Final wordcount: 51317.
I wrote about 1300 words while at the last official write-in of the month, but mostly I was just there to give other people moral support and was a total slacker about doing any of my own writing.
All of the new words were in Birthright. I wrote a scene where Allen tells Nathaniel about seeing the phoenix, and had to reread chunks of Triangle I to figure out what he would've known about and when. I don't think I quite have that part down yet. There'll have to be some revision later for the parts where he's talking to Janis and Elena, I think (from yesterday's words).
I guess now that the month is done, I should give it a break for a week, then go into revision mode. There might be more unofficial write-ins if anyone besides me is interested. Those turn out to be pretty helpful actually for keeping me focused. December will probably turn out to be a bad time to do more of them overall, but maybe in January I'll see who's still hanging around on the Nano forum....
Showing posts with label Birthright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Birthright. Show all posts
2014/11/30
2014/11/16
Passed 25k Today
Well, the theme of this whole Nanowrimo seems to be to do lots and lots of beginnings, and then stall out when I get to the part where plot needs to appear, and then move on to something else instead of trying to push through. So far I've done:
Amulet I - I wrote about 2200 words of James going back to the Duchene estate in Lagarnica, and meeting his current wife and new brother William. I'm not really sure where to go from there at this point. The new wife wants to kill James off so that William will inherit the estate. But I'm not sure if I'm all that excited about that storyline, not enough to actually write it.
Triangle I - I haven't done anything with this since the first day. 2200 words about Frank getting installed into his new body. It'll get broken up into individual scenes and put into appropriate places in the rest of the story later.
Triangle II - I have the most words on this one so far. 17.5k following what happens to Thomas in Jacob's house, getting the cure done, and then they and Josephine went off to Wild-hunt foodbeasts under the full moon. Meanwhile, Janis has a bunch more conversations with her grandmother. It stalled out where Janis was headed to talk to the city Eenin. She ran into Rebecca, who wants to eat her. Unfortunately, I'm not actually sure how exactly the protection on Janis works, because, once again, I need to figure out what the heck Aliacorba and Iorli agreed to, and it's stuck until I do. It has occurred to me, though, that Aliacorba would've had to give Iorli something in exchange during the pact, and I don't really know what that could be.
Amulet II - so far I haven't even opened this one. It's the farthest from my mind at the moment.
Temple - nothing on this one yet either. I'm assuming that this is going to be a huge project, and might be procrastinating starting on it until I've run out of all other, smaller things in the series to work on. This is probably going to be soon though, if I continue to be stuck on all the stuff I've already worked on.
Birthright - this was where I focused today. I wrote 3300 words covering what happens after they open the magic box. They ended up on the plain with the lamp post and met Arthur Glorian, and had a lot to say to each other. Then I tried to write about what happened after that scene, and I'm not actually sure what needs to happen next, without doing a lot of rereading of past material.
Myan - 1100 words so far. I started writing the attack on Myan from one of the zombies' point of view. They went through the center of the city, and then to Fortress Launne, and now they're about to attack the anchorpoints of Nathaniel's spell. The zombie that I'm following is headed over to the old art museum. Since zombies don't do a whole lot of thinking, or observing, of basically anything, I can almost freewrite what happens. Basically I'm just trying to get an idea of what actually happens, and I'll probably have to revise most of it later when I redo it from the point of view of actual characters. Once I figure out which characters that'll be.
Amulet I - I wrote about 2200 words of James going back to the Duchene estate in Lagarnica, and meeting his current wife and new brother William. I'm not really sure where to go from there at this point. The new wife wants to kill James off so that William will inherit the estate. But I'm not sure if I'm all that excited about that storyline, not enough to actually write it.
Triangle I - I haven't done anything with this since the first day. 2200 words about Frank getting installed into his new body. It'll get broken up into individual scenes and put into appropriate places in the rest of the story later.
Triangle II - I have the most words on this one so far. 17.5k following what happens to Thomas in Jacob's house, getting the cure done, and then they and Josephine went off to Wild-hunt foodbeasts under the full moon. Meanwhile, Janis has a bunch more conversations with her grandmother. It stalled out where Janis was headed to talk to the city Eenin. She ran into Rebecca, who wants to eat her. Unfortunately, I'm not actually sure how exactly the protection on Janis works, because, once again, I need to figure out what the heck Aliacorba and Iorli agreed to, and it's stuck until I do. It has occurred to me, though, that Aliacorba would've had to give Iorli something in exchange during the pact, and I don't really know what that could be.
