16 KiB
[D][WIP] Rational Novel Writing Month - Week 2
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Author: u/kaj_sotala *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2lnvap/dwip_rational_novel_writing_month_week_2/
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Score: 10
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Created: 2014-11-08T09:31:47
Post:
How many people do we still have with us?
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+7] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)
Currently sitting at 20,475. It's not total crap (yet), but there's definitely a lot that I'm going to have to go back and edit. Using Scrivener has been going really well. I spent ten minutes or so trying to figure out how much plot I have left, and it feels like the novel will end at about 90K words, though there's a good chance that I'll go over. Depending on how well this weekend goes, I might be targeting a word count of 100K for the month. I am three scenes (~4K words) from completing the first major set of events, which comprise the first three chapters.
And that's about all there is to say, I guess. I'm keeping a rapidly growing TODO list for December, though last year I just resolved to keep up the pace for as long as it took to finish the story, and there's a chance that I'll do that again and "end" National Novel Writing Month midway through December.
Edit: Link to the WIP, by the way.
u/gommm [+2] (a day later)
I really enjoyed the drafts you're posting on fictionpress. I find it very interesting to see a story as WIP before it's edited later on, it gives me a glimpse of your writing process.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+2] Finally, everyone was working together. (4 days later)
Very nice, and the contrast between two dark wizards and little children is adorable, but why couldn't Hirrush have erased the memories of the ill woman and her husband? He's a mentalist, I don't think there was a justification for that.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (4 days later)
I'll have to find a way to make this clear in the text itself, but:
- He's been previously injured in a mentalist battle that leaves him with splitting headaches after every time he uses the power - bad enough that he gets put out of service for a few days.
- Removing memories is difficult, time-consuming, and requires taking a baseline of their mindscape so you know what's changed and can revert it back. It's hard to remove memories from before the first time you've been in someone's mind unless you want to spend a lot of time rooting around in there. Doing it with two people would be even worse.
- People are almost always aware that a memory has been removed - the removal process creates something of a gap that they can feel, even if they didn't notice any incongruities.
- Hirrush doesn't want people knowing that he's a mentalist, for reasons that are mostly in his past (but have to do with the reason that he recognizes the royal mentalist on sight). Better for people to think that he's just a dark wizard than to let on that there's a mentalist around.
There will be more on mentalism is Chapter 4, where some of this reasoning is gone over in a bit more detail, and Henry gets some mentalist training from his father.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+1] Finally, everyone was working together. (4 days later)
Thanks.
u/kaj_sotala [+3] (23 seconds later)
Day 8: 8832, behind by about 5000 words but hoping to catch up tomorrow. Scattered observations:
- I'm trying to write epic fantasy, only to have my brain go "No, let's ONLY come up with ideas for the completely mundane love triangle plot!"
- People acting like reasonable adults is great in real life but your characters doing it is a pain, because it doesn't help generate the conflict the story needs.
Choice piece of dialogue: "Yeah, well, I... think I love you, if I'm to be perfectly honest." "Fuck."
u/JoshuaBlaine [+4] Princess of the Wasteland (10 hours later)
I've got ~6000 words so far. I've fallen behind my goals, mostly due to a couple just completely dead days, but hopefully I do well enough to catch up in the next couple days.
And, because I made a promise to myself last week to share it, here is what I have so far. It's just a prologue and chapter 1, so my purpose is mostly generating interest in the rest of the story. Let me know if you're hooked.
Feedback and encouragement is super welcome, as receiving a few words of praise translates to writing probably hundreds more words (hurray for socially motivated monkey brains!).
u/brandalizing [+4] Reserve Pigeon Army (13 hours later)
13,500 as of today. All written on my iPhone. My thumbs hurt.
Finally getting into the main plot, characters becoming more defined, pace picking up. Just had a Deity try to commit suicide by having all of his followers slaughtered in random wars. When this didn't work, he stopped Believing in himself, and now he's a semi-mortal wandering around an empty planet with his memories slowly deteriorating.
