Nano Planning Sheet—The Hanged Woman

The Hanged Woman

Outline

15 chapters, 50,000 words, 3333 words per chapter, 1 chapter every other day

chapter 1: The reader is introduced to the two main characters, Syrus and Zela. Their sister Silla (name may need to be changed) (actually, Silla is Syrus’s full sister and the two are Zela’s distant cousins; she was fostered with their family) has been hanged as a sorceress, after an altercation between the leader of the village and Syrus, which will probably need to be shown; otherwise, who would believe that superstitious people hanged a woman just because her brother was an ass? She will most likely have done something to them because they attacked Syrus or whatever.. The village in which the story starts is mysteriously burning. They are forced to leave the body behind and Syrus and Zela flee. They stop in a remote clearing. where Zela “cures” Syrus of his grief and pains. Syrus is annoyed. Zela is frustrated. The two try to decide what they will do next because they are afraid that other villages will have heard of the strangers and the burned village. By the end of this chapter, they have decided what they will do next.

chapter 2: In this chapter, the reader will find out why the two main characters were traveling to the burned village in the first place. Zela and Syrus will be moving on to the next town. A man from the burned village (aka, the villain or antagonist) will confront them and there will be a fight. Zela’s powers will become known. Zela will be captured by the villain, in spite of her powers, and Syrus will be injured during the fight. The new town will be a much larger city, perhaps the capital of the kingdom. Syrus will decide to seek help from another distant relative of theirs. The relative will at first disagree to help them. The confrontation will occur and Zela will be captured. After that happens, the relative will agree to help Syrus, because Zela is “the one they expected” or some such prophetic personage. The relative will not be the king, but a chamberlain perhaps, who has much influence over the king.

chapter 3: In this chapter, the villain (not really from the destroyed village, but someone who knows of Zela’s powers) takes Zela to his fortress in the mountains. He forces Zela to heal his wounds. He gloats of killing Silla and how Syrus will soon join her in death. He tells Zela of the prophecies surrounding the “one who is expected” [need to come up with a way better title than that!], and she is shocked and appalled that her powers were gods-given. She suffers despair under the watchful eyes of the villain, who is a powerful sorcerer and wants to use her powers for his evil ways. He is plotting to overthrow the somewhat weak king and will use the superstitious folks’ fear of the sorcerers to his advantage, by threatening to unleash Zela upon them, and then he will promise to save them from her destruction. Zela will admit to destroying the first village. Zela rages against the villain but there is nothing she can do to free herself. Her powers are immune to whatever he is using to control her.

chapter 4: Syrus confers with the relative on how best to proceed. The relative knows of the villain’s evil plans, through various spies placed within the king’s household and also the villain’s household. The relative is anxious to find Zela and so is Syrus. His injuries turn out to be minor and are healed by the king’s physician. There is an audience with the king in which Syrus pledges his loyalty and the king grants him citizenship [?]. The king knows of the prophecy and wants Syrus to proceed with reclaiming his “sister” from the evil sorcerer. The townsfolk are up in arms about the burned village, which Syrus lies (or is it a lie?) and says the villain killed his sister and destroyed the village for harboring them. Syrus is in crisis about lying but cannot stop himself.

chapter 5: More of the interaction between Zela, the villain, and the villain’s household and workers. The fortress had once been home to a prosperous farm landholder family, but the one time they overextended themselves, the villain swooped in and stole the entire place out from under them. They were relegated to servant status. Some of the family members fled to other villages and cities before they would see their beloved home fallen to ruin. The villain has let the home place fall to ruin because he is cruel and mean to everyone, even to Zela. He imprisons her in a tower and he taunts her cruelly. Secretly, he hopes to have her accept his advances. She despises him and refuses him constantly. He beats her into submission when he starts the experiments with her powers. She does not do anything willingly. From afar, another village is burned to the ground, due to the experiments. People scatter into the capital and the fear spreads.

chapter 6: Syrus hears of the 2nd destroyed village and of the fear spreading throughout the countryside. He cannot believe that Zela let herself be used in that way; in fact, he is beginning to realize his feelings for Zela extend beyond just brotherhood. He confides in one the men in his group, Aaron, about some of the past events. Aaron is a good guy, concerned only with the safety of the kingdom. He is almost pressured into spying by the relative, but he refuses out of loyalty to his own honor. He tells this to Syrus and the two become close. It takes awhile to travel to the fortress. All along the way they see evidence of the experiments and the closer they get, the more Syrus worries about Zela’s safety. He misses her so much by this time. The men encounter a band of travelers who were recently at the fortress and they tell the men what has been going on there. Syrus hears of the beating, and is horrified. They speed up their pace to make it to the fortress in half the time it would normally take.

chapter 7: Back at the fortress, Zela is suffering the ill effects of her powers being drained. She cannot do anything on her own. She cannot escape the villain’s advances, nor can she protect herself. Her spirit is being broken, and she knows it, but cannot do anything to stop it. He has powers of his own and can read some of her thoughts. He chooses an appropriate victim, a young girl much like the water bearer from the first chapter, and tells Zela that if she continues to refuse him, the girl will be tortured slowly in front of her. This is too much for Zela, so she acquiesces, assuming he will kill them both in the end anyway. By the end of this chapter, she is completely broken, and does whatever he wants her to do. She feels that Syrus has given up on her, or that he is dead; his wounds from the fight had looked grievous.

