Plans for my NaNo Novel

[future_guardian]

Well, earlier in this blog I outlined stuff I was writing for the third book in a trilogy and then a little later how I was going to merge that trilogy into a new trilogy (since the female leads were the exact same character and I liked both of them).  Well, during the month of November, I went to work on the merged novel.  You know how NaNoWriMo is supposed to be about reaching word count and the first draft doesn't have to be anywhere near perfect?  I did things a bit differently.  My first draft had to be usable.  A lot of pieces of said novel will be edited, but the ideas are solid.  So that's where I left off in my novel bloggings.

Here's the new news.  After reading some different urban fantasy/paranormal romance book blogs and got a feel for what was out there (although I do read urban fantasy, I am very particular about what I buy) I determined something about the creatures I write about.  First of all, I've been going about it the "wrong" way, if you believe some of the blog commenters.  According to them, if you are writing about creatures that have ties to religion (angels, demons, other similar things) then your book must absolutely beat readers over the head with religion. 

See, I don't believe in doing that.  For many reasons, starting with this one: I don't like being beat over the head with an idea.  I don't mind reading something once or twice so I hear it and then it's confirmed, but I do not want every five pages to be about "Oh, readers, in case you forgot what I told you in the last five pages...*Infodump, infodump, infodump*"  Writers I like have done this, and eventually I just skip over it.  Surprise surprise, I got it the first time. 

And also, since I'm not particularly religious myself, I don't think I should be telling my readers "Hey readers, you need to believe in this because it's good and I'm writing about these creatures that have ties to it..."  No, no, no.  Being beat over the head about anything is bad enough, but I particularly hate being beat over the head with preachiness.  I have no issues reading about religious stuff, but I don't want to find out after finishing that the whole point of the book is that it's trying to convert me.  No, can't do it.

So, all this rage leads me up to the way I'm handling my own creatures.  So, I write about demons.  And I write about those demons as part of a religion.  And yes, they tend to be evil (except the really ineffectual ones, and I want to focus more on one in particular in the second novel).  And yes, they have their own leader who exists to cause problems for humans.  But *TWIST* it is a fantasy-world religion, and there is no message I'm trying to push.  The same goes for the spirit guides and god.  In fact, I'd like to note that my spirit guides aren't necessarily good entities.  They're basically humans (appearance wise, do have emotions and sometimes consciences, that good stuff) who just so happen to have a bit more power and live in the spirit realm.  And being basically human means sometimes you do what you want.  So, sometimes there are evil or deeply misguided spirit guides.  It's part of my novel, not me trying to convert anyone.  So now I expect anyone reading this to run away screaming because god forbid a writer uses religion-based creatures in a fantasy world doing fantasy-world things.

And as a quick related-ish aside, I'm not entirely sure how to handle my stupid female lead.  I hate her.  I hate her with everything in me.  She's supposed to be flawed, but I mean I HATE her.  She's just a bad character.  Well, that's where I stand on her right now.