guff

Gang plotting

I guess now is as good a time as any to describe the plot for my 2003 NaNoWriMo novel. Not that I actually have anything down, mind you. In fact, for the most part I won’t be creating a plot at all, even though my novel will have one. To be more precise, it will have a lot of them.

Last year, another NaNoWriMo participant (Kass Fireborn/Kassanda Siegel) initiated a forum thread on a simple but fascinating idea: dare others to make use of a plot element in their novel. The dare could be anything, from the addition of a prop not affecting the overall storyline (have a character wear a t-shirt with the phrase “Cheese is God” on it), to one which could change it in unexpected ways (aliens invade Earth, but merely to learn how to polka). At the time I took a few dares, provided a couple more, and commented on how I was tempted to base an entire novel on nothing but them.

Sometimes a temptation can lead one over the edge.

So my novel this year, tentatively titled Babelith, will be based almost exclusively on dares. I am constructing an overarching frame to hang them in, but something tells me no outline will succeed in mapping out the novel as it will finally be written. If I’m successful at writing it, that is.

Initially in this year’s dare thread, I mentioned I’ll try to use every dare posted before October 27th, the cut-off date giving me several days to organize and pound out an outline. But necessarily for this kind of insanity, there are some additional rules I’m enacting to help select dares:

1. Where one dare conflicts with others (first line, name of main character, location, etc.), the first one posted will be used.
2. If more than one dare is suggested in a post, only the first will be accepted. [Exception: unless another one interests me!]
3. More weight is attached to dares given by participants who also accept a dare. [Though same exception as above applies.]

With 135+ forum posts of dares after two days, I’ll likely be forced to add to the rules to cull through them. Otherwise I might end up with more dares than words!