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[NaNoWriMo] National Novel Writing Month, Keep up the good fight!
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This is actually something I wanted to ask about. I was having a look at Quoth’s links on the first page, and the snowflake method caught my eye. It does, however, involve quite a few preparatory steps. So, here’s the question: Is it ‘cheating’ if you do a substantial amount of prep work, or is it all kosher so long as none of it is the official 50,000 words?
As for story, the biggest block at the moment is the main character... or rather, giving him a flaw. I’m guessing it’s a tightrope every amateur writer struggles with, but unsurprisingly I’m having trouble finding a middle ground between him being a Gary Stu with understated flaws, or just being an outright tool when they’re too pronounced. The original plan was for him to have a bit of a sordid history, reveal that up front, and slowly trickle info about why he made those dubious calls in his past as the story goes on... but once again, if the character’s too unlikable at the beginning of the story, then (entirely hypothetical) readers wouldn't want to find out more about him. They’d just stop reading. Any thoughts?
(And yes, I went out of my way to use ‘Gary Stu’. It’s one of only two literary phrases I’m familiar with, and got all excited when I saw someone else use it.)
I think that I may either write the next part of my "Beatrice and the Rising Sun" story from the last NaNo, or come up with something else insane and silly. I feel like I left Beatrice at a real cliffhanger once I got to 50k last year, but I didn't know where to go so once I hit 50k I just stopped... but the girl needs to get her treasure hunting on. I left her just as she was breaking through the barricaded entrance to a naval shipyard to steal an ocean-worthy boat.
EDIT: Ah, EmporerSeth, I did that too! When I was little, the first story I ever wrote had a villain who was essentially M. Bison... I think even by name at first. When I got older and tried to rewrite it, I renamed him and tried to give him more of his own distinct backstory, but I still always pictured him with a deep red beret and fiery glowing fist. =)
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The thing about giving someone a flaw is not that you are trying to make them flawed for the sake of not being a Gary Stu. You are trying to give them a flaw that is going to directly interfere with their ability to accomplish their intended goal. By the end of the story, they have to overcome that flaw to succeed, so you have yourself a nice character arc.
Say you have a character whose flaw is that he's stubborn. You want this flaw to be the cause of whatever trouble he gets into right away. Then you want him to keep making decisions that reflect his stubbornness, each decision making things worse. He wouldn't apologize to his girlfriend so she leaves him. He wouldn't back down in front of his boss so he gets fired. That kind of thing.
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Limited budget...engineering conference...you work with me in NASA? They keep cutting our budget and expecting us to get stuff done! Sucks.
Man, I shoulda joined these forums five years ago. NaNoWriMo sounds like a great way to get motivated about my next book. It's tough to stay motivated when the first one just gathered rejection notices from agents... lol
Thanks for the links, everybody. I'm gonna go check out Quoth's preparation site and such. Woot! I'm getting excited...gonna have to give up WoW again...
Anyway, now I'm determined to finish this year! No plans yet for what I'll write about, starting to consider it.
Could someone explain how "chatroom sprints" work?
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Hahahahahaha! Does Beast really whoop everyone every time? BEAST WHY DO YOU NOT WRITE MORE REGULARLY?!
Forged by Fate, March 5, 2013! (And it's on Goodreads!)
Quoth: I wrote 200 words, woohoo.
VanityPants: I wrote 250.
Amalia: I wrote 300!
Beast: I wrote 500 EAT IT SUCKERS.
Everyone else: o_O D:
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SUCKERS!
Edit: Also, yeah, the springs are in the IRC! The server is irc.slashnet.org and the channel is #thewritersblock -- a few of us hang out in there pretty regularly these days, and the population tends to explode during NaNo if last year was any indication. Hopefully it'll be the same this year!
Remembered the idea I had for this. It was to tell a story from two distinct perspectives of the same events in an overlapping timeline. One told chronologically, the other backwards, with the split probably between the protagonist and antagonist.
I'm not familiar with anything like that, but would be interested to know if someone has read something like it. Sounds like it might be too much to think about for nanowrimo, though.
-Starless, a boy being raised by the last witch of England, goes on an adventure in order to find the Pheonix's other egg and resurrect magic!
- Handle Parley is trapped underground in a series of bunkers after an earthquake hits while on holiday in Madrid. All he has to keep him company is his dead friend, Cave Donovan. The bunkers would have a military past, dating to just before world war one.
It would be heavy on musing and insanity, but I’m not sure I want to write this as my first novel, no matter how choppy it is.
