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Finally... => Creative Projects => Topic started by: Malt_Hitman on October 15, 2016, 12:57:42 pm

Title: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Malt_Hitman on October 15, 2016, 12:57:42 pm: NaNoWriMo 2016!

It’s that time of year again! Delve once more into National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org/dashboard) once again for the Xth time or for the first time!

What’s NaNo?

For the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month is the challenge to write 50,000 words in the span of a single month. Yep, that’s it. It doesn’t have to be good, it doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to be 50,000 words at least. You can do longer if you want (overachiever) but you’re not getting anything extra for it. At least not from me, that’s for sure.

Why start now?

Procrastination! You can’t truly procrastinate until you’ve officially started. Want to plan? Well you’ve got half a month to say that you’ll do it tomorrow! Want to pants? You’ve still got half a month to sit around and think about thinking about it tomorrow. So whether you’re going to post-to-write, post-to-watch, or simply post-to-say-I’d-really-like-to-do-this-but-I-won’t-have-the-time then you’ve come to the write thread!

Do I get anything if I finish?

You might. Not from me though. In past years certain NaNo sponsors have offered discounts on software, free trials, and other digital thingys. Plus, other people will congratulate you on writing 50k words in a month. Plus you’ll have written 50,000 words and have won and it feels good to win.

Other questions about NaNo?

If you want to know more you can go and post on their forums (http://nanowrimo.org/forums). After you create an account you can even earn stinkin’ badges for stuff like buddying up, posting on the forums, and joining your local community. So join up, announce your novel to the world, and then make yourself look better by comparison to those who haven’t! Or something like that.

Other linky bits:

NaNo Countdown: http://nanocountdown.com/

Older Threads: 2015 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=153572.0) 2014 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=144886.msg5744295#msg5744295) 2013 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=132259.msg4700987#msg4700987) 2012 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=117442.msg3676510#msg3676510)
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Skynet on October 15, 2016, 01:35:07 pm: Quick question. Would participation in the spin-off competition NaNoGenMo (https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2015) (National Novel Generation Month) also count as on-topic?

Because I'm participating in that competition.

I'm actually interested in that question. On one hand, NaNoWriMo cares about the writing of 50,000 words, and not the origin of those words. There's also no need to worry about the quality of the novel in question. So technically, NaNoGenMo should qualify as on-topic. On the other hand, while computer-generated novels are interesting to read and may even be decent, the amount of actual "content" in a computer-generated novel is lower than that of a human-generated novel. Reading a few chapters get you a good sense of what the computer-generated novel is about, while you're expected to read the whole human-generated novel. (I'm trying to fix that this year by curating a human-generated corpus and limiting the computer's involvement to the arrangement of that corpus...emphasis on trying though...no guarantees on success).
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Malt_Hitman on October 15, 2016, 02:07:03 pm: Consider yourself welcome here. I don’t know how much help you’ll get out of this thread given the technical nature of coding but I’m certainly interested in how you’ll go about generating a 50,000 word novel using code.

It was the best of times, it was the Segmentation Fault (core dumped)
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Caz on October 15, 2016, 10:19:04 pm: Quote from: Skynet on October 15, 2016, 01:35:07 pm
Quick question. Would participation in the spin-off competition NaNoGenMo (https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo-2015) (National Novel Generation Month) also count as on-topic?

Because I'm participating in that competition.

I'm actually interested in that question. On one hand, NaNoWriMo cares about the writing of 50,000 words, and not the origin of those words. There's also no need to worry about the quality of the novel in question. So technically, NaNoGenMo should qualify as on-topic. On the other hand, while computer-generated novels are interesting to read and may even be decent, the amount of actual "content" in a computer-generated novel is lower than that of a human-generated novel. Reading a few chapters get you a good sense of what the computer-generated novel is about, while you're expected to read the whole human-generated novel. (I'm trying to fix that this year by curating a human-generated corpus and limiting the computer's involvement to the arrangement of that corpus...emphasis on trying though...no guarantees on success).

It'd probably fall under the heading of being a Nano Rebel. Would be interesting to see this, the only outcome I can think of is some kinda hideous word salad.

So I'm doing character spreadsheets and need to do a summary plan thing to figure out wtf to write. I thought of about 11 concurrent plots so I shouldn't run out of material this year.

Story get: Bandits of the Mazewoods!
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Emma on October 17, 2016, 04:07:29 am: I tried last year and quit around the 10,000 word mark. I'm going to try again but actually plan something this time around since that might help me not dawdle too much.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Arx on October 17, 2016, 05:26:14 am: I was going to do it this year. This year was gonna be the year. Exams were planned to finish on the ninth of November, leaving me with plenty of time.

