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NaNoWriMo 2010 - Outline #1
A merchant gets screwed over when a very wealthy client dies, and decides to rob his tomb to recoup his losses. Before leaving, he asks his three daughters what they want. The eldest wants gold, the second wants pearls, the youngest wants <some token>.
But when he gets there, the tomb is already robbed and nearly bare. There is no gold. no pearls. But he remembers one piece he sold to the ruler that was decorated with <tokens>, and it was of little value, so he delves deeper and deeper into the tomb to try to find it. At the lowest level, he finds a tunnel half-collapsed, with wind coming frmo an opening into a deep black hollow. He's suddenly attacked, a desperate strike by a long, lithe creature. He defeats it by swinging his lantern into its face, blinding it.
Relighting his lantern, he finds a Beast, unlike any he's ever seen or heard. Not much larger than a wolf, it is lanky and black with eight limbs, eyes like a spider's, and two mouths. His first impulse is to kill it. But it mewls like a wounded child, trying to speak to him, and he's reminded of his daughters. Perhaps he could make money off of the thing and give them what they deserve after all.
He takes it home in a sack made of his cloak. There's a near-escape, but the beast shies away from the sunlight, trapping itself in the merchant's own shadow.
When he arrives home, the daughters have mixed reactions. The oldest wants to drown the creature (It'll kill children!), the middle wants to burn it (It's unnatural!), the youngest wants to set it loose (it's terrified!). The father, however, has his plan. Locking the beast in a well, he begins to build a large cage in which it can be displayed.
The youngest spends her days watching it, stealthily feeding it chickens and trying to talk to it. It grows thin, but the chickens keep it alive.
Just as it's beginning to get sick from being trapped in ankle-deep water, the cage is finished. The beast nearly escapes in the transfer, but the youngest defends her father, and it can't escape through her.
Father sells tickets to view the strange beast, and news spreads wide, attracting greater and greater clients. A circus, passing through, makes an offer, and only the youngest's urgent please keep her father from selling it. But the carnies come back at night, weeks later, trying to steal the beast. It kills one, and by the time the by-now-ravenous beast has fed on the corpse, it's dawn and once again, sunlight keeps it prisoner.
A mob comes for it that day, dragging the beast out of his cage into the sunlight, making it writhe and cry, begging in its limited speech. They're about to kill it when the youngest flings herself in the way, daring the torches and pitchforks, to set it loose. She would be killed as well, once the first startle is over, but her sisters intervene as well. She and the Beast escape into the woods and they find a hiding place, where she leaves it.
When she returns to her father's home, he's astounded. He'd expected her to be killed, and he'd been grieving.
It's not the same woods as the tomb was in, and the beast can't find its way home, though it tries. Daylight always catches it exposed, driving it into some den or other. After a near-brush with a farming crew, it returns to the place it'd been held captive so long, miserable.
Youngest, this time, is able to talk her dad out of taking it prisoner again, and helps it get home, where it gets a chance to save her from its own family. In the hollow where it first met her father, it shows her the hoard that the first (devoured) grave robbers had been trying to steal, and she gets to take as much of it home as she can carry. They part well, sad but each knowing where they belong.
Why this outline is inadequate:
Where are my character arcs?
Where are my character NAMES?
Make a scene list.
Outline #3 - by scenes (1/2) Somm's perspective
Funeral, with a huge demonstration of flame, nearly drives them out, but ends eventually. They let the young feed on the royal corpse once everyone is gone.
The robbers who come later put up a good fight, but they are also delicious. And they keep coming, at least one a day.
The human (Corwin) comes when the whole family is slow with torpor, gorged on theives. Only Somm is on its feet to defend them. It loses the fight, but keeps them safe.
(Somm gets bundled up and taken to the surface, its family unable to help thanks to Corwin's torch)
Somm wakes up, trapped and frantic. It tries desperately to escape, but when it's wrestled free of the cloak, the sunlight scalds its eyes and any exposed skin, and the only shade it can find is its captor's long shadow, its only choice recapture.
After a long, cramped journey, Somm finds itself dumped into the light again, while four humans argue unintelligibly above it, angry and afraid. The smallest female alone doesn't shout, and it tries to move closer to her.
(Corwin) dumps Somm into a deep, stone-lined pit with water in the bottom. Before it can climb out, a lid slams shut, leaving only thin gaps that let in light, bars of which slice across the upper reaches of the well like blades. It dares them to climb up anyway, but the lid is too strong. And locked. And the gaps are too small, though it tries to fit out.
