October Nano Prep 2024

Day 1:

On Ganymede billions of years in the future, the Earth has been swallowed by the expanding sun. People in our Solar system now live on the Jovian moons and the moons of Saturn.

Steve Corona is a 30 year old Ganymede man who has been wrongfully charged with a crime, and is on probation. He is accused of being a harvester, a person who kidnaps people from the past, miniaturizes them, and sells them at auctions. He was framed by an ex-girlfriend, Petra Pomeroy. Steve refused to agree to marry her, so she framed him for being a harvester, a crime she was actually guilty of, and departed the solar system. Now Steve must track her down and exonerate himself.

He has a choice: study engineering and reverse engineer the technology they use, or go to prison. The knowledge the function of devices like gravity plates, faster than light propulsion, and inertia dampeners has been lost to history, despite still being used by humanity. The teaching helmets are malfunctioning, so people must learn the old fashioned way.

He needs to take care of his nephew, Shai Corona, who is 18. Steve must investigate the circumstances of the crime he had been falsely accused of while attending math classes.

Characters:

Steve Corona: 30 year old protagonist
Shai Corona: Steve’s 18 year old nephew
Petra Pomeroy: 21 year old ex-girlfriend of Steve who framed him.
Fred Munoz: 50 year old probation officer who steals from Steve.

Day 2:

October Nano Prep Day 2

Now that you've brainstormed the general story idea, let's identify some story elements:
(1) Setting(s). Where and when does your story take place?

The year 3,333,333,332 A.D. in late December on the ecumenopolis of Ganymede. Earth has been absorbed by the expanding sun, which is now a red giant.

(2) Protagonist(s). Who is(are) your main character(s)?

Steve Corona, a man on probation studying to become an engineer.

(2b) Flaw(s). What is(are) the protagonist's major flaw(s)?

He trusts women too much, to the point of being deceived and taken advantage of.

(2c) Goal(s). What does(d) the protagonist(s) want (or want to avoid)?

Steve Corona wants to avoid having his ideas stolen by Fred Munoz, his probation officer.

(3) Conflict(s). What's keeping them from their goal(s)? Why?

Steve has a natural aptitude toward engineering, but each time he figures out how ancient technology works, Fred Munoz steals the idea and takes credit for it. Nobody believes Steve over Fred, because they assume a probation officer is honest.

(4) Antagonist(s). Who or what is creating the conflict(s)? Why?

Fred Munoz and Petra Pomeroy are the main antagonists. Petra framed Steve for being a harvester, when it was actually her who brought captives from the past to sell at illegal auctions.

Fred Munoz has no engineering background, but still tries to claim credit when Steve re-invents something. This means Steve will remain on probation longer than he would ordinarily have to.

Just for fun: Write a provocative one-sentence description of your story.
Example: A young, mistreated orphan discovers he is a wizard and must face the evil villain Voldemort to fulfill his destiny.

In a far flung future, a man wrongfully accused of a crime must find the woman who framed him and exonerate himself.


Day 3:

Steve Corona is a 30 year old man who was born on Ganymede on January 13, 2071. He is half Russian, half Mexican. He studied to become an electrical engineer and graduated college in the 2090s. He was riding a monorail and was pulled through a space warp to a time vehicle and miniaturized by Petra Pomeroy, a 21 year old harvester on Ganymede in the year 3,333,333,332. Harvesters kidnap people who were killed or disappeared in the past, and shrink them, then sell them at auctions. Steve was believed to have died when a nuclear fusion reactor exploded, killing all onboard the monorail he had been riding.

Petra fell in love with Steve, and re-enlarged him. He demanded that his 18 year old nephew Shai Corona, his older sister’s son, be brought to the future because he was on the monorail also.

When Steve refuses to marry Petra, she framed him for being a harvester and he went to jail. She escaped to Enceladus, and Steve must try to track her down. He got released to probation, and the job given to him by the probation department is to try to reverse engineer some of the technology invented by people of the past, because they are trying to figure out how that technology worked.

Steve is agnostic. He is currently single. He is great at math, he likes exercising, and is great at martial arts. He likes making home made chicken chow Mein. His weakness is he trusts women too much, and falls for a cute face. His desire is to make the world a better place by developing new technologies.

Day 4:

October Nano Prep Day 4

(1) Describe your protagonist's life in the beginning (Ordinary World or Stasis) of the story. Brainstorm ways you could establish normality through action and dialog to avoid boring your reader.