Amulet II - so far I haven't even opened this one. It's the farthest from my mind at the moment.
Temple - nothing on this one yet either. I'm assuming that this is going to be a huge project, and might be procrastinating starting on it until I've run out of all other, smaller things in the series to work on. This is probably going to be soon though, if I continue to be stuck on all the stuff I've already worked on.
Birthright - this was where I focused today. I wrote 3300 words covering what happens after they open the magic box. They ended up on the plain with the lamp post and met Arthur Glorian, and had a lot to say to each other. Then I tried to write about what happened after that scene, and I'm not actually sure what needs to happen next, without doing a lot of rereading of past material.
Myan - 1100 words so far. I started writing the attack on Myan from one of the zombies' point of view. They went through the center of the city, and then to Fortress Launne, and now they're about to attack the anchorpoints of Nathaniel's spell. The zombie that I'm following is headed over to the old art museum. Since zombies don't do a whole lot of thinking, or observing, of basically anything, I can almost freewrite what happens. Basically I'm just trying to get an idea of what actually happens, and I'll probably have to revise most of it later when I redo it from the point of view of actual characters. Once I figure out which characters that'll be.
2014/08/11
Second Draft: The Second Drafting ...
So far my second draft process for Fortress Launne seems to be:
1. Assemble all the drafts into one big file.
2. Skim them while compiling them into the one big file, but don't edit anything.
3. Make a duplicate copy of each draft to actually work on.
4. Do detailed rereads of each one. Make an outline of what the story looks like it's supposed to be.
5. Iterate. Rewrite the older stuff, write new stuff to fill all the holes.
I haven't done #4 for Amulet II or Myan yet, but it's certainly been a helpful exercise for the others.
The Flattening of a Temple
This was the one I wrote first (2004), and it has by far the most setting holes. It was also highly melodramatic - I can definitely tell that my writing skills improved as the years went by. The ones from 2007 forward are very readable as-is. Temple on the other hand, I think I'm basically going to have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch.
I'm probably going to keep the original structure idea, sort of. Start the story with the epic battle scene. Then have the king start an investigation into why that happened. Once the background is laid out, go back to the battle and cover all the parts that the king isn't going to find out about. End with Pedro. Of all the parts of the original draft, I really like the last few sentences with Pedro and Sarabelle.
The outline I made has pointed out a number of important holes in the story, too. Notably with Felicia. By the time I figure out how to fix that, I'm hoping it will also help with figuring out Antoine and the rest of the mages.
Other than that... well, I tried to reread my notes from all the tinkering I did between 2004 and 2006 or so. But I'm probably going to ignore most of it. It was a useful exercise for something, I'm sure, and all part of the process.
Amulet II
It basically has occurred to me that Triangle I -->Amulet II --> Temple is a story arc about the Reiter House. The tower gets built in Triangle I and demolished in Temple. So this one will likely make more sense from Antoine's point of view when I figure out what his point of view was in Triangle I - and also what Felicia's goals were in Temple.
Triangle II
The outline for this one turned out to be straightforward, much to my surprise. The first half is going to draw heavily on the Janis draft of 2006, where I basically wrote everything Janis is going to do and why, but didn't have the scenes in the right order, or the right setting elements pinned down yet. Then in the middle will be the court scene from Taint. And then there's a whole other half I haven't written yet, which will be from Jacob's point of view.
In general, the structure reminds me of Amulet I because it's in three parts (sort of). Only, the middle part with the king's court is actually quite short - only about 3 chapters or so. Whereas Aunlania is the longest part of Amulet I (so far, anyway). Also: the Janis part of the story, which will be around 20k words long, just like the Edward part of Amulet I ... can in fact actually be a completely complete story with all loose ends wrapped up and etc ... just like Edward's story would be if Lucien's spell actually worked.
I still find it kind of amusing that I had no idea that there was going to be a single coherent book in this part of the timeline until after I'd finished Nano 2006. Of course, on the other hand. I have a sneaking suspicion that what I'm writing isn't actually 7 novels. It's more like 15-20 novelettes, where each segment is 20k words long....