Haha no. They're now finishing on the 27th. RIP NaNo dreams. ;_;7
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Eagleon on October 17, 2016, 12:36:15 pm: I'll try again this year, came very close last - 39k words, still picking away at it. Are second drafts of previous NaNo failures ok? I haven't decided on a new story yet, and it'd feel good to finish/improve that one.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Darkmere on October 19, 2016, 02:24:43 pm: Honestly the higher-ups don't really care, but doing an edit is gonna be much harder since only the words you actually write in November count.

But you could also post "shit" 50,000 times and the validator would accept it, so that's also an option.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Baffler on October 19, 2016, 04:52:46 pm: I stalled out on this last year because I didn't really know where to take the story past ~4k words. Maybe now that I'm starting thinking about it sooner and got some idea of what to expect I'll do better.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on October 19, 2016, 05:09:27 pm: I've got concepts in mind for two different apocalyptic scenarios. Might as well give this a shot once more, right?

Now that have a better schedule this should be easier to stick to. Might even break the five-digit mark for the first time.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Skynet on October 19, 2016, 06:40:08 pm: The computer requires corpus (written text). Without a corpus, a computer cannot write, in the same way that a human cannot write without having ideas. Before I can do anything, I need to collect a corpus...and to limit the possibility of the machine writing silliness, I am going to have to hand-curate this corpus. My goal is to create a 50,000-word corpus by November 1st, by copying and pasting from public domain resources. That way, I can focus on manipulating the corpus for the rest of this month. (I'm also compiling a file that will provide citations for each of the public domain works that I'm using.)

Currently, I got over 4000 words in the corpus...and according to wordcounttools.com, it will take someone 21 minutes to read through all of it. (For comparison's sake, a 50,000 word novel should take 250 minutes to read.)

Copying and pasting other people's work is difficult, because you have to read it to see whether it's good or not, and then have to change up a few words to ensure that it stays thematic with all the other works you copied and pasted from. It's probably slightly easier than having to write the thing from scratch. There has been a rich artistic tradition of humans using other people's words (appropriation art (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriation_(art))) and as long as I provide proper citation and use public domain works, my computer should be able to avoid charges of plagiarism and copyright infringement.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Caz on October 20, 2016, 01:05:44 am: Prepping shit. Trying to finish a char sheet, plot synopsis, chapter outline and some sorta geography map before NaNo starts.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Digital Hellhound on October 20, 2016, 08:29:46 am: I doubt I'll do NaNo, but I'll definitely be writing through November - so if you get a chat going like in years past, I'd love to hang around there.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TheBiggerFish on October 20, 2016, 01:38:47 pm: Who knows, I might actually try writing something.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Caz on October 20, 2016, 03:57:38 pm: Quote from: Digital Hellhound on October 20, 2016, 08:29:46 am
I doubt I'll do NaNo, but I'll definitely be writing through November - so if you get a chat going like in years past, I'd love to hang around there.

IIRC the last one was \nano on darkmyst or freenode or something. Also I can't seem to make a hash sign with this keyboard. Imo joining a chat or board is essential for winning - word wars are a great tool.

11 days now until the beginning. How are you guys preparing? Are you? And what are you writing?
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TheBiggerFish on October 20, 2016, 10:38:25 pm: I might actually, but I have no idea what I'm going to write...
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Silverthrone on October 21, 2016, 09:13:28 pm: Same boat. I'm mostly interested in seeing if I can do it. Never written anything that long before. Still, better sit down this weekend and shake something out, something that can be stretched out to 50.000 words.

2000 words per day makes a comfortable margin, but Lord knows how that'll work out when the march is on. Mercy, I can already imagine all the hideous, hideous adverbs I'll be weeding out for weeks...
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Eagleon on October 21, 2016, 11:42:56 pm: Main thing for me was to not think about how much I had left, and also to set a reasonable goal for the day related to the novel, rather than wordcount, even if you're behind. Something that would naturally reach that wordcount, for sure, but not "I will write 2500k words today to catch up." When I started to worry about how much I "had" to write each day, I fell much further behind because it became stress instead of just a thing I did, and things started to snowball from there. Zen is important.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Silverthrone on October 22, 2016, 11:03:46 am: I do understand that approach, and I think it's usually the best. In this case, though, I'd like to challenge myself, see if I can stick to the deadline, see if I can work with a pretty big 'must' in the air. Or even better, learn to of I can't. I think that I dawdle too much, and that it'd benefit me to focus on productivity, since this is a really good environment for it. It might not be absolutely true, but I've got this idea that if I'm going to take this writing business of mine somewhere, then I'll need to learn how to manage more than just one, maybe two pages a day.

It being just a thing you do is probably the better way to approach it, overall, but I'm quite bone-idle as a person, and very little will get done if I leave myself to my own devices. I think that's why the nuts and bolts of writing attracts me so much.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on October 24, 2016, 08:26:58 pm: Hey fellows! Here to impart the wisdom of a screenwriting student currently embroiled in the whole MUST have something to turn it.