chapter 8: Syrus and Aaron arrive at the fortress. They disguise themselves as laborers to infiltrate the castle, and to figure out their next move from the inside. Syrus gets a glimpse of Zela and is shocked at her condition. He overhears a conversation between the villain and someone else about how Zela is now completely destroyed mentally and physically and it will soon be time for their plan to go into effect. Syrus is enraged, assuming [correctly] that the villain raped Zela. He wants to kill the villain at that moment, but Aaron manages to calm him down. They learn that the relative is in on the plot. Somehow, Syrus manages to talk to Zela and tells her not to give up hope. Syrus and Aaron return to the capital city.

chapter 9: The experiments continue while Syrus and Aaron return to the capital city to mount a force to destroy the fortress. They confront the relative, who denies any wrongdoing. But they drag him in front of the king, and he finally admits to the planned coup d’etat. The king is afraid, having seen some of the damage and heard of the rumors for himself. He agrees to mount the force, and by the end of the chapter, the force sets out from the capital city. Meanwhile, the relative has escaped custody, having a lot of friends throughout the city. The relative flees to the fortress ahead of the force.

chapter 10: The villain hears of how the city has been left fairly defenseless. He does not have enough manpower of his own to take the city, but he thinks of a way to hold the king hostage. He uses Zela’s powers to kidnap the king so that when the force arrives, they will not siege the place. Zela is in a world of her own, thinking that the conversation with Syrus was imaginary. She befriends the child. With the villain gone, her thinking becomes clearer, and she finally realizes what she will have to do. Her powers expand a bit. She pushes some of them into the child.

chapter 11: In this chapter, the force arrives at the fortress, ready to hold a siege unless Zela is released and the villain gives up. There is a small battle; the villain doesn’t hold enough men in reserve, nor is it easy for him to get people to fight on his side. He has returned with the king, and holds the king up on the parapets, where the force can see him. He threatens to kill the king, and says that he is the one in charge of the kingdom now. Zela tries to escape the tower, but she can’t—at first. With the villain’s attention elsewhere, she pushes more energy into a secret place in her mind, where he can’t touch. She will be able to use this energy later on, if she could just get free. She sends the girl out with a message.

chapter 12: Things are at a standstill. Syrus is quite enraged and wants to level the place, but Aaron cautions him to be wary. The girl arrives and through her, Zela communicates with Syrus. She explains that it will be impossible to win this fight, and that he should just allow the force to return to the capital city. She has a plan on how to kill the villain. She tells Syrus to return to the fortress in the guise of the laborer. Once he’s back inside, they will work together to destroy the man. The girl returns to the fortress, unseen.

chapter 13: Syrus does as she asked. The force departs. The villain gloats. Syrus and Aaron return to the fortress as laborers. Unfortunately, the relative recognizes Syrus and he is imprisoned—with execution for murder planned for the next day. As he is led out to the scaffold, he sees Zela sitting on the balcony where the villain is viewing the hanging. Zela has been slowly growing stronger because one weakness of the villain is that it is hard for him to maintain the psychic chains if he is distracted, and having the king there and having the force there were big distractions. At long last, she is able to break the chains that bind her powers, and attacks the villain, throwing him from the balcony, but not in time to stop the hangman from hanging Syrus. She manages to cut the rope before it’s too late.

chapter 14: Syrus is unconscious. Zela stays by his side night and day, trying to bring him back from the Veil. The king returns to triumph in the city. The relative is tried for treason and hangs as a traitor. The king issues a decree forgiving Zela and Syrus of their past misdeeds, because it wasn’t their fault. Aaron is declared to be the new chamberlain to the king.

chapter 15: Syrus wakes up to Zela’s loving arms. She is ashamed for what she allowed the villain to do to her, and how easily her mind was broken, but Syrus assures her that none of the events that occurred were her fault. She refuses to let him touch her, but he tells her that he loves her, that he loved her all along and was too stupid and stubborn to see it. With his love, Zela realizes her destiny, which is to be the first priestess to these people. Zela adopts the sigil of the hanged woman to warn of intolerance.

Other Notes on the Story:

This is a fantasy story, but not too far out there. Think Knights of the Round Table, with unexplained magic. The regular folk are very superstitious; anyone who is considered an outsider is deemed “evil” or possibly a bad influence. The story is about becoming more tolerant to differences and how what people don’t understand isn’t always bad. The regular folk are slow to accept Zela, but they had heard all their lives of the prophecies so once she arrives, they are both fearful but hopeful. Right now, as I write the story for the Daily Writing Challenge, the story is being told by Zela in first person, but I think that will have to change so I can follow Syrus around as I outlined above.

This story seems derivative, doesn’t it? Ah well, I really like the title and so far, writing it is keeping me going for the Daily Writing Challenge. I see, after jotting down these notes, that I will need to go back to the first chapter and dramatize the fight with the mayor, the hanging of Silla, and the burning of the village. Did Zela set fire to it? No, I think this is where we get our first look at the villain as well. I need to think of a really great name for the villain. Perhaps he will have appeared as the village’s leader, trying to instigate something with the strangers, and then in the end, Zela’s powers will come out, and he will realize what she is. That will set his plan into motion from that point.

Writing this outline has shown me just how complex a story can be. There are several things going on here that will need to be foreshadowed and loose ends that need to be tied up, and a LOT of dramatizing. I may need to research hangings since that is integral part to the story. Fun fun. Writing this outline has also been a bit easier than doing the NaNo outline for “Sayonara Sweetheart,” because maybe it’s easier to plot a story that’s a typical fantasy, rather than a modern story with relatively little plot. *shrugs* Either way, at least I’ve gotten this one planned out, for the most part, kind of.