Amulet I
The broad outline for this one is relatively straightforward ... probably. I sort of plotted out a sensible order of useable scenes from the 2006 and 2007 attempts. And then there's huge new blanks to fill in again for what happens after I run out of outline, that explains why the Duchenes and the Eenin are talking to each other.
I don't know why I have so much trouble with this one. I'm starting to have doubts about whether the Duchenes are even supposed to be in the Fortress Launne series, since, as noted, the Edward part of the story could be its own completely independent story. Plus the random scene about Charles and a tree and a prophecy and etc. I kind of wish I'd gone with it now, just to see where it went, because the only other time a scene like that randomly appeared (Thomas and Arrun fleeing Edward in Amulet I 2005), it was because I was doing the whole rest of the story wrong.
The Fall of Myan
So far I've reread the first draft and reread my notes from this blog. The rough outline I'd figured on before is probably what it'll end up being - where it starts out by following Suunja, then he eventually runs into Martha, whereupon it then goes over Martha's storyline about Endron Oil, and then moves Suunja and Martha forward together until they run into the zombie storyline. Then it would cut back to the Rouge Rogues. Something like that.
Eventually I run out of both outline and draft, though. I haven't written what happens after the zombies start their attack. I stalled out on what specifically the attack strategy was. At some point I'm still going to have to figure that stuff out.
Birthright
This one also has a three-part structure. It starts with scenes of Janis and Felicia at the Culture Center, and ends with Jalai in Mindy's house (along with others). The whole middle is a mobster story where they fight over possession of the magic box. I don't think I should intersperse anything in between - better to just let the readers immerse in that one for the whole go. I have a fairly detailed outline for the mobsters. The biggest problem is that it needs some kind of satisfying ending, where everything gets resolved to the mobsters' satisfaction. I can't just suddenly take the box away from them and leave them all hanging.
Triangle I
A lot of this one is ready to go as-is. The biggest problem is a complete lack of motivation for Antoine. I need to give him either a really good reason to try to kill Frank, or, he was trying to do something else and poisoned Frank by accident. Either way, there needs to be more to the character than what I have at the moment. And have it somehow also be related to everything else the mages do in the other books.
I guess that's it for where things currently stand.
1. Assemble all the drafts into one big file.
2. Skim them while compiling them into the one big file, but don't edit anything.
3. Make a duplicate copy of each draft to actually work on.
4. Do detailed rereads of each one. Make an outline of what the story looks like it's supposed to be.
5. Iterate. Rewrite the older stuff, write new stuff to fill all the holes.
I haven't done #4 for Amulet II or Myan yet, but it's certainly been a helpful exercise for the others.
The Flattening of a Temple
This was the one I wrote first (2004), and it has by far the most setting holes. It was also highly melodramatic - I can definitely tell that my writing skills improved as the years went by. The ones from 2007 forward are very readable as-is. Temple on the other hand, I think I'm basically going to have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch.
I'm probably going to keep the original structure idea, sort of. Start the story with the epic battle scene. Then have the king start an investigation into why that happened. Once the background is laid out, go back to the battle and cover all the parts that the king isn't going to find out about. End with Pedro. Of all the parts of the original draft, I really like the last few sentences with Pedro and Sarabelle.
The outline I made has pointed out a number of important holes in the story, too. Notably with Felicia. By the time I figure out how to fix that, I'm hoping it will also help with figuring out Antoine and the rest of the mages.
Other than that... well, I tried to reread my notes from all the tinkering I did between 2004 and 2006 or so. But I'm probably going to ignore most of it. It was a useful exercise for something, I'm sure, and all part of the process.
Amulet II
It basically has occurred to me that Triangle I -->Amulet II --> Temple is a story arc about the Reiter House. The tower gets built in Triangle I and demolished in Temple. So this one will likely make more sense from Antoine's point of view when I figure out what his point of view was in Triangle I - and also what Felicia's goals were in Temple.
Triangle II
The outline for this one turned out to be straightforward, much to my surprise. The first half is going to draw heavily on the Janis draft of 2006, where I basically wrote everything Janis is going to do and why, but didn't have the scenes in the right order, or the right setting elements pinned down yet. Then in the middle will be the court scene from Taint. And then there's a whole other half I haven't written yet, which will be from Jacob's point of view.