This semester, I've learnt more than I ever have in the past. First things first, if you have a method that works, don't change it, BUT if you need some structure do this:

1.) Get out the notecards. Write out 100 (adjust for length accordingly) obstacles, plot points, or ideas. They don't have to be focused or even coherent, just mildly related to what you want to write about.

2.) Stick em up on your wall or lay them out on your floor. Patterns will begin to emerge, reorganize them from start to end points. At this point, the story basically writes itself. You'll find that a thread will start forming in your mind.

3.) Start writing. Keep in mind that as you write, things will change. You'll leave out something you wrote down, add in something new, or even change where certain elements come in. What's important is that you have a BIG IDEA.

This works when you need to get something done. IT WORKS.

Advice on writing coherent stories:

1.) Write background first. My method involves writing out the first few pages of WHAT I THINK the story is. This gives me the character and the world, and more often than not, a more focused plot line. Delete it. (You don't have to actually delete it. I'm being metaphorical. Keep it for reference, but start over.) You'll find that once YOU, THE WRITER know about the world and character, you're not as hellbent on revealing all of it as you write. Remember, good writing is about the organized ABSENCE of information. (Quoth Andrew Stanton.)

2.) Don't write falling action. Falling action is boring. It's drudgery, and almost always hard to get through. Every scene raises the stakes. Every scene your character's lives get worse, and they get hurt more. If we think things are going well, it should be because we just don't know how bad they're getting... Which will shortly be revealed to ruin our delusions. It's not until the final conflict that things can get better.

3.) Know your ending, but perfect your opening. Seriously, the opening not only sets the tone for the reader, but also for you. If you write an opening and find that it needs to be rewritten, you might have to start all the way over from the notecards.

Good luck everybody!

EDIT: Another note on structure. Don't overthink it. If you are familiar with the three-act structure or the hero's journey don't attempt to cater to those models. Hit an opening/inciting incident (world, character, and quest), X# of problems, a pivotal moment (protagonist may or may not get what they want), and a final conflict (the big emotional pay off, can be very closely tied to the pivotal moment). The rest will occur naturally. Promise.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on October 24, 2016, 08:35:45 pm: Can you give an example of falling action? Also, why is it boring?
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Skynet on October 24, 2016, 08:39:43 pm: Quote from: Sirus on October 24, 2016, 08:35:45 pm
Can you give an example of falling action? Also, why is it boring?
Falling action is the events after the climax. What happens after the hero slays the dragon, the boy gets the girl, your political party wins the next Presidential election, etc. It's boring, because the conflict has now been resolved and you're just seeing the end result of that conflict. At worst, it's just a wall of text exposition. But at the same time, it's probably necessary, because it provides closure to the story and ties up any plot holes and loose ends. You don't have to dwell on the falling action though...just imply what's going to happen next and then wrap the story up.

Also, falling action might be more interesting in a tragedy where the main character loses...since the main character's reaction to losing can be a mini-conflict all of its own.
---
Reading Urist's post again, he might using "falling action" in a different manner - to refer any text that doesn't advance the plot/conflict at all. "Bob, the hero, spends six hours choosing the best sword for the job of killing the dragon. Let me spend six chapters telling you about how Bob was able to awesomely evaluate each sword's strengths and weaknesses." Unless, of course, the main conflict is about selecting the best sword for the job, then, of course, spend the whole book talking about it.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on October 24, 2016, 08:51:16 pm: Quote from: Sirus on October 24, 2016, 08:35:45 pm
Can you give an example of falling action? Also, why is it boring?

Falling Action is a couple of different things. Structurally, Falling Action is essentially when nothing happens or things get better for our heroes. It's almost always found at the end of a story after the final conflict where life returns more-or-less to normal for our heroes. This is called The Return in the Hero's Journey and the Wrap-Up or Dénouement in the Three-Act Structure, it basically signifies the end of the story. Of course, it's fairly obvious you don't want to write a big segment where nothing happens in the middle of your story. (See: The Lonely Londoners. Or: Mumblecore) Within a scene though, Falling Action is what "theoretically" takes place after an obstacle is passed and before the next one is met. What I'm really saying here is to not write "X happened, then Y happened, then Z happened."

Skynet got it right too. Don't be afraid to wrap it all up at the end, though plenty of stories DON'T, just be wary of accidentally doing it right in the middle of things.

EDIT: Skynet hit it right on the money. Cheers mate!

