Bragatyr wrote:I definitely think an outline is a good idea, I'm really casual about my writing and I don't believe in a rigid structure, but an outline really helps give shape to a longer novel and is great for those "What the heck was I doing here?!" moments. Speaking of the novel, Hukos, I'd be curious to know more about what you were thinking on your novel. I love dark fantasy, and I really love to toss around ideas and hear what other writers are thinking.
WALL OF TEXT INCOMING YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
The whole idea behind was this psuedo-intellectual/pretentious (I use these terms in a very tongue-in-cheek fashion) allegory for how I interpret the world. I'm at the point where I'm a cynical, jaded old man and see the world in terms of how I perceive hatred from everyone, including the common man. So I wanted to personify that hatred into a singular character, a malignant narcissist who is extremely nihilistic and self-destructive. And that character is the protagonist, or at least a villain protagonist and the whole story is from her point of view.
The goal is to make as despicable a character as I possibly can, to make the audience revile and despise them. And then to see if that character can actually turn into a somewhat decent human being over a period of time (Because if they
can't then that implies all the hatred I perceive in the world is unchanging and permanent, but if they could be a decent person then that implies that hatred I see doesn't have to be that way). This is why I chose the main character to be narcissistic, because narcissism entails an extreme degree of self-loathing that's justified by self-destructive behaviors and a false sense of grandiosity. And that's kind of how I see the world, a lot of senseless hatred bordering on nihilism. And really, this novel is definitely a reaction against that, as I don't want that kind of senseless hatred to overcome my worldview but at times it seems almost futile to fight against.
The actual
story on the other hand, features the main character Rebecca who leads what is essentially a gang that uses magic to achieve whatever ends she wants. It's noted that she's incredibly abusive (both physically and psychologically) to members of her own gang, using her own magic to intimidate them. Her gang focuses on a lot of very shady dealings, not limited to human/sexual trafficking, assassinations, taking in, etc. She's also extremely pretentious, believing herself to be better than everyone for very petty reasons and unable to grasp why her own failures in her life have happened because she's convinced its always everyone else's fault.
All in all, Rebecca is an absolutely terrible person.
Another aspect of the novel is how magic works. Now, the magic in this book isn't super high-fantasy type of magic, for the most part its largely controlled in very strict manners by x local government and breaking those laws gets you into a lot of hot water. Which is precisely why her gang is a thing, because it focuses on the unrestricted usage of the magic. What Rebecca half-heatedly knows but ignores when its convenient is what magic does in this universe to a person's psyche. Low level magic is pretty chill and doesn't amount to much if anything, but something that's high-powered (IE, if someone drops a raining inferno over a city) can even cause something akin to a psychotic breakdown and potentially permanent psychological damage. The type of damage depends on the kind of magic used, the main character uses a dichotomy of fire and water magic, with the fire type known for making its user have literal hallucinations of power and grandiosity!
Of course, being a pathological narcissist she doesn't really care if her subordinates have a psychotic breakdown or not, as long as they get the job done and if they can't, she'll just get rid of them. What makes this even worse is the few times that even she has suffered the same thing, she completely ignores it as if nothing had ever happened and then abuses her own subordinates
for the exact same thingThe majority of the novel focuses on her narcissism and how she deals with it. The idea is to eventually make he go from villain protagonist to tragic villain to Byronic hero with a shot at redemption at the end.