Challenges

On the nanowrimo forums, there are threads to help people get to 50,000 words.  Some of these are challenges, and the concept of these challenges inspired me to do my own in the Walker series.  Three novels of the five have a challenges in them.  But it all started with Novel 1.

The challenge for Novel 1 was to see how often I could get my male main character, Walker, naked.  (And recently I just thought of another place for this to occur.)  Why?  I think because I started out with him naked, and I thought, "cool, why not?"

The Prequel, or Novel 0 (I really have to rethink my numbering scheme), has a minor challenge:  a greeting.  Basically, if possible, whenever Walker and the vampire meet, Walker flips the vampire Valor, straddles him, and threatens him in some way.  Why this?  Because I had an image when thinking up this novel of Walker doing this after a long time apart and saying something funny about how they keep end up meeting this way.  I really don't think I can have Walker do this more than a couple times in the novel, but we'll see.

The final challenge came to me recently upon thinking why I am turned off by much of current fantasy fiction:  The ubiquitous romance subplot.  Well, I can't write romance--every time I do, it ends up bad, and instead of happy endings, I like killing people off (at best) or making them have ulterior motives (at worst), or both.   So that lead me to thinking of something related to the ubiquitous romances, but in tv/movie media:  The rampant, pointless sex scene.  Now that I could work with.  So, in Novel 3, the challenge is rampant sex, with bonus points for making it pointless.  Why that novel?  Because I already am using sex a couple times, one time to make a plot point and another time for humor.  So why not?  Oh, and don't worry, it's not erotica.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but that would be a major upset in tone for this series.

As of yet, Novel 2 and Novel 4 do not have any challenges.  Probably because they are more serious, and the other novels have a stronger sense of humor running through them.  But anyway, that's what I'm doing in this series:  Challenges.  Don't ask me why, I think it's fun :-)  And I can't see traditionally published novels doing this.  :-)  And I get bored easy.

So what about you--are there any challenges you can add to your novels?