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Author Topic: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!  (Read 9932 times)

TheBiggerFish

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #15 on: October 20, 2016, 10:38:25 pm »

I might actually, but I have no idea what I'm going to write...
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Silverthrone

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #16 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...
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Eagleon

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #17 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.
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Silverthrone

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #18 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.
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Urist McScoopbeard

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #19 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.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2016, 08:33:39 pm by Urist McScoopbeard »
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Sirus

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #20 on: October 24, 2016, 08:35:45 pm »

Can you give an example of falling action? Also, why is it boring?
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Skynet

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #21 on: October 24, 2016, 08:39:43 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.
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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.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2016, 08:48:42 pm by Skynet »
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Urist McScoopbeard

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #22 on: October 24, 2016, 08:51:16 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.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2016, 08:54:02 pm by Urist McScoopbeard »
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Insanegame27

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #23 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
« Last Edit: October 24, 2016, 09:08:36 pm by Insanegame27 »
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Urist McScoopbeard

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #24 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.
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Skynet

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #25 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?)
« Last Edit: October 25, 2016, 09:30:12 pm by Skynet »
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FallacyofUrist

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #26 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.
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Skynet

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #27 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 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).
« Last Edit: October 26, 2016, 06:20:15 pm by Skynet »
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Valdus92

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #28 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
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Caz

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2016! The Pre-Beginning Begins!
« Reply #29 on: October 31, 2016, 09:55:04 am »

And we're off. Good luck folks.
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