To start things off I laid out a rough outline. I tend to do my outlines in time-line form, because I'm anal retentive that way. And because it keeps me on-track and helps me avoid temporal inconsistencies- although that shouldn't be such a problem with this book, since, as I discovered, the main story is apparently not going to cover more than about six years, four of which won't even be on the page (see! Outlining is important because you learn things you didn't even know about your story...). I'll refine and expand this as I get further into it, but this is how things stand for now:
Backstory
Dramen beloved by people and Court, crows revered
-22 Dramen and Magician become lovers
-20 Dramen breaks M’s heart
-20 M curses Dramen (to be broken by true love), crows become despised
Dramen mopes. Like, a lot. No mortal will have anything to do with him: curse looks hopeless.
00 Serenity (Sera) born
08 Sera finds wounded crow, nurses it back to health
09 Crows begin to follow her around without D’s knowledge
15 D notices Sera’s affinity for his people, decides she will be the one to break the curse
Novel Begins
16 Sera leaves home
16 D courts Sera (roses)
16 Sera discovers D’s true identity, returns his affections
16 Sera goes to Court, meets Sivon and the Phoenixes, etc
16 It is revealed that D and Sera are not actually in love: just infatuation. Curse remains.
16 Sera, horrified at herself, goes back out into the world for some soul-searching
Part Two
20 D attempts more romances, finds them unsatisfying- goes to Sera to bitch
20 They become actual friends
21 They fall in love without knowing it
22 Some sort of crisis reveals it
22 Curse broken, crows restored.
Happily Ever After. Hooray!
So there's that. Now, the second thing I worked on today was the beginnings of my character sketches. To be fair it's not really the beginnings, since these are characters that have been drifting around in my brain in one form or another for ten years. But for the purposes of this incarnation, I needed to get something written down, that I could come back to and reference. Just like with the outline, these will become refined and expanded as the mood strikes- but for the time being, this is what I'm working with:
Dramen- Crow King. Once beloved by the Court and the world at large. His people were revered, and he was devastatingly charming and clever. Thoughtlessly self-absorbed, regularly broke hearts. After he was cursed by the Nightingale Queen he fell completely from grace: mortals turned from him and his people, their reactions ranging from annoyance to loathing. Dramen became depressed and prone to brooding as he realized people were no longer dazzled by him. Takes himself way too seriously when at the beginning of the book.
The curse has layers. The first is that he’s stuck in crow form any time he visits the mortal realm. The second is that it turned mortal hearts (in general) against crows, while at the same time robbing Dramen of much of his natural charm/dazzle. It can only be broken by true love.
Sera (Serenity)- mortal girl that loves crows. She, too, is amazingly charming and thoughtlessly self-absorbed. People are naturally attracted to her, and as such are more tolerant of the crows when she’s around. She is sweet and fun and not very serious at the beginning of the book- although prone to drama and bursts of temper. When it is revealed that their “true love” is merely infatuation (along with a display of her past behavior regarding people’s hearts) she sobers considerably and goes out to find a higher purpose.
Sivon- Raven Queen, older sister to Dramen. She is the possessor of True Vision, which combined with her long life makes her very wise. She has little patience for her brother’s dramatics, and is herself very good-natured and practical. Her husband is a true raven.
______- Nightingale Queen, former lover of Dramen. Very beautiful and powerful (but highly temperamental) mage. Curses him when he thoughtlessly breaks her heart.
______- Phoenix Emperor and Empress- they rule over the Welkin Court (/Feathered Court)
So there you have some of the main players, and a few of the supporting. There will be others, doubtless, but I haven't met them yet, and thus have not had to figure out anything about them.
Finally, I worked on writing blurbs, because the NaNoWriMo asks for a brief synopsis of your novel. I am going to save a tiny smidge of my dignity by only showing you the one I ended up using. The others... well, let's just say I will probably not be able to write book blurbs for a living. Especially not for books I haven't actually entirely figured out yet...
Everyone loves Sera- whether she wants them to or not. Animal or human, young or old, male or female- everyone finds her charming, delightful, and all but impossible to say ‘no’ to. The people of her village even indulge her strange affection for those filthy birds of ill-omen, crows. As she grows older, Sera begins to capture the romantic interest of boys and men at an alarming rate: even, it seems, that of the cursed Crow King himself.
Reading that gives you a little further insight into what I will be doing with the character of Sera- which I didn't actually realize at the beginning of this day. And of course there is loads more still locked in my brain- stuff that I may never write down, but that it's important for me to know to write this story. Because I, unlike Tolkien, don't think you actually want to hear about ever single political intrigue that has ever arisen in the Welkin Court (or the Empyrean Court, for that matter- what's that? What is the Empyrean Court? Never you mind! Because it's not friggin' pertinent!). And if you do care about that sort of thing... then get lots of people to buy my book, so that I'll be compelled to write a sequel. You know, when I publish it. Someday.
::cough::
EDIT: I did a quick word-count on this, and it came out to about 1150. In order to meet my goal of 50,000 words in 30 days, I will need to average 1667 words per day. So about half again as much as I threw down for this.
Oh boy.
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