Everyone in all the stories done over the past 10 years has been a hobbit wizard. They just don’t like to talk about it.
The honest answer is that I’m intimidated by the sheer amount of world building required to do fantasy well and not have it be, well, just another story where the characters just happen to be hobbits and it’s mentioned once and never discussed again,… and, I wouldn’t want to just borrow someone else’s world and trust that everyone has read that book. People will be complaining that they couldn’t get started until 6pm because they had to binge watch the entire Peter Jackson LotR movie series before they could get writing!!!
That’s not to say that I won’t get over that, and figure something out for a future year though.
My favourite approach I’ve seen to that is in Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller series. In the books, the movie “The Lincoln Lawyer” actually exists – the characters acknowledge that Matthew McConaughey was in a movie about them and they got some stuff wrong and hollywoodised other things.
Done a bit of homework for you, lads: No internet (not till August 1991). No Text messages (December 1992). Mobile phones, yes, but they were just, you know, phones. For phoning people. Hmph. My opening line goes back to the drawing board.
Yup! The 1991 equivalent of a text message was phoning someone’s secretary and having the leave a message on a telephone message pad on their desk. Very civilised.
I’ve not seen this before just now and none of the characters in the story are based on any real people (so I’m definitely not implying that anyone mentioned in the above article are in any way like any characters in NiaDX), but it’s a worth a scan if your finding it dry!
Good article! When I was living in Quebec several years ago, there was a huge scandal along similar lines. It took a long time to get to the bottom of it and many politicians were implicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charbonneau_Commission
Basically, the mafia controlled everything and all the big construction compaines colluded to artificially inflate their bids for public sector infrastructure jobs. Then, the most powerful guys decided who would get which contract and no one dared to underbid. Fascinating and crazy it went on as long as it did.
—laughs— I’d just come back from searching the internet because I wanted to figure out which iPhone the character I’m writing about would have pulled out of his jacket to take a photo.
Apple’s first digital camera, the QuickTake 100, wasn’t released til 1994.
The 90s are starting to feel a whole lot farther away!
I guess the characters probably shouldn’t be wearing masks and distancing either. Gotta get my head around the “old normal.”
(Presumably because people weren’t distracted by the internet and their phones and they still had to record real instruments in a room with other people)
[Rushes in holding a bunch of papers and folders and panting]
Hi guys! Sorry, sorry, I’m late, I know, I didn’t say anything, it’s all a bit crazy here [UFO crash-lands behind her] but I’m fine, I’m good, everything’s good, let’s see, where were w[zombies attack] —stop it, I’m trying to get some writing done here, guys… [fiery hailstorm] Okay, okay, everybody inside, no need to panic, let’s just — [hungry cannibal flying frogs swarm covers town] Just close that window, will you? Thanks. Okay. Deep breath.
It’s exciting to be doing this again. However, my desire for details to be correct is leading me to a lot of online reading (my chapter has quite a specific setting, about which I know very little!)
Hopefully I’ll get beyond that soon and actually start generating some words to fill in the outline
I was too excited to sleep after I got my brief so just stayed up and wrote and it’s done!
Hope it’s ok.
I received a message to say it was received so now got to wait to see the finished product.
Love Novel in a Day
Yay!
NiaD X done.
What a year it’s been so far
Just a newbie question: it doesn’t state it in my brief but what if the characters (or some of them) do not survive by the end of a chapter or turn out to be some alien cannibal frogs (thanks for that image, by the way, it won’t leave my head now) - is it overstepping too much?
Unless I’m dreaming, which, truth to tell, is quite possible, Mr. P. Fender has changed his avatar.
Why?
And how have so many finished already?
And why is it comptroller not controller?
And…
You can kill, maim, or send off to university any character you’ve invented (invent as many as you like!), but if they were provided in your brief, they’ll likely be needed in later chapters, so should only die / lose a limb if the chapter brief says so!
They should only be revealed actually to be alien cannibal frogs in skin covered robot exoskeletons if the frogs are happy to spend the rest of the novel back in disguise as normal humans.
(starting to wonder what I put in all the briefing packs now)
(or more to the point, what’s in this tea)
