Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => Creative Projects => Topic started by: Flaming Dorf on September 29, 2009, 06:37:18 pm
-
Anybody else doing this (http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node)?
I've known about it for a year now, but I'm going to try it this time!
Not sure what I'm going to write about, but I guess that's part of the fun.
-
We've got a few of us planning to do it this year on the Bay12Games IRC channel. About 3 or 4 tentatively signed up at last count. Should be fun.
Just remember, start planning now! Put yourself in a position where you can hit the ground running come November 1st and not have to worry about anything but putting words to paper. Do all your plotting and characterisation now.
-
I have a great many ideas for novels, but my main difficulty is actually getting started.
-
For me, having too much preparation slows me down, so I'm gonna make it up as I go.
Really, all you need is an excellent character for readers to relate to. Plot comes later, for me at least.
-
Jeez, my story's only 5000 words. Novels are long.
-
At what word count does a novella or short story become a novel anyway?
I should get into this, although I know school is going to be kicking my ass in November. Of course, I could just work any time, but some structure would be helpful.
-
For NaNoWriMo, the target is 50'000 words, which as admitted on the site itself, is closer to a Novella than an actual novel, which tend to start around the 100'000 word mark.
Completing NaNoWriMo averages out to 1666 words a day, which should only take you an hour or so if you know what you're writing. Some days you'll be on a roll and write way more, others, you'll write way less. Why I recommend plotting everything out before hand, even if it's only a sentence on what happens in each chapter, is because then you at least know what's happening, and gives you plenty of time to see mistakes in pacing and plot well before you stumble over them and waste hours thinking about what comes next, or just scraping your last few hours of work and starting over again.
The more you wing things, the less consistent you'll be. You may have the most relateable and loveable characters on the face of the earth, but unless you know what you're going to do with them, they won't have the opportunity to shine. Characters need a direction, and you want it to be an arrow, ever forward - not an endless loop of 'lets go this way, no wait this way, how about this, whoops that didn't work'
-
A novella, for most published works, hits around 75 to 100 pages. A novel hits around 300 to 500 pages. Which, if you think of it, is only really ten pages a day--easily achievable, especially if you're writing fun stuff and have most of the day off.
Sadly, this is when my inner Edgar Allan Poe and Albert Einstein duke it out. Einstein's won every match so far, but Poe's been beefed up by me switching projects. It should be THE FOIGHT OF THE CENTURAY!
Generally, I have a path I want people to go down, and specific gems to find along the way, but the characters sometimes punch my plan in the face and get on their own path.
-
The more you wing things, the less consistent you'll be. You may have the most relateable and loveable characters on the face of the earth, but unless you know what you're going to do with them, they won't have the opportunity to shine. Characters need a direction, and you want it to be an arrow, ever forward - not an endless loop of 'lets go this way, no wait this way, how about this, whoops that didn't work'
Totally agreed. I just meant that I don't like to have pages and pages of backstory and preplanning, it gets me muddled up.
-
The more you wing things, the less consistent you'll be. You may have the most relateable and loveable characters on the face of the earth, but unless you know what you're going to do with them, they won't have the opportunity to shine. Characters need a direction, and you want it to be an arrow, ever forward - not an endless loop of 'lets go this way, no wait this way, how about this, whoops that didn't work'
I was just reading through the FAQ, and it's suggestion was not planning what to write. If you come in knowing what you want to write, you'll agonize over the details and quality because you want it to be just right, which is exactly my problem. I originally thought this would be a good excuse to finally write a story I've had in mind for some time, but I already know that I'd get nowhere because I'd fret too much over composition to write anything at all.
Speaking of which, does anybody who has some experience with writing have any tips on getting around that? I'm at that awful stage where I've got these characters and a story that I love, but I can't write any of it because nothing I type can do justice to my vision. Stupid OCD perfectionism.
-
When I write something, I usually have an idea of what's going to happen, as in Character A does A, then goes to point B where he meets character C and does D, and so on, but make up dialog and the more detailed stuff as I go along.
Also, none of it is written down. I store it in my brain, because if I write it down I'll write in short-hand so short even I won't know what I was trying to say when I read it later.
-
Aqizzar--get it down on paper. The only failure is a blank page. Blahblahblah other writing cliches.
The thing is, if you don't get it down on paper, you will never improve. Even if this story goes straight to the crapper, there will be others. But if you just sit on this? You'll never write a good story in your life. You'll always start off with a plot that's just for practice, and then it'll end up boring, and you'll stop.
In any case, you're in a good place--after you break through this, you're a "writer" in the sense that you'll be able to put out quality work that you can trust. It's just that getting through this stage is a bear and a half.
-
i'D JUST NAIL DOWN 10 CHAPTER NAMES AND GO FOMR THRER.
-
Chapter 1: Hell to Pancakes
Chapter 2: New Management
Chapter 3: Apes Could DO Better
Chapter 4: Screw You Laptop
Chapter 5: Sticky Beesiness is Sticky
Chapter 6: Is Time Enough?
Chapter 7: Jump Back From Reality
Chapter 8: Oops There Goes Gravity
Chapter 9: DUN DUN DUN
Chapter 10: Resolute!
-
#(N-1/i) on the New York Times Bestseller List
-
Speaking of which, does anybody who has some experience with writing have any tips on getting around that? I'm at that awful stage where I've got these characters and a story that I love, but I can't write any of it because nothing I type can do justice to my vision. Stupid OCD perfectionism.
If you can manage, try to get something down on paper. You'll feel a lot better with a fuller story.
Then, you can let your inner editor perfect the crap out of it. Once the story is written, you can do your story justice through careful refinement.
