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Finally... => Creative Projects => Topic started by: Telgin on October 26, 2019, 08:10:32 pm

Title: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Telgin on October 26, 2019, 08:10:32 pm
Didn't start it as early as last year, but since nobody else started a thread on it, here's 2019's NaNoWriMo thread.  Copying most of the material from last year's intro post.

In case you aren't familiar with NaNoWriMo:

What is NaNoWriMo?
NaNoWriMo is an informal challenge to anyone who wants to write.  The idea is simple: you simply have to write 50,000 words of a story during the month of November.  You don't necessarily have to finish the story, so long as you write that many words, and it doesn't matter what the story is.  This isn't going to be published anywhere without you doing it, so it can be fanfiction for all that the challenge cares.

The point is to just get words down.  A lot of writers agree that this is the hard part, and you can easily get stuck trying to edit or world build.  From experience, I can say that it's very true, and anyone who wants to give this a shot is strongly encouraged to not fret about the quality of your work and just focus on getting a first draft down.  I did last year and hate how it turned out, but I'm still glad I did it since it puts me in a better place to try it this year.

Is this a competition?
Not really.  You're only challenging yourself.  You can certainly compare your progress to others, but it's informal and you won't get anything but a warm, fuzzy feeling for beating someone else.

Is my writing safe?
Sure.  You don't have to publish anything you write, and nanowrimo.org just has a tool for inputting word counts.  They have a word count utility as well, which supposedly scrambles the text so that nobody could possibly steal it, but in seriousness there's no reason to be afraid of whatever you're writing getting out in the wild without you doing it.

Can I win anything?
Only personal satisfaction, which is a surprisingly good thing in my experience.  Supposedly you can get some discounts on software or other sponsored goodies if you "win" by hitting 50K words, but I don't actually know how this works.  I "won" last year, but didn't investigate that part.

Can't I just cheat and enter whatever I want in the word count tool then?
Sure, but you're only cheating yourself in the end.  The whole point is to make something of your own and prove to yourself that you can do it.

Official website:
https://nanowrimo.org/ (https://nanowrimo.org/)

Links to previous years:
2018 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=172256)
2017 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=167748)
2016 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=161111)
2015 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=153572)
2014 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=144886)
2013 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=132259)
2012 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=117442)


I actually have a solid topic this year, but fear it's a little too ambitious: a CYOA story about a dragon paladin and his cleric friend (also a dragon) who go digging in the ruins of their collapsed civilization to learn and destroy the source of the undead plaguing the world.  The twist is that despite it being a CYOA, you're actually not playing the paladin or cleric and instead an outside force guiding them, which will be a late story plot twist.

I can't decide at this point if writing a CYOA for NaNoWriMo is a good idea because you can get lots of words in by rewriting scenes along different decision paths, or a terrible idea because CYOAs require a lot of planning and I'm historically bad at doing that.  Time will tell.
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: itisnotlogical on October 27, 2019, 04:49:02 am
I've been working on-again, off-again on a novel concept, but really I have no idea what I'm doing with it. Maybe this is my chance to start over?
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: notquitethere on October 27, 2019, 06:26:38 am
I'm planning to use it to finish up a big project that's been dragging on. A final sprint to finish, as it were.
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Telgin on October 27, 2019, 12:12:16 pm
I've considered using NaNoWriMo to finish up a long project before too, and may do the same if my CYOA story falls apart before I get to my word count.  I've had some fanfiction that I've been working on for literally 5 years, and it's time to be done with it...
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Caz on October 30, 2019, 04:33:42 pm
I have a vague novel idea but need to really plan more of it out. Last year I didn't plan at all and it got quite horrific at times to finish. :D
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Telgin on October 31, 2019, 08:35:30 am
I'm expecting things to get hectic on my end as the month goes on, but we'll see how it goes.  I haven't done any planning for the last 10 days or so, and today is the last day before it starts.
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Telgin on November 01, 2019, 11:06:57 pm
The challenge started today, and I hit 1,720 words.  I'm already feeling uneasy about this, since at this rate I might have enough outlined for 15,000 words.  I'm sure I'll have more ideas as I go, but this is going to be a real challenge.
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Reelya on November 03, 2019, 04:54:39 am
Quote from: Telgin on November 01, 2019, 11:06:57 pm
The challenge started today, and I hit 1,720 words.  I'm already feeling uneasy about this, since at this rate I might have enough outlined for 15,000 words.  I'm sure I'll have more ideas as I go, but this is going to be a real challenge.

What to professional writers do when they don't have enough story? They don't write more story on the end btw, they pad out what they have. Tarantino is a prime example with all his conversations about hamburgers and the like.
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Telgin on November 04, 2019, 04:17:54 pm
Sure.  I know the start and end, but there are still gaps in the middle that I need to fill out since I don't have a complete path from end to end yet.

One advantage of the CYOA format at least is that you can always add more forks in the middle, which is the easiest form of padding ever devised.
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Muz on November 04, 2019, 06:54:21 pm
Plugging my random character generator in case anyone gets stuck on anything: https://random-character-generator.com
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Telgin on November 10, 2019, 04:48:42 pm
We're 1/3rd of the way through the challenge and so far I'm at 19036 words out of the 16670 needed, which was relatively easy to achieve with two 4-hour flights this past week since I had nothing else to do while flying.

The CYOA format is working out pretty well, although I feel like I'm cheating a bit.  A lot of the forks in the story have come at fights, where through a gimmick the player has the choice of spending a point of mana (of which they have a limited amount) to make the fight easier.  The idea is that you're supposed to choose your battles or suffer consequences, since you might run out later in the story if you waste it all early, and run into fights you can't win.

Anyway, the result is that I get to write most fights twice.  Once where it goes really well, and once where it may not.  I've been trying to rewrite bits where there's some overlap so that I'm not literally copying words from one fork to another, but it still feels a little like cheating at times.
Title: Re: National Novel Writing Month 2019
Post by: Telgin on November 27, 2019, 02:17:22 pm
Spoiler: Victory (click to show/hide)

Finished today.  I've come to the conclusion that CYOAs are pretty suitable for NaNoWriMo, or at least not more difficult than any other story.  However, this particular CYOA didn't work out so well, for the reasons I outlined in my last post.  I got the word count in, and got one of the endings written, but writing a long sequence of fight scenes is pretty boring and I don't think I'll finish everything now that I hit the word count.

I might try a different kind of CYOA next year that allows more character development, but we'll have to see.