My other main character is a human, Commander of Fleet 115, James Kobal. He just accompanied Earth's prime Deity into the Heavenly Plane to try and convince one of the Galactic Deities that Earth deserves FTL technology. It's not going too well.
u/Evilness42 [+2] And even myth is long forgotten... (a day later)
Out of curiosity, are the Deities in your story based on actual mythologies, are the mythologies meant to be messed up stories based on rumors about older deities, or have you scrapped all that and built from scratch?
Sounds like quite an interesting concept, really.
u/brandalizing [+2] Reserve Pigeon Army (a day later)
They're completely made up, as opposed to being pulled from a pre-existing mythos. Mostly because 80% of the story so far has been happening on planets other than Earth - there are no mythologies I can build off there.
The Greek/Roman, Norse, etc. mythologies are a real part of the Earth's history though, as far as the existence of their pantheons. Funnily enough, the only one still 'alive' is Dionysus. He goes by Dio now. Changing fashions and all. Earth's prime Deity is also the head of their military; Earth does things very differently than most other species.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (2 days later)
Bu.. But.. Democracy!
If the 'Gods' are real, are there monsters to go along with them? Was Medusa a thing or whatever?
Anyhow, what about the more modern myths and legends? Does Cthulhu sleep at Ry'leh even now(even though he didn't sleep/exist back in Greek times), and does Slenderman stalk the forests?
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (2 days later)
The people of Earth don't know he's also the General. He simply has a lot more influence in that position than he does in any Deific capacity. He and a group of other Deities have been pushing Earth's space program along in order to ready themselves for contact with what they (the Deities) know is a very, very large universe out there.
There are Demons (collective fears of things that go bump in the night, given form by the mechanic of Belief-to-Power this universe runs on), but no scaly, winged, or otherwise recognizable monsters running around. Existence has a number of Planes - so far I've introduced three. The mortal plane, or the Void Plane; the Heavenly Plane (take a guess as to who resides there); and the Afterplane, home to the Demons, who are really people's fears. There really is nothing to fear but fear itself. And getting run over by an eighteen-wheeler. And many other things.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (7 days later)
I will read the hell out of this once it's available. Will you be posting it here, I hope?
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (7 days later)
When it reaches a postable stage, I will definitely be posting it here. Won't be for a while though.
I might post non-spoiler snippets of backstory or setting-centric scenes during December, as I go through and edit things.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (2 days later)
Well, I am certainly looking forward to the completion of your novel. It certainly sounds like a great concept. And one last thought-Is there an afterlife on any of the planes, or did they cancel that because of budget cuts when the population started getting above 100 billion or so?
That satisfies my curiosity nicely, and my desire to read the stuff people are putting up here continues to increase.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (2 days later)
The afterlife is as of yet unconfirmed - and if it does exist, it would not be on any of the accessible Planes.
The Heavenly Plane exists only because of people's belief of a 'home of the gods'. This 'home of the gods' is different in each belief, or even not necessarily given specific detail. Therefore, the Heavenly Plane is a nebulous, changing place. The Deities, being manifestations of collective Belief themselves, can affect their Plane by grabbing onto specific Beliefs and morphing the Plane into that form.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (3 days later)
Well, that clears up all my questions. Hmm... Now, how to munchkin a belief powered deity system.... Ah, crap, the belief of the billions of Galactic people would override any sort of trap I could manage to make, unless convincing every human on earth that the home of the human gods is incompatible with all other gods and would kill them the instant they set foot in it would actually work.
If it had a single hope in the Afterplane of working, I would also convince them that it(human god home) is such a paradise that all gods would seriously want to go there and all the other gods are super jealous and would get in at the first chance they'd get. My Master Plan is FLAWLESS! (Yeah, that ain't working)
u/brandalizing [+2] Reserve Pigeon Army (3 days later)
Don't worry, there are already two parties who have managed to munchkin the system in completely different ways.
u/Evilness42 [+2] And even myth is long forgotten... (4 days later)
Oh, good. You shouldn't create a system without at least one person abusing it, though that would be rather hard for a mere mortal to do.
