2012 NaNoWriMo: EPOCH

Brainstorm Scenarios and Guidelines while writing

Brainstorm Scenarios


Funding

          private
          government

Technology

          Communication

                   access to six orbiting communication satellites

                   Other Humana Shelters--via audio-video media as well as e-mail

          Computer

                   Sophisticated Circuitry for computer graphic design and gaming--
                   Graphic Headset for -Reality

                   Increase interactive response between computer and human--
                   programing sophistication--increased robotic intelligence

                   Future Tech-developed in the Mountain: Holodeck: infant stage--you
                   walk through a cartoon world sort of like entering Toon Town in
                   Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

          Environmental

                   Nuclear Power Plant

                   Biologic Engineering--Gene Manipulation--

                   Temperature, Humitidy, and Air Circulation Efficiency

                   Food processing--Replicating

          Pets

          Genetic bank of world species.

The Hidden Controllers
          Group of 50 administrative Personnel unknown by and isolated from the
          main population

                   Mission--to do what is necessary to insure the survival of the colony.

                   Occupy an unknown level--central control--between the top entrance
                   and the first Colony level.

                   Hidden Controllers affect colony through central computer manipulation--
                   information control

                   25 couples--who will have families and train their offspring to become                    the future Hidden Controllers

                   Also representative of the world population--genetic sampling--just as
                   the Colony.


Scenarios
         Disease or accident threatens Colony--
                   Hidden Controllers aide by giving their research info regarding the
                   disease treatment into main computer disguised as analytical
                   computer capacity.

                   Colony dies and controllers become next vital second chance

         Hostile factions threaten to destroy viability of the colony--
                   Hidden Controllers exterminate the threatening individuals in what
                   would be classified as unexplained
                   accidents. A colonial mythos develops--belief the Mountain has
                   become sentient and intolerant of human hostile stupidity. Or
                   analytical computer is sentient and intolerant of human hostile
                   stupidity.

                   Hidden Controllers allow the factions to evolve and intervene ONLY
                   upon determination that the hostilities do threaten the survivability of
                   the colony.

         Disease or accident kills the Hidden controllers--eliminating fail-safe for
         survival of colony

                   Colony survives fine overcoming all problems through their own
                   knowledge that if they don't make it humanity ceases to exist.

                   Colony in effect is reduced through disease or accident but survives.

                   Colony dies as well as the second chance for man--
                   Humana Institute mission fails.

         At the end When colony emerges from inside the mountain--

                   Hidden Controllers reveal themselves and join the exodus from the
                   mountain.

                   Stay hidden--remain in the mountain and emerge only when it is
                   deemed they can do so without being discovered.







When Beginning your story:
Do Not:
1) Let your viewpoint meander.

2). Confuse immediate setting with background. Let your camera eye wander in, out, and about randomly.

3) Start with a lecture in anything--history, physics, biology--anything Expository lumps anywhere are to be avoided if possible, but are deadly in the opening.

4) Start in the middle of a scene.
Ongoing conversations are hard to catch up with.

5) Mislead the reader with false information or try to create suspense or arouse curiosity by withholding necessary information. What you arouse is distrust and annoyance.

6) Sprinkle around neologisms or made-up words that cannot be found in the dictionary.

7) Use words that only you and a few others in your specialty can understand.

8) Use contractions if you can avoid them, and only sparingly no matter what.

9) Have your character look into a reflective surface and describe him/herself.

10) Let your character talk to an inanimate object or animal in order to inform the reader about what is going on.

11) Play games with the sex of your character.

Do
12) Remember the basics:
The Five Ws (Who? Where? What? When? Why?) apply equally to writing journalism and Fiction.

13) Characters: Making them real
Discover who lives behind the facade; peel away the public layers and find who exists under the skin.
As Your characters become more obsessed, they become more interesting.
Know the hidden and public selves of your character.
Place your character in a real place, then get on with your story.

14) Characters: Curiosity
Human beings are so curious that it is a powerful drive/motivator. We are driven to find out what is out there and so is your character.

15) Setting: World
Setting, world and culture are so intricately wed to character that it is impossible to talk about one without the other.

