Can you spell cacophony?

We’re well within two months of NaNoWriMo 2009 and I’m not really sure what I’m wanting to do.

Last year’s story only told half of the story I had planned, so I was originally planning on doing a sequel. But now I don’t want to. I was happy to leave it where it finished. In fact, the story I ended up telling started off being just the introduction to the story I first envisioned telling. It’s funny how things turn out sometimes!

I need to come up with something else. That doesn’t need to be hard, I’ve always got lots of ideas, I just need ideas plus inspiration. And a bit of interest developed in the subject matter.

So instead, I’ve come up with a completely different and very stupid idea that will have me doing almost everything differently to how I did it (successfully) last year.

I’ve been playing around with the Mythic Game Master Emulator (demo here and yahoo group here) for my role playing games this year and I am considering using that to completely “wing it”. The GME book says this:

Finally, Mythic: GME can be used as a writing tool. The architecture that creates dynamic adventures is really an automated story-telling system. It will work just as well without any games or formalized characters attached. Just set the scene, ask some questions, and start writing.

If it works the way I see it, I could just come up with a general concept (or even make one randomly) and then use the system and appropriately phrased questions to let the plot work itself out.

Some years ago, I did some rough outlines of an alternate-history Earth. Very little of it got detailed, but the setting has a reasonably defined place in my mind. The idea of writing a novel set there, and having the Mythic Fate chart to help me flesh it out really appeals to me.

I’ll keep you informed as to how it goes…