NaNoWriMo Discussion

[Tybalt Capulet]

Well, so far all is well! Not much has gone down plot-wise, but a ship has been sighted, so my crew can finally get some action (I may have used that phrase wrong).

[Naril]

7150 words, officially still on track, even a little ahead.

I'm headlong into how the first public reveal of metahumans goes, and laying down the foundations of the familial dysfunction and emotional complexity that this story is going to need. I'm very deliberately making sure that these two aren't orphaned, because that's the lazy way to build some of the narrative structures I'm going to be needing. Characterization at this point is necessarily broad, but the complexity and shading will come along with the narrative.

I wish I'd done more outlining; the way this story is coming together I'm having to do a scene skeleton before each block of writing. Normally I work from broad arc descriptors, but I've also never done this kind of temporal skipping before. Ann Leckie makes this look so easy, hah!

[Tybalt Capulet]

@NarilI'm kind of figuring that at this point, whatever I write is better than having nothing. With that attitude, I'm throwing nonsense onto paper and hoping it sticks.

[Antarctic Termite]

@Tybalt Capulet That's the spirit.

[Antarctic Termite]

Done! Had a slow run towards the end but I found the thread again and finished above target.

...

You know what's satisfying? Creating a despicable character, making them out to be the lead role of the story, and then killing them in a single line with no chance to repent.

[AlteredTundra]

@Antarctic Termite That sounds like quite the treat. Can't say the same for your future audience of this story who'll get attached to said character.

Also, I've caught up to where I need to be on my current day(technically going by the 5th since I've yet to sleep yet). So, that feels good. Might try to go for 10k before sleep. Uncertain if I'll make it.

[Naril]

Just over 9600 words before I went to bed last night.

Like always, dialogue comes much easier than anything else. I do an enormous amount of technical writing, and it's sometimes a job to keep myself from leaping off the Good Narrative track and into the land of Shitty Infodumps. Not only are Shitty Infodumps, well, shitty, but they're very word-efficient and dry, which is not terribly helpful when your goal is word count.

[Antarctic Termite]

Finished below daily quote yesterday, doubling down to make up for lost time today.

Let's roll lads

[Tybalt Capulet]

I finally got to a combat bit, so I can really dig into the action and get some words down!

[shylarah]

AAAH! How is it I missed this thread?! *flails*

I'm way behind...again...didn't even sift through the dares thread this year.

...Can I count rp posts towards 50k?

[Antarctic Termite]

@shylarah Most people give up roleplaying while they're doing the November run, so, sure. All practice is good practice.

[Tybalt Capulet]

I'm looking at nine hundred words tonight to catch up. Doable, but still a good bit.

[shylarah]

TFW you have over 15k words in rp text written since November first, and only like 7.5k in your NaNo story. Ahahahaa *sobs*

[Naril]

Over 17,000 words!

I've spent about 16,500 of those establishing who these characters and their world are (while trying to hew pretty close to the idea of "make every scene work on two different levels"), but if you're telling a story about superhumans, you have to eventually show what they can do.

So, our protagonist's sister just tried to kill her.

[Antarctic Termite]

wheezes

i've put my protagonist into an unwinnable fight for no other reason than 'oh, why not put my protagonist into an unwinnable fight'

RIP main character you were cool while you lasted

[shylarah]

@Antarctic Termite there's such a thing as a decoy protagonist. Kill them off! I'll dare you, if it helps! Alternatively, perhaps defeat is not death?

[Antarctic Termite]

@shylarah I already murdered the decoy antihero, remember? And then I had another decoy protagonist, who disappeared from the scene when the actual protagonist chased God into the void and wound up following a Moroccan trading caravan a couple thousand miles away.

And the actual actual protagonist, who narrates all this, has already commented that this is a story about the actual protagonist, the one now in Morocco.

Believe me, I'm not averse to murdering unnecessary characters. I just don't think the audience will buy it a third time.

[shylarah]

@Antarctic Termite oh did you? I wasn't here for most of this thread...alright, so only mostly murder the guy, and have him survive. Somehow.

[Antarctic Termite]

The problem solved itself when my protagonist turned out to be, in fact, still just as badass as I made her out to be in chapter one.

three kills in five minutes, wooooo

[Tybalt Capulet]

Got next to nada done this weekend, so that's a shame.