I was thinking of doing a thing where the author and protagonist are aware of each other outside of the plot of the book; I figure that having little "breaking the fourth wall" segments between the author and the protag would be a good way to eat up words.
An acquaintance of mine is doing that. His main character 'finds out' that she's in a story because she 'meets the same guy on the public transport every day'. Public transport being Jeeps with long benches. Both these characters go to the same school. So yeah, don't go about it in that pathetic way.
No, I mean having the protagonist talk to me. A little different, but it allows a chance for exposition, and, essentially, time wasting.
It was an idea I got from a short story by Barry Longyear, wherein the protagonist spends much of his time arguing with the author about the absurdity of his situation.
Could be a way to generate a very anti-climatic ending.
WRONG! That is wrong! You do not want to hear 'less' when participating in NaNoWriMo. More, more, always more! If it takes 2000 words, great, if it takes 5000 words, awesome, if it takes a total 10K of words, epic.
You're not getting me. That's 2000 words or less of a situation I'm having trouble writing. If I tried to extend it out to 5k or 10k words I'd just be slowing myself down. The 2000 words is to get out of the situation I have my character in, and make a logical setup to something easier for me to write.
Today I managed to do a total of zero words. This takes me to 4 days out of 7 that's failed to write any of my novel. I was, however, writing a magazine article (which I actually get paid for) which ran to 3000 words, plus actually had to be edited and formatted, etc. So I don't feel too bad about myself.
Tomorrow I'll have time to do maybe another few thousand words. Sunday I have pretty much all day to record two podcasts and work on the novel, so I may even catch up then.
The way I'm going is very non linear. As I'm doing a book about someone living many full lifetimes in a continuously cycling time period I can dip into any part of any life, pick up his story there, run with it for a few thousand words, then stop when I need to. This way if I only want to stick with a few hundred words in that chapter, that's no problem.
I'm really liking this form of storytelling, as it lets me play and add in what I want. It weaves a broad patchwork blanket of a world, and hint a stories and events which happened both in the past and in the future.
I've just decided to drive one of my characters insane through torture and solitary confinement during a war, and then be put in command of an army after being rescued. After that he'll probably take revenge on his the inhabitants of his enemy's nation through various atrocities, and tragically realize his wrongdoings just before I kill him off. This is going way better than before.
Don't do that! Make him die heroically while killing civilians. I'll read it.
I would, but that wouldn't work as well with the fun little plot device I've got going. See, I've got a bunch of chapters scattered throughout the book named after the five staged of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Each one is a journal entry by the character while he's in solitary confinement, lamenting after his dead friends, and each one takes the theme of the stage and takes it to an extreme brought on by the characters descent into madness. I plan to have all but one of them be a journal entry, and then the chapter titled "acceptance" will be the one where he realizes what he's done wrong, and accepts the deaths of his comrades before tragically snuffing it.
How am I doing? Well, for just about everything I do in life I make up some kind of spreadsheet to help keep track or plan. This is my NaNoWriMo thingy. All I do is enter how many words I wrote today (Jer's Novel Writer has a "session wordcount") and it works everything else out for me. As you can see (if the formatting works) I did too many words on the first few days, missed three days, did over 1666 words, which is the minimum target per day, but only if you write every single day. I missed another day, but knocked out a few words this evening.
Because I've not written for four days out of 8, tomorrow, if I want to catch up completely, I have to write 8203 words. This isn't going to happen, of course. I think I'll make a new column that divides remaining word count by days remaining so it spreads catchup work over future days, rather than making it seem such a massive block.
Well, for just about everything I do in life I make up some kind of spreadsheet to help keep track or plan.
Have you downloaded the NaNoWriMo Report Card? It's got a nice layout, and it automatically calculates how many words you've written in a day, your average daily word count, and how soon you'll likely reach your goal (which is, unfortunately, not that accurate past the first day. The chart that tells you where you are is a lot better).
As an aside, would someone please tell me why I thought that committing to 100K this year was a good idea?
