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The longest thing I've written was 39K words, but the longest thing I've completed was only 14K words (technical reports don't count), so 50K words is a bit daunting.
I've got an idea for a story (it's a side story for an original universe created by one of my friends, with elements of Panzer Dragoon inserted in it), but I'm not sure whether I can stretch it out.
I tried this last year and though I didn't actually get anywhere, I did enjoy it and thought it was a good experience. I really would like to do it again, but I just don't think I'm going to have the time to this year. Sadface.
Re: No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012
Discovered this contest last year, I believe I will try this time. Even if I end up typing about the Inuit discovering faster than light travel to fish on faraway worlds, EA designing an all-new game or Queen Elisabeth starting a genocidal war against the french in her nineties, it will be more of a plot than most movies have nowadays.
__________________ The Pen is mightier than the Sword - when the message is written in Blood.
It never struck me how... kinda... painful it is to have a character you love behave like a cow, but Caitlin's snobbery seemed like the natural progression of her character, so i winced and bore it.
Anita is a lot more fun and interesting to write in situations. Character interviews with someone highly insular are difficult.
Oh right, I'm going to a con the first weekend of November too.... ah well, I'll dictate any ideas to my phone.
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You, too, could have a trophy case this intense! Participate in Iron Avatarist! Do it, or I'll start sending you drunken PMs.
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I am not brave enough to say something outrageous and be serious. You'll be happier if you assume I'm joking.
Stoats legit King Arthur by The Succubus.
The last time I did nanowrimo, the story had quite a lot of filler (yes, yes, they were character development sequence with a bit of action, but essentially filler) About 3-4 chapters of it.
And then I ran out of words and stopped.
This time though. This time I am armed with more than just an idea.
I have that magic system. This has been waiting for four years.
I have Twin Faces of the Sky as a setting (and title). It is a cool one, and very hard to explain. The explanation will eat words like no tomorrow, muhahaha.
It has a history. I worked this out as part of another story in a different setting, to be adapted for this new one. That one was a 6000 word short.
I have the major characters. I have an outline of the politics.
I have a bombastic plot that goes from the swashbuckling sky pirate on a freedom struggle (from her mother, the Church and later, society), all the way to changing the world.
What I fear this time is that I've done too much planning.
The setting is obviously important, the lack of a planet strikes me as kinda important.
The history is important, it is highly related to one 'character' and central to knowing the Church and the entire second half.
The *magic system* is important, there is a major focus on how progress in magic changes the world.
The characters are important, no need to explain.
And then there are the factions and political players. They are characters and they shape the plot.
And then there is the plot itself.
Just explaining everything WILL eat the entire word count (the magic system alone is already at 100 pages and only 40% done, although I certainly don't need to explain everything) and I will lose motivation to write.
So, my goal for Nanowrimo: reach the last chapter of the story by the end of November.
EDIT: So say I, on this day the twenty fourth of october two thousand and twelve.
I only hope I sustain the motivation to actually do the darn writing.
So here's where I stand picking the concept to go with. I'm purposefully being vague the particulars in the interest of concentrating on the writing bits.
#1 is an idea I've been kicking around for a while. It's a genre I don't have much practice in (romance), which is both a drawback and a charm. One of the key charms is that the concept lends itself to an 'episodic' structure, which in my experience lends to a longer story for me (if I have a beginning-middle-end, I tend to start rushing to the end). The key drawback is that I can't nail down a struggle, some reason to get the plot moving beyond its root concept. Otherwise it's just a TV drama series of the variety I can't stand, with the environment & characters being static.
#2 is more my traditional territory - "It's not the world as you know it anymore." The inspiration here is largely how disappointed I was with the movies Chronicle, Push, and Jumper. I feel one of the mistakes made in those movies was making the central character too powerful and narrow, so Billy is going to have much lower levels of power but more of them (right now I'm talking about 32lbs of TK, 100 yard teleportation, that sort of level). The big weakness here is that this too normal for me: I don't know if I can keep interested in writing that for a month. I can very easily see this getting to 30k in 10 days and then not getting finished.
