Beautiful Books #1 // Meet Dragonslayer

 

 

Beautiful Books is a different take on Beautiful People -- a monthly writerly meme hosted by Cait @ Paper Fury and Sky @ Further Up Further In so if you're a writer too, check it out!

It's been much too long since I've participated in a Beautiful People link-up, and when I saw this post on Cait's blog I knew I had to post my own Novel Introduction. This month, instead of Beautiful People, the topic is Beautiful Books, and the idea is to introduce your novel to the world!

So, world... meet Dragonslayer! This will be my NaNoWriMo 2015 project, and my aim is to write at least 100k words of it in November! Plausible? Not at all. Possible? Well, sure!

Questions:

 

1. How did you come up with the idea for your novel, and how long have you had the idea?
   Okay, so fun story time: I still act like a little kid. All the time. My neighbors across the street, me, and my brother (and step-brother, this time) enjoy playing adventure games where we all act out random adventures together. Our favorite game to play is called "Hungry Dragon", wherein we all vote on whom to sacrifice to the Hungry Dragon. Then we promptly sacrifice that person and play continues.
   This was one of our adventure games that stemmed from that. I'm thinking of posting a longer in-depth explanation about it in a future blog post, so let me know if you want to see that? I think we played this game, what, a couple months ago? Early September?
2. Why are you excited to write this novel?I'm really in love with these characters, especially the main character, Pupil One. She's just so bubbly and optimistic and outgoing and everything I'm not. It's going to be so great writing about her.
   Plus, I love dragons, so I'm excited about that too.
3. What is your novel about, and what is the title?The title is... *drumroll* DRAGONSLAYER. If you hadn't figured that out already, hehe. It's pretty self-explanatory by the title. There are these young kids, somewhere in the 7-15 age range and it follows their journey and life growing up at this academy their enrolled in to slay dragons, and in a few rare cases, tame and ride them. (Also, at this academy they are assigned 'Pupil' numbers, rather than names).
   The main character, Pupil One, has her mute brother go missing after he discovers he has magic. It's all about her being determined to get him back and defying age-long prophecies and proving things wrong and slaying dragons. It's gonna be fun.
4. Sum up your characters in one word each. (Feel free to add pictures!)Pupil One: Determined
   Pupil Two: Conflicted
   Pupil Five: Dense
   Professor: Legendary
   Secret Enigmatic Person: Enigmatic. Also secret. And a person.
5. Which character(s) do you think will be your favourite to write? Tell us about them! PUPIL ONE. She's so great. I love her because she's so curious and inquisitive and isn't afraid to ask a lot of questions. It's just who she is. She also is so determined and stubborn and stands true to her beliefs. She starts the book optimistic and seeing the best in everybody, but as her brother goes missing, and she starts to grow up, she realizes that maybe things aren't as great as she thought they were when she was a kid. Her journey is just going to be so emotionally impactful for me to write, I think, and difficult too, since these gradually pessimistic changes are things we all experience growing up, I think. Just to a different extent. It'll be super fun and interesting.
6. What is your protagonist’s goal, and what stands in the way?
    
   She has two driving forces throughout the novel:

   a) getting her brother back and

   b) slaying a dragon

   What stands in her way is the strange old man she keeps running into (though she doesn't know it yet) and an age-old prophecy claiming that her brother will die. Slightly problematic.
    
7. Where is your novel set? (Show us pictures if you have them!)
   
   I'm not quite sure where this is, but I'm 99% sure it'll make an appearance in my novel at some point.
   MY WORLD. It's kind of like Medieval England, I gueeessss? (Yes, I'm gonna be that person. Again.) Except there's no royalty. And no knights. And no castles. Also there's no unnecessary sexism. (Not that I have anything against royalty and knights, of course.)
   
8. What is the most important relationship your character has?Oh, this is such an easy one. She loves her brother very much. She always asks for his opinion on things and he writes the things down. Pupil One is just really protective of him and kind to him. They're very important to each other.
9. How does your protagonist change by the end of the novel?I mentioned this earlier, but she does go through a huge journey as a character. However she still has some of the things that make her her. You know what I mean? I'm a pantser and we never finished playing the game so I don't know really where she'll end up.
10. What themes are in your book? How do you want your readers to feel when the story is over?
    I'm not sure, as I haven't planned out anything yet! :)
11. BONUS! Tell us your 3 best pieces of advice for others trying to write a book in a month.

• DO NOT DELETE. Seriously, here guys. If there's something your unhappy with, highlight it in yellow or something, or use the strikeout feature. That way you know to cut it out when editing. But when your writing NaNoWriMo-style? Resist the temptation!
• WORD WARS. These things are the best. The idea is, you write as many words as you can in a limited amount of time. So, say, 10 minutes. It's fun to race against friends, too! (Feel free to buddy me on NaNo as Waffle Writer so we can word war against each other!)
• TAKE ADVANTAGE OF EVERY SPARE MINUTE. At lunch during work? Write. Got a few spare minutes during passing time at school? Pull out a notebook and write. You'd be surprised at how those minutes add up.

Also, most importantly, guys: stay healthy and hydrated! Get plenty of sleep, please. It can be tempting to sacrifice sleep or hygiene or society for the sake of getting in the daily word count, but it is so, so important to take care of yourself.

 

Thanks for reading! Are you doing NaNoWriMo?