More NaNoWriMo Prep

Discovering some things about Karen by doing a one-minute interview.  I’m hoping to discover where she met Malachi.  Why she’s attracted to him, what she’s looking for in the world of magic, how she got into magic, what she was doing before, how old she is, etc…

Karen met Malachi in a bar somewhere.  She was either a waitress or a bartender.

Let’s use real world places I’ve been to as the setting for each of their adventures within the real world: OKC, New Zealand, Colorado, New Mexico.  Anywhere else I might be able to come up with?

Back to Karen, she was working int he bar to put herself through college.  She was training to be an engineer but never could get into it despite her good grades.  Somehow this is a link for her to the structure of magic.

She’s mainly trying to get certified as an apprentice magician.  Her main tie tot he world is Malachi, but she’s met others in the cabal she recognizes may be able to help her more than he.  So to some degree she’s staying with him out of habit.

Namely she’s met his mentor ‘the doc’ and and the corporate dude who turns out to be the bad guy.  She’ gravitating to the corp guy because his methods seem cleaning and more precise than Malachi’s.

Magic’s ‘quality’ has something to do with it’s intentions.  Each work has a ghost of the workers’ intention.  So good magic with bad intentions will ultimately do bad things even if it does good things first.

The intention is not an overwhelming things just a characteristic.  Int his way each workers’ personality and mood are imprinted into an action.  Some people can read this signatures better than others.

That’s where Malachi is headed with the spider; to a reader.

So how old are you Karen?  I think by now she’s got to be kinda far along to not make the thing with Malachi too icky.  I don’t mind a little icky, but not too icky.

Speaking of icky, who’s going to illuminate that for me?  Karen’s non-mage friends or other in the cabal or both.  I suspect I may need a little of both.  One group to give Malachi shit and the other to give it to Karen.  Hmmm.  Or maybe one group is decidedly cool with it.

Or doesn’t know.

Regarding the plot, what’s Karen want out of it?  She insists the spider is good based on some very rudimentary principal she’s been taught.  One a veteran mage might know but have neglected or modified over the years.

Essentially she’s trying to convince Malachi of the pure intention of the spider but he’s not seeing it.  SO something must cloud his perception of it.  Either actively or just through his own bias toward the spider.

I’ve already put some scope on what clouds him, but what convinces her?  Just an instinct?  Or an innocence? Or has she had some other knowledge that might inform her in some subtle way.

I like the idea of some other knowledge informing her.  But I don’t know where she’d get that without it being too obvious.  At least too coincidental to the reader.  A book.  Reading.  The Doc. The Corp?

A Broken One-Minute Drill With My NaNoWriMo Prep

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/full-screen-stopwatch/

OK.  So everything I just wrote got deleted in a weird keystroke accident.  Which means that not only do I no longer have that material such that it was I also have no proof I had the material in the first place.  I suppose neither are really that big a deal.

I’d like to consider the murdered mage.  I used a word last night as I drove home that appealed to me: dispatched.  Obviously used int he past to mean killed but more accurately just sent on ahead with a message.  I think…

I’d like to pick up on that wording.  Mostly because I don’t want to have to have killed him.  But maybe I’m being a chicken here.  Dawned on me I should kill off Malachi too.  Don’t know why, but the do say kill off your darlings.  I suspect he’ll…

So Malachi was our dispatched mage’s apprentice and made the clockwork spider.  A long time ago.  Long enough ago that none of the gather mages would know this.  Though, of course, one suspects/does know.

Ok. DM was an academic mage.  He wasn’t as much of a practitioner and had no real protective experience.  Therefore when he began to play around in the darker arts he was easily susceptible to the the…

evil-ness or whatever.  The cabal figured this out or at least made up their minds it was true and had Malachi do the dirty work.  They always have him do the dirty work.  He’s just that kind of guy.  They stay clean.

Last one.  What’s Karen’s deal in all this?  She’s M’s lover, but what’s her real goal?  Just to become a promoted mage?  Accepted?  Allowed to perform magic on her own?  What does that even mean in a world such as ours?