Hello there, this would be the first post on my blog... Ever. I don't usually blog, but hey! Why not!
So I started my novel about a girl named Jael. I'm not going to lie and coat it, she's a lot like me. Tall and boyish, often mistaken for the wrong gender, crass and stubborn. Her job is simple: Protect the people on her side of the Wall. The Wall separates magical creatures (like Imps, Dragons, gorgons, demons, harpies and the like) from humans. It was a good move, the supernatural thrive in a world where they're with their own kind and the humans thrive in a world where a vampire won't suck them dry.
However the wall starts to crumble, monsters called Scourge begin to seep through. Mostly they represent sickness, making anyone in their arms reach ill, but then strong ones come by. Smallpox, Measles, it gets to the point where Jael is teamed by with a man from the other side of the Wall to figure out what's going on and how to stop it.
Now, I know it's lame and whatnot. It's Nanowrimo, I wanted simple, easy, explainable. And you should stick to that as well. Remember! Nanowrimo is quantity over quality, throw complicated out of the window! I learned this the previous year, I won was but very unhappy with my results.
Complicated lead to one issue I think all complicated plot lines will followed at some point; You get really far with writing, you look back, and notice a contradiction so huge and glaring that you have to practically start over. It hurts, especially in National Novel Writing Month, to start from scratch on day 7 or day 14. Catching up is nearly impossible if you have a job.
So how do you stay away from digging yourself into a complicated hole?
Go simple. Go fantasy, go rule-of-cool. Rule of cool refering to doing something that makes no logical or physical sense, but because it's cool, because it's not complicated and requires too much explaining, you can slap it up and leave people to figure it out on their own without contradicting something you have.
Example: Walking Skeletons. How does this happen? Without tendons and anchor muscles something like that can't be possible. True! And claiming "MAGIC!" is a bad excuse to patch things up. That's how most high-fantasy books break things down, it's just magic. You can go that route, nothing wrong with it at all, but if you feel the need to explain something of that nature to raise your word count, here's a few ideas.
So you need tendons. And your character is a mage or is fighting one. The enemy or your character use skeletons or has a companion that is one, what have you. You could use vines. And yes, plant vines. Put a pot in the skull, the pot has water, you just have to keep the vines alive and then use magic to will the vines as you see fit.
1. It would look cool and 2. the vines can act as tendons. It's a small and simple explanation that cries "magic!" but with more that just invisible lines to back it up. What you've just done is throw the reader something to work their own mental calculation off of. They feel they understand your world without any real explanation. Good Job! Simple tweaks like this can save a story!
On the flip side.
don't get too overly complicated. Vaguely explaining something is good. However it can get out of hand when you try to scientifically examine a spell. Take, for instance, the vine tendons. Say you do something like this: "The vines fibers are like muscle tissue," Okay, good start. Do not continue into: "And so the magic moves the water in between the fibers to case motion in the skeleton, it can also make heat from the vibrating molecules!" You have just introduced science. Magic is Science without explanation, Science is Magic with explanation. Keep that in mind. Be vague, it's okay!
When you get complicated, you lose sight of your end, you end up with padding and useless dialog as well as flat characters. Complicated stories for a 30 day write-a-thons can be messy, not that it's a bad thing! But if you want to make it into a real novel, the editing can get to be so heavy that you'll end up just writing it again.
A last good bit of advice for you lovers of Nano and complications:
You can do the same book draft over and over each year, tweaking the plot in the off season then writing the actual draft until you like it enough to properly edit it and send it off. I'm currently working on that now.
I hope some of this proved useful to you in your search for 50,000 words. Good luck fellow Nanoers!
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