In general, the structure reminds me of Amulet I because it's in three parts (sort of). Only, the middle part with the king's court is actually quite short - only about 3 chapters or so. Whereas Aunlania is the longest part of Amulet I (so far, anyway). Also: the Janis part of the story, which will be around 20k words long, just like the Edward part of Amulet I ... can in fact actually be a completely complete story with all loose ends wrapped up and etc ... just like Edward's story would be if Lucien's spell actually worked.
I still find it kind of amusing that I had no idea that there was going to be a single coherent book in this part of the timeline until after I'd finished Nano 2006. Of course, on the other hand. I have a sneaking suspicion that what I'm writing isn't actually 7 novels. It's more like 15-20 novelettes, where each segment is 20k words long....
Amulet I
The broad outline for this one is relatively straightforward ... probably. I sort of plotted out a sensible order of useable scenes from the 2006 and 2007 attempts. And then there's huge new blanks to fill in again for what happens after I run out of outline, that explains why the Duchenes and the Eenin are talking to each other.
I don't know why I have so much trouble with this one. I'm starting to have doubts about whether the Duchenes are even supposed to be in the Fortress Launne series, since, as noted, the Edward part of the story could be its own completely independent story. Plus the random scene about Charles and a tree and a prophecy and etc. I kind of wish I'd gone with it now, just to see where it went, because the only other time a scene like that randomly appeared (Thomas and Arrun fleeing Edward in Amulet I 2005), it was because I was doing the whole rest of the story wrong.
The Fall of Myan
So far I've reread the first draft and reread my notes from this blog. The rough outline I'd figured on before is probably what it'll end up being - where it starts out by following Suunja, then he eventually runs into Martha, whereupon it then goes over Martha's storyline about Endron Oil, and then moves Suunja and Martha forward together until they run into the zombie storyline. Then it would cut back to the Rouge Rogues. Something like that.
Eventually I run out of both outline and draft, though. I haven't written what happens after the zombies start their attack. I stalled out on what specifically the attack strategy was. At some point I'm still going to have to figure that stuff out.
Birthright
This one also has a three-part structure. It starts with scenes of Janis and Felicia at the Culture Center, and ends with Jalai in Mindy's house (along with others). The whole middle is a mobster story where they fight over possession of the magic box. I don't think I should intersperse anything in between - better to just let the readers immerse in that one for the whole go. I have a fairly detailed outline for the mobsters. The biggest problem is that it needs some kind of satisfying ending, where everything gets resolved to the mobsters' satisfaction. I can't just suddenly take the box away from them and leave them all hanging.
Triangle I
A lot of this one is ready to go as-is. The biggest problem is a complete lack of motivation for Antoine. I need to give him either a really good reason to try to kill Frank, or, he was trying to do something else and poisoned Frank by accident. Either way, there needs to be more to the character than what I have at the moment. And have it somehow also be related to everything else the mages do in the other books.
I guess that's it for where things currently stand.
2009/11/29
Wrote an outline for Birthright
Well, I passed 50k this morning (and then went to bed). Yay another successful Nanowrimo. :)
So, what's my story about, anyway? I made an outline from what I have, from the mobsters standpoint:
So, basically, it's a collection of scenes that are vaguely related to each other and have a chronological order. ;) I could probably write up more details about what the Russians are doing, but it'll be quite a sidetrack from the story about the box (which seems pretty minor as it is). Also, as things stand: the Italians don't have a very satisfying role, and Uncle never did do anything important in a conflict-with-parents way.
I guess I was a lot more interested in developing the city of Myan than in telling the story of Elena's birthright. Probably should fix that...