#3 is a world I've been kicking around for about three years now. It might be roughly described as being a Naruto-esque world, minus the eye-hax and tailed beasts. This one has the huge advantage that I've already got a lot of the world-building done, and I can do 10k-20k on that alone. The problem is that I've never developed a plot or story for this world.
I am toying with the notion of mixing #2 and #3, with the main character being a new concept for the world -- different enough he'd still be finding everything out for himself, but having the built-in struggle against the status quo.
__________________
Sometimes, the knights are the monsters
The main problem with the world? So many grownups, not enough adults.
Pain is nature's way of saying you're not dead and the other guy is.
Current Project: Sky High, the superheroic High School campaign. The school's name isn't the only thing I borrowed...
#3 is a world I've been kicking around for about three years now. It might be roughly described as being a Naruto-esque world, minus the eye-hax and tailed beasts. This one has the huge advantage that I've already got a lot of the world-building done, and I can do 10k-20k on that alone. The problem is that I've never developed a plot or story for this world.
I am toying with the notion of mixing #2 and #3, with the main character being a new concept for the world -- different enough he'd still be finding everything out for himself, but having the built-in struggle against the status quo.
If you need help by way of a plot brainstorming session, I could be of service. I certainly could use some myself! Sometimes in explaining things, you fill in the gaps on the spot, and end up coming up with solutions you'd been trying to figure out for years.
Alright ladies and gentlemen. Here is the plot of my novel, as developed as it probably will be before it gets started.
For the first semester of his junior year in a small, New England liberal arts college, Clarke Kaplan decides to study abroad in Seville, Spain. He is a technically gifted painter, but he feels like his paintings aren't "important" or meaningful. He is an Art History major and decides that studying in Spain will help inject him with some passion and meaning.
He leaves behind his group of friends, including Adrian, a Southern gentleman who is heir to a large forture, Erick and Amanda, two starry-eyed slackers, and Emily, an enigmatic girl from another school. While in Spain, he immediately connects with a new group of friends, the jovial computer programmer Santi, the budding politician Paulina, and the quiet Ángel María.
For the most part, Clarke finds his classes in Spain boring, one in particular interests him. It's a study on contemporary, counter-culture art that focuses prominently on a new Spanish artist named Salvadore Sáez. Sáez is extremely private, to the point where no one has ever met him. He is primarily a graffiti artist, but has recently begun a sequence of paintings that have been left on the doorsteps of local art galleries.
Despite finding a lot of interest in Sáez's work, Clarke ultimately leaves Spain at the end of the semester feeling unsatisfied. He made friends, but didn't "find himself" or make any meaning out of his life. He also finds that in the five short months that he's been gone, his friends have changed a lot. Adrian, previously an entitled trust fund boy, has taken an internship at a large corporation in order to prove to his parents that he deserves his share of the family's company. Erick and Amanda, having never taken the step to have an official relationship and generally behaving like awkward teenagers, have begun dating seriously and begun to sort out their schoolwork. Even Emily, someone Clarke saw as a kindred spirit, has begun pursuit of a career in journalism.
Feeling alienated by his friends' newfound sense of purpose, Clarke resolves to finish the year and then re-evaluate his life, but
Spoilers for a book that has not been written yet
Spoiler
Clarke's father's illness gets worse and he is moved to a hospital full-time. Clarke leaves school to be with his family, and then to take care of his ailing grandmother and mother after his father passes away. He ends up taking a minimum wage job as a clerk to help support his family. He attempts to begin a relationship with Emily, but is rebuffed, and he tries to begin one with Amanda as well after she comes over to comfort him about his father's death. After spoiling his friendships with Emily, Amanda, and Erick, Clarke takes a turn for the worse, burning his paintings and throwing out his art supplies, resolving to "grow up" and abandon his creative pursuits.
His grandmother gets sicker as well, but she reveals that she'd sold some jewelry in anticipation of taking a vacation. Given the circumstances, she offers the money to Clarke to go somewhere for a little while and clear his head. Initially he refuses, but after the doctors assure him that she will be fine, and after Adrian offers to look after his family, Clarke decides to return to Spain and track down Salvadore Sáez.
