A couple of weeks ago I babbled about the characters in my upcoming ~April Madness~ writing adventure; today I'm going to babble about the story itself! The general idea behind the story, what you can expect, and where I'm hoping to go with it.
Of course, keeping in mind, that I'll be writing this daily in conjunction with the #freewrite prompts. As a result, it's entirely possible that my original idea will deviate. But that's part of the excitement!
When I came up with Half Past the Moonfall, a lot of the driving factors in that story just would never have existed if not for the freewrite prompts. For example: Draven's armband. He wore it simply because the prompt for that day was "armband." But the jewels on it ended up being elf eyes and it ended up being the source of his magic and was constantly referred to throughout various chapters.
That's how one little prompt can influence an entire story!
The upcoming ~April Madness~ story has a WIP title of It All Went Down at the Whistling Fart.
Not sure if that's actually going to be it's title or not, but that's what I called it two years ago when I first started writing it and that's what I'm going to call it now.
Two years ago I was attempting another Writing Madness adventure, but I didn't feel able to actually continue on with it. I was hosting this giant writing contest and I just wasn't able to both write and host at the same time. This time I'm being selfish and hosting this little writing madness just for me!
(Feel free to join me if you want to challenge yourself though, I'll be using the tag #writingmadness)
Anyway, as a result of that, a small chunk of the upcoming writing may or may not be familiar due to it already been written previously. Is the Cheetah Bot still a thing? If so, it's going to yell at me. Whatever. I mean, I won't be re-writing it exactly how it was before. I already have several differences planned in these pre-existing 8000 words. But there are a few sentences I'm definitely keeping as is.
Anyone remember the goat on the TV eating the farmer's missus? 🤣 That was one of my favourite lines during that last attempted writing madness and I am not removing it!
I love that bit with all my heart! 🤣
✨ So, what can we expect!?
It All Went Down at the Whistling Fart is an adult comedy written for those who enjoy vastly immature humour.
I am a middle-aged Australian which means I have been raised to be inherently inappropriate and not beholden to the whims of the politically correct. I will happily have a stereotypically gay and flamboyant character who is not PC-friendly and be proud of it. He's fun to write! I have a bogan couple planned who swear and speak in theeeeeee most distastefully crude manner, I am planning on throwing Jenny into all sorts of whacky employment encounters, including having a massage client with an unexpected erection, and I don't really care if the reader doesn't like it.
What's the number one rule in writing that only the rare author will agree with?
Write for YOURSELF first. Write the story that YOU want to tell and not what you think is expected of you; not what you think will "get the most sales." If other people like it, great! If they hate it, then it's not for them and that's okay, not everyone will like everything.
It All Went Down at the Whistling Fart is also a "reverse coming-of-age." Most coming of age tales focus on a young adult leaving behind their magical youth and emerging into the "joy" of the real world. My story takes that backwards.
✨ So, what's the story?
Jenny is a young adult in her mid-20's who has had a bit of a tough life. She emancipated herself from her family long ago and has relied on herself to survive. Everything was fine until the company she worked for entered administration and laid everyone off, and now she finds herself in the painful position of Employment Seeker.
She's no longer fresh out of school so isn't what most employers are after -- cheap labour -- and her only real experience is as a receptionist, a position which is not widely available in her small country town. No longer able to afford her bills and rent, luckily her friend, Joey, has a spare room in his house and he's more than happy for her to move in until she gets back on her feet... except, he doesn't want her to get back on her feet. He wants her to stay, but doesn't know how to simply tell her.
We follow Jenny as she navigates life with the hyperactive, child-like Joey and tries to find a job, only to experience failure after failure (mostly thanks to Joey). To add onto the failure of being unable to secure work, a disaster unfolds across the planet ~ The Great Fungus, as one man in the story calls it. This Fungus is ingested, makes people sick as though with a bad flu, and then when they die, their corpses explode in a mass of the fungus and the spores infect all that surrounds them as well as their immediate environs.
But wait! That's not all. Soon after the Great Fungus starts spreading, a massive CME fires from the sun, the planet clearly in its sights, and destroys the one thing that people have come to rely on. Electricity.
Faced with the end of the world as she knows it, Jenny has a choice. Will she embrace this apocalyptic madness, or will she be consumed by the fungus that has taken over her life?
We will find out! When ~April Madness~ begins! 😁
✨ So, why April?
There was once March Madness in March, and Maynia in May, and, of course, the general National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) as we know it in November.
I'm choosing April for this writing adventure simply because the 1st of April is the start of the school holidays for my son! Which gives me two whole weeks of sitting on my butt, writing, writing, writing, without fear of exhaustion.
Even better, after those two weeks of holidays my son will be attending a new school that doesn't require that I walk 50km a week (don't worry, the boy only walks a quarter of that amount) ~ so I will no longer be exhausted all the time and will actually have the willpower to do things, including writing!
Woohoo!