I started snowflaking earlier in October, but the snowflaking hit rough roads about 2/3 of the way in as my character descriptions were turning into story summaries and my story summaries were ending up as character descriptions. I lost a bit of motivation on snowflaking when I should have kept it up, but I just have too many hobbies to pin myself down to it. Oh bother!

I have artwork up for all the story characters except for the main two (although I do have an artwork for Clover, while nothing for Sarah, and they’re the same character). Again, motivation fell after I “nearly completed” the character artworks.

This happens a lot, and I have many things over at The Pink Sylphide that I started, planned to do on a schedule, then forgot about or lost motivation with after repeatedly taking a long time to do each post in a series. I have so many drafts that are 75% to 90% finished.

November will be different.

How will it be different?

I hope it will be different.

Can it be different?

I want it to be different.

What would make it be different?

One of the reasons I feel NaNoWriMo will be a success for me (with “success” defined as “writing a rough draft of a novel in at least 50,000 words during the month of November) is because I’ll have about 17 days where I’ll be sitting in a vanpool for at least two hours a day with nothing but me and the laptop. I can’t do many other projects in this situation as I don’t have my bedroom full of resources, nor Internet access.

With time to write available, I’ll have to stock up on motivation. I’m motivated to write before I write, but when I write something, it isn’t always easy to move from Scene A to Scene F, knowing that Scenes B, C, D, and E needs to exist somehow. That, and I didn’t finish my snowflaking, so I don’t have a clear chapter-by-chapter idea of what will happen. If I don’t stock up on motivation, my writing ability will deflate early on.

The best way I can think of to keep motivation early on is to expect the worst. “Dream Clover” is planned to span three arcs.

The first arc will be fairly episodic, a one-story-per-chapter situation. This is where the main characters should be introduced, but there isn’t much room for anyone other than the two “main” main characters. Everything will be loose and there will be many story pieces that will either be dropped in the end or will get massive rewrites after November in order to give them a purpose in the overall story.

The second arc puts the characters into an actual story. There is a plot, and they find they are a part of it. Because they are now a part of this plot, they have no choice other than to play along. This arc ends where I know it will end. The plot has been resolved. This arc will need a lot of stretching out to fill in more depth to the story and characters. After November, of course.

The third and final arc looks at the characters now that the story is over. Shouldn’t this arc consist of nothing more than “…and they all lived happily ever after,” the end? Just because the plot seems to be resolved doesn’t mean the characters are. This arc has no real direction, and might end up going nowhere during November.

Clichés I’m including:

• Sarah Cloverfield uses a wand with a magical jewel to transform into the magical girl, Clover.
• She uses the jewelled wand to perform magical feats.
• Magical characters are “color coded” with the source of their power (such as Clover having green hair, eyes, and clothing to match her green jewel).
• To an extend, there’s the “collection” aspect (not a cliche to the “magical girl” genre, although seen in series such as “Cardcaptor Sakura”). The plan right now is for three jewels to need collecting, although this would cover only a portion of the story.

Clichés I’m avoiding:

• No animal companion or talking animal guide. This means no Ruby (Saint Tail), Luna (Sailormoon), or Cerberus (Cardcaptor Sakura) character.
• No magical transformation sequence. Outfits do not vanish to be replaced with a new outfit. The only thing that changes when becoming a magical girl is hue.
• No double identity. No Meimi and Saint Tail to Asuka Jr (Saint Tail). No Clark Kent and Superman to Lois Lane (Superman). If you know someone, then you’ll recognize her as a magical girl. She looks the same.
• No love triangles. At least, I’m not planning on any, as there’s currently no focus on romance planned. I don’t see anyone on my cast list who could be a Méilín (Cardcaptor Sakura) or Lina (Saint Tail).
• No school settings. Sarah is home-schooled, along with her neighbor, Samuel.
• No stock attacks. There will be no magical phrase used to unleash a magical attack that is used to defeat every opponant.
• No upgrades. There will not be a “next level more powerful” transformation item or attack item.
• No monster-of-the-day. It’s less like the Sailormoon animated series and more like the comic series (referring to the first series). The “enemies” are recurring characters, and are included in the cast list.

I’ve been wanting to add a mascot character to my main site, The Pink Sylphide, and concept art has been put together by a friend of mine. However, there’s been no progress further on the artwork side.

I’ve been wanting to create a story for my mascot character. Because most of what I write about on “The Pink Sylphide” is related to the magical girl genre, my mascot character would have a story that puts her into a magical girl situation.

I wanted her to be a normal girl, but I wanted her to become a magical girl, but I want her to be a normal girl. I wanted her to appear at a very young age, a young child, but I wanted her to appear as a young teenager. I wanted her to be a cute child, but I always wanted her to be a more complex person.

In one morning, upon deciding to try for this year’s NaNoWriMo, I took my character, Sarah Cloverfield, and I created a plot and cast of characters around her. Her story will begin during her younger childhood, then it will continue in her early teen years. Her life as a magical girl will exist within her dreams.

With a solid knowledge of the magical girl genre, I’ve already decided which “common magical girl elements” I’ll be using, which I won’t be using, and which I’ll be introducing.

Now begins the most difficult part of NaNoWriMo: not writing the actual story in advance!