesion, and doesn’t let me subtly flaunt Chekov’s Gun. So this time, I’ll try to plan the plot out in advance of putting the proverbial pen to paper.

There is an intractable problem with all fantasy works; one that no author I know of has worked around elegantly. Writing a fantasy story lets the author ignore reality to a large extent; they don’t need to study up on history, on different cultures, on geography: instead, they can create whatever they want. Except for homo sapiens, and the English language, and idioms, and the animals, plants, geological structures, and weather systems of their world. At the end of the day, most fantasy stories have more in common with reality than sci-fi.

I’m a perfectionist, often to the extent of procrastination. I’ll need to sidestep this issue by willful ignorance, pretending my characters have always spoken English, are all humanoid, and that there is somehow still no connection to Earth. I guess we’ll see how well I do.

The Story Circle

My first step is to come up with a general plot. A friend clued me into the Dan Harmon Story Circle, and while it’s not an obvious fit for my plot, I’ll try to use it as a basis nevertheless. I desperately want to avoid the cliché of “young adult male wants to prove himself, so he fights a dragon/becomes a knight/defends the princess” stories, so I’ll need to come up something less common.

Comfort Zone

The protagonist is a young teenager named Theobald, living with his parents and younger sibling in a small village. His father is a blacksmith, and it’s expected that the protagonist will apprentice under his father.

(Side note: I need to establish an emotional connection with the younger sibling. That’s going to be difficult, seeing as the sibling exists solely for this connection.)

The Turn In The Road

Unfortunately, while the protagonist is visiting a nearby village for his father, his parents (and most of the village) are killed by dragonfire. The only trace of the dragon is a single dragon scale, broken off the dragon by an arrow. The protagonist’s younger sibling is missing (not dead); this fuels his desire to find him and enact revenge on his parents’ murderer. As his town no longer exists, he decides to set up his father’s smithy in a neighboring village.

He spends as much time as possible apprenticing under a clothier, so as to learn how to create his own clothing, as he realizes that blacksmithing is not a very portable skill. He takes multi-day trips around the area, learning from travelers how to kill, forage, and make his own way in the wilderness. He takes on an apprentice of his own. He becomes known for his skill and speed at blacksmithing, but is treated as an outcast for his increasingly unusual behaviors.

When he’s ready, he passes his smithy to his apprentice, then leaves the village.

The Unfamiliar Situation

He sets off on a journey to a renowned mage, one he’d heard of from travelers. He hopes that the dragon scale can help the mage track down the dragon it came from, helping the protagonist kill it. The journey is long and difficult (due to the infuriating tendency of mages to live far off the beaten path), and along the way he falls sick. He’s rescued by an innkeeper’s daughter, and nursed back to health in the inn run by her parents. He falls in love with her, but she reminds him of his younger sibling and reluctantly continues his journey for the mage.

(Falling sick is a thinly-veiled allegory for his own insecurity and doubts in meeting this unknown mage.)

Adaptation

Theobald makes his way to the mage, who is able to detect traces of foreign magic in the dragon scale. The mage cannot tell him where to find the dragon; instead, she will train him to detect the trace himself. This takes many months, during which Theobald performs menial tasks for the mage; this is the bit that gets a 30-second rapid-cut montage.

Theobald departs the mage with rudimentary magical skills, which help guide him towards the dragon. After a few weeks’ travel, he finds the dragon, in the cold mountains of the Northlands.

Victory! Or is it?

The dragon is quite young; Theobald nearly kills the dragon in a surprise attack (by causing an avalanche), but fails. The injured dragon speaks to Theobald, telling him that he’d been under the control of a dark mage when he destroyed the village. The dragon tells Theobald to go home, but after having realized that the dragon wasn’t guilty, Theobald insists on staying to help the injured dragon heal. The dragon doesn’t recall seeing Theobald’s younger sibling in the fire; but then again, he was under the control of the dark mage, and not in his right mind at the time.

