30.11.09

Raiders of the Lost Recipe/Jäger des verlorenen Rezepts

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In the last weeks,there was almost no activity on this blog. Here is the reason why: I wrote almost all the time. To be precise: I took part in the National Novel Writing Month (abbrev. NaNoWriMo). The challenge: write a novel with at least 50.000 words (yes, that's words, not characters!) in 30 days (to be precise, from Nov 1st to Nov 30th). My novel was called "Jäger des verlorenen Rezepts" (translates roughly as "Raiders of the Lost Recipe" - the similarity to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (the first Indiana Jones Movie) is intentional). It takes part in my own steampunk world called Chodra which is on the technology level of the late Victorian Age (ca. 1900).

This morning, I finished at a word count of 26.842. In NaNoWriMo, I failed. But for me, it was a very refreshing experience, so I consider it a win.

Hekla, wolkenfrei

The title "Raiders of the Lost Recipe" proved to be a kind of "self-fulfilling prophecy". I started off with an idea in mind to write a steampunk novel in Jules Verne-style and ended up with something like a "steampunk spy thriller". Due to the lack of time and the near due date, the plot started to mutate. On Nov 15th, I realized that the ending I had in mind on Nov 1st was no longer reachable. The archvillain I had in mind suddenly became a minor character, and in constrast one of the minor antagonists became the main opponent. Due to the "Titus Müller Rule #1" which says:" passive chars are boring", I suddenly gave the heroine's boyfriend (who was intended to be a pure sidekick) a whole chapter of his own.

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Some new locations popped up, too. The final chapters took part on a huge sea fortress which almost looks like Suomenlinna - with one slight, but important difference: below it is an old lab built by an ancient high tech civilization.

The novel also includes some other crazy elements, e.g. a kind of "Harvey", a character based on "Back to the Future" and a "locomotive chase" (instead of the classical car chase - in my steampunk world, the motor car has not been invented yet).

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