NaNoWriMo 2010 - Outline #1

[i_id]

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.

Comments

Outline #2 - By scenes(1/2)

[i-id.livejournal.com]

Begin with the client's death (King so-and-so). Corwin is devastated, almost suicidal. Decides to rob the tomb out of desperation.

Asks his daughters what they want, not telling them that the money's gone.

Travels to the tomb, paranoid. He's never been a criminal before. Has an alarming night in an inn, hearing rumours of tomb robbers. Thinks he's been found out.

Arrives in the night to find the great seal already broken, evidence of many thieves. But he's come so far, he goes down to see what's left to be scavenged. He finds many empty rooms, going deep into the earth, four levels cut deep into the granite.

He finds a cave-in, near the deepest point. The body of the late king is in this final chamber, stripped of its finery and its flesh, too, a raw skeleton dried to firewood. He is not alone here. When he raises his lantern to see down the hollow, he thinks he sees jewels, or eyes, dozens of them gleaming back at him before they suddenly vanish, and he's attacked. It's a brief, furious battle before he smashes his lantern into the attacker's face, and it collapses.

When he lights the lantern again (flint), he finds the creature laid out. He draws the knife he brought, meaning to cut its throat, but it wakes up before he can, pleading for its life in a language he can't understand. He can't bring himself to kill it, can't bring himself to turn his back on it, either, so he bundles it up in his cloak and begins the climb out.

At the surface, the creature revives and attempts an escape on the road. It breaks free of the cloak, bu tthe sun's bright and hot and it winds up cowering against Corwin's legs, the only near shade. He bundles it up again, continuing on.

When he gets home, his daughters run out to greet him, giving him no chance to hide the monster. But like before, the sunlight makes it harmless as they freak out. Dusa, the town's teacher, wants it drowned before it can eat local children. Seppe wants it burnt as an abomination. Not understanding them, but hearing and smelling their fear, the monster huddles afraid, and Elspeth pleads for it to be safely released. Corwin denies all three, telling them his plan.

He seals the beast in a nearby dry well, and begins to build a wooden cage to house it in an empty barn on their property. He has big plans for his new sideshow (maybe a week to build?)

While it's in the well, Elspeth visits the monster. It's curled up at the bottom, filthy in the few inches of muddy water, obviously miserable. When she speaks to it, it tries to speak back, and she begins to teach it words, one by one. Chicken. Rock. Water. Hands. And she feeds it.

When the cage is finished, Corwin has to figure out how to get it from the well to the cage. He tries to knock it out with dropped rocks, but it flings them back, resisting. So he lassos it by the neck and one hand, nearly killing it as he hauls it up from the bottom. It's sick, coughing and sputtering in the sunlight, but it attacks him anyway, desperate, and only stops when Elspeth puts herself in the way. Corwin locks it in the cage, telling her it'll be better off in there.

People start coming to see it as Corwin spreads the word. First the locals; They're a small town, with many reactions like Dusa's and Seppe's, but there's a growing fascination.

People start coming from farther away, stranger folk. Corwin stops letting his daughters fraternize with the visitors, but Elspeth sneaks into the barn as often as she can to be the beast's guard, and keep it company while it's stared at. Once, she stops a wealthy visitor from cutting off one of its strange long fingers as a souvenir.

The local Duke visits, and Corwin is overjoyed, sure that their money troubles are over forever.

Outline #2 - By scenes(2/2)

[i-id.livejournal.com]

A circus comes to town. Dusa and Elspeth sneak out to see it. They have all sorts of strange creatures in cages, all smaller than the one Corwin built, which unsettles both girls.

The leader of the circus, a woman named Tabi, comes to Corwin the next day with a bag of gold offering to buy the beast. But her best offer is less than the Duke's token of appreciation from only a few days before, so Corwin decides not to sell.

Elspeth talks to her dad about the Beast, grateful that he didn't sell it.

Late that night, Tabi and her sons sneak back to the farm, breaking into the barn. The beast is hungry - chickens have never been enough, and his illness is finally gone - and it lies in wait, attackin the invaders. Since they brought no light, it has the advantage and kills the eldest. It feeds, wasting the rest of the night, and daylight traps it yet again.

The mob arrives not long after daylight, while the beast is still in torpor beside its mostly-eaten prey. They break open the cage and drag the beast out into the light. it cowers and cries, using its very limited English to beg for mercy. Tabi, grieving, is about to light it on fire when Elspeth flings herself in the way, disrupting the mob's inertia. She saws at the knots holding it, and they're revving up again to go right through her when Dusa and Seppe stand in the way. And then Corwin, too (once he stops trying to drag Elspeth away) fights Tabi and her kin while Elspeth and the wounded beast flee.

They run until the beast can run no further. She finds them a den and they hide through the day, and the night too, huddled together and finding ways to communicate. Here, Elspeth learns that the beast's name is Somm.

In the morning, it rains. Elspeth tells Somm how to find its way home, and they part.

Elspeth arrives home to a shocked father, grieving a daughter he had been sure was dead, from the blood Somm had left behind. Yay, she's not dead!

Somm tries to follow her directions, but the nights are too short. It can't follow the road across the shadeless steppes.

It tries to steal a cloak and a goat from a farm, but runs afoul of the harvesters, and again barely escapes with its life.

When it returns to Corwin's home, it's skinnier still and meaning to steal one of their chickens. But it runs into Elspeth and her father. Exhausted, starving, it lies down before them in surrender. Elspeth convinces him not to stick it back in the well, and they give it shelter.

Leaving Dusa and Seppe to watch the farm, Elspeth and Corwin take Somm home. Corwin wants to just leave it at the tomb's entrance, since they've arrived after dark, but it pleads with Elspeth to come down and see its family.

The family, of course, tries to attack the humans, but then reunion! instead. Somm explains much of what's happened.

Through chance, Corwin sees down into the hollow where he first met Somm. The thieves' bodies are long gone, but their hoard is all there, as glittery as ever. The monsters are astounded to find that the treasure is of value to the humans, and they load them down with all they can carry and negotiate to buy future goats.

Parting scene and close.

Re: Outline #2 - By scenes(1/2)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Neat.