Six Throwaway Novel Ideas

With a full season to go before NaNoWriMo, YT has been thinking of ideas for this year's novel. A good idea, expressed in a couple of sentences, can become the kernel of a good plot. Here are six of them that didn't make the cut, most in the science fiction genre. Faithful Readers, fellow WriMos, use 'em or laugh at 'em, your choice.

1. Because the code of public manners has become so strict, some people wear masks in public. Each mask shows the wearer's image, but is animated by a computer "agent" to mimic the wearer's personality. Inside the masks, people can think their private thoughts without fear of their faces betraying them, but the price is permanent divided attention.

2. In a world with teleportation machines, jumping to random, underused destinations is the cheap way to get a vacation. This is similar to last-minute airline ticket sales today. Then something goes wrong, and people disappear...

3. A man kills a rich man's automaton "double," then gets charged with murder. The charge is that the rich man lived more in the automaton than in his original body.

4. A man kills a business associate so the associate's heir will end up with a larger share of the business than him, and thus will take his place at the end of a list of suspects in a fraud investigation.

5. A guy steals an extremely rare bottle of champagne from a restaurant, then tries to sell it. A comedy of errors.

6. A man time-travels forward 80 years and cannot figure out how to get back. He sees the political situation as ripe for change toward his turn of the century neoconservative views, and to his advantage.

YT has stumbled upon a serendipitous combination of tech news and business trends... The leading contender for his 2008 NaNoWriMo novel is a mystery where the crime is committed with - wait for it - car electronics.

Noveling? What Noveling?

Hmm, it's a long way from December, yet YT has written nothing new in his blog. Funny thing, writing month starts with a bang, finishes in a rush, and three days later, everyone puts away their wild inner novelist for about 10.5 months. Same here.

So: how did it all end, Brico?

Well, friends and faithful readers, YT skipped several inner chapters, you know, the relationship stuff, and got right to the denouement and its aftermath. Mysterious types skulking about, fire, romance, narrow escapes! Ironic epilogue! 50,000 words with hours to spare!

If YT's first year effort was a third of a novel in 50K words, this one might have been half of a novel. It gets easier with practice, and some forethought, just a wee bit of scheming before November 1 and a few minutes of planning each day during the month.

The urge to drop the novel cold in early December has proved irresistible again, though.

YT has given some thought to more work on his third year novel, Drunkard's Leap. The universe it's set in has a few more wrinkles, the third act is stronger, though still not strong enough, and YT has noodled with an "origins" story set decades before. There may yet be some good thing coming out of the concept.