Revisiting my last NANOWRIMO attempt

I don’t write a lot of short stories. In fact, my attempts at writing short stories often is more of a recent thing.

While looking back on some of my works, I stumbled upon my last NANOWRIMO attempt, a paranormal mystery set in a very rural place entitled “The Mystery of Barangay Wiska.”

Barangay is a Filipino word which means small settlement. It’s like the component of a city or municipality.

I thought of injecting in some Filipino folklore into the story which was set in a modern era.

Re-reading the first few chapters renewed my interest for the story. I don’t even remember the direction my story went, but I vaguely remember I ran out of ideas, and I also ran out of time with the NANOWRIMO attempt. However, I got myself up to 30 chapters…

Which got me thinking… can I complete this story? While it may not be finished as a full-fledged novel, perhaps I could at least finish the story. With fresh perspective, perhaps I can, finally, save this story from Work-in-Progress purgatory… hahaha…

As of now, I don’t know what direction I will take the story. Will it be a happy ending, or a tragic one? What lessons will my main protagonist learn? How will he grow from this encounter?

I still have a lot of unanswered questions. I guess that’s why it still is a work in progress, eh?

Let me share to you a bit of the story, please let me know what you think.

Here is a brief excerpt of the two chapters I got:

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Preview of my Dragon Slayer Story

In my previous post (10 Ways to Slay A Dragon), I mentioned that I was working on a short story involving a dragon slayer… it is still in it’s unfinished stage, and while I am currently stuck with the process of actually writing it, here’s a first preview of the story:

The Dragon Slayer

Everything changed when the dragon came.

The fields once rich with flock were decimated with fire. Herds were turned to ashes in a blink of an eye.

Everyone was afraid.

This was a community of farmers.  They did not have the strength.

Each night, like a typhoon, the winds would pick up, the trees would sway, and a loud thunderous roar filled the air.

People huddled together in fear.

One day, a stranger arrived. He was tall and well-built. He had a shield as tall as he was by his left arm and a large spear on his right. He wore armor of dark blue enamel, with almost no distinguishable markings and it had dents. His shield bore no marks of any noble house, but rather had a large scratch mark that run from the top to the bottom.

He was looking for the dragon.

*****

Well, I know that isn’t much to go on, but please do leave me a feedback.

I am also posting the incomplete draft in my patreon page  (which is more or less half-way into the story already) and would update it as soon as I can get more information and research done, which I hope would be sometime early next year.

I haven’t been able to do any decent fiction writing ever since my incomplete attempt at this year’s NANOWRIMO, which was another stab I did at writing mystery fiction. I’m trying a different genre this time, and it’s a genre that is also dear in my heart – fantasy.

My recent manga reading lists also somewhat influenced me into trying out fantasy. I have read Konosuba and caught up with the latest chapters of Goblin Slayer… which are both on the opposite sides of the spectrum as far as fantasy goes. One being a comedy, and the latter a rather dark fantasy kind.

Well, I figured that if my writing skills is not yet at “Novel Writing” level, I might as well write enough short stories to keep my skills sharpened. Who knows, perhaps one of my ideas could be fleshed out to be a novel one day.

Well, that is all for now. Seeing as this will probably be my last post for this year… Thank you everyone for subscribing and supporting my blog. I hope that next year will be a lot better for all of us.

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Thank you and have a nice day.