- Gilliette Lettertongue, a goblin smuggler just released from prison, with her crimes cut into her tongue, falls in with drunken Vlademerry Belterweight Croupe, a filthy rich elf of the Wild Hunt.
It would be a general who is the monster, who is the man? story, except it wouldn't beat you over the head as to who is who, or even tell you. It would be set in an industrial fantasy world, in a time similar to say, 1900's. The story would come to a head when Croupe offends a goblin street-thane, a mob boss, and Lettertongue has to choose what side of the law to live on, whether she can side against her own race, whether her friend is worth the risk at all and… stuff like that. The ending would ultimately be tragedy for everyone involved.
- The life and times of Two-Colour Grew, the high shaman of the Umfula tribes, those who live nomadically around the Dead River, a canyon filled with sand.
The first quarter of the tale would lead up to Grew’s death, then it would tell of his middle age, as the absolute best shaman, then his time as a student, then of his early childhood when the tribes were at war. Perhaps it would end with his birth.
Grew is not magical, he has more in common with the Wizard of Oz, he understands people and the purpose of religion, and with this knowledge he slowly ties the tribes togethor over the course of his life. It would be a alternate Earth I suppose, it would have an overall plausible feel. Oh and he is Two-Colour because he would suffer from some skin pigment disease, thats all.
- Something about twenty-somethings living on Mars in the future. Just hanging out. Then a refugee from Earth moves in next door and their lives change for ever. Its better in my head.
Forged by Fate, March 5, 2013! (And it's on Goodreads!)
My sprinting will be slower this year, I'm hoping to up the quality a bit from 0 to possibly 2 (out of 100 possible quality points).
So on to a short explanation of my nano this year. It is about a dude who is trying to pick his life up after this lady leaves him. A lot of it will be flashbacks to their relationship but mostly will be him being pretty insane. It will be sexy and depressing and hopefully also SEXY.
That is all.
Loving the sound of this especially. :^:
This'll be my first ever attempt at writing a novel. I've only scribbled a few short stories in the past, and my issue has always been slacking and not actually getting ideas down on paper/screen. Hopefully NaNoWriMo will help me change all that in a big way. I've definitely made progress, as I've been writing at least 250 words a day for a few weeks now. 50,000 in a month will be a massive step up, but I'm ready for the madness!
Aaaanyway. My currently-vague idea for this attempt revolves around the rather silly adventures of an eccentric perfumist in a surreal version of ye olde English countryside.
Okay, this is how I approach it, which comes from screenwriting more than anything else.
Your character needs three things: a WANT, a NEED, and a FLAW. What your character wants is his goal. It is the thing he is trying to accomplish that moves the plot forward. His flaw is the part of him that keeps getting in the way of his achieving that goal. It is the thing that affects his actions and choices and causes him to screw up. His need is complicated; at least partly, he needs to overcome his flaw if he's ever going to attain his goal. Sometimes he needs to realize that his want is not really worth having, or that what he wanted isn't what he really needs. So a need can also be a sort of shadow goal, or real goal, however you want to look at it.
In the beginning of your story, you set up the goal and the character starts working toward it. Like I said, he's got a flaw that keeps screwing him up. He's too proud to accept help. He's too stubborn to admit when he's wrong. He's too timid to go after the girl. Whatever it is, it influences his decisions negatively and makes his situation worse somehow. This happens throughout the first third or so of the book.
Then, you have a change. The stakes are upped. The character realizes that going about things in the same old way is not going to get him anywhere, so he tries another tactic. He'll accept help, but he wants to be in control. He'll admit he was wrong in the first place to get someone on his side, but he still doesn't really believe it. He grows a pair and gets super macho and goes after a BUNCH of girls instead of the one he wanted in the first place, but inside he's still the same timid guy putting up a front. This goes on for another third or so.
Finally, the character realizes he's flawed. By now, he may have actually achieved his goal, his original want, but he may have figured out it's not what he really needed. Or he still hasn't gotten there and he knows that he won't until he truly changes. So he either has a new goal or he's ready to change so he can achieve the original one. He learns to collaborate and listen instead of being stuck up. He recognizes that everything is his fault and it's his job to fix it all. He gains enough self-respect to stop playing games and be honest with the girl he likes. Final plan is implemented, climax ensues, denouement unfurls, FIN.
Hope this helps a bit, sorry for the length.
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I am the worst writer ever.
Forged by Fate, March 5, 2013! (And it's on Goodreads!)
Of course, I also lost NaNoWriMo last year, but I'm sure these things are in no way connected.
Also, Quoth often says smart things.
Plot arcing and character arcing and things like that usually feel like formulas to writing. It makes me feel kind of restricted.
