FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Little shy of 700 words done, first passage completed. Start on my second on the way home.
That means I got a couple hundred words out today at the office between posting and compiling and silly computer breaks, but not sure if I'll manage more or less than that on a regular basis. Weekends will probably be my crutch, I think.
10,000 words by Monday morning? Who knew my university education would become relevant only once I had 10 years experience in an office environment.
I have character motivations for most of my main cast. I don't think I can come close to telling the story I want to tell with one novel, though. Like, most of the time I've spent planning this story, it's been a comic book (even though I think I'd be able to pace it better as a TV series, even though I also know the odds of a TV series coming out of something like this are astronomically low).
So my main obstacle here is figuring out how to pace this in novel form (and how to adjust some of the visual stuff I see in my head when I think of this story into just words). I know a bunch of major events I want to have happen, and I know there are some story beats I want to hit, and I know, basically, how the big mystery at the center of it resolves.
One thing I've learned while working on this is that spending time thinking out your characters' personalities and motivations can really help in plotting. It seems simple, I guess, but spending five minutes working out who one of my characters would be changed the central mystery I'm working with in a way that unlocked tons of new story opportunities and solved some elements I found more problematic from a non-literary standpoint. And I did some bare bones research into native Hawaiian culture because I wanted to make one of my characters a native Hawaiian and I found some cool bits in there that sparked some more ideas and it's been fun thinking about all of this stuff.
I looked at some other ideas for nanowrimo this year, and some of them are ideas that I really like, but I had more trouble unpacking the characters and plots with those. This one...I feel like I know what the story is. I feel like I know who the main cast is. And I want to write it down and I want other people to see it. So...I'm doing this story instead.
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AntimatterDevo Was RightGates of SteelRegistered Userregular
i think i'm going to incorporate a page i had written into this nanowrimo and make it about a character i have been wanting to write more about
Geebs if your thing is too big for a novel and kind of thought of as a comic book or tv show there is a push to make serial stories a thing again. So you can have it set up in the chunks you think of as episodes or whatever you want to call them and just break it up that way instead of just by chapter.
well the biggest current problem is that the opening scene was going to be a wordless montage establishing the main cast and the main mystery and I had these ideas for scene transitions and
It hit like 11pm last night and I immediately started hating the idea I've had for the past month, so I stayed up late watching dumb shows on Netflix instead, bleh. Gonna just write it anyway, hopefully I come back around on it before long.
3DS: 2234-8122-8398 | Battle.net (EU): Ladi#2485
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Oh god that pain of writing so badly and not letting yourself stop or go back and change it. My brain is screaming.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
It hit like 11pm last night and I immediately started hating the idea I've had for the past month, so I stayed up late watching dumb shows on Netflix instead, bleh. Gonna just write it anyway, hopefully I come back around on it before long.
In lieu of finding a copy editor for my novella, I guess I'll just write that child murder story. November seems like a good enough excuse as any to get that going.
I've typed my first few paragraphs of my short story when I suddenly discovered that my auto-spell check is not working. Also, no matter what nonsense I type I can run my regular spellcheck without it discovering any errors. This annoys me.
Now I'm going to have to figure out how to fix this before continuing.
Edit: Aha, fixed it. There was a setting somewhere that had set my writing program's default language to "None" (which acts a heck of a lot like English except in terms of the Spellchecker apparently), so I set it to "English" and now it works.
Gonna start on this when I get home tonight. What I'm doing probably doesn't quite qualify, because I'm not actually writing a novel, I'm writing a roleplaying module. My gf and friends are very into Call of Cthulhu, and we've done some one-off games from time to time, which led to me toying with some ideas for a module of my own I can run for them.
I don't know if I can find 50k words on the topic, but I've got to do character biographies, location descriptions, event planning, etc. I'm really bad at improvising, so the more I can get down on paper in advance, the better I can react without any railroading. And there are some aspects of the module that I'd like the players to find genuinely horrifying, which will be much easier if I've got words prepared in advance.
As I do in every writing thread in SE++ I'm going to remind everybody that the Writing Block IRC room exists. I just go to it through mibbit.com or you can use whatever downloaded program you want that does IRC stuff.
The server they need to connect to is: irc.slashnet.org
Then join the room: #thewritersblock
We don't always talk about writing, but if people ask questions we usually provide responses and in November we are pretty good about organizing writing sprints and actually talking about writing.
I'm just using mibbit.com since I don't think I have an IRC client installed.
You must make yourself write in order to get the joy of watching Chuck. 600 words gets you an episode and in just three episodes you've written your daily allotment of words.
I just cannot write interesting visual descriptions. I mean, I can't even describe the way things look when I'm talking, either, so I don't know why I'd expect to be able to do it in writing. Like if you ask me to describe what my father looks like, I can't do it. I can picture him in my head, but it just comes out like, "black hair, male? White, I guess. Short-ish." God help us all if I ever need to give eyewitness testimony.
Starting to wonder if there's actually something wrong with my brain, some kind of agnosia thing going on.
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Quoththe RavenMiami, FL FOR REALRegistered Userregular
Probably not. It's just a muscle you have to build, like any other. The description muscle. It's sort of pink and gnarly. Like a, um, muscle.
I just cannot write interesting visual descriptions. I mean, I can't even describe the way things look when I'm talking, either, so I don't know why I'd expect to be able to do it in writing. Like if you ask me to describe what my father looks like, I can't do it. I can picture him in my head, but it just comes out like, "black hair, male? White, I guess. Short-ish." God help us all if I ever need to give eyewitness testimony.
Starting to wonder if there's actually something wrong with my brain, some kind of agnosia thing going on.
