Friday, April 4, 2014

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 4: Bombs Away


Sometimes things just fall together.

My plan for the day was to work on a story idea I had called Bombs Away.  This was meant to be an encounter with a villain named Brain Bomb who was an "explosivekinetic" -- he manifests bombs with his mind.  I really didn't have a story idea behind this, just a fun idea for a villain, but I worked out who the sidekick was and what the situation was -- the villain was trashing the local mall.  This allowed for some fun descriptions of mall food court places blowing up.  I wrote about 1/3 to 1/2 of the story.

The problem was, I still had no idea where the story was going or how it was supposed to end.  Having Grandpa defeat the villain wasn't an ending with any surprise or comedy.  I had no idea how to work it into something that was funny or unexpected.

I had also planned on writing two stories today, because tomorrow we have a Tai-Pan Work Party tomorrow and I likely won't have a lot of time to work on a Grandpa Anarchy story.  So, stuck on what to do with Bombs Away, I decided to work on my other story for the day, an idea titled Already Failed, which was an argument between Grandpa Anarchy and his sidekick on what constitutes a "risk worth taking".  The Sidekick argues that it's a dumb expression, a risk was only worth taking if it succeeds.  Grandpa counters that if you don't take a risk, you've failed already.  I had an idea for how to end it in a funny manner too -- I just didn't have a villain or a situation to put it in.

It occured to me that story A was a villain and a situation, story B was something that could happen looking for a situation and a villain.  If I put them together, I had one complete story.

So now Bombs Away is almost done, and I'm in search of a new second story to work on tonight.  Right now I think that will be Beneath The Skin, in which some villain finds a way to release the inner monster within Grandpa Anarchy.  Grandpa's allies need to defeat him -- but can they hurt their friend?  (Naturally, they're all quite eager to do so.)

Update:  finished Bombs Away before bedtime.  1,160 words... possibly not one of my better stories though.  But oh well, on to the next one!

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