Writing

Preparing for July Camp NaNoWriMo

Hey, everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. For those of you who don’t know, Camp NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is happening, starting July 1st. And I plan to participate in it! Today, I’m going to be talking a little more in depth about my current WIP and what I’ll be working on next month.



What my novel is about

The title would probably be a good thing to start with. Right, right. The title of my novel is Of Moonflowers and Myths. I’ll be referring to it as OMaM because it’s easier that way. I’m really bad at explaining things, and if I tried to explain what my book is about, I’d probably ramble on and on and not get to the point, so here’s a synopsis I wrote a little while ago:

The Dark Land is a forbidden island, surrounded by thunder clouds and strange magic. It’s been that way for the last 150 years and terrifying stories about the island keep adventurers away. No one exactly knows what happened. The only knowledge of the island are rumors about dark magic and a fateful decision made all those years ago. However, this streak for the isolated island is about to end. 

Out on another island, Alna, Aria’s mother is stricken with the “Dimming”, a deadly disease that weakens her magic. The one-known cure involves kantar, a small white flower rumored to grow only on the Dark Land. Aria desperately wants to help her mom and soon connects with Castor, a boy whose own mom has the same illness. She’s now in a coma and no one knows if she’ll wake up.

As they learn more about kantar, Castor makes the crazy decision to go to the Dark Land and retrieve the plant. Even though it seems terrifying and impossible, Aria isn’t about to let Castor go alone. Aria’s best friend, Jasmine, is a botany enthusiast. Aria knows she would be invaluable on the quest. Initially Jasmine is reluctant to make the journey, but decides she can’t pass up the opportunity to explore the plants on the forbidden island. 

With their parents’ lives on the line, the teenagers secretly make the dangerous journey to the Dark Land, in the hope of saving what will be lost if they’re too late.

So, yeah. That’s the main overall summary. I also need your help. The cure, kantar, translates to ‘moonflower’ in the ancient language. I recently discovered and read the synopsis for Brigid Kemmerer’s soon to be published novel Defy the Night. While the overall plots of the two stories are very different, the cure aspects for the diseases are quite similar (the name and also some other aspects that are included in my story). While my story wouldn’t be published for a very long time (if I even did that), I feel like I need to change something about mine so that it doesn’t seem as though it’s slightly plagiarized. I’ve been contemplating changing the name of my cure, plus some of its properties so it fits under the new name, so it’s not so similar to Kemmerer’s. What do you think I should do? Is it different enough? Am I just over exaggerating this situation? Please, tell me in the comments; I need someone else’s opinion.



My goals for the month

This is going to be the third draft of OMaM. For this draft, I really want to work on characterization, relationships between characters, and worldbuilding. I’ve made character profiles, but I didn’t fill it all out. I did the major stuff, like appearance and personality, but the smaller stuff that really makes them realistic people hasn’t been completed yet. I think that writing the story really helps develop the characters as well, so I’m planning to work on those parts as I write.

Also, making sure the characters are distinctly their own. I’m doing a multiple perspective novel, with the three POVs being Aria, Jasmine, and Castor, so I really want it to be obvious who’s narrating.

As for word count, since I’m not on the adult site, I can set my word count for whatever I want. I’m so grateful for that, I would not be able to write 50k words for this. My second draft was around 35,000 words. For this one, it’s probably going to turn out to be more, since I’m planing to work on relationships and worldbuilding, but I’m shooting for roughly around the same.



I’m really looking forward to doing camp this month. I’m not sure how much I’ll get done because I’m pretty preoccupied with some other things (geometry, I’m looking at you), but I hope to get as much done as I can.

I know some of you were interested in seeing some more writing-related content, so I plan to do some form of those posts in the near future. I’m thinking about doing a ‘meet my MCs’ post and if that goes well, I might do a character Q&A! I think it would be a lot of fun to do and it will also help me develop my characters a little more. So, yeah I’m really excited about all of this!

Are you participating in Camp NaNoWriMo? Have you done NaNo in the past? Are you working on any writing projects right now?
Chat with me in the comments below!

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