EDITEDIT: But it's also more than that. It's letting your characters off the hook/giving them a pass, giving them what they want, tangential information, and a certain amount of exposition.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Insanegame27 on October 24, 2016, 09:02:22 pm: Somehow, life found a way for my last exam to be on the 31st of October, so I guess I'm in.
Rising action = what happens in the lead-up to the climax
Falling action = What happens after the climax
The falling action shouldn't be boring - in LoTR, you have Sam/Frodo coming home to bad times. You have the conflict as the Main Character leaves to foreign lands and has to leave his love behind (ala Eragon). You have Bilbo coming home to seeing his whole house being looted and auctioned off
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on October 24, 2016, 09:07:18 pm: No, it shouldn't! I was talking more about scene structure than the falling action at the end of a story. I've had some weird teachers who have used such terms a little loosely.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Skynet on October 25, 2016, 09:22:51 pm: For NaNoGenMo, I've given up on the goal of generating a fully human-readable novel. The reason is that the approach that I'm taking (curate a corpus of 50,000 words) is just way too long and tedious. It's possible, I'm sure, but I just don't want to do it, and the result isn't going to be all that pretty. Besides, I'm have a smaller corpus that is composed of over 5000 words, and I'll be fine with either reusing that corpus or just filling up the rest of my word count with the word "meow". (After all, NaNoWriMo/NaNoGenMo only cares about word count).

Still, I'm feeling confident of my (to-be-written) program being able to generate human-readable novellas with the corpus I have, even though the novellas will be similar to each other. This probably isn't "ground-breaking and revolutionary", since it's obvious that computers can easily generate short stories, and it's scaling up the stories that's the hard part. Then again, I do read short stories a lot more often than I read novels...so maybe that's okay?

If I generate a couple of novellas, then I can place them right next to each other and call the "collections of novellas" a novel, but it's clear that the reader will just read and enjoy a single novella. (Hypothetical Thought: What if an algorithm generates a bunch of similar-looking novellas, and then evaluate each novella to find a novella that matches a criteria the best (such as promoting a certain mood or feeling)? Would that approximate the creative process of writing a rough draft and then furiously editing it afterwards?)
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: FallacyofUrist on October 26, 2016, 08:31:39 am: Have you ever heard of Mythic Structure For Writers?

Basically, it's a miracle book for what you're attempting. Look it up.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Skynet on October 26, 2016, 06:09:05 pm: I have not heard of Mythic Structure For Writers, but I have heard of the Hero's Journey (and Wikipedia says that Mythic Structure essentially deals with the Hero's Journey). I'm not sure if it's quite a miracle though...certainly it does provide a structure of some kind, but it requires a lot of corpus writing for each individual Stage in the Journey (and possibly multiple paragraphs for each Stage as well, so you can randomly choose from within the Stages).

In any event, I already have a story structure in mind for this month. The story structure I'm aiming to use is a bit...more...looser than the Hero's Journey, called the Track Method. A literary publisher had came up with this new story structure after discussion over a previous programming attempt at NaNoGenMo and I am interested in trying it out to see how it works. If you are willing to deal with possible programming jargon, you can read my description of Track Method (https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2016/issues/15) here, but here's some sentences that are probably not jargon-y:

Quote
Consider a runner who runs around a track. He reaches the first checkpoint - Topic 1. Then he runs and see the next checkpoint - Topic 2. He keeps running, encountering Topic 3. Finally, he makes it to the finishing line - Topic 4...and then he keeps running, back to Topic 1.

The runner can keep running forever and ever, but it's probably best to keep at 4 different topics with 4 circles around the track. ...

One important issue to note here though is that you do need to write transition phrases to explain why the author is moving away from one topic and is talking about a different topic (or, to continue with the running metaphor, what happens when the runner leaves the Topic 1 checkpoint and reaches the Topic 2 checkpoint)

These transition phrases can be very generic and interchangeable though (so you could write 16 different "stock" transition phrases).

You'd obviously bookend the track with Introduction and Conclusion sections. And I'm not treating the "track" as a literal thing, more like a metaphor for the standard routine in the main character's life, as he visits these four topics regularly until he reaches the end of the novella.

EDIT: Hang on. The "Return with the Elixir" stage of the Hero's Journey (where the Hero improves the Ordinary World)...could be used to justify the creation of a brand new Ordinary World and restarting the Hero's Journey with a brand new Hero. A computer-generated novel using the Hero's Journey would essentially be a chronology of Heroes continually going on quests and marginally improving their World each and every time they do so. This would easily unify together a bunch of different novellas! I probably won't choose the Hero's Journey this month, but maybe next year. And if the Track Method is lacking, maybe I might be able to patch up any faults by using information from Mythic Structure (such as a looping story).
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Valdus92 on October 27, 2016, 08:21:26 pm: I am planning to write as an oculus observer. Oculus being a solo rpg story engine that allows you to see into myriad worlds of the imagination.

It can be found here... https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByVeZxlFO74FWTZTQkJrUUNtZW8/edit?hl=en-GB&forcehl=1 (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByVeZxlFO74FWTZTQkJrUUNtZW8/edit?hl=en-GB&forcehl=1)
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Caz on October 31, 2016, 09:55:04 am: And we're off. Good luck folks.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TheBiggerFish on October 31, 2016, 10:01:03 am: Quote from: Caz on October 31, 2016, 09:55:04 am
And we're off. Good luck folks.
It's the 31st...
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Caz on October 31, 2016, 11:38:08 am: Quote from: TheBiggerFish on October 31, 2016, 10:01:03 am
Quote from: Caz on October 31, 2016, 09:55:04 am
And we're off. Good luck folks.
It's the 31st...