So, what's my story about, anyway? I made an outline from what I have, from the mobsters standpoint:
- Belgians have taken over some of Italian territory (Belfry District)
- Italians see the box
- Italians steal the dragon from a museum
- Russians set plan in motion to rob a weapons depot in Keywe
- Italians steal the box from the Triad
- Russians blow up Italians (no particular reason), which makes them lose the box and dragon
- Louies street gang, then Black Dragons street gang, sell box back to Triad
- Triad shoots up Leban's diner and ties up his grandmother in response to box theft
- Cuban drug dealer sells dragon back to the Italians
- Italians blow up Triad warehouse in response to Leban's Diner shootup
- Grandmother passes box to Elena
- Arlice passes dragon to Elena (for no good reason; needs work)
- Belgians try to expand into Triad territory, but fail
- Triad blows up 50 Italian restaurants in Belgian-held territory, simultaneously, in response to warehouse blowup and Belgian invasion attempt
- Italians try to kidnap Elena to get back both dragon and box, but fail
- Italians try to steal phoenix from Mindy's house, but fail
- Triad sees phoenix in Mindy's house
- Mindy allows Elena to see the phoenix at her house, but not take it with her
- Italians blow up Triad cargo ship with Russian ordinance theft in it
- All components of box artwork fully assembled at Mindy's house
- (Russians now mad at Italians, Triad likes the Italians better because they'd unwittingly saved them from a headache with the Yakuza)
So, basically, it's a collection of scenes that are vaguely related to each other and have a chronological order. ;) I could probably write up more details about what the Russians are doing, but it'll be quite a sidetrack from the story about the box (which seems pretty minor as it is). Also, as things stand: the Italians don't have a very satisfying role, and Uncle never did do anything important in a conflict-with-parents way.
I guess I was a lot more interested in developing the city of Myan than in telling the story of Elena's birthright. Probably should fix that...
2009/11/25
The time sure has flown ...
Top of Day 25 now, and I have 41,435 words. I might even see things starting to tie together for an ending, somewhere in the near future. It'd be neat if I actually managed to have a The End again by 50k words, the way Temple had in 2004. Back then, my "The End" scene wasn't the last one I wrote, but I wasn't writing them in order. This time around, it probably will happen at the actual last scene that I write.
As usual for this particular story, after I'm done with each scene I have no clue what I'm doing next. At the moment, the mobster storyline has collided with the Elena storyline, which then in turn ran into the Janis/Felicia storyline. The two big things that need to happen next:
a) the Triad must somehow be invited or have cause to visit Mindy's house, whereupon they cross paths with the Italians who are there to rob the place of the phoenix;
b) somehow Janis needs to have cause to visit Mindy's house, so she can talk Mindy into handing it over. Janis is the only character who actually can.
No clue how either of these are going to happen. For the first one, there was just a shootout in the Black Dragon parking lot, which I need to somehow lead into going to Mindy's house. Latter? No idea at all. I'm hoping something presents itself at some point...
Aside from writing the storyline down for Birthright, there's also been a whole lot of references to stuff that happened in Temple and Amulet II, and even some of Amulet I. Eventually I'll have to go back and figure out how to explain it well enough to still have each book be a separate standalone story. But for now, I'm just writing down what the characters actually want to say about things.
As usual for this particular story, after I'm done with each scene I have no clue what I'm doing next. At the moment, the mobster storyline has collided with the Elena storyline, which then in turn ran into the Janis/Felicia storyline. The two big things that need to happen next:
a) the Triad must somehow be invited or have cause to visit Mindy's house, whereupon they cross paths with the Italians who are there to rob the place of the phoenix;
b) somehow Janis needs to have cause to visit Mindy's house, so she can talk Mindy into handing it over. Janis is the only character who actually can.
No clue how either of these are going to happen. For the first one, there was just a shootout in the Black Dragon parking lot, which I need to somehow lead into going to Mindy's house. Latter? No idea at all. I'm hoping something presents itself at some point...
Aside from writing the storyline down for Birthright, there's also been a whole lot of references to stuff that happened in Temple and Amulet II, and even some of Amulet I. Eventually I'll have to go back and figure out how to explain it well enough to still have each book be a separate standalone story. But for now, I'm just writing down what the characters actually want to say about things.
2009/11/13
Friday the 13th
I barely managed to get past 20k last night, because at this point I'm not sure where I'm going. So, a list of possibilities in no particular order:
1. Newspaper articles about the museum break-in, about the warehouse explosion, about the park mugging of an elderly woman
