What are you working on right now?

These days I find my way into a novel not by worldbuilding and then dropping characters into said world but by finding a character and building a world around them. I've just found my latest character (or the seed of him) while watching the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch 'One Leg Too Few', in which a one-legged man approaches a casting agent for the part of Tarzan. The one-leggedness isn't the funny part so much as the casting agent's thoughtful and eloquent management of the poor guy's expectations ("Now your right leg I love. When you came through the door I instantly thought to myself 'that's the leg for the role'. I've nothing against your right leg. Unfortunately... neither have you..."). I like the idea of taking that sensibility and outlook and putting it into a fantasy character in a fantasy world.
That's all I have really. But just the idea makes me smile and gets me thinking.
 
About three weeks left in the first draft of a low fantasy novel. Then it sits for a while.

Next up I have a scifi draft banging to get out, and a couple short stories ready for revision. Probably finish the draft before starting on the shorts.
 
Hi everyone, not a new member but new to this post.

I'm currently drafting an early middle grade horror based on the nursery rhyme Mary had a little lamb, a flash fiction memoir, and a vaudeville picture book about invisible disabilities. I'm also working with my editor on my picture book about consent.

I'm currently waiting on responses from publishers about my science fiction chapter book, two picture books about disability, and a fourth wall humor picture book.
 
1) Sequel to my first novel (YA superheroes). When building a superhero high school in a disused supervillain lair, make sure you've removed all the death traps. And all the supervillains.
2) Novel set in an alternate timeline where the Britannic Empire has necromancers and a God of Health Insurance, and a giant turtle is about to eat London.
3) Novel with a herald who has been sent on a quest to slay a dragon and return the hoard of toilet paper and hand sanitiser to the plague-ravaged kingdom. And the Princess has come down with an advanced case of necromancy.
4) The superhero high school has around forty students. I now have about ten minor characters demanding novels of their own.
 
I've been hard at work on something which takes place more than 500 years into the future in a futuristic yet still recognizable society under an endless night sky, with people who have evolved to their surroundings and changed drastically while following an unknown threat and more to it. Evolution and such have kicked in and made them into entirely different people while new things continue to be discovered all that jazz. I was also working on a prequel to explain how things ended up the way they are but I don't know about whether or not to put it into its own book or if it's possible to simplify it into a few chapters.
 
WatermelonPink said:
…with people who have evolved to their surroundings and changed drastically…
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That sounds interesting, and it raises a question I’ve been mulling over with my own current project. It involves a protagonist who is forced to inhabit an alien body for a good part of the story, and during that period she’s exclusively with other aliens. These aren’t just men in suits, they’re exotic, Vernon Vinge type alien aliens. But what I’ve been thinking is that a story largely about alienation (literal and figurative) may be difficult for many potential readers to relate to, even if I stay focused on my MC’s core humanity throughout. Even alien stories are stories about people (or “people”), because otherwise who cares? Still, I know it’s a risk, since there won’t be any sense of familiarity except at the very beginning and the very end, when she returns. But I gotta write what I gotta write.

No real conclusion. I’m writing a crazy story with very few (recognizable) humans in it. It is what it is!
 
WatermelonPink said:
I was also working on a prequel to explain how things ended up the way they are but I don't know about whether or not to put it into its own book or if it's possible to simplify it into a few chapters.
Click to expand...
Hard to do that without slipping into cliché. Eco disaster, war, bad science or whatever. If you can come up with a unique spin on how the situation arose it might stand up on its own. If it were me, without something seriously different, I wouldn't even do chapters, just drop a few lines in suggesting the historic causality and leaving the reader to mix their own spices.
I think readers have their own axes, say political, religious or scientific, those with agenda X want X to be the cause of the trouble and those with agenda Y want Y to trash the joint. You can't please them all so :censored: and leave things somewhat open.
 
Astro Pen said:
Hard to do that without slipping into cliché. Eco disaster, war, bad science or whatever. If you can come up with a unique spin on how the situation arose it might stand up on its own.
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I was thinking about how to do it in a way where it could work well since the idea was supposed to be about how the actions of three characters in the far past would have influenced society as it is in the current time with their actions. More specifically how their actions would have thrust the world into a time with a Sun which never rises. The story itself uses heavy fantasy elements and I could just tell it in a few lines while leaving some details out. I've sort of just taken a pause on the story thinking about this idea although it could just work as information pieces littered throughout parts of the story where it makes sense while leaving things still open to interpretation.
 
WatermelonPink said:
I've been hard at work on something which takes place more than 500 years into the future in a futuristic yet still recognizable society under an endless night sky, with people who have evolved to their surroundings and changed drastically while following an unknown threat and more to it. Evolution and such have kicked in and made them into entirely different people while new things continue to be discovered all that jazz. I was also working on a prequel to explain how things ended up the way they are but I don't know about whether or not to put it into its own book or if it's possible to simplify it into a few chapters.
Click to expand...

Go ahead and write it and get it out of your system, because if you don't it will keep gnawing at you and possibly distract you from doing what may be more important to you. Even if it's a failure you will have the satisfaction that you tried and perhaps it will give you a better idea.
 
Lafayette said:
Go ahead and write it and get it out of your system, because if you don't it will keep gnawing at you and possibly distract you from doing what may be more important to you. Even if it's a failure you will have the satisfaction that you tried and perhaps it will give you a better idea.
Click to expand...
I write stuff all the time that goes into a slush folder to be reworked later. Or not.
 
I'm finishing a steampunk novel set in an alternative 1917 where WW1 never happened (but the villains are trying very hard to make sure it does).
 
I'm about 4/5ths of the way through the strange far-future story I started to keep myself sane during the summer heatwave. It's about people on another planet discovering that they were once part of a galactic empire and the race for various factions to use the lost technology. I only really started writing it as a laugh and it's gone a lot of ways that I didn't really expect due to a severe lack of planning, but the end is in sight and I'm pretty sure how it will finish. Not long to go now!
 
Not planning very far ahead has interesting effects. It's made the overall arc of the book - well, not exactly predictable, but familiar, in that it's a really a conspiracy thriller. But it's also forced more ingenuity from scene to scene. And I've been able to squeeze more alien dinosaurs in, which can't be a bad thing. It's beginning to look less like a complete jumble and more like (hopefully) the written equivalent of a Moebius picture.
 
WatermelonPink said:
I've been hard at work on something which takes place more than 500 years into the future in a futuristic yet still recognizable society under an endless night sky, with people who have evolved to their surroundings and changed drastically while following an unknown threat and more to it. Evolution and such have kicked in and made them into entirely different people while new things continue to be discovered all that jazz.
Click to expand...
How do they grow crops? Or have they overcome the need for photosynthesis?
 
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