Depends which side of the globe you are sitting on.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on October 31, 2016, 03:19:50 pm: Well, in AMERICA AKA REAL TRUE TIME, it's still Halloween :P

^{_{^{_{i kid, i kid}}}}
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Insanegame27 on October 31, 2016, 03:41:21 pm: Pfft, Australia time best time.

Good luck folks.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Caz on November 01, 2016, 05:05:35 am: Got par by 10am. Whee.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Insanegame27 on November 01, 2016, 05:25:06 am: Day 1 nearly gone and I'm 2k words behind schedule. someone's staying up late tonight.
BTW my goal is 60K, which is 2k per day, rather than 50k and 1.6666666666666...k For ease of computation and because I'm gonna need the space for words.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TheBiggerFish on November 01, 2016, 11:34:44 am: If I'm doing this, I have no idea what I'm even writing :v
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Darkmere on November 01, 2016, 11:46:37 am: 1300 words in the opening sprint. Better than I expected.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on November 01, 2016, 12:15:49 pm: Alright dudes, I'll be home in a few hours and I need to decide once and for all the kind of story I will attempt to write this month. I figure I might do better if I share my novel-in-progress with an audience...so what sort of thing might you folks be interested in reading?

Idea 1: Super plague wipes out humanity except for one dude. There are no zombies or vampires or any supernatural things to deal with. Instead, the story is about how the dude copes with a world of ever-present loneliness, degrading equipment and infrastructure, and the slow onset of psychosis more than a decade after the world ended.

Idea 2: Cosmic horror of a sort. The world hasn't quite ended, but it's in a slow and steady decline after an event called the Fracture. Global temperatures are dropping, suicide rates have skyrocketed, the world's governments have joined forces but all they can do is barely keep things together. A group of companions tries to piece together exactly what happened and, more importantly, to see if anything can be done about it.

Those are the two stories I've done the most thinking and planning about.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Valdus92 on November 01, 2016, 12:28:54 pm: I say combine the two.

I went off, surprisingly. I started by thinking about doing an oracle writing, pick a symbol and write, but it has exploded to fictionalizing the whole creative and oracle process into a letter from a (mad)man to his brother.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on November 01, 2016, 12:34:00 pm: How would one combine last-man-on-Earth with still-some-people-and-some-semblance-of-society?
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Draignean on November 01, 2016, 12:34:43 pm: Quote from: Sirus on November 01, 2016, 12:15:49 pm
Idea 1: Super plague wipes out humanity except for one dude. There are no zombies or vampires or any supernatural things to deal with. Instead, the story is about how the dude copes with a world of ever-present loneliness, degrading equipment and infrastructure, and the slow onset of psychosis more than a decade after the world ended.

Uh... That kind of thing takes a LOT of skill to write. Not saying you don't have it, but it's the kind of story that a lot of people try to tell and end up getting bogged down in the amount of navel gazing that needs to be done.

You deal with the problem where all of your action that involves other people, all of your of your interaction-action, revolves around hallucinations/dreams/flashbacks, and at a certain point the reader may start to wonder what the point even is. If everyone else is dead, then the resolution of the story becomes really constrained. At the end, the protag is some combination of happy/unhappy (read as psychologically resolved/ psychologically broken) and alive/dead- and because you have nobody else in the story, the reader is bound to wonder about what the point any of this was.

Again, I don't want to be that guy who tries to tell you what makes a good story or not- but IMHO, this is a truly difficult story to tell well.

Quote from: Sirus on November 01, 2016, 12:15:49 pm
Idea 2: Cosmic horror of a sort. The world hasn't quite ended, but it's in a slow and steady decline after an event called the Fracture. Global temperatures are dropping, suicide rates have skyrocketed, the world's governments have joined forces but all they can do is barely keep things together. A group of companions tries to piece together exactly what happened and, more importantly, to see if anything can be done about it.

Much easier, orders of magnitude easier than the first option. This is an idea that's easy to arc out from and pick what kind of story you want to tell, as well as keep some diversity within the moment. Not much else to say, since this a fairly standard theme to pick up and play with. (X is terribly wrong with the world, and John, Jack, Jill, and Jane are united in their desire to survive X's ravages. But what will happen when event Y unfolds, giving them a critical glimpse at a way to stop X, while pitting them against hurdles A-K?)

I'm interested in the whole "World Governments have joined together" business, largely because I'm pretty sure that will only happen some time after Jesus and Hitler go ice skating in Hell.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Darkmere on November 01, 2016, 12:56:29 pm: Yeah only having one protagonist is... ruinous. I tried that my first year and it was a real struggle the entire way, to the point that once she actually encountered someone else I breathed a sigh of relief and the story tripled in pace from there on.

