What are you currently writing?

[Raptori]

I'm surprised this thread doesn't exist yet, especially considering how many writers there are around here.

So, what stories are you currently writing? Share as much or as little about your WIPs as you'd like - synopses, elevator pitches, titles, genres, inspiration, anything at all.

[ArhiX]

Propably most of us are now writing (dum tu du dum) — outlines. For NaNo of course. Just like me now :p

[Mr.J]

It is strange why this sort of thing is absent, perhaps because it requires you to bare your precious works a bit, those types of writing that are personally yours and hidden in your word document, suddenly baring it all can feel a bit exposing?

Anyway currently writing a fictional (obviously) autobiography of a gay man who lived a life in the pursuit of looking for something better, his desire to be a poet and write his experiences of the world he traveled through, we discover the fantasy world he lives in through his eyes (I haven't really detailed many elements of it yet, but I want it to be an actual 'world' with different continents and cultures that he travels to).

Begins with him waking up one morning in his first year at university after having slept with the nephew of the King, realising he's made a terrible mistake and needs to get expelled. My idea was to have a fantasy story but from the viewpoint of a writer/poet (Important note: there will be NO torturous Tolkien-esque long poems, trust me) rather than the usual POV character's we get in fantasy. I may also switch gender I haven't decided yet.

Would anyone actually read this? I'm curious.

[ClintACK]

Two current WIPs, both in revisions... and of course a bunch of brainstorming on a bunch of different possible NaNoWriMo projects...

Novella: Adventuring Party (20k words)
Blurb: A history student at the University embeds with a band of heroes (classic RPG adventuring party) to get the real story.  Along the way he'll discover that experiencing violence is nothing like reading about it, gods and wizards and magic really are incomprehensible, and moral lines are harder to draw in the trenches than in a library cubicle.


Novel: Bad Blood (64k words and growing)

This one was inspired by @Yora's "We are not using the Z-word" thread (http://fantasy-faction.com/forum/writers-corner/we-are-not-using-the-z-word/).  That marinated around in my head for a bit until it became "I hate the word Vampire" -- because someone who has to drink blood, but otherwise isn't really at all like a vampire, would hate the word even more than a writer does.  I wrote about 800 words of "talking straight into the camera" character discovery and came to a line about how she was trying to find other people like her, put a personal ad in the paper, and met a whole series of goths, freaks, role-players and Twilight fans.  And then I had my story (starting with the first *real* response to her ad).  (And, although I didn't realize it, a theme -- about growing up feeling different and alienated with very negative societal stereotypes and no one else like you to serve as a counterexample.)

I think I don't want to say more about it yet, because I might subject Writing Group people to my first chapter, and I'll want a clean take on what promises I'm making.


NaNoWriMo: Alas, @Yora has done it again with http://fantasy-faction.com/forum/writers-corner/how-do-you-write-mystery-and-investigation-stories/ and I find myself struggling to come up with a fantasy mystery to outline for NaNoWriMo.  Even though I've never written a mystery, and frequently discovery-write myself into corners.

[night_wrtr]

My WIP is centered on a non-human character that wants to make his people proud and be the best non-human around, but eventually ends up causing a revolution that virtually destroys the entire empire. 

[Elfy]

I'm happy to share a few words about my WiP. It's set in an alternate 1945, just after the end of WW2. The main twist in this world is that magical races like elves and dwarves are real and part of society. My hero is an elven fighter pilot suffering from PTSD, who steals a plane and winds up hunting for a dragon's treasure in the Caucasus, all the while being tracked by a determined, elf hating military policeman who wants to recover his nation's plane and court martial my hero.

[Mr.J]

All of these sound great! Just shows how much interesting and diverse stuff there is here. Hope you guys got a mix of characters too! 

[Francis Knight]

I have a bit load of beginnings (each of which I could expand happily)

But I'm currently -- and slowly -- working on a work where Merlin is the bad dude and Morgan Le Fey is the good

Too soon to tell if it'll p[an out

[Nora]

Interesting all around.

I'm definitely not working on a NaNo project, but just revising the novel concept I had when I arrived here. It was a bit dark and very messy, missing characters to flesh the story, and a real adventure for my MC.

Now It's a bit better but I'm still missing an Arc for one of my MC, and the background of my bad guy.

The whole story is set in the world I've expended with my Hades character, in Rogues and Politics : 2 or 3 centuries after the nuclear fall of our own world, the southern hemisphere is the only place still harboring real surviving cities. It's a mix of very old technology and futuristic one, with a population often dying young or born deformed by the high radiations.
The MC, Sybil, lives and works in one of these cities. Hades is the second most important character, and a Uni lecturer and researcher called Malcolm is the third. The bad guy acts out of love, and causes the mystery part in the story.

