RPGC #6: The NaNo One!

[Naril]

Remember to back up your story!

I passed 35,500 words today, and that's with houseguests and a dinner party. I'm proud of myself. :3 Our Heroines have taken to the skies, putting them in an extraordinarily rare position - and one that has a liability for every advantage.

We're almost in the home stretch, everyone! There's considerably less ahead than there is behind. By now our stories are considerably longer than 100 pages long - on average, a 50,000-word story is around 200 pages of printed text. Kind of fun to think about, isn't it?

[Keyguyperson]

Got to 35,250 today. I really, truly cried for the first time in my time writing this novel today. And for once, it wasn't because I'd written something sad. I also will not be nearly done with my novel at 50k words, there's still so much more to write, so much more to add to the story. I don't even know if I'll make it to the climax by the end of this. Today was a good day. I am a happy person right now.

[mdk]

34,157. Essentially caught up, but tomorrow it'll be official, assuming all goes well. I think when this is finished -- meaning on the second or third draft, probably -- the final length is gonna be in the neighborhood of 70k. As it stands in the current form, I think I've got plenty of story to get me through the end of NaNo and probably some more to spare. The characters have really filled out, except for Benevici, but I've already figured out what to do with him on the next pass. Right now, for the first time, we're about to meet the "Big Bad." Trying a different tactic with the antagonists this time through -- should be interesting to write, but I'm not sure how tolerable it'll be to read. So I may have to undo it later. But for now, it's gonna be great.

[Keyguyperson]

-snip-

@mdk

It's kind of fun to read these posts and see what everyone else is doing with their novel. I focused mine around character interaction with a romance plot that takes a while to heat up. And then the subplot of the whole thing is a game of spies and political intrigue that could cause WWIII. So I basically just took how fictional stories in general are written, and then flipped it upside down and went with that.

[Frettzo]

Well, my novel is shaping up to be about a family of Demon Hunters who're forced into a conflict against the Vampire Nobility after a particular Demon pulled some strings.

[Keyguyperson]

Keyguyperson proudly presents:

Like An Entire Page Of Incorrect Alien Speculation On Human Sexuality

[Naril]

37,500 words! I'm hoping to get a little bit further ahead every day for the next few days, because I'm reasonably sure I'll need at least one day off - Chateau Naril is hosting quite a Thanksgiving celebration this year, and that means I need to be in my kitchen preeeeeetty much starting from Wednesday evening. *laughs*

My story originally started life (in my head and even in the early outlines) as a straightforward adventure. There's still a lot of that in there, but there's so much more now. Our Heroines have become reluctant players in a game of power and conspiracy, racing toward a goal that nobody in the game truly understands - only knowing that they all need to get there first.

Slightly modified from my NaNo author profile....

-----

The Ancients didn't kill the world - but they did drive it mad.

Thousands of years ago, civilization fell and left the world ferociously dangerous, with an out-of-control biosphere and humanity no longer at the top of the food chain. Over time, a new nation rose, tearing their own cities out of the endless jungles and forests and discovering the ruins, wonders, and terrors that their ancient ancestors left behind. Of those, none are more mysterious than the Wall - a vast, impenetrable energy field completely isolating the Northern part of the world's most-explored continent. But in a few days, the Wall is coming down, with word that a mysterious, powerful group known as the Priory are working to that end. When it falls, dozens of teams of explorers, scientists, thieves and miscreants are ready to charge into that unknown land, dreaming of a gold rush.

In the workshops of Kanda, the closest city to the Wall, Ada and Lara Velt are prepared to be one of those teams. Ada is a prolific inventor, her sister an academic. Like many, they are deeply distrustful of the Ancients' legacy, and want to know more about what might be locked behind the Wall. They suspect there's something dangerous up there, and while Lara expects something that perhaps should be locked away, Ada hopes for something that might help to undo the damage the Ancients did. What they find - and the path getting there - will be something other than either of them expect.

[Keyguyperson]

36,754 words total for today, and I've gotten to the point where the reader discovers that my story isn't going to be ENTIRELY internal struggle and nice moments between two main characters. They learn this because China moves a giant fleet into waters claimed by Japan, this setting off an international crisis which will eventually lead to the short-lived Third World War. Except this time it's short lived because peace prevails, not because the world as we know it comes to an end in nuclear hellfire. It'll be fun to figure out how the alien reacts to learning that the country that's taking care of her is right next to an extremely powerful country that they're at war with.

[mdk]

36,863, but that *is* counting some notes at the end of various chapters telling future-me what to do when I edit. I think that's legal.... but anyway, this shit just came together. There was a lot of stuff that didn't make any sense at all in the backstory, and my characters just accidentally figured out how it all happened.

Read the synopses so far -- cool stuff. The Velt adventure sounds like a great premise, and although I'm still waiting for photographic proof that @keyguyperson can write hold off from destroying humanity, I've learned not to bet against him.