The youngest girl visits it, speaking down through those gaps once it has worn itself out trying to escape. She speaks to it in her own language, and it begs her to let it out. There's obviously no specific understanding, but there begins to be. It learns her name (Elspeth) Espet, and the words for stones, water, hands, eyes, teeth, chicken, the last when she stuffs one down through a gap, neck already wrung for it to eat.
(Corwin) returns for it some days later, set on something. He begins by throwing stones at it, bruisingly, and angered, it throws them back. Then he flings a lasso down, catching it around the throat on the second try. If Somm didn't get its fingers under the line around its neck, it might have been strangled as (Corwin) hauls it out of the hole. Furious and hurt in the light, it immediately tries to attack him, but Espet bursts from the house and protects her father, and it can't fight the only one who's been good to it. So it gets locked in a large wood cage, inside a dimly lit wooden building.
More strangers come, many who murmur and point, some who shout. Most smell of fear and/or anger, at least by the time they leave.
Espet keeps it company as days and nights pass, teaching it more words, just talking to him. There's a scuffle with a man who smells like spice, a man who catches its hand and tries to cut off a finger, and Espet protects it.
A man visits for whom they bring Somm's cage out into the yard, thankfully after dark, though the torchlight is still painful. He is neither afraid nor angry, and he tries to speak to Somm, though he doesn't use any words it knows.
One of the other daughters (Seppe) visits, silent and smelling angry. Somm tries again to speak to her, but that only seems to make her more angry and she leaves. (Espet and Dusa go to the circus.)
A woman comes to see it the next day, (Corwin) with her, and they speak and argue. (Corwin) is calm, but firm, and the woman is increasingly angry. She shouts at him before she leaves, and (Corwin) gives Somm a possessiv look that chills it.
Somm worries about the future. It has no way to escape, and misses its family keenly.
It's woken up by the woman and three males related to her breaking into its barn, wearing gray and carrying hammers and sickles and rope. They stumble in the dark, and it realizes that they can barely see. It lurks in the darkest corner of its cage, and attacks the first man to enter, mauling his throat. The others are scared off by the savage attack, slamming the door shut on it, but it's distracted anyway by the flesh at its feet. It feeds itself into a torpor.
Re: Outline #3 - by scenes (1/2) Somm's perspective
It can't run long, bleeding badly. Espet leads it to a dark, safe place before it can collapse, and cares for it, bandaging wounds. She spends the night with it, each talking whether the other can understand or not, both learning a bit more. It tells her its name, at last.
In the morning, Espet carefully tells it to follow the Great Road south, out of the woods across the steppes to the tomb where it was found. She draws it a map, and then reluctantly leaves.
(Espet gets home) Somm stays two days in the den, licking its wounds, starving. It dreams of its family.
It leaves the den when the rain stops, tries to follow Espet's instructions, but it doesn't understand the map. When it reaches the end of the woods, it can't cross the Steppe. The nights are too short; it would mean days in the sun with no shelter.
Wandering the edge of the forest, lost, one night Somm finds a farmstead and tries to steal a cloak and a delicious goat from the yard, but the humans return from their fields, and it barely escapes with its life.
It has no choice but to return to Corwin's farm, unsuited to life on the surface and alone. It's coming back to steal their chickens, but Espet is out feeding them, and Corwin's close enough to hear her startled greeting. Exhausted, starving, and afraid of the pitchfork in Corwin's hand, it lies down before them, surrendering. It expects Corwin to put him in the well again, since the remains of the cage are still piled in a pyre. But Espet speaks to him, and instead of imprisoning Somm again, they lead it into the barn, and leave it unlocked. And they give it two chickens.
It recovers there, slow and cared for, speaking to Espet and, rarely, the other three, about its family. It needs to go home, and Corwin and Espet finally agree to take it there. In Corwin's new wagon, the trip is shockingly easy, and takes only three days. When they arrive, Somm shyly asks Espet down to meet its family, and Corwin, of course, insists on coming.
Nearly to the cave-in, several of Somm's family, on guard, stalk them, but when they see Somm, it becomes a happy if somewhat uneasy reunion instead, as Somm tries to explain all that's happened.
Lingering because Espet wants to, but uneasy, Corwin sees down into the hollow. There are bones there, but also mounds of gold; all the treasure of the tomb. Somm's family, who only like it because it keeps luring humans down to them, give Corwin and Espet all they can carry, and through Somm, make a bargain to buy goats in the future with the rest.
Parting scenes and close.