My NaNoWriMo story thus far II

I'm now twenty thousand works in - so about forty percent finished? Anyhow, I'm finding the experience so far to be exceptionally fun and oddly brilliant. Admittedly, I am having problems balancing the dialogue and actual scenes since I feel like I have to describe everything in length.

The only part of the whole process which I find regretful is that I have no writing buddies. In RL (real life for those of you who are not WoWNerds) I have plenty of friends, but none of them are writers with one exception, and he writes poetry... something tells me he has no interest in writing a fifty thousand word novel. And before someone says "he might", trust me when I say he does not.

I feel like somewhat of a loner on the NaNo website. There are no special cliques or groups I am affiliated with and I haven't anyone to show off to. Instead, I send my work to my friends and they politely inform me they're busy playing Dragon Age: Origins or doing something call w..wo....work. No clue what this "work" is, but I hear it's hard.

In regards to my story I have finally fleshed it out (obviously) and am currently breaking into chapter eight. As I said previously, I am hoping to write a fantasy novel with all of the possible cliches and stereotypes just so that I can turn them over and shake them about. To put it simply, here is the basic plot:

A small group of soldiers escort a dignitary from their country (A republic, none of this monarchy crap) to a small nation they are looking to ally with.

No, seriously, that's it. I used a basic idea and fleshed it out with the world around it. The elves are the enemy of humans and goblins, who have allied. Yes, goblins are good. In fact, in my story they are anti-war and have stopped the advance of the human war in an effort to negotiate a treaty with the enemy. Oh, and before anyone asks, no the elves do not live in a forest and no, their nation is not elf only. They have a plethora of races and their armies include humans as well as elves.

The whole point of the story is that in a war there is not a single hero who saves the day, just as there is not a single villain. There is no good and evil, everyone is different, and whether you support it or not (I am pro-war in most cases, mind you) war is horrific and should be avoided until the very last straw.

As an added side bonus here are a few other things I decided to toss into the story: women are equal and serve in the military alongside men, the elf kingdom is actually a theocracy, bows have been replaced by rifles, catapults have been replaced by canons and black powder, magic is deemed otherwise useless (and I do mean that, none of this crap where a wizard pops out of some elfs bum and starts shooting lasers out of his eyes), and sexuality is considered fluid.

Oh, and to piss off some of you political folk: Capitalism is seen as good. OMG! I know, weird right? I actually decided to delve into politics and societal issues in the story. One of the biggest problems in the human/goblin nations is elves who have dissented from their nation and come to seek aid from theirs. My influence was how F.D.R. reacted in WWII by detaining all Japanese Americans. Whether it was the correct thing to do or not, I cannot stomach the idea of being so cruel to innocent people.

-Irish