(2) Describe the inciting incident or trigger (Call to Adventure) that prompts your protagonist(s) to embark on this story's journey (whether literal or metaphorical) and face the conflict. This incident could be large and obvious like a death or disaster, or it could be seemingly insignificant, such as an offhand comment by another character.
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(1) Steve Corona is 30 years old and lived in the year 2101, on Ganymede. He was an engineer with a masters degree in electrical engineering. He graduated from Mars Tech. He worked at a nuclear fusion power plant that supplied power to the colony where he lived. His older sister and 18 year old nephew lived in the same colony.

(2) Steve was riding a monorail with his nephew Shai, and having a conversation about what major Shai should take when he enrolls in college. This is the conversation that establishes that Steve is a college graduate, and all of the information about his major is supplied.

A voice only Steve can hear asks him if he would choose to travel into the future or die by being vaporized, and Steve replies that he wants to travel into the future. This is the voice of Petra Pomeroy.

When the shockwaves of an explosion of a nearby nuclear fusion reactor hit the monorail, Steve is pulled through a temporal vortex into the distant future. He is then miniaturized. The vortex was created by Petra Pomeroy, in an effort to get more miniaturized captives to sell at an auction. There are several other people who have been pulled out of time and miniaturized.

Day 7:

Steve is finally able to get the main oracle working again, and gains complete control of Ganymede. Because he was an engineer, he knew how to make things work better than the people who were starting the learning process from a more basic level of understanding. They didn’t even know Ohm’s law.

Every cubic foot of every dwelling on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are digitally monitored, but the people had forgotten how to access these files. Down through the millennia, people started using drugs and playing video games and allowed machines to do everything for them, so they became complacent. People stopped going to college unless forced to by their probation officers. Steve figured out how to access these digital files.

Now he can right some wrongs. Fred, the probation officer who was stealing from him can now be monitored, and Steve can access digital footage of Fred in his dorm having conversations about how people would believe Fred over Steve, because Steve is a criminal.

He is also able to access the digital files that prove he was falsely accused in 2096 of trying to rob people on a space station orbiting Saturn. Fred had been using that against him, and up until now, Steve had no way to prove his innocence.

Steve is able to prove that dozens of people were wrongfully accused, and get them exonerated.

Fred tried to bribe him, in order to stay out of jail. Steve now has him under his control.

Steve is also able to track down Petra Pomeroy, she is on one of the moons of Saturn. He has footage of her threatening to frame him if he doesn’t marry her.

Day 8:

October Nano Prep Day 8

Hero’s journey outline

Call to adventure

Steve Corona is on a monorail on Ganymede with his nephew and sister, when a vision opens up in front of him. A woman asks him if he would like to journey 3 billion years into the future with him.

Refusal of the call

He won’t leave unless his sister and nephew can come with him.

Acceptance of the call

The woman explains that there will be an explosion and everyone on the monorail will be killed, she agrees to take his sister and nephew along, also.

Supernatural aid

When Steve, his sister, and nephew arrive in the future, they are miniaturized. There are other miniaturized people, including an old man who is from further in the future than Steve. He gives Steve a map that shows what Ganymede looks like in the future.

Crossing the first threshold

Steve asks that he, his sister, and nephew get re-enlarged. Petra agrees, on the condition that Steve marries her. Once they are established in their apartment, Steve tried to learn about this future time.

Entering the belly of the whale

Steve changes his mind about marrying Petra, and she gets angry and blames him for harvesting people from the past to sell at auctions. She flees to Enceladus and he gets thrown in jail, accused of being a harvester. They only have fragments of information about his past. They think he tried to rob a space station orbiting Saturn in 2096, when the truth was he stopped the robbers, was falsely accused, and exonerated.

Because they think he robbed the space station, he gets put on probation for having priors. He is forced to take engineering classes, to figure out how the technology they use was made. It has been long forgotten, despite the fact they still use the technology.

His probation officer is Fred Munoz, a crooked man who tries to take credit for Steve’s accomplishments when he reverse engineers something.

The other shrunken people Petra had harvested are re-enlarged, and Steve befriends the old man who gave him the map.

