22 KiB
[WIP][D][BS] National Novel Writing Month: Week 1
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Author: u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3r1yq0/wipdbs_national_novel_writing_month_week_1/
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Score: 18
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Created: 2015-11-01T05:57:46
Post:
This is a general purpose thread for anything you'd like to talk about for National Novel Writing Month, which starts November 1st.
- Want to check in your some progress?
- Want to talk about what you're writing?
- Out of ideas and want some help?
Feel free to make posts to the subreddit if you crank out a chapter you want to share, have a meaty question you want some help with, or something like that; this is more a place for things that aren't quite substantial enough to warrant their own posts.
Comments:
u/quickpocket [+6] (11 hours later)
As a just as cool alternative, there's NaNoGenMo, which is the same thing except easier! Or harder! Because instead of writing the 50,000 words yourself, you write a computer program to do it for you! I'm really torn about which one I'm going to try, and I'm sorry for the sleep deprived exclamation points.
u/eaglejarl [+7] (2 days later)
...
10 PRINT "Hello world!"
20 GOTO 10
You're right, that was easier.
u/quickpocket [+6] (2 days later)
The "novel" is defined however you want. It could be 50,000 repetitions of the word "meow". It could literally grab a random novel from Project Gutenberg. It doesn't matter, as long as it's 50k+ words.
Congrats! You finished your novel already! Go submit it then :D
u/eaglejarl [+4] (2 days later)
:>
u/PeridexisErrant [+6] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (4 days later)
Unfortunately there are two problems with /u/eaglejarl's novel:
- It's written in Basic, which is an outdated genre nobody buys these days
- It's a lot longer than 50Kw - in fact none of our editors finished reading it.
u/eaglejarl [+6] (4 days later)
Oh, no worries. A quick editing pass should help:
"Hello world " map [1..100000]
How's that?
u/PeridexisErrant [+5] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (4 days later)
Lovely, I reckon we could get a trilogy out of it easily.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 days later)
Nah, 100k is a long novel. If you want a trilogy, you need AT LEAST 240k.
Well, unless it's romance. Those tend to be shorter, maybe 50k each.
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (11 hours later)
I've seen that before - it's very cool, but as with Ludlum Dare and similar game jams, I think your results tend to be orders of magnitude better if you have some background (in the case of NaNoGenMo, NLP stuff).
u/quickpocket [+1] (13 hours later)
I imagine you could say the same thing about the original :D. As I have little to no writing experience and a tad more NLP, both would probably be more of an interesting project to see what I could do than a fully fledged work.
u/xamueljones [+5] My arch-enemy is entropy (a day later)
It's probably just because I'm already a computer programmer, but that sounds easier to do than to take the time out of my busy schedule to write a novel. I mean I could use my code as a course project for one of my classes.
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (a day later)
I've started writing a lexer and parser (good feedback loops for short iteration), even though my calendar looks ridiculous. If only I were actually taking a programming class.
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
I'm doing a continuation of The Dark Wizard of Donkerk this year. Because of some editing work on last year's NaNo, I'm basically in catch-up mode if I want to hit my goal of 100K words; Day 1 was spent getting back up to 50K, so I'm basically starting a day behind. I'm a little leery of the fact that I've got three and a half magic systems going, but they're all vital to the plot, so I guess I'm just forging on ahead. On the plus side, I think I have all of my principal characters pretty firmly set in my head.
Here's a link if you want to check it out. If you want just the stuff from this year, CTRL+F for "Miriam had taken her oaths late, at the age of eighteen."
u/AKACombustionMan [+4] (14 hours later)
Finished Day One at 2,275 words. An excerpt:
“I think I’m going insane,” Manch offered to the table at large. The assortment of tabletoken players rolled their eyes and continued the current round of betting.
“Get yourself a wife, boy,” said an old weever. “Then you’ll know.” He laughed sharply, then coughed and said, “Four greens on the fourty. Fill ‘er up, Terzo.”
Terzo shuffled the tokens around to their new places and flicked the turn-counter to his left. “Your bet, Rudo,” he intoned, his hollow-sounding voice matching perfectly with his mask-like face.
The longbrow trowling yanked on the eponymous feature of his race and screwed up his face. “Smoke it, Genki, I feel like I’m playin’ with a Scavenger here. My luck’s run out and kept on runnin’ the other direction. Go easy on us, will ya?”
The weever cackled, jumping a black token across the six fingers of his bottom left hand. “Experience trumps luck every time, Rudo, my boy.”