Everyone has internal conflict, but being social animals we crave that sort of interaction between more than one person. No one who has access to your story will live in such true isolation, so that's a huge barrier to scale before you can make a connection with your audience. Plus, the ending is guaranteed a downer.

Cosmic horror sounds much better. I already want to know what the Fracture was and how desperate survivors must be to work together on a scale like that. There's a LOT of story to tell there, that will be easier for you to maintain in the long run.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on November 01, 2016, 01:02:55 pm: I wasn't planning to keep the LMOE alone for the entire story, y'know :P

Still, it seems folks are interested in the second idea more. Fine by me, I've been wanting to cover that one for a couple of years now.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Twinwolf on November 01, 2016, 04:51:19 pm: Welp, let's give this a go then.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Skynet on November 01, 2016, 05:53:31 pm: Quote from: Sirus on November 01, 2016, 12:34:00 pm
How would one combine last-man-on-Earth with still-some-people-and-some-semblance-of-society?
Flashbacks to the past when the society is still in the process of decaying. The novel Galapagos is narrated from the perspective of the last human ghost on Earth, and the dramatic tension comes from the narrator explaining how the last humans survived and thrived during the disaster, paving the way for a successor species to take over from them.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on November 01, 2016, 06:06:51 pm: So of course my first 14-hour shift in weeks would be the first day of NaNoWriMo. That's 4 hours of potential writing gone forever, and by the time I eat, shower, and get ready for work tomorrow I'll have maybe 90 minutes to spare before bed.

Off to a GREAT start!
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Valdus92 on November 01, 2016, 07:56:35 pm: Can you write notes, inspirations, bulk it up somewhere else at another day? Perhaps even write on the job, as a teacher and now a full time dad, lord knows I did and do.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on November 01, 2016, 08:03:34 pm: Writing is a wee bit difficult in my job. I'm a full-time truck driver.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Draignean on November 01, 2016, 08:41:24 pm: Quote from: Sirus on November 01, 2016, 08:03:34 pm
Writing is a wee bit difficult in my job. I'm a full-time truck driver.

Use phone to record voice. Use free app to translate recorded speech to text. Dictate like a hormonal teenager.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Insanegame27 on November 01, 2016, 09:04:03 pm: Google docs has google dictate built-in
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: FallacyofUrist on November 01, 2016, 10:33:01 pm: Well then. It's the end of the first day, and I have nothing written or planned.

Quick, five people give me five words!
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Darkmere on November 01, 2016, 10:35:51 pm: Quote from: FallacyofUrist on November 01, 2016, 10:33:01 pm
Quick, five people give me five words!

"You are not The One."

bonus:

"This is the wrong tool."
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Insanegame27 on November 01, 2016, 11:05:08 pm: "A tiny casket, so heavy."
Bonus
"I'm sorry for everything... son."
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on November 02, 2016, 06:25:08 am: "Quick, give me five words!"
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Caz on November 02, 2016, 08:19:09 am: Quote from: Sirus on November 02, 2016, 06:25:08 am
"Quick, give me five words!"
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sappho on November 03, 2016, 03:57:51 am: November already... I've at least tried every year for a long while now. Won twice. Not sure if i can even attempt it this year, unless i just throw together random stream of consciousness stuff. It's already day 3, which puts me way behind. I may have to just skip this year. What little time i have, I'm using to make Stardew Valley and Minecraft videos, lately.

Though i could do something if i use a tool to generate a title, maybe the video game name generator, and make up some nonsense. I certainly type fast enough, if i stop myself from thinking too hard about what I'm writing...
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Twinwolf on November 03, 2016, 05:14:19 am: I'm a bit behind now. Had a little more than 2000 words when I went to bed yesterday. But I think I'll be able to catch up over the weekend as long as I don't fall further behind.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: FallacyofUrist on November 03, 2016, 08:57:22 am: Quote from: Darkmere on November 01, 2016, 10:35:51 pm
Quote from: FallacyofUrist on November 01, 2016, 10:33:01 pm
Quick, five people give me five words!

"You are not The One."

"This is the wrong tool."
Quote from: Insanegame27 on November 01, 2016, 11:05:08 pm
"A tiny casket, so heavy."
Bonus
"I'm sorry for everything... son."
Quote from: Sirus on November 02, 2016, 06:25:08 am
"Quick, give me five words!"
Quote from: Caz on November 02, 2016, 08:19:09 am
Quote from: Sirus on November 02, 2016, 06:25:08 am
"Quick, give me five words!"
By all your powers combined I am CAPTAIN WRITER!
~~~
Suffice it to say I've started writing. 2000+ words as of right now.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TheBiggerFish on November 03, 2016, 10:30:21 am: Maybe I should do this...
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Draignean on November 03, 2016, 10:34:30 am: Quote from: TheBiggerFish on November 03, 2016, 10:30:21 am
Maybe I should do this...

DO IT NOW.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: FallacyofUrist on November 03, 2016, 12:18:47 pm: The mustache man compels you!
~~~
If you're having inspiration problems, you can always play the "Five People, Five Words" game!
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TheBiggerFish on November 03, 2016, 01:42:45 pm: Amazingly enough, I did have an idea just now. Woo.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Arx on November 03, 2016, 01:58:20 pm: Quote from: FallacyofUrist on November 03, 2016, 12:18:47 pm
the "Five People, Five Words" game!