Day 9:

Dramatis Personae

Allies:

Shai Toro

Age: 18

Occupation: college student

Relation: Nephew of Steve Corona

Dianna Toro

Age: 40

Occupation: teacher

Relationship to main character: sister

Ron Vexler

Age: 80

Occupation: philosopher

Relationship to main character: mentor

Enemies:

Petra Pomeroy

Age: 21

Occupation: harvester of captives from the past, gambler

Relationship to main character: ex -girlfriend

Fred Munoz

Age: 48

Occupation: Probation officer

Judith Klak

Age: 48

Occupation: supervisor to Fred Munoz

Relationship to main character: she is Fred’s boss, she doesn’t believe Steve when he tells her the illegal things Fred is doing.

Day 10:


Steve Corona accesses one of the oracles and discovers how gravity plating works, but his probation officer Fred Munoz steals the credit for it, despite having no engineering background. Steve’s nephew Shai tells him to report the theft, but he is reluctant, because he doesn’t want to make waves.

Fred becomes a celebrity on Ganymede, and most people believe he is responsible for reverse engineering the technology.

Steve is convinced by Shai to report the theft to his boss, Judith Klak, but she doesn’t believe him. She says Fred would never do anything like that.

Steve figured out how inertia dampeners work, and as he tries to explain it to a group of leaders, Fred steals the credit for that invention, as well. When Steve tries to report Fred to his boss, the same thing happens and his boss Judith doesn’t believe him.

Fred warns Steve privately that if Steve gets him fired from his job, he will kill Steve. He will have Steve incarcerated if he ever talks to Fred’s boss again.

Steve tries to access the main oracle and reverse engineers it, and is able to take over Ganymede. The oracle will now only take orders from him. He is able to provide proof that Fred stole the schematics from him, because he is able to access the digital files of the video cameras everywhere.

Now he must decide what to do with Fred and Judith.

Day 11:

Fred Munoz, probation officer

48 years old, born in 3,333,333,284 A.D.

350 pounds, 160 kilograms

Fred Munoz is a war veteran who was conscripted to become a soldier when he was 18. He had to kill during war, so he learned not to value human life. When he got out of the service, he went to college and became a probation officer. Over the years, he became extremely obese. He steals money from people on his caseload to buy extra food. He is unable to stop stealing, eating massive amounts of food and stealing are like addictions to him.

He knows he could lose his job if too many people do what is right and leave the program, so he lies and makes it look like some of them have broken the law. Fred is extremely unattractive, and doesn’t like attractive people due to jealousy. He mainly targets attractive men when he lies about people. Although everything everyone does is recorded digitally, no one at that time knows how to access those digital files, because knowledge of that process has been lost to history.

Fred routinely lies about clients on his caseload, and his boss, Judith Klak, doesn’t believe anyone who reports him. Fred will threaten to kill anyone who exposes him for who he really is, and what he is really doing. If someone could prove what Fred Munoz has done, Fred would go to prison for a long time.

Day 14:

Ganymede in 3,333,333,332 A.D. is an ecumenopolis. The entire surface of the moon is a city. There are tall buildings, and each level of each building has gravity plating to allow for Earth-like gravity.

There is trade with the other Jovian moons. Io and Callisto and Europa also have their entire surfaces covered with cities. Digital currency is used, and can be placed on a disc or transmitted through the Internet.

Most of the people on these moons don’t have jobs. They sit around playing video games and interacting with holographic fantasies. The small percentage of people who did go to college run the civilization, but the knowledge of engineering and science has been lost to history. Their civilization is automated for the most part. The military, police, probation officers and parole officers are some of the only people who have real jobs.

Everyone is immortal, in the sense that they can’t grow old and die, because of advanced medical science. Most of the real engineers and scientists left the solar system millennia ago. Nobody lives on Earth any longer, because the surface is scorched. Nobody lives on Mars, either.

Mining operations in orbit above Jupiter at one time siphoned hydrogen gas from a craft in the upper atmosphere. This craft converted the hydrogen into an isotope that can be ionized and sent up through an electromagnetic tunnel to the space station above it. This was one of the ways fuel is provided for space crafts and nuclear fusion reactors. There are other gas giants in other planetary systems where this was done as well. The mining operation has been shut down for 3 billion years because no one can repair the system.

This hydrogen was sold to people traveling to our solar system who needed to refuel. It was a critical and intrinsic part of the economy of the Jovian moons.

