Six days into NaNoWriMo 2023 – not an entire week, obviously, but close enough.
Quick recap:
I have chosen to use this NaNo to focus on writing in a genre I love, but have never attempted to write in. The tentative title is Valiance– my attempt at blending Science Fiction and Christian Fiction.
The quick take is this:
After centuries of humanity spreading across space, eradicating all religion and its various ideologies from the society of humanity, on a distant planet recently terraformed, one doctor finds her community threatened by strange phenomena. Not knowing its source, and suddenly in the center of events when she discovers that her hidden faith in a long forgotten god has the power to repel said phenomena, she has to weigh the consequences: fight for the people she cares about and risk death for her faith, or stand silent as people are overcome and killed by an ancient evil.
I started the project prior to NaNo, so I already had a baseline, main set of characters, and rough idea of where I wanted the story to go.
So I have two goals.
•For NaNo, the goal is to hit 50k NEW words.
•But for me, the goal is actually 90+K.
Since the first of the month, I have started NaNoWriMo strong. As of last night, I have written over 16k words.
Total word count so far is over 21K words.
I am working on chapter 10 currently. The book is turning into a hodge-podge of mixed sci-fi carrying elements of subgenres fans of sci-fi love. Think Firefly meshed with The Expanse meshed with Dune. Some space western, dystopian, Christian, social science, and so on – though in the end, the main genres will be Christian SciFi written in a Soft SciFi fashion. (I’m more interested in the character development with this one, though the settings are epic!)
You can see some of the visuals I am using as I imagine the world of Valiance and the people of Tera-Val:
I am having fun bring in some horrific elements tied to the unknown evil that is stalking the community, as well as the elements of hope and faith as the MC relies on passages from a forbidden book and prayers to an unseen god to protect herself and help others.
I’m also enjoying adding scripture for context to the MC’s faith and prayers. She has a unique way of recalling passages from the forbidden book and working them into her prayers, and then witnessing the immediate, although often unexpected answers to those prayers.
Some passages I have included are:
Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our father by breaking faith with one another?
Malachi 2:10
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
Psalm 46:1
I have other verses and passages planned for insertion throughout, but I don’t want to be heavy-handed with Scripture, nor do I want the book to be preachy. Still… This will be a fine line to walk. As the MC discovers people she can trust with her secret, there will be questions she will have to answer. So there will be a fair amount of dialogue mixed in with the mystery and fear of the evil surrounding them that focuses more on the basis of her faith.
Here is a snippet from Chapter One:
I was vaguely aware of the wind picking up outside, but the sudden sound of my shutters slapping against the wall of my house made me jolt in surprise. I looked up from the book I was reading. Gasping at the unexpected view, I rushed to the window and stared out at the strange fog rolling through the settlement. As I stared at the fog, shivers ran up and down my spine. The fog swirled darkly in lazy waves, patches of light and dark obscuring my view of the world outside my window.
“Lord, please guard this home,” I prayed, though the pit in my stomach causing the quick prayer made no sense. Fog often fell over the small town I lived in. It was nothing to be afraid of, and yet… I felt the urgent need to pray.
No sooner had I finished my short prayer, the fog shifted away from the edges of my home as though an invisible barrier stopped it. I gasped in surprise.
Valiance: Chapter One
I would like to say that I intend to keep up the pace on word count going into the second week of NaNo, but I am committed to attending a writer’s conference starting tomorrow. Between that and my regularly scheduled life, I will do the best I can to add to Valiance daily, even if just a few hundred words, or just adding notes and ideas for the future progression of the story.
If you are interested in my daily progress, I’ve been trying to post a daily thread on X, where I share my daily word count, the NaNo progress, and the overall project progress.
See you all there, or see you back here next week when I share more in-depth updates, and maybe some more snippets.