“I’m old enough to be your father, you spiny loon,” said Rudo, tossing a handful of muddy brown tokens onto the table.
“I’m older at heart, Rudo, I’m older at heart. So, Manch, what brings you moping to seek the company of us tabletoken rascals?”
“Insanity loves company, or something like that,” said Manch, tilting his head and peering blankly at the mess of colored tokens arranged across the table. “What’s the count, Terzo?”
“Seven-and-one,” Terzo replied, voice passing through the air like a raindrop through smoke.
“You’re crazy if you think you’re insane, boy,” said the weever on Genki’s other side. “What’s got ya down?”
“The turning point of my life is approaching and my brain is falling apart into a mental game of tabletokens where each of my thoughts bids against the others to gain control of my focus. Are yellows still wild?”
Genki glanced back at the stack of tokens in front of him. “Aye. So when’s this turning point, anyway.”
“Five days from now, at the Midcycle Exams. How many turns until the Shift round starts?”
“After Terel here makes up his mind about how he wants to lose,” said Genki, his bottom right hand splurching out to point at the other weever.
“Are you going to apply for Squireship, then?” asked Rudo, wrinkled face scanning his tokens for a pattern he hoped he’d just missed.
“Mm,” said Manch noncommitally. “Take five white, Terel, then declare and double.”
“What?” said the young weever. “Why would I double, especially after I declare? Why would I even declare in the first place, that’s letting Genki take the side-pot right off.”
“Don’t listen to him, he’s obviously insane,” Genki said, eyes flicking to the table’s tokens before becoming interested in the black token he was still flipping between his fingers.
Rudo’s voluminous eyebrows twitched as he found whatever it was he hadn’t known he was looking for. “Hey, Terel, the boy may have something.”
“If you don’t, Genki’s going to trade all his yellows for whites first turn of the Shift round,” Manch said, eyeing the pile of whites in front of Terzo.
“What?” said Terel, lost. “But he doesn’t have any-”
“Smokes!” yelled Rudo. “He’ll have a finger on everyone else’s by the time his turn comes around!”
“How?!” asked Terel in exhasperation, still not seeing it.
“The count’s seven-and-one now, right?” said Rudo, shaking his head in amazement. “If you do nothing but bet flat and pass on doubling, Genki just has to double at the start of his turn and he’ll get the pick of any color he’s got nil of! I was wondering why you kept passing up the chance at nabbing a few yellows yourself, you wily bastard,” he said, this directed at Genki.
Terel sat back, deflated. “Damn.”
“Will you shut up and bet,” said the fifth denizen of the tabletoken game, a towering aspin fay with a bushy white beard.
“That’s all you ever have to say, even at a time like this?”
“This time is no different than any other.”
“I almost lost everything!” Terel cried. “We all did!”
“Take five white, declare, then double, Terel,” Manch said boredly, repeating his earlier advice. “If you play as bad of a Shift round as you do the primary rounds, you’ll still come out on top, though not by much. Have a goodnight, you guys.”
“Yeah, you’d better leave,” grumbled Genki, arms crossed, four hands tapping an angry beat against his exoskeleton. “I’ll have you know that in the past, they used to string up a spectator by his bottom-wrists for interfering in a game of tabletokens.”
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (a day later)
You use insane and crazy a bit too often for my tastes. I recommend replacing a few with delusional, loony, or cracked in the head. Especially since it seems like you're going to be using these words again later.
u/AKACombustionMan [+1] (a day later)
I only used 'crazy' once, unless I'm missing something, and each utterance of 'insane' was a specific reference by the speaker to the initial usage of the word by Manch.
u/AKACombustionMan [+3] (5 hours later)
Welp. Here we go.
u/avret [+3] SDHS rationalist (20 hours later)
Day 1: 2000 words, the results of which are posted to /r/rational. Cracks knuckles
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
Great job!
u/eaglejarl [+3] (2 days later)
For NaNoWriMo I'm going to be writing an erom, 50 Shades of Grey Except Not Awful. (It's a working title.)
Unfortunately, last month I did a NaNoWriMo challenge for 80,000 words, of which I've only written 68,000, so I need to finish The Change Storms: Induction before officially starting on NaNoWriMo. Wish me luck.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (2 days later)
I don't have any spare wishes, unfortunately, but I hope you see luck all the same.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (2 days later)
Good luck!
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (9 hours later)
I wish you all luck. I am out of it, due to collusion by evil college teachers.
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (a day later)
Same here. I've got so many tests and projects due by the end of November. sob
u/None [+1] (4 days later)
It's not like the real world has time for hobbies.