Time travel is a big part of the economy on Ganymede. Wealthy people can rent a time vehicle and travel into the past. Gambling is outlawed because of this. If someone knew sports results because of time travel, it could create problems.

Some people travel into the past and harvest people who disappeared. They are then miniaturized and sold as captives. This practice is illegal, only convicts who are guilty of murder can be miniaturized and legally sold.

Day 15 outline

Hero’s journey outline

Call to adventure

Steve Corona is on a monorail on Ganymede with his nephew and sister, when a vision opens up in front of him. A woman asks him if he would like to journey 3 billion years into the future with him.

Refusal of the call

He won’t leave unless his sister and nephew can come with him.

Acceptance of the call

The woman explains that there will be an explosion and everyone on the monorail will be killed, she agrees to take his sister and nephew along, also.

Supernatural aid

When Steve, his sister, and nephew arrive in the future, they are miniaturized. There are other miniaturized people, including an old man who is from further in the future than Steve. He gives Steve a map that shows what Ganymede looks like in the future.

Crossing the first threshold

Steve asks that he, his sister, and nephew get re-enlarged. Petra agrees, on the condition that Steve marries her. Once they are established in their apartment, Steve tried to learn about this future time.

Entering the belly of the whale

Steve changes his mind about marrying Petra, and she gets angry and blames him for harvesting people from the past to sell at auctions. She flees to Enceladus and he gets thrown in jail, accused of being a harvester. They only have fragments of information about his past. They think he tried to rob a space station orbiting Saturn in 2096, when the truth was he stopped the robbers, was falsely accused, and exonerated.

Because they think he robbed the space station, he gets put on probation for having priors. He is forced to take engineering classes, to figure out how the technology they use was made. It has been long forgotten, despite the fact they still use the technology.

His probation officer is Fred Munoz, a crooked man who tries to take credit for Steve’s accomplishments when he reverse engineers something.

The other shrunken people Petra had harvested are re-enlarged, and Steve befriends the old man who gave him the map.

Road of Trials

Steve figured out a way to repair the mining operation to siphon hydrogen gas from the atmosphere of Jupiter, but Fred Munoz steals the credit for it. Steve has no way at this point of proving anything, and Fred’s boss Judith doesn’t believe Fred would steal or take credit for something he didn’t do.

Steve finds out Petra Pomeroy went back into the past with an expedition to the Cretaceous period, so he volunteers to go back, so he can bring her to Justice and get off probation.

In the Cretaceous period, their base is on the Antarctica continent. They find eggs of dinosaurs and use a machine to duplicate them. The original eggs are returned, so history isn’t altered, but the duplicated eggs will be in a stasis chamber at the base in Antarctica.

Some of the eggs are hatched, but others will remain in stasis in a pyramid structure in Antarctica until the 21st century.

The eggs that hatch are grown to adults, and mind control is used to allow them to be tamed, so people can ride them.

The Meeting With The Goddess

In the Cretaceous period, Steve meets with the daughter of Petra, who has journeyed back in time to help him. Cording to her, Steve saved their entire civilization, and she wants to help him.

Woman As Temptress

Steve encounters Petra, and she tricks him and her future daughter into entering a stasis chamber, where they remain until explorers thaw them out in the 21st century, long before Steve was born.

Atonement with the father

After getting accustomed to the 21st century, Steve encounters the old man he had met on Ganymede in 3,333,333 332 A.D. He reveals that he is an older version of Steve, and that he is watching over him. He has come back in a time vehicle to take Steve and the daughter of Petra back to their own times.

Apotheosis

The United States government of the 21st century is eager to acquire the time vehicle from the old man who rescues Steve, and the old man is gunned down while Steve and Petra’s daughter escape in the time vehicle.

Steve takes Petra’s daughter to her time first, which is about thirty years in the future in relation to the time he came from in 3,333,333,332 A.D.

He is regarded as a hero, but to earn this he must go back to 3,333,333,332 A.D. and get the oracle working again.

The Ultimate Boon

Steve returns to 3,333,333,332 A.D. and gets the main oracle working, and with this device he is able to access the surveillance files on Petra and Fred Munoz to prove his innocence. He is hailed as a hero, and Fred gets fined enough money that it would take a million years to pay it off. Petra is sent to jail, but will get out in a year.

Refusal of the Return

Steve wants to remain in 3,333,333,332 A.D. but he knows he must go back when he is older and become the old man who helped him.

