It's NaNoWriMo time again and this year--even more so than previous ones--I have no idea whatsoever what I'm going to write. Even worse, it's already technically Day 2.

And so, I've decided to turn the idea generation process over to the tools of Seventh Sanctum (a site I use a lot when I'm running my various role playing games). Over there they've pulled together and/or created a large number of random generators for everything from space ship names to full story summaries. Some of the stuff is pretty wild, some of it just plain silly, and, sometimes, downright inspirational.

Needless to say, I'm hoping for the latter. :)

In that quest, I've turned to their listing of story inspiration generators. With little sense or ceremony, I've gone and opened the lot of them up in multiple tabs here in my browser and read the first auto-generated suggestion they've all produced. Then, being generally dissatisfied with that initial try, set them to generate ten ideas each.

Some interesting ones of note:

• From The Envisioner: "The story of Moby Dick set in a suburban home."
• from The Quick Story Idea Generator: "The theme of this story: romantic transformation. The main characters: generous mobster and philosophical schoolgirl. The start of the story: accident. The end of the story: deception."
• From The Quick Story Theme Generator: "Setting: pirate. Theme:natural disaster/slice-of-life story"
• From The Romance Story Generator: "This story takes place in a jail. In it, a cynical veterinarian has a chance meeting with a witch-hunter who inherited a family curse. What starts as indifference becomes love."
• From The Story Generator: "The story is about a stockbroker, an astronomer, and a physicist. It starts in a mosque in a small city. The story begins with a death, climaxes with the taking of a test, and ends with someone discovering a report about themselves."
• From The Symbolitron: "The allegorical story where the eras of history map to the thirty-eight slots of a Roulette wheel."
• From The What-If-inator: "...Stalin was an alien?"
• From The Writing Challenge Generator: "The story takes place five years into the future. A character changes clothes. A character is sick throughout most of the story. During the story, a character eats something that disagrees with them."

All interesting things, for sure. Unfortunately, most of them strike me mostly as starting points for short stories. In other words, I have no idea how I'd even come close to padding them up to the 60,000 work NaNoWriMo goal, even under the best of circumstances.

But I do think I've found something. It actually came up on the first opening of The Story Generator page:

This is an epic drama with a strong theme of exploration. The story is about a graceful monk who is in debt to a watchful prophet. It takes place in a tourist town on a barren world of forbidden magic. The story climaxes with a slip of the tongue. The need to protect someone so a prophecy comes true is an important part of the story.

Now this... this I think I can work with.

Maybe after getting some more important work done, I'll auto-generate some characters and get writing.