Quote from: FallacyofUrist on November 03, 2016, 12:18:47 pm
The mustache man compels you!
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Skynet on November 03, 2016, 06:48:57 pm: Meanwhile, on GitHub...

The discussion in this year's NaNoGenMo appears to have became much more technically advanced than usual. Several people have already outlined plans for generating "human-readable" novels, and their plans look very plausible - usually, they take the form of: take a corpus of existing human-generated content, turn them into mad-lib-style templates, and then use some type of story framework to decide where to place the templates. Devil's in the details, of course. Collecting the corpus and turning them into templates seem like it would require a lot of manual labor.

There's also another person planning to create a simulation detailing the life of a "phreaker" in the 1980s traveling to different dumpsters to gather information on telecommunication systems and sometimes finding news articles about the world, which I think could keep a reader's interest. I'm very interested in seeing this project come to fruition, and think that this approach is the most likely to lead to a human-readable novel...though again, devil's in the details. It depends on collecting interesting news articles as well as producing a good simulation.

I guess I'm experiencing the same feeling of inadequacy as the human-writers in NaNoWriMo, since I haven't started coding my project yet and my project is only intended to be human-readable for a few thousand words. The difference, I guess, is that NaNoWriMo is working in a relatively stable system where there's no fear of being "left behind" (the state of manual novel generation hasn't really changed), while in NaNoGenMo, there's the sense of an technological arms race occurring.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Valdus92 on November 03, 2016, 10:25:30 pm: Report for Day Three:
About a week ago I had the masochistic idea of participating in National Novel Writing Month (why November? Why not June? where here in New Orleans nothing is gone on!), writing it as a grand solo adventure to commemorate solo gaming appreciation month and trying to design an oracle based solo engine called the Oracular for Nagademon (national game design month). Oh so much room for abuse!

It has been three days, and all I can say is I feel like a philanthropist gone completely mad! Without being judgmental and squashing the creativity, here is what I have.

Eight thousand pages where my mind has wandered to places that my fingers dread to go. I have hundreds of words of a first person Victorian letter-writing with a little steampunk helping, all thanks to the circles of perdition rpg called De Profundis. I have an oracle based RPG taken from the burned ashes of Oculus. Upon which I follow absolutely no rules and just grab the nearest tarot card, rpg, cubes, dice or random pet I could find and write about the nearest world I can think of. All in all, I’m not even sure if I am playing or writing, doing it for Nanowrimo, or solo gaming or thinking about dice mechanics (well, not that, because there aren’t any).

No matter what I try or what I do, I keep coming back to that mythical world I created in my head, sent in a (rejected) short story; cranked out a draft, and have played in my head ever since- The Barony of Rivermoon. For like its inspiration, New Orleans, I will always return to that place. It is my literary/RPG home.

I have garbage, I have a mess, I have a ball of yarn made out of words and phrases, tangled mess of ejaculate that can hardly be called creativity.

And I have never been happier.

Plus I got three hundred more words for that Nano, don’t I- don’t I?
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Parsely on November 04, 2016, 01:03:20 am: I just wrote about 400 words for Steel From Stone. I wish I could finish enough of this to actual feel like it was worth talking about.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sappho on November 04, 2016, 04:29:42 am: Well I still haven't signed up or written anything or thought about it. Somehow, though, it doesn't feel right. I feel like I should be suffering this month, struggling to get my word count done each day. I feel like I'm in limbo.

EDIT: Hell with it. I hereby introduce Tales from the Video Game Name Generator (http://nanowrimo.org/participants/kotshka/novels/tales-from-the-video-game-name-generator). My the gods have mercy on my soul.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sirus on November 04, 2016, 05:07:44 am: That's...actually a great idea.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sappho on November 04, 2016, 05:27:03 am: Currently writing "Relentless Ice Cream Armageddon".

EDIT: I'm going to go ahead and publish what I write each day. Fortunately, I still remember my password for the blog I used to write in every day. I have to admit, I feel better hating myself for being behind on my word count than I did just not doing it at all. It feels... right, somehow.