Nooooooo, instead it's all "spend time with friends" and "go to work every day" and "do a bunch of activism that's good for the world" and "work on research outside of work".
u/brandalizing [+2] Reserve Pigeon Army (a day later)
Accidentally commented with my alt account yesterday. Awkward.
Excerpt from Day Two:
His breath caught in his throat as he finally saw what had taken everyone else’s away.
The three suton were of moderate size for their race, each clothed in flowing, silk robes over what looked like a small mountain of wrapped cloth. Their hairless heads - including an eerie lack of eyelashes and eyebrows - were perched atop those small mountains, peering calmly around, a distinct lack of interest written across their fleshy features. The long poles they always carried were grasped loosely in wide, soft hands, resting horizontally across the backs of their steeds.
And they were all painted in wide swathes with a nauseating amount of deep, crimson blood.
A few strong smells mixed in the air, most of them a result of the strong spices the suton carried with them. There was riversalt, some strong peppery odor, and a hint of the bitter culo seed.
And the overpowering, metallic scent of a nauseating amount of deep, crimson blood.
It hit Manch instantly as he stepped to the front of the crowd, clogging the air around him, reaching down his nasal passages and stuffing a grimy cloth all the way down and into his throat. “Wait, don-” he tried to cough out.
Rimmer poked his head out right next to Manch as the rest of his sentence choked on the stench of stale life.
“Guh,” said Rimmer.
What in the twelve hells? It wasn’t that he’d never seen blood before, because he certainly had - though never quite this much of it, to be sure. He, and the entire city, was intimately familiar with the smell of death, with death itself. It was as much a part of life as anything else, especially life itself. It just wasn’t usually this… They really are dead in the eyes, Manch thought, looking between the three remaining sutons - he’d put two and two together as soon as he’d seen the blood, and now knew why there were two riderless fulpir. And dead in the heart, he finished, completing the quote. The suton weren’t doing anything to indicate their awareness as to the fact that they were currently drenched from scalp to saddle in the blood of their recently deceased brethren. Recently devoured, by the looks of it. What could have killed them that violently? A pit-tree?
Manch fought to swallow the grimy rag of bloodsoaked air blocking his throat, and took a shaky breath. It had taken him by surprise, that was all. I can’t react like this if I want to make it out there. He eyed the newly-dyed silk robes. At least, not if I don’t want to end up with my blood recoloring someone else’s wardrobe.
As he stared with morbid curiosity at the thick drops of blood falling languidly from the bottom hem of their robes, the suton at the head of the group caught his eye. Or rather, its eyes caught him. They were grey, or maybe just white and filmy without reflecting much light, and they were as empty as a corpse set upon by a swarm of bloodworms. The suton was looking at him, he was sure - it was even looking where his eyes were, technically. It just wasn’t actually meeting his eye. It didn’t look like it could meet his eye. Where were its pupils? Could its eye even focus on something as specific as Manch’s own?
It broke eye contact - or whatever it was that had been - and Manch felt an involuntary shudder pass through him. He ground his teeth with sudden conviction. If they pass the evaluation and I don’t, there’s going to be one more fulpir without a rider.
u/brandalizing [+2] Reserve Pigeon Army (3 days later)
Pushed hard today in order to reach 10,000 words. That buffer is looking mighty comfy.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (3 days later)
Just don't get cocky. :)
u/brandalizing [+2] Reserve Pigeon Army (3 days later)
Yeah. My goal is no longer to reach 50,000, because that would give me a seemingly large amount of leeway and might result in my slipping off the habit slide. My goal is now to write at least 2,000 every day, no matter what my total wordcount is.
u/LeonCross [+2] (6 days later)
Currently sitting on 21,960 out a targeted goal of...well, however big it gets. I'm finding my best method of writing is to have the key areas thought out (Beginning, middle, end, any major plot points) and beyond that just write any scenes I'd find interesting that fit in each section. Like, the 21,960 scenes all are either the intro or fit in before the climax.
It's a little modular, but gives me room in the editing to go "Ok, I think that this particular scene of interaction would probably work best here. So lets do a little tweaking of it's tone and the specifics so it does. Hm. If I put this framing device over here, it will make this point in the climax work better."
Nothing worth posting around here. I just noticed that a lot of people in my generation that I know seem to suffer from this...lostness? Like they're not really sure where they're going or what they want to do?
So I wanted to capture that in a teen coming of age story.