My story is based on a TTL entry I did for the Fourth Labor (which, I've since discovered, is also roughly the same premise as Uncharted 2, the multi-platinum AAA videogame..... darn.....) The TTL entry is huge, so here's a shorter synopsis. Basically, there's this history professor who gets a letter from an archaeologist, inviting him to come on a super-secret dig (set in 1925, so between world wars). Mackenny, the archaeologist, has found what he thinks is the entrance to a mythological kingdom called Shambhala. He wants to go inside and find the Cintamani Stone, an important piece of history and (according to religion) a magical boon that can grant immeasurable wealth. They're racing against the Vaerichs (which are based on the real-life Roerich expedition), who want to get it first and use it for their own weird purposes. The story is all about the characters -- you've got Mackenny, the Indiana Jones type; Doctor Cole, the history teacher and former Rough Rider; Benevici, the do-gooder; and the Vaerichs, Helena (based on real-life wonderwoman Helena Roerich) and Nikolai (based on real-life creepy genius Nicholas Roerich).

If I did it right, it's less about the magic rock, and more about all these different people interacting with one another (and some other characters) along the way.

[Keyguyperson]

@mdk

I know I haven't been pointing out my desire to read any of these novels despite the fact that I totally do, but yours just sounds like my kind of thing. I really love those classic, Indiana Jones-y type stories, as well as character interaction. The only way you could make me more interested would be to throw in something about nuclear weaponry.

[Naril]

Right now, I'm at 39,296 words, and I think I'm pausing here for now - I need to get dinner and play with my cats and snuggle my other half. :3

I finally had to sit down with a ruler, some math, some graph paper, and my incredibly rudimentary drawing skills and work out the scale for some of the things in my world. There are a lot of very, very big things, which I did intend - but there are enough of them that I'm starting to need to understand their relationship in a very concrete way. Our Heroines, for example, are piloting a flying machine (very nearly the only one of its kind) that's definitely human-scale - the "living area" is about the size of a city bus, or a nice RV. The Priory, on the other hand, has colossal, armoured flying citadels that, as it turns out, are terrifyingly huge. They were always intended to be dramatic, but I guess I surprised myself with how much. I think I kind of love it.

What are all our working titles? I'm terrible at them, so right now my story is just called The Wall. I'm really starting to warm up to it, though - there's something to be said for simplicity.

[ayzrules]

Nothing wrong with a simple title! Mine is called a ballet of blades (it too me ages to come up with a title omg)

[WilsonTurner]

@Naril
I got a pretty good book that's called "The Roar" and "The Whisper."

[Keyguyperson]

I'm going with The Bluebird of Uotsuri-shima. Because the island of Uotsuri-shima is important (like, WWIII-level important), and one of the main characters is a blue alien (shut up I was more creative with how that species expresses emotion I swear) whom has hollow bones for a damn good reason. Originally, it was going to be called On Fridays We Eat Curry, and be about the crew of a Japanese destroyer during a hypothetical war with China. But then I remembered the whole "Dude in Navy finds injured alien" story I came up with a year ago. So now I have something that reads like I'm soapboxing about the Syrian Refugee Crisis, while also kinda being an interspecies romance, while ALSO being about a brewing war in the Pacific.

So that's fun.

In other news, 38,547 words today! Woo! Now I've finally hit the point where I have to start skipping bits because I don't know what to do with them.

[mdk]

light day. I got roped into a gaming marathon, but I got about half a daily wordcount in afterwards.... made it up to 37674, then deleted a word so that my total could also be a palindrome.

[Keyguyperson]

Well, we've got six days left now. Less than a week. I'm gonna have to start writing a bit more, since I won't be able to do that much on the 30th thanks to homework. Instead of the usual "Start at like 8 or 9 in the afternoon and go until you're done", I'll probably set myself a X to Y time to actually hold myself to. Shouldn't be hard, I have nigh-infinite time on my hands right now.

[mdk]

39,186 -- might get some more in before bed, but I'm also kinda beat. Also, BOY WAS I WRONG about running out of material before the end. I've just discovered exactly how many characters I left blank in the TTL version.... the evil-doer's camp is chock full of somewhat-interesting people and two more of them just spontaneously came to life. If this keeps up, I'll be lucky to reach the climax of the story by the time the month is out. Tomorrow I get to do meaty dialogue with the Big Bad for the first time ever. Also, tomorrow is my birthday, so by the end of the night I'll be writing while plastered. This bodes well for the wordcount.

[Keyguyperson]

I'm at 40,159 now, and I'm definitely going with the parallels to the Refugee Crisis. You can't get much more blatant than having an MC say "We were forced out of our homeland because of power-lustful invaders" and having Earth on the verge of being overrun should they accept her people as refugees, with multiple politicians being quite outspoken about only letting ones who agree to denounce their own culture in or simply nuking them out of the sky. Now I've gotten to the point where I spend like ten pages discussing cultural differences and their affects on two societies completely alien to each other.

I'm literally the only person who would ever read this, aren't I?

[mdk]

I'm at 40,159 now, and I'm definitely going with the parallels to the Refugee Crisis. You can't get much more blatant than having an MC say "We were forced out of our homeland because of power-lustful invaders" and having Earth on the verge of being overrun should they accept her people as refugees, with multiple politicians being quite outspoken about only letting ones who agree to denounce their own culture in or simply nuking them out of the sky. Now I've gotten to the point where I spend like ten pages discussing cultural differences and their affects on two societies completely alien to each other.

I'm literally the only person who would ever read this, aren't I?

@Keyguyperson

On your rewrite, throw in a sexy blue femalien love interest for each MC. I understand that automatically makes it hollywood-quality mass appeal?

[RomanAria]

@Keyguyperson I'd read it, too, Key. I doubt I'd understand the political nuances but I'd read it.