NaNoWriMo Discussion

[Naril]

@Tybalt Capulet One of my favourite characters was someone I originally wrote to be a Tragic Backstory kind of character, because sometimes you need those. She wound up as one of my favourite characters I ever wrote about, and it's a concept I still play with from time to time.

I'm absolutely certain that one of the sisters in my NaNo story is going to die, though. It's the only way the story can end. They're both proud, intelligent, convinced that they're right and have good personal and narrative reason to believe that. There's no room for daylight between their points of view. The question will eventually be whether I want to write a knock-down, drag-out, Last Act Of A Marvel Movie ending, or whether it's going to be something more like the Chess Courtyard Fight in Hero. I admit I am hugely leaning toward that second one.

[AlteredTundra]

Gah, I don't know how I'm going to catch up now. I'm practically 10k words behind. x.x

[shylarah]

@Altered Tundra I was that far behind last week. ^.^;;

[ZB1996]

On the topic of romance, no matter what I do I'm never able to set up real romantic tension between characters. It did happen once accidentally last year between a pair of characters, but I was never able to settle that since there was never a time when a kiss scene wouldn't have been completely out of place.

The vision I have of my characters from when I begin to write tends to be radically different from when I begin. This seems to be affect me without fail. This year I had planned a side character who had a fiery, even rude personality. She's now turned a trickster whose pretty kind, and has turned into the main character. The fact that I am even able to surprise myself is undoubtedly the best part of pantsing for me.

[Tybalt Capulet]

@ZB1996Pantsing is incredible. I've been actively trying to force my story to stay in a certain path, but it just... won't.

[ZB1996]

@Tybalt Capulet I've been lucky enough to always have an endgoal in mind, but I could see how that could be a problem.

[Tybalt Capulet]

So, advice, please! I have a female character masquerading as a male. She's also very outspoken about my main character, a captain of a ship, being incompetent. Naval code means she should be flogged if she says something too harsh against the leader. Do I go through with it?

Pros: Difficult scene that will challenge MC's morality.
Will out female character as female, something that I need a way to do
Will show that bad things really do happen at sea
Will build conflict

Cons: I'm concerned it might be too much. I've had violence, but this'll be brutality, not fighting for one's life.
I don't want to give the wrong idea with outing the female character. I'm concerned that this might.

That's my thinking, at least! Thoughts?

[Antarctic Termite]

@Tybalt Capulet Ask the character. If she's going to act up knowing the consequences, don't stifle her because you don't feel like writing the conclusion. If it's not actually in character for her to do that, then there's no reason to force it.

If the scene strikes you as confronting, write to the point where she finishes her speech/rebuke/tirade, find a nice line to end the chapter/section on, and then open the next one with her nursing her wounds or dealing with the aftermath of being outed. You can hop and jump across implications where there are things the story needs but doesn't need to describe.

[Naril]

You know, I did all this work, wrote out all these different character capsules and did all these scene skeletons...

...And I never figured out what our protagonist's abilities actually are. I mean, I know she has some (in a sort of Tony-Stark-meets-Hank-Henshaw kind of way), and that she's going to need to stand up to her sister's frankly almost deific powers, but...well. That took a little while.

I still got my words out, but I kind of wound up staring at my cat for an hour or so, thinking. I kept coming back to the idea that Protagonist doesn't want to destroy her sister or anything she stands for, she just wants to be enough of a threat that she can't be ignored. That means she's going to be built much more for the idea of surviving her sister than anything else, and then I could work from there.

Words are still coming easily. I hope it stays that way. :3

[Naril]

Popped over 42,000 words last night!

I was pretty lazy over American Thanksgiving, and didn't do a lot of writing on Thursday and Friday, mostly because I was just tired. But I got about 5200 words written last night, and I'm right back on track.

How's everyone else doing?

[Antarctic Termite]

How's everyone else doing?

@Naril

[shylarah]

*ded*

[ayzrules]

Around 6000 words behind with a shit ton of stuff to do this week ahahaha I'm so great at managing my time

[Antarctic Termite]

I'm starting to think I'm overdoing this one character's kill count. I just wrote a fight scene for her and over the course of two pages she racked up eight.

I'm running out of ways to kill her off but she just keeps on surviving. Dang.

ed: I've tried bandit gangs, divine intervention, heatstroke, desert nomads, desert nomads 2: camel riding boogaloo, burning for heresy, a miscarriage, pirates, and boredom. So far boredom came closest.

[Naril]

I pootled over 45,000 last night. Almost there!

So far, very few people have died in this story - at least, directly. The main character does have a comment about how the deaths she's responsible for are "more than I wanted; fewer than I could." I don't know if I'll keep that, but.

There is also the deliberate-on-my-part ambiguity of what exactly happens to Bad Guys once the nominal heroes have dealt with them. There isn't an Arkham Asylum in this story, and the Heroic Stronghold is devoid of a cell block or a series of well-hidden oubliettes.

That could go some dark places, but while this story is fundamentally a tragedy, I want it to be a different kind of tragedy than "oh, well, it turns out everyone's a piece of shit." I don't like reading those stories, let alone writing them. Maybe we'll find out in the sequel.

Speaking of going some dark places, I'm reading a fun superhero romp right now called All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault, which is absolutely my 2017 Novel Title Of The Year and, so far, a pretty good time. The followup novel, which is coming out in a year, will apparently be called They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded.

[Tybalt Capulet]

I initially assumed that I'd have a novel at the end of this month, but even though I'm going to hit my word count, I think I'll have about a third of one. What do.

[shylarah]

@Tybalt Capulet this is actually not an unusual problem.

[Naril]

Every single one of my NaNo projects has been "part of a story" by the time I hit 50k. This one, even pared down from the "fluff for word's sake" would easily be 90,000 words for an actual novel. My NaNo project for 2015 would have been easy to turn into a trilogy.

I have enough outline to do that, but I decided I'd rather work on something else. That went...okay, I guess.

[Tybalt Capulet]

A line I'm particularly proud of:

“Faith is not meant to be useful, Captain Durram. It is what picks us up when ‘useful’ things fail, and we have nothing left to lose. Captain, faith is the difference between a man wandering aimlessly in the desert and a man who is searching for the next mirage with confidence that eventually, one will be more than an illusion.”

[shylarah]

@Tybalt Capulet I have a character that would snort and reply that faith is like pretending you're safe because you've hidden under your security blankie. It can be comforting, sure, but there's a lot of times when it keeps you from taking productive action.

Although to be fair she doesn't have much against people having faith, so long as they have sense too. It's when they let it blind them -- or try to convince her she should have it -- that she gets peeved.