The only real rational parts of the story is that I do deal with how the brain processes information, patterns of behavior, some stuff about drugs, sexuality, relationships...
But it's more an INTJ character being an INTJ character rather than well crafted research on my part to make sure everything they say is accurate. I feel that way it's easy to look at it and go "Ok. I can easily see how the character went A - B - C+D = E, etc." and not have them be an author mouth piece.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Man, I've started mine, but it's REALLY bad - way worse than the stuff I wrote in highschool and college.
Should I just force forward with this idea until it starts flowing, or move forward with something else that might flow a little better?
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
I think it's better to just forge on ahead. You don't want to train in a thought pattern of "I could just give up and start on something else". Hopefully you can tell why it's bad and fix anything you write in the future, then circle back to the beginning when the month is over and you have a better sense of the story.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (2 days later)
No. Keep going. There's a lot of reasons why you should: pick the one you like best:
The vast majority of authors hate their work on re-reading it, if not while writing it. Neil Gaiman famously had this conversation with his publisher:
Neil: Bob, I'm so sorry, I need to drop out of this contract. I'll give you the advance back, but I just can't do it. Everything I'm producing is absolutely awful, and I can't seem to come up with anything decent.
Bob: laughs Neil, every time we work together, we get about six weeks in and then you call me to say everything is awful and you need to give the advance back. And then you finish it, and it sells like hot cakes because everyone else in the world thinks it's great. Now get back to work.
Finishing your project gives you the chance to have it turn into something good. If it doesn't, maybe you can edit it into something good. If you can't, you will have the chance to learn something from the process by figuring out what you did wrong.
There's a saying: you have to write a million bad words before you write any good ones. It sounds trite, but my personal experience backs it up. So, congratulations -- if it ends up being crap, then you've gotten through some of your million bad words. If it turns out to be good, you're beating the curve.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
I cracked two thousand words for a stargate fic today that I had been working on the past two weeks.
I did another 500 words for a nBSG story I am writing.
And another 500 words for something I am questmastering.
u/None [+1] (3 days later)
Did three thousand words for the SI nBSG yesterday, mostly finally starting the second Cylon War.
Another one thousand for a SG fic in which we get to see the aftermatch and its fallout.
Today, I did one thousand detailing further impact, including a Jaffa telling his story about the Tau'ri.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (2 days later)
Finished Day Three, my total word-count now at 6,067 words. Today's excerpt:
“Uh, Ewin, do you-”
“If you ask me why I don’t want to risk my life, Manch, by the gods,” Ewin spit out, not even moving her eyes, “I will drag you down to the Dean’s office myself and hand you over along with all the incriminating papers in this room and a personal recommendation that you be ground up and used as bait during the next Potential Protectorship Predator Survival Test, I swear it by my father’s grave and my mother’s ferociously delicious fulmut stew.”
“...I was going to ask if you knew how long it would take a single redthread to eat completely through an average person’s forearm.” Though honestly, the Dean seemed like he would be pretty okay with what I’m doing here. ‘The Society ranks have been getting too dusty’ and all that.
Also, that Protectorship test thing sounds like something I want to avoid. Manch made a mental note to never volunteer for anything that sounded remotely like the name of that test, or, preferably, any test with the word ‘predator’ in it.
“Oh!” said Ewin, brightening instantly. She tossed aside the paper she’d been reading and straightened up, smiling widely. “That’s from the experiments of the late Professor Huami! A complete madman, always did his experiments on himself. Which is what ended up killing him, I suspect.”
“Wait, he amputated his own arm to see how long it would take a redthread to eat through it?” Manch frowned. “Are you trying to sneak one by me?”
Ewin laughed, rocking backward and then slamming her hand down on the table as her chair almost tipped completely over. “What, still worried I’ll try to convince you about something like, oh I don’t know, the Dean having been a weever before he ran into a spectrid out on the Expanse and it,” she stopped to muffle more laughter, “it took his exoskeleton away!?” She rocked back again, keeping a hand on the table to steady herself, and guffawed, dramatically, loud enough to hurt Manch’s ears and ego both.
“I was six years old!” he yelled back. “Plenty of weird things have been known to happen to those the spectrids get a hold of but don’t suck completely dry! How was I supposed to know this particular thing wasn’t possible?”
Ewin was cackling know, drawing it out, surely, no one could possibly find the memory that funny after having brought it up periodically for the past nine straight years.
u/brandalizing [+1] Reserve Pigeon Army (4 days later)
2,824 words today. Raisin' that average wpd count e'ry day, mmmmhmm.