Ah, wordplay, what you inspire...
Working Title: A Murder of Crows
Genre: Mystery
Protagonist: Davey, a nightingale detective. He's fairly standard as far as the "hard-boiled detective" archetype goes, but he does have a fondness for food in general.
Other Main Characters: Benny, a raven with some sort of paranoid complex. He's the favoured suspect of the murders (killings, not the remaining crows) and hires Davey to make him a case.
Antagonist: It's... a mystery. But someone's certainly wanting to make Benny look guilty... And it's entirely possible they'll strike again.
Setting: A 1920s city and its outskirts, including a large meadow and some farms. All bird species can communicate with each other. The community of birds is ruled by a parliament of owls.
Plot: A murder of crows... has been murdered. While the local unkindness of ravens is the first to be blamed, a party of jays, a cast of hawks, a cauldron of raptors, a clamour of rooks, a deceit of lapwings (and so on) aren't safe from blame, either. It's up to Davey to find the perpetrator before he/she/it/they can strike again.
Point of View: First person (Davey).
Because puns.
This ... minus the murder, this actually sounds like something I would have written when I was little. Seriously, I had this OBSESSION with birds. I'd make up a whole bunch of bird characters and the forest that they'd live in and everything.
ReplyDeleteHee hee, I liked all the use of bird group terminology. That's pretty cool. :D
Also, this may not be the best place for it, but I have a question about writing style. I've currently driven myself into a rut in Unstained because I can't get out of the idea that everythig has to be super dramatic because they're in the Hunger Games. Seriously, every line of dialogue I have the characters seems to be followed with paragraphs and paragraphs of angst and inner turmoil, and I hate it; it's slowing down everything. I want the story to flow and for the characters to not always be 100% consumed by fear and/or guilt, but at the same time, I feel that they should always be scared, because of the situation they're in. Did you ever have this problem with the Brutal Series? How did you get around it? Do you think it's okay if I let off on the drama/angst and have the characters acting more casually?
Well, I pretty mich don't have any actually developed characters or setting, so maybe we should put our ideas together. ;)
DeleteHmm… I could always take the easy way out and switch to one of my ditzy characters for a few hundred words. You obviously can't do that in just Wiress's perspective, so… Maybe you could sort of fade out the angst but keep the tension, if that makes any sense? Make things more casual, but still have plenty of trembling hands and sideways glances? Probably some act of trustworthiness is necessary before they could reach that point, though.
It's kind of hard to say when our writing styles are so different. You're better at exploring in-depth what you're characters are thinking, while I just design things to sooner get to a death scene or snarky comment. Naturally the flows of our stories are going to be pretty different beasts. Hope that helps somehow, though!
Oh, you don't want to see any of my little kid ideas. There was a character called Mrs. Clay-Eating Cardinal. That tells you the extent of my cleverness as a child.
DeleteHmm, I really like that idea. Thanks for your help! I'm glad you responded since I was feeling very discouraged about my story yesterday, even wondering if I should discontinue it since it was getting so difficult to write, but I feel much more confident about it now. :)
Hey, it could work. ;)
DeleteNo problem! Glad you're feeling better about it.
If you put that in and this book becomes a best seller, I expect 25% of the royalties for giving you that name. ;)
DeleteI suppose that's fair. I'll need to know your bank account, though.
DeleteXD
Delete