Spoilerception
Spoiler
After a few days of bumming around Seville, Clarke discovers that Salvadore Sáez is the pseudonym of his friend Ángel María. In shock, he has a conversation with Ángel, who reveals that his father is dead as well. His father was a cruel man who beat him and his mother and drank away their savings before he was eventually kicked out. After he left, Ángel never saw him again, but he eventually discovered that his father had won a large sum of money in an American lottery and left it all to his ex-wife and son, before being murdered over a gambling debt.
Ángel hated his father for what he had done, but couldn't deny that the money he'd been left had helped his mother take care of herself, and allowed him to make his art for free. In that sense, he started to try and forgive his father and became concerned with redemption and healing, which is why he'd begun his paintings, as a way to express the conflicted emotions he felt over his father.
Clarke initially reacts indignantly, upset that the art that he'd taken so much from could be explained by something so simple as a strained family relationship. Ángel explains that it doesn't really matter what the art means to him, personally. What has made his work famous is the way other people respond to it, what meaning THEY take from his paintings. He claims that there is no great cosmic meaning of life, but that each person has to find their own path to a fulfilled, meaningful life, regardless of if it's "important" or not. Clarke leaves and reflects on Ángel's words, deciding to return home and reconcile with his friends. As his plane flies home, he sketches the first piece of art he's done in months on a sheet of notebook paper, and has a brief discussion with the woman next to him about it.
Being in that this novel has central themes that include "the meaning of life", "isolation", and "religious themes", I give this one Pretentiousness Level: Damien Hirst.
I'm planning to write the second novel in my YA Sci-Fi series: Zack Jackson & The Cytherian Academy. I might change my mind at the last minute and work on my next fantasy novel instead, but my brain is in Sci-Fi mode, so I should take advantage of it. I have a general plot already, though. Earth Kid (43rd century), first time away at school on a different planet, dealing with more aliens, kids who don't think he should be there, etc. I might even throw something about bullying in there, though I thought about doing it without a villain, per se, but I think that might be difficult.
Plus, writing a 50K - 75K YA Novel in 30 days is slightly easier than a 100K+ fantasy novel, even if I am already 13K words into it.
I've had pretty good luck with NaNoWriMo. 2008 was the only year in which I was unable to write 50K words, but my wife died on 11/11, so I have a good excuse. Once Zack Jackson & The Cult of Athos gets published (hopefully before Christmas), that'll make two NaNos published for me, out of three books (it's time consuming 'cause I'm doing it right: hiring editors, cover artists, finding Beta Readers for feedback, etc.).
I'm actually still undecided about going rogue (because I like it more than rebel :).. or not taking part at all..
I'm not doing any prep work, still having the notes of last year's effort..
but I'm not really feeling it and unsure I will have the time to stick to it for the entire duration.
not that I need that long to come up with 50k words.. but last year things conspired to make me quit despite being way ahead of schedule...and there are reasons to believe that work will do this to me this year too.
so..I'm both passionate about the idea but not really feeling it at the same time.
anyway, should I decide to take part, I'll continue on my previous "book".. the story of a band of conmen/rogues, in a medieval/high fantasy setting, whose attempt at stealing a crapload of money backfires as they get entangled with world-shaping events, a quest to rediscover "high magic", an impending war between various factions, an otherworldly invasion of nasties and a number of people chasing them across the planet.
so..yeah..nothing really new or never done before
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a triple cheer for Wojiz, for making me my very own Avatar...
I've had a consistent record of failing to write 50,000 words for the past several years and I see no reason to change now.
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"Justice is a blade that draws blood from the innocent and wicked alike. And raised high, it can lead a charge that changes the world forever."
This avatar of Anders from Dragon Age 2 was provided by Dorian Soth. I didn't do it.
Last edited by Candle Jack : 10-25-2012 at 01:28 PM.
Yeah. I am not sure I will paticipate in this simply because I am so busy between collage and such. HOWEVER with election day coming soon I'll have a lot more free time because my campaign work will be over, so I MAY have time to devote to this. Even if I don't, however, I will still be doing work a novel in a world I've been fleshing out for a while. I don't want to put the defining element of the setting that makes it so unique out there because it's treading somewhat original water and I don't want anybody lifting the idea. However, I will say that it is a blending of cyberpunk and high fantasy that has a very unique take on both applications of cyberspace and magic. I don't want to give away too much, though. If your interested, PM me and I will probably tell you as long as you promise not to lift the idea.