16) Setting: Place
Draw house/building plans, maps of terrain so you know where the doors are, the halls, the over-stuffed chair, the hill, the hairpin curve, how far it is and how long it takes to get from point A to point B.

17) Setting: The Imaginary
Even out of this world settings need to be consistent to make it plausible. If the atmosphere is too thin to breath, then your character must wear a pressure suit and oxygen pack when outside an unpressurized building or vehicle.

18) Plot: Situation and Event
Think of the situation as the precipitaing event in which your character placed in a conflict must respond to resolve how s/he can regain his/her equilibrium.

19) Plot Loops: Something to Avoid
A Plot Loop is any situation that strays from the storyline; isn't relevant to your story.

20) Plot: Choices that Matter
Characters have to do things they don't want to do or make hard choices. If the character's choices are easy and without conflict, then the character's decision won't matter to the reader. There must be a cost either emotional, moral or financial for the choice the character must make.

21) Plot: Considering the Alternative
Short Stories under 4-5 thousand words, just by the nature of their size tend to be unplotted stories. Much short fiction isn't about overcoming obstacles, but rather is about how people behave, who they are, how they fit into society, how technology influences their lives, how they manage or mismanage their relationships, things of personal interest. The writer must completely grasp the meaning of the life of the character before s/he can reveal what the character understands about his/her life.

22) The Forms: Short Story, Novelette, Novella, Novel
For genre-writing awards--Short Stories are 7,500 words and under, Novelettes are 7,501 words to about 15,000, Novellas are 15,000 words to 40,000, and Novels are 40,000 words and up. A cap of 100,000 words is suggested but not set in stone for readability.

23) Taking the Time
No one gives writing time to a new writer, or to an established writer. Everywriter must take the time, forcibly if necessary, by wile, bribery, any method that woks. There is always some time everyday to set aside as one's own, but it requires a lot of self-discipline to seize it and keep it. If not every day, then three days a week, and if that isn't possible then one day a week. As long as you are writing sometime during the week; but, don't schedule your writing time so far apart that you can't keep the passion alive. Writing is a task that needs to be done alone and isolated and consistantly.

24) Emotional Sources
By the time a child is ten years old, s/he has experienced every possible human emotion.
Face your emotions. Acknowledge them and examine them. Then use them.

25) The Self
The writer reveals the self, sometimes fully aware, sometimes unconsciously. That is all that any of us as writers have to offer: our own perceptions of the world, our own interpretation of our culture, our experiences in fictional terms.

26) Take Criticism...
Writers need more than encouragement regarding their work, they also need to know Why they are not succeeding. Where they are weak in the craft. How they can improve.

27) Don't Get Discouraged
If you are feeling low or depressed, go to the library or a book store and look at ALL those books written by individuals who started at the bottom: rejected, unwanted, unloved, to depressed to continue at times, and yet...there they are, their works they produced.

28) Points to Keep in Mind
It's not an editor's job to teach the craft to a beginner writer.

If you can describe your character with a two- or three-word phrase, you're probably writing a stereotype.

Pay attention to the differences in the way men and women talk.

Fiction is first and foremost about people.

It's a good practice to know who the person is before you know what the person does.

Stories told by a detached observer can rarely arouse suspense or tension in a reader who desires the vicarious experience of someone living through the events.

29) Short Fiction Conventions
The First Named Character is the person the story is about.

The character has to be Qualified to Do Whatever is Required in the story.

The reader has to know what the limits are.

Beginning writers often confuse Predictability with Inevitability.

Deus ex machina: It is the Character's Problem and the Character has to resolve it--It never works to have the problem solved by God, a Miracle, Fate, or another Character.

Killing off characters does not add suspense.

A threat has to be real, and it has to put the character in jeopardy.

Call a rabbit a rabbit; a smeerp has to be something that isn't a rabbit.

A plotted story consists of a situation that is problematic. There are attempts to alleviate it or get rid of it, which usually fail and makes the probem worse. There is a crisis where all seems lost. Then there is the final solution that resolves the problem and changes the situation.

A literary or academic approach to story is not the same as a writer's analytical approach.

For many writers, no story is ever finished; at some point it is abandoned. Some abandoned stories are ready to be submitted for publication, and some are not. It is important to learn which is which.