Nat's World

2009-08-05T01:18:54Z

I've had some Nat-related brainwaves today, and that's why I'm still awake at 2am, trying to make sense of them all. I can't sleep at all because my brain is so active.

Anyway...I got all steampunky in my thinking. I'm yet to dip my toe into the steampunk world in any very big way, but I do like what I've seen so far, and I'm thinking of catapulting Nat into some sort of steampunky world. I'm considering making it a very Earth-like planet, that has developed in a different way, that Nat somehow comes into first contact with. It's all a bit vague so far, but Nat's arrival sparks off a chain of events with massive consequences, both for the world she enters, and our own, which have a close link no-one has been aware of thus far. Argh - it's hard to describe, but there's a rich set of images in my head. Let's just say the film adaptation is going to look amazing. :)

Plot bunnies

2009-06-12T11:46:24Z

I've managed to establish Nat's life quite well now. The beginning of the story sees her eighteenth birthday, her A-level results arriving, and her decision to start a photography course. Everything in her life remains entirely normal, though - the next part of the story needs to see the start of some freaky weird shit.

The original dream I had, in which Nat appeared, and in the first attempt I made to write her, Nat's parents were dead and she didn't know why, and this was a mystery she had to solve - but that has subsequently struck me as far too Harry Potter, and I don't want to go there with it.

What I do see as a possibility, though, is two rival factions recognising Nat's potential - she has a rare and as yet undiscovered gift, that makes her massively valuable to two groups diametrically opposed to each other, both presenting themselves as good, with their rivals as the epitome of evil. I've always liked stories where it's not obvious who is good and evil. Much as I like Harry Potter, Harry never really had to consider where his loyalties were, and only Snape presented much of a mystery as to which side he was on. The rest of the characters had rather predictable motivations.

I'd like Nat to be a little more enigmatic and mysterious, and have to resolve some inner conflict about how to best use her talents, one of which could be finding the truth behind a very complex situation.

Whatever happens, the next stage is whipping Nat out of her cosy existence and into something mysterious and dangerous - watch this space.

Nat's Diary

2009-06-08T22:18:06Z

As already mentioned, Nat is an obsessional diarist, devoting a lot of time to writing about her life. She's been doing it every day since she was about eight years old, using hardback notebooks to record her thoughts. Entries vary from a few to several thousand words a day, and are made every day, without fail.

She always uses the same pen and is fanatically neat, lavishing more attention on her diary than anything else in her life - most tasks she carries out are done in a slightly careless manner.

Nat mostly talks about what happens in her daily existence, but also writes creatively now and again - mainly snippets of started but unfinished projects - and she also records her thoughts, of which there are many. She asks questions and attempts to answer them.

Nat tried experimenting with a blog for a while but didn't keep it up, mainly because it was found by someone who used to bully her at school and who made a few unpleasant comments on it. She decided to close it down as a result, sticking to her diary and steering fairly clear of social networking sites.

Some of her story will be told through diary entries, and some through narrative.As her story progresses, the diary will become very significant in revealing a number of questions that will take Nat some time to answer.

Biography

2009-06-06T22:25:02Z

Natasha Rebecca Farthing, known to all as Nat, is just about to celebrate her eighteenth birthday as the story begins. She's just had her A-level results as well, and she got four A grades. Nat has passed every exam she's taken at the top grade, much to everyone's amazement – it's obvious to anyone who meets her that she's very intelligent, but she also never does any work – she's the most forgetful and disorganised person who has ever walked the earth. She's good at remembering obscure things, but on an everyday level, she manages to forget just about everything, and sometimes comes across as a rather dreamy person, not quite engaged with reality.

Her effortless success made her schooldays rather difficult, as she was quite unpopular in some circles – people were jealous that she never had to work hard, and just seemed to cruise through things with ease. Nat herself is convinced that her acheivements are entirely down to luck, and she lives in fear that one day her luck will run out. She did suffer some minor bullying at school, but had enough close friends to get by. She loves having deep relationships with people and is an incredibly loyal and generous friend to those she allows to get close to her. She's wary when she meets new people, and sometimes her surreal and occasionally tactless sense of humour puts people off – but she's generally very friendly when she gets the measure of people and trusts them. If she wants to keep her distance, she'll get people to address her as Natasha – Nat is reserved for her friends.

Her two closest friends from school are Dan and Holly. Dan has known Nat since they were both five, and has been romantically interested in her for some time – he's made this clear on a few occasions. Nat loves him dearly, but has no romantic interest in him, which sometimes makes things difficult. Dan is, however, very persistent, hoping that Nat might one day want a relationship with him beyond their friendship.