While healing the dragon, Theobald formulates his plan. The dragon was given a chest of gold by the dark mage; Theobald finds a strand of hair within. With his new-found magical powers, he decides to trace the dark mage with the hair. Once the dragon is healed, Theobald sets off towards the dark mage. The dragon joins Theobald despite his misgivings, staying in the shadows to avoid being seen.

After several weeks’ travel, Theobald locates the dark mage’s hut. It’s on the edge of the forest, near the seaside. The dark mage is far too powerful to kill, even for Theobald and the dragon together. After several days of watching the hut, Theobald has seen the dark mage come and go, and along with the dragon, formulates a plan.

The Heavy Price

Theobald and the dragon work together to execute the plan. Theobald puts teleportation spells upon the hut’s doorstep, with the dragon helping with the magic. When the dark mage comes back, he’s teleported into a boat offshore for Theobald to interrogate him.

The dark mage taunts Theobald, telling him about how he’d kidnapped Theobald’s sibling; Theobald gets angry and begins to torture the mage for information. The mage tells Theobald that he’d been hired by the Lord that presided over Theobald’s home village. The Lord orchestrated the attack on his own village to garner support for a war against a rival lord.

With this new information, Theobald leaves in disgust and turns to leave, but the mage ties him to the boat and breaks his own bonds. He pulls a cloak off of a chest in the boat, revealing the innkeeper’s daughter inside, but unconscious. The dark mage brings Theobald to the shore, still bound, to watch the boat as it sinks underwater.

Back Home

[TODO]

Background Information

Location

In an undisclosed continent. Since I get to invent the landscape (and I don’t want to get stuck up in realism, or “What Would A Geologist Think”), I’ll play fast and loose with geological formation processes. I’m very partial to the vistas of Ireland, with water running across the exposed bedrock, violently green terrain, and the perennial mist hugging the ground. I also love the fjords of Norway (and surrounding countries), with their steep cliffs and snow-capped mountains.

Culture

I want the culture to be one that highly values intelligence, problem-solving, creativity, and innovation. Basically, everybody is enlightened. This is mostly because I don’t want to fall back on the trope of “poor artist’s hopes and dreams are crushed by reality”. Not only is it lazy and played-out, it’s not even fun to read anymore.

Magic

I want magic to play a strong role in the story, making up a large part of the learning experience for the protagonist. Magic in my world will be functional and logical (something I greatly admired about Eragon), and can be used in innovative ways to accomplish seemingly complex tasks with minimal effort. For example, forming a cave in a cliff face is something that traditionally requires massive amounts of energy. However, the actual force needed to separate a part of the cliff from the rest of the cliff is not nearly as energy-intensive, but it’s also not possible with traditional methods. With magic, that can be done relatively easily, as the actual energy expenditure isn’t that high.

Characters

• Theobald, the young adult male protagonist
• Theobald’s younger sibling (Gender and age are largely irrelevant to the story.)
• Theobald’s love interest
• The corrupt lord
• The corrupt lord’s personal mage
• The protago-dragon, who the lord’s mage influenced, and is later befriended by Theobald

Animals

Dragons

Yes, we’ve gotten to that part now. Dragons are highly intelligent thanks to the actions of an insane mage who gave dragons human intelligence in a fit of madness. They are the classical embodiment of magic, due to their enormous bodies and strength; while they have wings, they’re unable to fly without the help of magic. They’re bipedal, and their body structure is visually similar to bats, with the exception of a scaly body (because let’s face it, nobody would want to ride atop a mildly hairy fleshy dragon’s back.) Dragons use their snouts to manipulate objects, much like dogs and birds. Dragons can use their magic to speak to human minds directly, without the need for vocal cords.

Something I really liked about Eragon (yes, another thing): the connection between a dragon and its rider. The almost yin-yang balance between the two is an aspect I haven’t really seen anywhere else.