Everyone has their own style!
Basically it'll be a Noir Superhero Drama.
A former drug addict is caught in a mysterious explosion, which severely burns him and otherwise just fucks him up. It forces him onto pain meds and the like. However, at the same time, he discovers that he can enter a sort of dream avatar state that can actually affect the physical world.
He ends up furthering his "addiction" with sleeping pills so that he can stay asleep try and start helping people, but in the process nearly loses the last bit of contact he gets with his kids, which forces him to make a decision. In the process of doing that, his still uncontrolled powers actually cause him to splinter his personality, casting out all of his negative emotions and traits and essentially giving them all physical form.
And so he has to find a way to fight/rejoin them without turning back to the pills.
It would have a fairly heavy focus on the life of the man and how his world is completely changed by what happens to him, rather than all about how he learns to kick ass or whatever.
Forged by Fate, March 5, 2013! (And it's on Goodreads!)
Just noticed the boards went up, too. No posts in my region's forum yet, but I'm excited!
Forged by Fate, March 5, 2013! (And it's on Goodreads!)
I posted the prologue to my novel on the forums a while ago. Soon after that I got 3 more chapters into my book and its currently sitting at 14k words. Only problem is that I haven't touched it in months because I am stuck on establishing the rules for the "magic" system in the universe. This has given me the motivation to pound out some ground rules before November so I can finally get back to writing.
So excited.
And a little bit nervous.
EDIT: Also, that prologue I linked to is not that great. That was the first fiction I had ever written. Mind you, I haven't improved tons, but I can tell I have made progress after reading that.
I haven't done much prepping yet, but I have been thinking about thinking about my novel!
Uh oh.
This just reminded me...
While the first piece of fiction I ever wrote was safely destroyed, one of my very early works is still on this forum somewhere.
*shudder*
All rocketships and atomic power and evil Martians and rayguns. Straight pulp.
I probably won't, but it would be fun.
Yeah, once it's on the internet, it's forever.
How is everyone's planning going?
If anyone needs a program to help with their writing planning, OneNote is awesome for organization. Amalia pointed it out to me last year and it's extremely helpful. It's really handy to be able to drag and drop pictures, links, or any text you want/need to remember into an organized document.
Some other things that you might find useful:
Write or Die is a tool to keep you writing. It uses negative reinforcement to punish you for not writing, with different modes depending on how strict you want it to be.
Q10 is a program I know a lot of people loved using last year. It's a word processor that covers the entirety of your monitor. It also defaults to a black background, which I found to be a lot easier on my eyes than staring at the white page in Word. Another added benefit is that you can set a timer in Q10 so when you do sprints you don't need a separate timer.
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Still, I may try to participate, although I'm not going to beat myself up about the word count this year if I don't make it. Instead of literary fiction, which I've done for the last three years and is the focus of most of my writing in general, I'm veering off course going for pure fantasy this year. Actually, derivative fantasy you might say. I'm going to tell the story of the character I've created for my regular D&D game. And I think it would actually work well as a trilogy, or even an ongoing series.
The story follows Rahant, a Deva avenger in the service of Bahamut looking for answers. For those who don't know or follow D&D, Devas are a race of angelic decent and are effectively immortal. Whenever they die, they reincarnate in a remote location. They strive to achieve and serve good because if a Deva becomes too corrupted, they are reborn as a rakshasa. Devas remember their previous lives, even if the memory is somewhat vague, but Rahant can't remember anything from his previous life. It's almost as though there was about a hundred years in which he didn't exist. He is now on a journey to discover what happened during that time and why he can't remember anything. Not to give too much away, but the story I'm thinking of would essentially be a fantasy-style retelling of the Book of Job.
Forged by Fate, March 5, 2013! (And it's on Goodreads!)
You probably worked this out for yourself, but Quoth - you rock. I've sat down and had a proper think about my character's flaw (as well as reading your posts about story arcs), and after a bit of reassessment, I think I've come up with something that works far better, and suddenly the whole story is back on track. The problem was exactly what you said - he was flawed just for the hell of it, and so it came of being a bit phony either way.
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Because, you know, there are so many original thoughts floating around out there.
Basically, I am saying that 2300 years later, anyone worrying about originality is screwed.
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I tend to have a hard time with the opposite, which is making the antagonist of the story more than just a one-dimensional bad guy. How do you make him or her relatable without being too likable? What happens if you take it too far, and the antagonist becomes more endearing than the protagonist?
It's been done well many times before, but when I sit down to try it myself, it always feels like a tightrope act and I can never quite get it right.
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