Word count so far: 2,457
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TD1 on November 06, 2016, 02:42:51 pm: Good luck, everyone! I don't know if I can do it this year, but thanks to this thread I remembered it. Might start tomorrow after I've finished current essay depending on how I feel then.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Skynet on November 08, 2016, 07:54:02 pm: Just finished generating a human-readable short story (and then generated 5 different versions of that short story to meet the "novel" criteria). Here's some links, if you're interested:

- Human-Readable Short Story, 13,606 words (https://github.com/tra38/track-method/blob/master/story.md)

- Completed "Novel" (5 different short stories that are very similar to each other), 67,408 words (https://github.com/tra38/track-method/blob/master/novel.md)

- Source Code, if you are interested (language is in Ruby) (https://github.com/tra38/track-method)

While it does take a lot of effort to curate the corpus, the result is human-readable. I'm willing to call it a success.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sappho on November 11, 2016, 07:42:22 am: After a couple of days of zero or very little progress, I've finally managed to crank out a few thousand words. Hopefully I can eventually catch up to par and succeed this month!

Completed Tales from the Video Game Name Generator so far:
Relentless Ice Cream Armageddon
The Incredible Love Showdown
Cosmic Amish Psychiatrist

What's next? Let me go ask the generator...

https://meganleeprose.wordpress.com/
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Twinwolf on November 11, 2016, 10:27:13 am: Starting to fall a bit behind again, but as of last night I'm at 15,817 words. Probably more than I've written on any single idea before.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sappho on November 13, 2016, 01:09:04 pm: Custom Cookie Ransom is done, and now I'm starting Spirit of the Burger Fortress. This is fun! And I'm slowly catching up on my word count...

https://meganleeprose.wordpress.com/
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Fniff on November 15, 2016, 03:57:18 pm: I remember there being a Nano chat somewhere around here. Is that still around or did no-one make one for this year?
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Darkmere on November 15, 2016, 08:56:02 pm: There's usually one on IRC for the group, and I've opened up the regional one I run before. There's been... issues... not with people from the forum but I don't want to publicly post. We've still been pretty dead but if you want the info PM me.

I'm usually around from about 8 pm onward, GMT-6.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sappho on November 16, 2016, 10:40:25 am: I am falling behind again... Ohnoooooooooooo... Didn't have any time to write yesterday (literally, insane day), just got home after a long and exhausting day, don't know if I have it in me to write anything... Must... Push... Onward... Push through the pain!!! :o
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TD1 on November 16, 2016, 01:19:00 pm: You realise that saying "literally insane day" means you literally went insane for a day?

;)
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sappho on November 16, 2016, 01:44:06 pm: Quote from: Th4DwArfY1 on November 16, 2016, 01:19:00 pm
You realise that saying "literally insane day" means you literally went insane for a day?

;)

You missed the comma. The "literally" was referring to not having time to write, not to the day being insane. ;)
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TD1 on November 16, 2016, 01:47:36 pm: Even with the comma, my interpretation stands. With me standing beside it!

Which institute did you use? St. Luke's is good, I've heard. Maybe Bedlam? Bit of a grim history, though, and I don't think it's in "business" any more.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sappho on November 17, 2016, 04:28:19 pm: I've now finished Spirit of the Burger Fortress and Geriatric Wagon Siege.

This is so much fun.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Darkmere on November 28, 2016, 02:02:51 am: Anyone still doing this? I just topped 47,500 words. Victory is in sight!

...

Please tell me someone is still doing this?
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Sappho on November 28, 2016, 04:43:40 am: I had to give up just past 25,000 words due to real-life problems. I'm proud I made it at least halfway - not bad for not having planned to do it at all. Keep going, though, you're nearly done! Wooooo!
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Twinwolf on November 28, 2016, 06:19:56 am: I'm around 32,000 words due to life getting in the way

Still going to try to finish tho
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: zombie urist on November 30, 2016, 03:07:13 am: Quote from: Darkmere on November 28, 2016, 02:02:51 am
Anyone still doing this? I just topped 47,500 words. Victory is in sight!
Please tell me someone is still doing this?

I finished today at just over 50000 words. I had a slow start like last year for about a week, then made it up by doing 2k per day until about Thanksgiving, where I was far ahead enough to finish.

Spoiler: progress graph (click to show/hide)
(http://imgur.com/yaguRME.png)
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Darkmere on November 30, 2016, 03:31:12 am: Hey, Congrats!

I finished yesterday after being at least 3 days behind for the first two weeks. Finally gave up and started rapid-firing notes for every book idea I've got on the burner, but it got a win so I'm cool with it.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Silverthrone on December 01, 2016, 11:53:26 am: Real life decidedly scuttled the whole endeavour. Which, of course, means that I did. I have some ten thousand odd words scattered in various chapters, although I did manage some write some eight thousand more, albeit in unrelated texts. In brief, quite the disaster.
We shall see. If I get another year, it might go better then. Or, I shall pretend January is November.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: TD1 on December 01, 2016, 12:17:44 pm: Quote from: Silverthrone on December 01, 2016, 11:53:26 am
I shall pretend January is November.
That's pretty much what I'm going to do. Start of a new semester and the heat isn't on yet.
Title: Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
Post by: Twinwolf on December 01, 2016, 08:03:56 pm: I was really behind for most of the thing. On Day 27 I had 32,552
And then I just wrote
A lot
And just barely made it to 50,000 on time