-
That always was the plan. I wrote three pages on mis-en-scene loaded exposition before I forgot where I was going. That was four years ago. I've done a lot of rethinking since then and tried to jot down a structure several times, but always stopped short of actually writing something.
Just recently, I've finally come up with a new way of approaching the gaping hole where an introduction should be. Screw this contest, I'm going to get started immediately. Well, this weekend anyway. Stupid college.
-
This is something I need to try.
-
Tis better to have wrote and failed, than never to have wrote at all. Lest thou then take yon writing and destroy it in disgust - then, alas, it is as thou hast never written in the first place.
And all that jazz. You're not a writer until you actually write something. Yes, it will be bad, and it will be awful, and you'll hate it and despise it and wish to simply throw it out the window, smash that delete key, and be rid of this affront to your assumed talent forever.
But don't. As hard as it may be to realise, you need to write a thousand bad sentences before you can learn to make decent sentences. And you, of all people, are the least qualified person to make this assumption. You are far too emotionally attached to anything you write to have any sort of constructive comment on it so early in your writing career. So you may hate it, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Doesn't mean it's good, either, but the truth is you're not in a position to judge your own work.
So just shut up, sit down, and write. Cellotape a live scorpion to that Backspace key, and god help you if you give up and start again. You write. You write and write and write and stop listening to yourself and write and write and write. And then, when it's done?
You write more. You are only as good as the next thing you write. Hand off the earlier work to an editor, an enemy, a forum. Forget about it. Come back in a few weeks with fresh eyes and then you can find someone else to edit.
-
I don't like having to write 50,000 words, that's too long. If you can explain a story in 100 words, then explain it in 100 words.
-
I like long novels the same way I like long movies.
They last longer.
-
I don't like having to write 50,000 words, that's too long. If you can explain a story in 100 words, then explain it in 100 words.
100 words isn't a story though, it's a paragraph.
-
-
-
Be like HP Lovecraft. Put two female characters total in your entire body of work, and make them both evil.
-
-
-
Chapter 1: Hell to Pancakes
"Yes, you do deserv to go to me! So sweet and tasty on the outside, and yet by that very propety you are trecherus, luring peaple into the trap of bulimia!"
Chapter 2: New Management
"Headlines: Hell, due to the recent recesion in the metaphysics industy, has ben sold for the price of 3 000 000 souls!"
Chapter 3: Apes Could DO Better
After his recent purchase of hell, mr Wikkins, the CEO of Orans&Chimps united went there for a visist. He would make the trains run on time goddammit.
Chapter 4: Screw You Laptop
"Hello there sir Wikkins! YOU, YOU have got 347986687 new emails! To celebrate this event, lets play the Vista Dance!"
Chapter 5: Sticky Beesiness is Sticky
Apperantly, giant cybernetic wasp mechas are non-refundable, and biopolymer armor might be high-tech, but not in a place made of fire, like for example hell.
Chapter 6: Is Time Enough?
"So, we simply go into the wormhole, grab Tesla and... Wait, does this dial here say we have only 264 milliseconds before it closes once we enter?!?"
Chapter 7: Jump Back From Reality
In wich the protagonist finaly get powerfull enought to confront the author
Chapter 8: Oops There Goes Gravity
"Mister Tesla, are you SURE this is a good ide- AAHRUUG!!!"
Chapter 9: DUN DUN DUN
[spoiler!] Also, a climatic battle between the wasp mech hotwired and improved by Tessla, and the Orangutan army.
Chapter 10: Resolute!
"And so they lived happily ever after"
-
Pretty much yeah.
XD
-
I don't like having to write 50,000 words, that's too long. If you can explain a story in 100 words, then explain it in 100 words.
Have ye ever heard what they say about talking in elizabethan (read renisance-ish times) if ye can say it in 4 words say it in 12. Then again I do prefer the if ye can say it in 100 words say it in 100 words when it comes to schoolwork. But if yer going for a creative project usually more is better.
As for me I've got a story I've been working on and off, mostly off, over the past few years. Maybe I'll start working on that again.
-
My sister did this a few years ago. Gave up in the middle of it, but she had fun.
If I'm free in November, I think I'll do this too. Depends on whether or not I get that lucrative job :P
-
I don't like having to write 50,000 words, that's too long. If you can explain a story in 100 words, then explain it in 100 words.
If you can explain a story in 100 words, then frankly you aren't taking it seriously. If you story can be so diluted and watered down that you can cover all major events, plot points, backstory, characters - including motivations, history, profound changes in personality, relationships - in 100 words, then that should be seen as a damning indication that you suck as a writer.
It's a common misconception that you should be able to describe a character in one sentence. That is complete bullshit. Dilute for me the entire sum of existence for any individual on this planet in one sentence, and you'd be selling them short by at least another 10 pages. Characters are complex. They are not gimmicks or throwaways that can be summed up in "He is a man looking for vengance, and he has a dark and mysterious past", because in making them so shallow as to be able to describe them as such, ruins their potential. Anything and everything they do falls back into the barriers created by that one sparse sentence, forever remaining nothing more than a barely standing skeleton that yes, you may build upon, but all you're doing is layering on something so thin it will eventually collapse under the weight of all those half-arsed hacks and retcons as you desperately try to make them something more than a two-dimensional sentence.
An idea can be 100 words, sure. But something worth reading - and worth writing - contains thousands of ideas.
-
I still need an idea for my book... anybody have an any plots laying around?
-
Just start with something simple - I devise my (never realised) plots with my characters in mind. (If x happened, what would Character Y do? How would characters A and B respond?)
Of course, I have no idea how this works in practice - but I HATE railroading ideas.