Magic Flight

He journeys back to the late 20th century and makes a life for himself under an assumed name. He keeps the time vehicle, and uses it to rescue his older self on the day he got shot.

Rescue From Without

Steve takes his older self back to Ganymede in the early 22nd century, where he will live until 3,333,333,332 A.D. under a different name.

Crossing of the Return Threshold

On Ganymede in 3,333,333,332 A.D. the older version of Steve celebrates the new year of 3,333,333,333 A.D. with his sister and nephew Shai.

Master of the Two Worlds

Steve is celebrated for restoring the machines that had been abandoned millennia ago. He gets a percentage if the sales of all hydrogen mined from Jupiter and Saturn, and the solar system is once again opened to trade. The rest of the human race across the galaxy can now go back to the ways that were lost when they forgot how to utilize their ancient technology.

Freedom to Live

Steve now trains others in the science of engineering, so that knowledge will never again be lost.

Day 16:

Theme: There are good people who are evil, and bad people who are good. There are probation officers who are evil, and people who are accused of breaking the law who are good people.
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Steve finds other people on Fred’s caseload who offer to help him find evidence of other crimes Fred had committed.
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Petra Pomeroy is a granddaughter of Judith Klak, the woman who runs the probation department, so Judith doesn’t think she is guilty. Most people Steve talks to don’t believe Petra is secretly a harvester who travels back in time and abducts people to miniaturize and sell at illegal auctions.

October Nano Prep Day 17

Describe the cultural, political and/or religious setting in your novel, regardless of whether the cultural setting is fictional, historical, or modern.

(1) What do your societies believe?

Engineers were responsible for ensuring that everyone on Ganymede had adequate heating. If the power went out for several minutes because there weren’t enough backup systems in place, people could die. At that time, engineers could be put to death if people died because of their mistakes. In the past, so many engineers were executed over the millennia that there were none left, so no one wants to follow in that line of work.

(2) In what practices do they engage?

People would rather play video games and drink alcohol and pursue careers in the entertainment industry than to become engineers. The path of least resistance leads away from the engineering field.

(3) What laws or rules of society are in place?

If an engineer is responsible for the deaths of innocent people, he will be executed.

(4) Who/what enforces the laws and rules and how successful are they?

The government is a democracy and the police force apprehends criminals and the judicial system punished them. They are limited because although cameras scan and record everything, there are no engineers to figure out how to access those digital files.

(5) What technologies are in use?

Hover cars fly from place to place, and computers and simulators are available for use. People mainly are involved with entertainment. Medical technology makes everyone immortal, the only way people can die is in accidents or by being executed.

Jupiter and Saturn have been mined to the point that they are half the size they were in the early 21st century. The hydrogen was used for nuclear fusion reactors. The knowledge of resuming the mining operation would be a boon for the economy of the Jovian moons, and the moons of Saturn.

(6) How does the setting impact your protagonist(s) in their pre-story lives?

The protagonists lived in an earlier time period before all of this had happened.

(7) How does the setting impact the plot of your story?

There are no engineers, and Steve has a master’s degree in electrical engineering, so he has the capacity to help the people of this time period and get their technology functioning correctly again.

Day 18: Settings

Courthouse and courtroom: a large structure for people to be tried for their crimes. Ganymede is an ecumenopolis divided up into districts and each district has a courthouse.

School/Classroom on top of a skyscraper for people on probation forced to learn engineering so they can reverse engineer some of the forgotten technology that they still use. It is known as the tower of cower.

Apartment K-83372 where Steve Corona lives. It is a small studio apartment. He has a view of the city.

Apartment K-1218 where Steve’s sister Dianna Toro and his nephew Shai Toro live. It is a two bedroom apartment. They have a good view of the city.

Restaurant 23-Skidoo where locals socialize. It is a spacious place on the top of a skyscraper. You get there by taking an elevator. It is not far from the apartment where Steve lives.

The parking garage where Steve’s hover car is located is in the same complex as his apartment.

Steve’s hover car: Power is siphoned from the Goliath dimension, because most of the usable hydrogen has been siphoned off of Jupiter and Saturn. There is hardly any hydrogen left in the galaxy that can be used as fuel. Larger atoms are brought on our universe and stripped down to use as a power source in reactors. Steve’s hover car can fly to other moons of Jupiter or Saturn.