I haven't written much about my writing this year, and in part that's because I've accomplished very little in my writing. I've struggled on and off to rework or move forward on my current Grandpa Anarchy Story Arc, but it's been very difficult and at most I've rewritten parts of stories or completed a few paragraphs on this or that story, and that's all I've managed for most of the year.
I really wanted to work on NaNoWriMo though, and I wanted to "finish" my unpublished fanfic story Nerima All-Stars. I tried to work on it in September and October, but I really wasn't able to get anything accomplished until NaNoWriMo started. The pressure of getting something written every day for NaNoWriMo has helped kick-start my writing and to date I'm behind but cruising along and I think I'll be able to manage 50,000 words in the next few days.
So let's talk about this story, because as always I'm trying to feel my way forward with the plot.
The story, in short: some gods and goddesses and one demon decide to play a "superhero" game where they transform a Ranma 1/2 world into the kind of universe where superheroes exist. Then they each pick one of the main characters to transform into a hero, while the two people on the "bad" team get to pick someone to become a supervillain.
This was the entire idea for my original story, which consisted of the first few scenes as setup, and which I wrote quite a few years ago -- more than twenty years ago now. Originally I thought, I'll make a few heroes, we'll have a fight, maybe I'll write sequels involving one or two more villains. But when I finally decided to work on the story in earnest, it became evident that I was incapable of writing even one single battle with a villain that didn't take me multiple years to write. Currently my document is over 250,000 words and I'm not close to done -- although this does include a lot of research notes at the end of the document, because NaNoWriMo.
My story takes some weird twists and turns that probably do not make for a good way to tell a tale, but I keep following my instincts and writing what seems best to me at the moment. To whit:
I set my heroes up to fail, because I knew it would be funniest if Ranma Saotome was supposed to somehow become a sorcerer supreme and Akane Tendo was meant to be the next Tony Stark/Iron Man. Then I wrote the inevitable confrontation with the villain, and of course they failed. That's okay, heroes aren't supposed to succeed at first -- but I began to realize that there was no believable way to transform Ranma into a competent sorcerer in just a few weeks. He couldn't believe in himself enough to overcome his shortcomings. Same for the other characters.
So i wrote a very long chapter in which Ranma is placed in another universe where he can spend ten years learning magic. This seemed like a workable solution, and I enjoyed writing it, and it involved Lina Inverse which was fun because Lina and Ranma make a fun combination (and they had the same voice actress in Japan, so there's one drawing of Lina where they gave her a long braid and leaned into the Ranma resemblance). But! This chapter is kind of a side-step narratively -- instead of dealing with the main plot, now we're going off to another world and having some adventures there.
But I enjoyed writing it and I assume it will be fun to read. This became Chapter Six of my story, titled Sorceress. Yet that only fixed things for one character. I had to come up with something to explain why Akane and Nabiki suddenly got much better as well, so I wrote two more very long chapters involving them doing something similar -- I stuck them in heaven to learn their powers, again as a kind of "time here doesn't count back on earth" setup. These were Chapter Seven: Temporary Goddess, and Chapter Eight: Spider's Web and Shattered Globe.
Two years ago I was working hard on Chapter Nine: Time Stands Still, which I had planned to be the next "real" chapter in the story, but I had a lot of plot threads to tie up from my previous two chapters and so this chapter became a third straight chapter of things happening up in heaven with all of the characters there.
So my story does not flow in a very direct manner, plot-wise. We have four long chapters where characters go off to other places to become good at what they do, before a final showdown with the villain. But I really thought that after this we would dive right into the big conflict.
As I wrote Chapter Ten: Asleep in Nerima, I came to realize that just explaining how all of the heroes prepared for the big fight was a chapter in itself. So I still wasn't even to the point of the actual battle. I've rewritten this chapter and rearranged things a few times, and I did some of that this November, but I think the chapter's pretty firm as written right now.
I've been working on Chapter Eleven: One Night in Nerima. Last year I did a few scenes that take place at the start of the final battle, so to speak, but in the meantime it had become apparent to me that my heroes had become immensely powerful in the last several chapters, and I would need to also explain why the villain was powerful enough to still be a threat to them. So I came up with yet ANOTHER time manipulation trick, in which the villain has a sorceress place the heroes within a time bubble, which gives him about three months with no interference during which he takes over Tokyo and most of Japan.
And... I was originally just going to have them wake up next day and discover that all of this has happened. But it seemed to me that I should document his rise to power a bit. It gives me a chance to show how he becomes powerful, and what his allies are capable of, before the final fight.
That's the current chapter I've been working on, and until recently I was struggling to write it. It wasn't interesting. I decided that this was because there were no sympathetic characters to follow, and I had two that I could write about -- Akane's friend Yuka, and a storm controller named Lady Leviathan who really just wants to be left alone. So I tried writing chapters involving these two, and this included going all the way back to chapter three or four, so that I could introduce my storm controller as a character who just might have some interesting abilities, and establish that she and Yuka had met.
I wrote a few scenes, and it was still pretty boring. Yuka hides out in a library. She lives on the streets. She evacuates to a shelter when Nerima is placed under a state of emergency. She meets Lady Leviathan again, and they talk. All very boring.
One of my problems was that I've written scenes in which Yuka finds her friend Sayuri in a bombed-out Nerima, and Sayuri is dying, and at this point she is offered power by a demon and decides to accept in order to save her friend's life. And I was having trouble figuring out why she goes back into Nerima after she's already evacuated. I mean, she wants to save her friend, but then why hasn't she tried to do so before now?
And I told myself, the way to make a story interesting is to imagine what's the worst thing that can happen to your character, and try doing that. I was writing Yuka as being a reasonable citizen -- avoiding any confrontation. She can't save her friend, so why have her even try? Well, because that's more interesting, yes?
So I came up with a secondary reason for her to return to the Tendo Dojo, where the villain is holding court, and suddenly the story was more interesting again. And I thought, what if she accidentally discovers Akane's secret base? And that sounded interesting, so I did that. She escapes from certain capture by finding the entrance to the base in the back of Akane's closet. Then I thought, what's the worst that can happen now? The villain's henchmen -- a demonic assassin and a powerful sorceress -- get into the base. So I did that.
Then I had to figure out how Yuka avoids becoming ensnared a second time. The base has an A.I. that controls several spare suits of armor, and there's a robot there as well, and they help fight the villains and allow for Yuka to escape. Behind her, the base explodes, which prevents the villains from following her.
Anyway, I think I've crafted a more interesting story -- at the very least, it was more fun for me to write. It's turning my "Dr. Pineapple takes over Japan" chapter into a massive section of the story that might need to be broken up into 2-3 chapters, but if it's interesting then I guess that's okay?
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