Fantasy or Science-Fiction?
What should I write for NaNoWriMo?
So, I’ve got two ideas floating around in my head for NaNoWriMo. Well, two BIG ideas, with many variations on them that could go a lot of different ways. Naturally, the ideas in my head have polarized between two extremes of fantasy and science-fiction.
Under the fantasy ideas, I have two, I suppose. One is an expansion of the idea I first explored in The Chrome Girl over on Fantasist.net. The idea, in short, is that magic is a virus, a disease. Specifically, a sexually transmitted disease. And, naturally, it spreads quickly and has lots of unintentional consequences. I see this starting with an expedition to find something, well, historical. Something from the time of Christ, back when miracles were more common. That “something” turns out to have a blood-borne pathogen on it or in it or whatever and that gets out and infects someone on the team. Sadly, that person would have to be a bit trampy for the rest of the story to work, but, I think you all get the idea anyway.
The other story that’s fantasy-based is a bit more, um, complicated. Imagine, if you will, a war in fantasy land. Anthropomorphic caterpillars with sabres and muskets fighting goblins mounted on racing snails with lightening lances fighting winged monkeys armed with repeating crossbows complete with bioluminescent tracers. I see a landscape of huge mushrooms and magic run wild. I’m not sure what the cause of the war would be, exactally, but I can figure that out. Naturally, the war would be epic and completed by the end of the NaNoWriMo book.
On the science-fiction end of things, I mainly see a survival story. Possibly a world-wide pandemic combined with one or more meteors and an EMP event that knocks out electronics all over the US. Maybe the fast travelling disease just disintigrates people or maybe it makes them zombies. And, to add a bit of motivation and flavor, the main character has a daughter, say, or a son, in another state that he has to go and “rescue”. Though, how that rescue turns out is sort of up for grabs. Naturally, depending on the zombies/no zombies options, we have two very different stories. (And, yes, this was very much driven by The World Without Us, which I recently read.)
So, what do you all think? Which way should I go?
(And, by that I mean, vote in the poll on the sidebar.)