I would start writing, I could, with what I have, but I'm genuinely stumped by the lack of knowledge on that mystery part, and not sure about the arc of this malcolm guy, who got a lot of his lines stolen or distorted by Hades. So things are a mess and un-messing it is what I'm currently writing.

[Elfy]

It is strange why this sort of thing is absent, perhaps because it requires you to bare your precious works a bit, those types of writing that are personally yours and hidden in your word document, suddenly baring it all can feel a bit exposing?

Anyway currently writing a fictional (obviously) autobiography of a gay man who lived a life in the pursuit of looking for something better, his desire to be a poet and write his experiences of the world he traveled through, we discover the fantasy world he lives in through his eyes (I haven't really detailed many elements of it yet, but I want it to be an actual 'world' with different continents and cultures that he travels to).

Begins with him waking up one morning in his first year at university after having slept with the nephew of the King, realising he's made a terrible mistake and needs to get expelled. My idea was to have a fantasy story but from the viewpoint of a writer/poet (Important note: there will be NO torturous Tolkien-esque long poems, trust me) rather than the usual POV character's we get in fantasy. I may also switch gender I haven't decided yet.

Would anyone actually read this? I'm curious.

I'd probably give it a go. It has a bit of a Walter Mitty feel about it, and there's also a touch of Replay in there. I quite like fictional biographies, Austin Grossman does them really well.

[Doctor_Chill]

Been on and off with a project for about five years. Little Fantasy Noir type thing. Basic heist story, y'know.

[Mr.J]

It is strange why this sort of thing is absent, perhaps because it requires you to bare your precious works a bit, those types of writing that are personally yours and hidden in your word document, suddenly baring it all can feel a bit exposing?

Anyway currently writing a fictional (obviously) autobiography of a gay man who lived a life in the pursuit of looking for something better, his desire to be a poet and write his experiences of the world he traveled through, we discover the fantasy world he lives in through his eyes (I haven't really detailed many elements of it yet, but I want it to be an actual 'world' with different continents and cultures that he travels to).

Begins with him waking up one morning in his first year at university after having slept with the nephew of the King, realising he's made a terrible mistake and needs to get expelled. My idea was to have a fantasy story but from the viewpoint of a writer/poet (Important note: there will be NO torturous Tolkien-esque long poems, trust me) rather than the usual POV character's we get in fantasy. I may also switch gender I haven't decided yet.

Would anyone actually read this? I'm curious.

I'd probably give it a go. It has a bit of a Walter Mitty feel about it, and there's also a touch of Replay in there. I quite like fictional biographies, Austin Grossman does them really well.

Hmm bit different from Walter Mitty in tone I think, it's basically a viewpoint from a writer/poet wondering middle earth, rather than imagining his fantasy world. Also trying to quite hard to make sure he's not seen as an unreliable narrator, he's quite honest with his faults. Although people like unreliable narrators so idk.

[m3mnoch]

my current wip is a character-driven fantasy series set in the chaotic city/duchy of rainn.  it's on the border of a nation at war during the early tipping point of clockwork technology.

oh, there's also magic.  http://fantasy-faction.com/forum/writers-corner/explain-your-magic-systems/msg114787/#msg114787

it's roughly going to look like the old thieves' world stuff.  lots of battling factions.  lots of heavy, gray personalities.  a bunch of novellas and short stories, all tightly coupled along an ongoing storyline.  in my head, it works like a television series, with each novel being a 'season' filled with 100k words or so from a dozen different povs and intersecting stories wrapped around a main plot thread.  almost like an anthology circling the same story.

my favorite titles so far are "Tales of Rainn" for the series and "The Patter of Rainn" for the first book.  they may or may not change.

the intro story looks like it's going to be 60k words or so based on the 8k word outline.  i'm about 23k words in so far.  (thanks writing group for critiquing 17k words so far!)  it's basically an escalate-then-crash-explode setup for everything.  it's got one of those mind-bending, the sixth sense type twists at the end.  (that i have a very, very hard time not telling people about -- and no, it's not a silly 'everything's a dream!' endings either)  i'm also planning on packing in a fistful of short stories fleshing out some of the background events and people.

i'm happy to let anyone who wants to read the first draft as i go, tho, i'd probably recommend waiting until i have that first 60k word intro story done.

[Yora]

As I usually am, I am currently throwing some ideas around in my head about monster fighting warriors and shamans in a bronze age fantasy world with elves and dragons. But as always, I don't really have much ideas for a plot.

[JRTroughton]

I haven't written anything for a while. I'm tinkering every so often on a short story where a girl travels to the underworld to bring back her deceased grandfather, but I haven't been finding time nor rhythm of late.

This makes me sad.