Fun fact
You odn't really need to be able to describe things visually in order to write well
Some schools of writing actually hold that not doing so lets the voice of an action or a character speak more clearly without using the crutch of visual aide
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AntimatterDevo Was RightGates of SteelRegistered Userregular
I AM A GOLDEN GOD
BOW BEFORE ME, MORTALS, THE WORDSMITH WHO IS OVER THE AVERAGE AND NOT DONE FOR THE DAY
i'm not gonna burn out, i've barely even been lit up
I just cannot write interesting visual descriptions. I mean, I can't even describe the way things look when I'm talking, either, so I don't know why I'd expect to be able to do it in writing. Like if you ask me to describe what my father looks like, I can't do it. I can picture him in my head, but it just comes out like, "black hair, male? White, I guess. Short-ish." God help us all if I ever need to give eyewitness testimony.
Starting to wonder if there's actually something wrong with my brain, some kind of agnosia thing going on.
Fun fact
You odn't really need to be able to describe things visually in order to write well
Some schools of writing actually hold that not doing so lets the voice of an action or a character speak more clearly without using the crutch of visual aide
Think that's going to depend heavily on what you're writing.
Spec fic demands some amount of description--especially the further it gets from traditional spec fic trappings.
Speculative fiction? I mean, kind of. But not really?
The amount of actual physical description Gene Wolfe gives tends to be pretty normal, but the gulf between his aesthetic and that of most fantasy and sci-fi is vast and mighty and terrible
You can make sparse descriptions work to your favor if you are careful and crafty. It's hard, but it's doable, and it's a joy to read
Speculative fiction? I mean, kind of. But not really?
The amount of actual physical description Gene Wolfe gives tends to be pretty normal, but the gulf between his aesthetic and that of most fantasy and sci-fi is vast and mighty and terrible
You can make sparse descriptions work to your favor if you are careful and crafty. It's hard, but it's doable, and it's a joy to read
I don't know that there's a "right" amount of description, but for my own stuff my limit tends to be "how tightly can I do this and keep the story action moving forward?"
Posts
That means I got a couple hundred words out today at the office between posting and compiling and silly computer breaks, but not sure if I'll manage more or less than that on a regular basis. Weekends will probably be my crutch, I think.
10,000 words by Monday morning? Who knew my university education would become relevant only once I had 10 years experience in an office environment.
So my main obstacle here is figuring out how to pace this in novel form (and how to adjust some of the visual stuff I see in my head when I think of this story into just words). I know a bunch of major events I want to have happen, and I know there are some story beats I want to hit, and I know, basically, how the big mystery at the center of it resolves.
One thing I've learned while working on this is that spending time thinking out your characters' personalities and motivations can really help in plotting. It seems simple, I guess, but spending five minutes working out who one of my characters would be changed the central mystery I'm working with in a way that unlocked tons of new story opportunities and solved some elements I found more problematic from a non-literary standpoint. And I did some bare bones research into native Hawaiian culture because I wanted to make one of my characters a native Hawaiian and I found some cool bits in there that sparked some more ideas and it's been fun thinking about all of this stuff.
I looked at some other ideas for nanowrimo this year, and some of them are ideas that I really like, but I had more trouble unpacking the characters and plots with those. This one...I feel like I know what the story is. I feel like I know who the main cast is. And I want to write it down and I want other people to see it. So...I'm doing this story instead.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
scripts are so much more fiddly, it's a lot harder for things to flow
gotta stop giving a shit about formatting
Why do you hate it?
Add a shoot-out in a classy antiques store!
3 pages out of 90 done
a good start
really need to do my fucking character trees
No guns in my story, but I guess I can do a swordfight/magic battle in a classy antiques store.
167 words down.
IT HAS BEGUN!!!!
Now I'm going to have to figure out how to fix this before continuing.
Edit: Aha, fixed it. There was a setting somewhere that had set my writing program's default language to "None" (which acts a heck of a lot like English except in terms of the Spellchecker apparently), so I set it to "English" and now it works.
When. I was doing comic scripts, CeltX was my go-to for formatting because it is so automated
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
I don't know if I can find 50k words on the topic, but I've got to do character biographies, location descriptions, event planning, etc. I'm really bad at improvising, so the more I can get down on paper in advance, the better I can react without any railroading. And there are some aspects of the module that I'd like the players to find genuinely horrifying, which will be much easier if I've got words prepared in advance.
I'm just using mibbit.com since I don't think I have an IRC client installed.
Also this phone wrote sorbet instead of storm there because of swipe and that's terrific
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Just hit my target for today though, so yay! Hopefully get a few hundred more words done after work. Only 29 more days to go, then.
SwiftKey! Get it now, sorbet me later
And I'm with Magell: the reward system for managing the whole writing vs doing other things is a good plan.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Starting to wonder if there's actually something wrong with my brain, some kind of agnosia thing going on.
50% of any time I spend writing is setting up a coherent beginning to a scene.
oh, I use Final Draft, which is crazy automated
I'm just OCD about it
Ah, that I can totally understand
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Fun fact
You odn't really need to be able to describe things visually in order to write well
Some schools of writing actually hold that not doing so lets the voice of an action or a character speak more clearly without using the crutch of visual aide
BOW BEFORE ME, MORTALS, THE WORDSMITH WHO IS OVER THE AVERAGE AND NOT DONE FOR THE DAY
this is finally giving me the motivation to write
Think that's going to depend heavily on what you're writing.
Spec fic demands some amount of description--especially the further it gets from traditional spec fic trappings.
The amount of actual physical description Gene Wolfe gives tends to be pretty normal, but the gulf between his aesthetic and that of most fantasy and sci-fi is vast and mighty and terrible
You can make sparse descriptions work to your favor if you are careful and crafty. It's hard, but it's doable, and it's a joy to read
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
copy the url of my sig, replace my username with yours
I did that with smof's