Jan 5, 2011

The Good News and...

In addition to several others, I had my first Creative Writing class today. The good news is I'm looking forward to it and looking forward to writing a whole whole lot. The not as good news is instead of a bunch of short fiction, the class assignment for the whole semester is to write one novel(la) length story, about 30,000-50,000 words. The main reason that's not so good news is I'm not sure what to write about, and it won't be as easy to post on my beloved glassofrandom. I have several ideas, some even good ones, but we'll see what is destined to become my longest story ever written.

For those of you familiar with my work or have read glassofrandom in the past, I'm debating between several.

Prince Pert and the Perilous Quest for the Perfect Princess, a tongue-in-cheek fairytale prequel, I actually have a first draft already written, but that's about 20,000 words and I don't know how much I can add. I probably should actually remove quite a bit. There are only so many "fairest of them all" jokes you can make.

The Friends of Henry Paris, a western/horror/mystery story. One of my ideas I think has the most potential, but possibly too long for a novella. It's about a small town Sheriff in the old west who hires someone to kill a pesky thief, only to have the pesky thief come back from the dead and makes things even worse then he did when alive. OOOOOOOOooooooo.

Magpie, or Nick the Thief
, a character I came up with in my last creative writing class. Basically a harmless thief who is so antisocial and awkward the only way he can connect with people is by stealing seemingly worthless objects from them. But the plot begins when he steals the wrong thing from the wrong mob boss. Dun dun duuuuuuu-- you get it.

I've wanted to write 50,000 words of one story for several years now, and now it finally appears that I will do just that.

What do you think I should do? What would you write if given a 50,000 word assignment? Not that I'll listen, but comments are what I love, and they warm my little black heart.
Bless their little black hearts.

4 comments:

Jacob I. McMillan said...

A novel-writing class? Ridiculous.

If I were you, I'd try to come up with something entirely new. A simple concept, maybe even plotless, but something I know I can just write on and on and on about. But of the ideas you've got, I like the Western horror one the best. If you can't bring that one in under 50,000 words, no writing class will ever help you.

Or I would just write my current novel, The Soul Trade, from the beginning again. It could use a rewrite at this stage.

Wendy McMillan said...

The western definitely sounds the most intriguing.

Mark Beckstrom said...

write an anti-vampire story - maybe about people who hate vampires and all they stand for - or maybe cowboys vs vampires

I just read The Confession by John Grisham and am thinking about "brides" of death row inmates either for script frenzy or nanowrmo

Charlo said...

Nick the Theif, because you've already got an intriguing character, and character development often makes or breaks a story for me, and you are writing this for me, after all.

But no Mob. I think he should start falling in love with a women he has never met, based on the objects he finds in her car... or in her cubicle while he's working as a night janitor.


haaaaaaaaaaaaa. Cowboys vs. vampires.