The actual story, however, will be centered around a group of eccentric misfits who also happen to be some of the world's foremost magical prodigies. They've all been assembled by the setting's resident giant (and somewhat...ok...very) corrupt megacorp to act as a special unit against a masked terrorist mastermind and his minions who are kinda like a darker, twisted, evil fusion of occupy wallstreet and the nazi party before it took over Germany......and even that is not really a description that does them justice. Of course, you can bet most of these oddball "heroes" are anything but "heroic" and the interactions between themselves and their corporate superiors are already looking to be very, very fun to write...There is a lot more to the plot then that, though. Family matters for some of the characters get involved, there are undercurrents of political themes dealing with inequality, corporate power, the dangers of extremism ect...(and neither the corporate side or the anti-corporate terrorists come off looking clean by the end of things.) There IS a lot more to the plot, I just can't write it all down here without a wall o' text. What is above is a bare minimum concept.
Well, I think I may actually have a Plan at last. I've got a rough outline of what I need, it's just a matter of locking myself in a library for a hundred years. Oo
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Proof that avataring standards in the Playground have reached an all-time low:
Well, I'm settled in and ready to go. The problem now is going to be *not* writing until Nov01.
I decided to go with merging my #2* and #3** ideas (see earlier post). It occurred to me that each made a nigh-perfect fit for the other concept. #2 had a plot/struggle, #3 had the better world. I had to make some changes to the world for #3 to get it to work but hey - the struggle writes itself once that is done.
One key issue right now is getting the Billy's*** power level right. He's going up against opposition with mostly physical powers so he can't be helpless in such a fight, but I don't want him winning a physical confrontation either. I also don't want his teleportation to be a free escape card; it is an escape card but I don't want it to be a casual fight ender. Right now I've got his range pegged at 100 yards but I might have to rein it even further in. Right now the TK is holding at 32lbs (I don't want him flying under his own power or throwing people around) but I'm having trouble pegging his defenses.
So, three days to get this in the ballpark. Hopefully that prep work can keep me from cheating. Hopefully
Footnotes spoilered
Spoiler
*Essentially, this concept is inspired by my disappointment with the movies Push, Chronicle, and Jumper. I wanted to do a story where the main character is a bit of a loser who becomes psionic (TK, telepathy, teleportation, and so forth) but isn't a complete jerk / doesn't go berserk as a result of his horrible life.
**"A Naruto-esque world, but with no eye-hax or tailed beasts". The world itself was pretty developed, but I hadn't developed characters or a plot for this world.
***A standard trope for me. "He'd be a protagonist if he were growing up anytime soon. He's not a good guy, not a villain, nor someone that can get away with saying they'd be a good guy if not for the world they live in. Just somebody who suddenly gets more power than he deserves, and has to figure out what to do with it."
__________________
Sometimes, the knights are the monsters
The main problem with the world? So many grownups, not enough adults.
Pain is nature's way of saying you're not dead and the other guy is.
Current Project: Sky High, the superheroic High School campaign. The school's name isn't the only thing I borrowed...
Last edited by TheEmerged : 10-28-2012 at 09:39 PM.
TELL ME ABOUT IT. All I want to do while trapped at home during this storm is work on my book.
__________________
bees
You, too, could have a trophy case this intense! Participate in Iron Avatarist! Do it, or I'll start sending you drunken PMs.
Spoiler
I am not brave enough to say something outrageous and be serious. You'll be happier if you assume I'm joking.
Stoats legit King Arthur by The Succubus.
It's going to be the other way around with me. There's no way I'm going to be ready to start writing immediately on the 1st of November. I've still got so much more research I need to do and I feel I've only just scratched the surface.
On the plus side, my knowledge of demonology is improving nicely.
__________________
Proof that avataring standards in the Playground have reached an all-time low:
You, too, could have a trophy case this intense! Participate in Iron Avatarist! Do it, or I'll start sending you drunken PMs.
Spoiler
I am not brave enough to say something outrageous and be serious. You'll be happier if you assume I'm joking.
Stoats legit King Arthur by The Succubus.
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Re: National Novel Writing Month