I suppose the Deities would be self modifying and improving themselves by telling believers 'facts' and 'revelations' about themselves, thus making those things facts and revelations. Sucks to only be a mortal believer, though.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (4 days later)
One of the munchkin-ers is indeed a Deity. The other is not. Nor is it a mortal. It is a whooooooole lot of mortals. Can you say intergalactic conspiracy? Because no one else will. Everyone who knows about it is either part of it or dead.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (4 days later)
Well yeah, it would have to be a whole lot, but getting enough mortals to cooperate in order to start a conspiracy to munchkin gods would be like trying to get everyone on the internet to work together in order to save the world.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (4 days later)
Ah, but how about getting everyone in a cult to believe what the cult leader tells them to believe? The cult has been expanding since the very first instance of civilization amongst the cosmos.
Also, there's a hive mind or two involved.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (4 days later)
Well, if the cult has been around for that long, I doubt anyone can stand against them. At this point, I got no ideas left. Other than desperately praying to the Incredibly Helpful and Friendly God of Artificial Intelligence Who is Smarter Than All The Other Artificial Intelligence Gods (IHFGAIWSTAOAIG for short) for better ideas.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (4 days later)
The Deity who has been gaming the system has munchkin'd into Existence some powerful Tools that can end gods and mortals alike - they're pretty much the only thing the cult has to worry about now. And the Munchkin God himself.
And the pseudo-Diety who just lost his memories of the past few millennia and will soon be on his way to Earth.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (4 days later)
Ouch. But how could they be threatened by a pesudo-Diety? If the Lord of Munchkins is the only one who can threaten them out of all the real gods, then... Though going farther than the extensive background info will probably get into spoiler territory.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (6 days later)
Not A Spoiler: the Tools that he brought into Existence are not in his possession. They are in the possession of the Five Galactic Deities, one for each. This is how they became said Galactic Deities. The god of Munchkinry - who's actually the god of untruths, but he's been changing as his follower base changes - is trying to get one of the Tools off of one of the Five.
He's also sent the pseudo-Deity to Earth because no gods are allowed to interfere with Earth at the moment, due to the treaty stating that all planets outside the Five's respective territories are off-limits until they have developed FTL capabilities.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (6 days later)
Soooo... He`s basically Loki from 2YE? Though he must have messed up badly to lose 5 god killer weapons.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (7 days later)
I'm haven't been up-to-date on the 2YE in a while, so I can't confirm, but he is the Loki-type god of the story.
The mistake wasn't really his fault, to be fair - he had no idea the Universe was that broken when he tried the experiment.
u/Evilness42 [+1] And even myth is long forgotten... (7 days later)
By the 'Loki' I meant as a sort of trickster god who plays every side at once, attempting to break the rules and get away with it.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (8 days later)
Yep, that's him. Trickster through and through. If he had blood, being a trickster would be in it.
u/notsarahnz [+3] (2 hours later)
I didn't realise others were doing this. I'm writing a rationalist fic for NaNo.
u/Nepene [+1] (2 days later)
Is there a particular target?
I've been writing a fanfiction recently. I've been trying to improve the dialogue a lot. When I first wrote my fanfiction I didn't have anywhere near enough people talking so it was a lot less interesting.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (7 days later)
50,000 words or your definition of success, either one.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (7 days later)
(50k is what NaNoWrMo wants; for comparison, most commercial novels are 80k, though that varies by genre.)
u/AmeteurOpinions [+1] Finally, everyone was working together. (4 days later)
I think I'm out. Too difficult to stay on track and keep my grades up in my courses.
Oh well, I'll just hold off until December break.