I'd forgotten you can post excerpts of your novel in the "About the Novel" section of your profile. I added chapter one of my novel if you care to check it out. I've not read it back since reading it (as encouraged by the NaNoWriMo website), so beware of glaring mistakes.
I just passed 16666 words. Two thirds still to go. From a quarter done to a third done in one day makes me happy. Unfortunately to get to the the next big goal, "half done", is a much bigger step.
I'm falling horribly behind between work, my dad and I actually getting somewhere on the basement, the election and the fact that 5 days at the end of the month I'll be in Ohio, I should make a plan to write 50,000 words in February ^_^ Oh yea, and Fallout 3 :-p
My characters need to quit talking and start actually doing things. I'm just shy of 38k, and I've only finished one chapter. That's right. One. I got about halfway through another, then I hit a wall and started a different one, which I'm about two thirds of the way through. Of all this, I would wager that about 80% of it is made up of useless dialogue.
I'm with you, Cremlian. There's too much other stuffgoing on this monthI'd rather be doing.
Like playing WoW? ^___~
I know people at work who have taken off the rest of this week to play the expansion. I meanwhile, will be getting said expansion at 5 pm this evening and will play it then (like a sane, working person).
Whoot! I got past 20,000 words. Just three fifths of the way to go. And while I missed writing for four days near the beginning of the month I've almost caught up completely. If I do another 1123 words today I'll be back on track for the 1666 words per day average.
I think I'm done for this year, unless I suddenly get a flash of enthusiasm later in the month. I just can't seem to muster up enough excitement this year for NaNo, mainly due to the prospect of other things I'd rather be doing. I think I'm allowed, considering how long I've been participating in NaNo. I know I can get to 50K when I really want to, so it's not a matter of proving that I can do it anymore; I just participate when it's fun now, and since it's not currently fun, I'm out. XD;
Gad, you people are dropping like flies. I'm still chugging along at 22,000, and I've got enough stuff in my head to get to 25,000 by tomorrow, I think.
"Day fifteen in the NaNoWriMo FRCF house and we're down to just three housemates. Misakyra is clearly doing best at almost forty two thousand words. Running neck and neck for second place Luke and Günter, who've been within a few thousand words of each other at the end of each day for the past week. Both are just under twenty five thousand words. Compared to Misakyra this looks hopeless, but both are on target for a successful year...."
Comments
It was an idea I got from a short story by Barry Longyear, wherein the protagonist spends much of his time arguing with the author about the absurdity of his situation.
Could be a way to generate a very anti-climatic ending.
Tomorrow I'll have time to do maybe another few thousand words. Sunday I have pretty much all day to record two podcasts and work on the novel, so I may even catch up then.
The way I'm going is very non linear. As I'm doing a book about someone living many full lifetimes in a continuously cycling time period I can dip into any part of any life, pick up his story there, run with it for a few thousand words, then stop when I need to. This way if I only want to stick with a few hundred words in that chapter, that's no problem.
I'm really liking this form of storytelling, as it lets me play and add in what I want. It weaves a broad patchwork blanket of a world, and hint a stories and events which happened both in the past and in the future.
Make him die heroically while killing civilians. I'll read it.
I'm 8 days behind. I'm going to write my ass off and hope I hit at least 50,000 words before time's up. How are you guys doing so far?
Because I've not written for four days out of 8, tomorrow, if I want to catch up completely, I have to write 8203 words. This isn't going to happen, of course. I think I'll make a new column that divides remaining word count by days remaining so it spreads catchup work over future days, rather than making it seem such a massive block.
Anyway, here it is:
As an aside, would someone please tell me why I thought that committing to 100K this year was a good idea?
*is shot*
I'm going to have sooo much editing to do. 0_o
However, I gave up pretty much everything else for Fallout 3.
Fucking mirelurks.
"Day fifteen in the NaNoWriMo FRCF house and we're down to just three housemates. Misakyra is clearly doing best at almost forty two thousand words. Running neck and neck for second place Luke and Günter, who've been within a few thousand words of each other at the end of each day for the past week. Both are just under twenty five thousand words. Compared to Misakyra this looks hopeless, but both are on target for a successful year...."