Holly is a more recent friend, and again Nat is close to her, but Holly doesn't think much of Dan, and this is sometimes a cause of friction. Holly is the friend Nat confides in the most, and Holly has also told Nat a great deal about herself, more than she's told anyone else. Holly's parents have a difficult relationship, and Nat is often there to give Holly a sympathetic ear when things are hard.

Nat is an only child, and her parents, who are both in their early forties, are called Andy and Jenny. They met at university and married soon after graduation. They are both involved in scientific research, but Nat doesn't know much more about their work than this – much of it is confidential. They often travel to conferences – in the past, Nat sometimes went with them, or stayed with grandparents when they were away, but now she'll often stay at home alone when they're away. The family live in a large house that has been in her dad's family for many years – it's not far from Littlehampton on the Sussex coast, but some way from the town, surrounded by fields with only a few other houses nearby. It's near the beach too, a place where Nat spends a lot of time.

Nat needs a lot of solitude – she gets extremely irritable if she doesn't get enough time alone. She's a very deep thinker, and does much of her thinking at her favourite quiet spot on the beach, or while out walking. She's very curious and very questioning, constantly wanting to know how things work, why things happen, and why people act the way they do. She won't necessarily accept what she's told straight away – she needs to ponder it deeply first. On top of this, she reads a lot of books, and this fuels her thinking and curiosity. However much she likes being alone, though, she also needs company at times, and can be prone to feeling very lonely. Dan and Holly are used to her phoning to talk at all hours of day and night, a habit which has lost her a couple of friends in the past. Nat doesn't seem to need much sleep – she doesn't strike most people as being very energetic, but she's never tired either.

Nat's room reveals quite a lot about her personality and interests. Although she's not particularly “girly”, the walls are pink, and there's a fair few pink objects in there, including her phone and her laptop. She loves technology, both old and new – alongside her laptop is an old manual typewriter, and she also owns an old record player with a valve amp. Various objects are in differing stages of disassembly, victims of her curiosity about how they work. Her room is full of books, usually in precarious stacks that fall over randomly, and she also has a lot of CDs, tapes, records, videos, DVDs...just about everything you could imagine. Her tastes are very eclectic, some of which are inherited from her dad, who loves music and has a large vinyl collection. Nat and her dad sometimes see bands together. There's quite a few posters on her wall, an equal mixture of music, films, and quirky humour. There's paper and notebooks all over the place, and the only neat area is the shelf where Nat keeps her diaries. She's been a meticulous diarist since pretty much the time she learned to write, and she spends many hours writing her diary – mainly as a way of clarifying her thoughts. She usually always carries her diary with her, in a battered canvas satchel that belonged to her mother when she was a teenager.

Nat knows her own mind, and is very principled – this is borne out in her taste in clothes, which is quite individual. Nat despises the fashion industry and rarely wears anything that could be considered trendy – she's sometimes been guilty of stopping wearing something she likes if it's become popular. Her style has elements of indie and gothic, and she wears a lot of black, although she has clothes of lots of other colours too. She much prefers skirts and dresses to trousers, and boots to shoes, but if she needs to do something energetic, she'll don a pair of combat trousers.

She's a slim and slight figure at only around five feet tall, but her very curly and slightly wild blonde hair makes her look a little taller. Sometimes her hair has a coloured streak in it. She has blue eyes.

Most of Nat's fairly large collection of clothes can be found strewn on the floor, along with most of her other belongings. Stress and anger at being unable to find something is a common occurrence. Nat's parents learned long ago that they're better off not going anywhere near her room.

As the story begins, Nat's normally good relationship with her parents is under a little strain. They've always let her get on with what she wants, and have given her a lot of independence, but they're concerned about her lack of direction now she's left school. She has a job three days a week in a local shop, which gives her a reasonable amount of money to spend on the things she wants, and it's hardly demanding employment. Her parents are keen for her to use her intellect and go to university, but it's not something that appeals, as she has no idea what she wants to study. She's also afraid that her luck will run out and that she'll fail her degree. Much of her thinking time is spent trying to sort out some kind of direction for her life, but it's far from easy. She's very attached to her home, and she really doesn't feel like leaving. She does, however, have a fatalistic sense that she'll have to do so at some point, for reasons she doesn't quite understand.

That will do for now – hopefully LJ won't eat this like it did last time. :( Second attempts never seem as good as the first ones, but I think I've managed to include everything.

natashafarthing

Nat's World

Plot bunnies

Nat's Diary

Biography