Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Origins: What is Nondescript?

I have to apologize. It's been almost a whole week and you still have no idea what this story is about. I mean, I'm really sorry I waited this long to tell you, because you're all just dying to know, I'm sure. (And if you're not, well, I'm just going to have to work to get your interest, right?)

There was little bit of a teaser in the last post, where I mentioned a young woman named Gwen, making her way through the woods after a long journey. That's how the story begins. But before I can just start telling the story willy-nilly, it might be nice for you to know where to put this story in your head.

So, how do we categorize a novel? When I was student teaching (gasp! first mention of something college related) I took over 100 middle schoolers to the library, and we had this long discussion about different genres. For them, they identify what genre a book is by cutesy little stickers. So if there's a tiny detective holding a magnifying glass, it's a mystery. If an American flag sticker waves proudly from the spine of Johnny Tremain, it's historical fiction.

I could tell you the genre of Nondescript. But if you read the whole thing, you would say it didn't fit. I don't think it fits either. So first I'm going to show you this picture, which I painstakingly made and even created my own color scheme. (I named it "Antique Maps" because sometimes I pretend to be a hipster.) The words here are not based off the entire novel but actually on the freestyle poem at the start of the very first chapter.

See, I'm one of those people who believe that beyond the syntax and the dialogue of a novel, you can have significant connections just with the feelings characters express or experience, if it's done right. I wept incessantly when I read The Book Thief for the very first time, like a hormonal woman, or an angsty teen... maybe both. I have read a great many books in my life and enjoyed a good majority of them, but they rarely made me cry. The Book Thief made me sob and struggle like someone was punching me in the throat. And even during the second, third, fourth times reading it I still teared up.  This is something I carry with me every time I read a book, hoping to feel as deeply to someone else as I did with little Liesel Meminger.

The words in the cloud, from the introductory poem, express the depth of feeling Gwen experiences throughout the novel. If you look close enough you can see "war" and "survival" in there. Technically, this is a science fiction novel. (That would be a little sticker with a flying saucer, for those of you wondering.) But science fiction isn't for everybody, and immediately turns some people off--it even distracts me, and I wrote the thing.

So, here is what you need to know about Nondescript.

Shortly after the turn of the century, there is a worldwide panic as everything man-made begins to decay and dissolve. Things like cars become obsolete, buildings crumble, and humanity's desire for material things leads to chaos and violence. The cause is eventually determined as a few power-hungry scientists, who devised a substance that destroyed everything and were destroyed during their own experiment, but by the time our story begins to unfold it has been five years since the horrific event. Only rubble remains and there is an 85% decrease in the world's population. There is an organization simply called the Ministry which searches for survivors and distributes rations to any surviving communities. When we meet Gwen Esmond, she has been working with the Ministry for several years and has just returned to the community that welcomed her after the end of the war: Dexterhimmel. Within the walls of Dexterhimmel Gwen attempts to survive, to maintain the life she now must live. She has one sincere companion, Amos. Their relationship is strained because while Amos claims to love Gwen, he believes working for the Ministry is more important than staying with her in Dexterhimmel. With Amos often absent, Gwen finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation that could end her life. The only resolution is to escape to the world outside the walls of Dexterhimmel and find the mythical SubCity, supposedly a secret underground community with enough resources to renew the world that was lost. 

This sounds like science fiction. Honestly, it sounds like post-apocalyptic science fiction. In many ways that correctly identifies my story but in many ways it doesn't. The way I see it, it's a "relational" story, it's about people. Some science-fiction-y stuff happened to them, but in the 60,000+ words I have so far, do you know how many times I actually mention the scientists? Once. One time. I talk about it as little as possible. They are only necessary so that readers will know why the world is the way it is.

So, let me put it a little more simply: This story is about a girl, a young woman, who struggles with something as simple as daily survival. Nobody is fighting. There are no soldiers. All she has to do is be courageous enough to live for another day, and convince herself that remaining alive is worth it.

In the following posts I'm going to begin introducing characters. This will include both a literary sketch, and an actual sketch. Yup. I'm gonna draw pictures, 'cause I can. So now that you have a handful of words to gamble on and a few promises from me, I hope you're a bit more invested. If you want to ask questions or give suggestions, PLEASE say whatever you want in the comments below. I would love to hear from you(and your friends! tell them!), and I hope you stick around.

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