I have a story I want to write about a witch who runs a potion shop. The basic idea is, she uses her potion shop to help people; people come to her with problems, and she sells them potions and dispenses friendly advice. There are also various non-humans who come to her shop (vampires who come to her for blood substitute, for example).

My original idea was to do a serial manga where each chapter has a different person come into her shop with their problems (think The Tarot Cafe), but I was thinking I want to try entering the story into NaNoWriMo this year, so I need a plot that better suits a novel. I can only think of two directions to go: budding love interest, or political conspiracy. Can you guys think of a plot that would work well for turning this premise into a novel?

I think you'll need a situation that pulls her out of her shop, but that could be any of her customers' problems turning into something bigger than the customer can handle on their own. FYI, if you want to just do the various customers, you could do 5 of them at 10,000 words each and win NaNoWriMo; collections of related short stories are totally allowed.

Also, I love this idea. This is always the sort of picture the song "Love Potion " paints in my head.

Oh my god, you can do short story series on NaNoWriMo?! 8D I can TOTALLY do short stories! THAT'S MY TICKET OUTTA HERE ─=≡Σ((( つ＞ω＜)つ

They're totally inclusive and their rule of thumb is, "If you think it's a novel, so do we." They've explicitly stated in a few places that collections of related short stories count. Non-related short stories are kinda iffy but it's up to the author to know if they're writing in the spirit of NaNo. That is, are you going to turn off your muse and abuse caffeine and generally have a great time writing?

Haha, awesome :D I haven't been to the site in a long time, but I'm excited to finally give it a try! I'll work on liner notes this month so when the first hits I can churn out some proper pages.

Well, it depends on where you want to go with the idea. If you want to make an emotional shocking development, if you want to have an adventure, a mystery, or even a philosophical story (my specialty, even.) For every line there are thousands of universes in wait.

WAIT OH MY GOD I JUST HAD THE GREATEST IDEA I've been thinking of potion recipes and character scenarios, trying to figure out how to implement them into one story, and I just had a brainstorm: what if I have each chapter be about a different potion recipe and how the protagonist helps someone with that recipe? What novel has each chapter center around a different recipe? LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE! IT'S PERFECT!! 8D

• A customer asks for advice and she gives it, but something nags at her and she ends up having to go save the day.
• She has to go out and gather reagents for something, and ends up stumbling on a Magical Turf War between two parties.
• She gets an apprentice foisted upon her(cousin/niece/nephew/etc), and they get some ingredients mixed up on her and magical hijinks ensue.

I like it! :D Especially the second one; I could totally see her running into some sort of human/mer trade skirmish at the harbor.

I really love your idea. This sounds like a very interesting story.

A few thoughts:

• Do the customers always have good intentions?
• Does the witch make a difference between "good and evil" or is she a neutral party?
• Are her recipes always correct, or are there mistakes?
• Are there any rare ingredients she has to gather in exotic places (space? under the sea? inside a monster?)

Those are some good things to think about! I'll write them down :) I can definitely think of a scenario where she needs something really rare for a specialty potion... :m