NaNo Planning
Sep. 24th, 2012 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesAlso, I'm getting more of a sense of the protagonist in my NaNovel. (I'm using Summerborn as the working title.)
Here's the plot idea: Here and here
I'm working with an idea of the Middleborn people being matrilineal -- I'm drawing a bit from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) (mostly how the individual villages work together) and something from the Mosuo. Basically, households are headed by a Matriarch and people don't leave the household of their birth. I'm going with the idea of the 'walking marriage' from Mosuo culture: adult women basically invite men of other households that they fancy to spend the night, and the men go home in the morning; while kids usually know who their fathers are, and the fathers (and their households) might be the sort to bring gifts to their children's households, uncles and other 'mom's male relatives' do more of the day-to-day duties we might associate with a male parent.
So, my protagonist is the eldest daughter of an aging Matriarch, from a prominent family. She's been acting as her mother's heir for a long time... except for the fact she's yet to have kids. (And not from lack of trying.) So a lot of the family is starting to favor the protagonist's younger sister, or at least that protagonist start training one of her nieces. But Protagonist (no, no name yet: I haven't even decided on the language feel yet) is hella stubborn... and, well, she wants kids. She resents not having them. She feels like this makes her less of an adult, while trying to keep her sister as far from managerial responsibilities as she can (and then saying she's not mature enough to head the household). So, with summer coming up, she takes a lot of risks to have one last shot to have a 'normal' kid... and ends up pregnant in summer with a kid who will be too different to belong to the family and now has to deal with the conflict of her own desires versus what's best for the family (and maybe realizing she wasn't exactly acting in the best interest of her family before she got pregnant either).
So, she needs a name, but this looks like a plot. Very domestic for a fantasy story (that's not a romance, I mean), but screw expectations.
Now, for names and such. And thinking of a name-feel.
Here's the plot idea: Here and here
I'm working with an idea of the Middleborn people being matrilineal -- I'm drawing a bit from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) (mostly how the individual villages work together) and something from the Mosuo. Basically, households are headed by a Matriarch and people don't leave the household of their birth. I'm going with the idea of the 'walking marriage' from Mosuo culture: adult women basically invite men of other households that they fancy to spend the night, and the men go home in the morning; while kids usually know who their fathers are, and the fathers (and their households) might be the sort to bring gifts to their children's households, uncles and other 'mom's male relatives' do more of the day-to-day duties we might associate with a male parent.
So, my protagonist is the eldest daughter of an aging Matriarch, from a prominent family. She's been acting as her mother's heir for a long time... except for the fact she's yet to have kids. (And not from lack of trying.) So a lot of the family is starting to favor the protagonist's younger sister, or at least that protagonist start training one of her nieces. But Protagonist (no, no name yet: I haven't even decided on the language feel yet) is hella stubborn... and, well, she wants kids. She resents not having them. She feels like this makes her less of an adult, while trying to keep her sister as far from managerial responsibilities as she can (and then saying she's not mature enough to head the household). So, with summer coming up, she takes a lot of risks to have one last shot to have a 'normal' kid... and ends up pregnant in summer with a kid who will be too different to belong to the family and now has to deal with the conflict of her own desires versus what's best for the family (and maybe realizing she wasn't exactly acting in the best interest of her family before she got pregnant either).
So, she needs a name, but this looks like a plot. Very domestic for a fantasy story (that's not a romance, I mean), but screw expectations.
Now, for names and such. And thinking of a name-feel.