2. The Triad are going to disrupt Lebanese Lunch, then kidnap a Louie on their way back
3. The Belgians could accidentally trespass Josephine's territory to illustrate why nobody ever goes there
4. Where's the Janis/Felicia storyline going anyway?
Think I'll start with #2 and see how many words I can get out of it. The Louies previously got me 5000 words when I was expecting more like 500, so there's some hope. ;)
1. Newspaper articles about the museum break-in, about the warehouse explosion, about the park mugging of an elderly woman
2. The Triad are going to disrupt Lebanese Lunch, then kidnap a Louie on their way back
3. The Belgians could accidentally trespass Josephine's territory to illustrate why nobody ever goes there
4. Where's the Janis/Felicia storyline going anyway?
Think I'll start with #2 and see how many words I can get out of it. The Louies previously got me 5000 words when I was expecting more like 500, so there's some hope. ;)
2009/11/08
Top of Day 8
Wrote another very long scene for the Janis/Felicia storyline. It was a tour through the Culture Center, and they went past three places that are going to be relevant later in the story - the Hall of Trees exhibit, where Felicia saw the pearl part of the box sculpture; a legends and myths exhibit where Janis talked about the Legend of Aliacorba (but Felicia didn't make the connection to Thomas); and the spirit wolves exhibit, where Felicia got her first glimpse into some of the consequences of her actions in Temple and also talked about the Golden Flame (that is, the phoenix part of the box sculpture).
I'm not sure where I'm going next with this, but those were awesome to write. I got to explain tons of stuff out of my backstory notes in an organized way, through Janis. ;) Which will be helpful later when I go back to figure out how to rewrite all my previous Fortress Launne material. I incorporated some of the changes I have in mind for Temple already. And while working out the timeline for the rise and fall of the spirit wolves, I figured out when they came across the Golden Flame in the first place - during Triangle (Nano 2010 maybe?). How they came to have it, no clue yet, but now I know when.
Next? Well, I have vague ideas about going into the details of what exactly Janis lost, and also introducing Felicia's main motive (revenge against another high-ranking Tainted mage). That could be a problem, because I'm still not sure what Janis lost.
The basic idea: It was something Aliacorba set up after his own tainting. It was something that could only be broken by Aliacorba himself. It was broken by Thomas at the end of Temple because the only way to save Janis's life was to destroy who she was.
From Janis's view, she can describe what she was like before and after, at least to Felicia. That might be good enough to continue the story. At some point I'll need to figure out the details, though.
Then the other part, how to introduce Felicia's revenge motive, well, so far I'm not sure what would cause her to mention it.
Meanwhile, back at the mobster plotline, the Louies street gang are about to recover the dragon and the box from the smoldering remains of a warehouse that got burned down with the Italians in it. I'm planning to work on this part at tomorrow's write-in, since it shouldn't require a huge amount of angsty emotional involvement. Should be fairly humorous, if anything. The dragon, which has never done anything magical before (at least not in Aunlania) is going to activate. What's it do? Well, I haven't worked out all of the details yet, but it'll be an offensive weapon. I'm kind of imagining it as a phantasm.
I'm not sure where I'm going next with this, but those were awesome to write. I got to explain tons of stuff out of my backstory notes in an organized way, through Janis. ;) Which will be helpful later when I go back to figure out how to rewrite all my previous Fortress Launne material. I incorporated some of the changes I have in mind for Temple already. And while working out the timeline for the rise and fall of the spirit wolves, I figured out when they came across the Golden Flame in the first place - during Triangle (Nano 2010 maybe?). How they came to have it, no clue yet, but now I know when.
Next? Well, I have vague ideas about going into the details of what exactly Janis lost, and also introducing Felicia's main motive (revenge against another high-ranking Tainted mage). That could be a problem, because I'm still not sure what Janis lost.
The basic idea: It was something Aliacorba set up after his own tainting. It was something that could only be broken by Aliacorba himself. It was broken by Thomas at the end of Temple because the only way to save Janis's life was to destroy who she was.
From Janis's view, she can describe what she was like before and after, at least to Felicia. That might be good enough to continue the story. At some point I'll need to figure out the details, though.
Then the other part, how to introduce Felicia's revenge motive, well, so far I'm not sure what would cause her to mention it.
Meanwhile, back at the mobster plotline, the Louies street gang are about to recover the dragon and the box from the smoldering remains of a warehouse that got burned down with the Italians in it. I'm planning to work on this part at tomorrow's write-in, since it shouldn't require a huge amount of angsty emotional involvement. Should be fairly humorous, if anything. The dragon, which has never done anything magical before (at least not in Aunlania) is going to activate. What's it do? Well, I haven't worked out all of the details yet, but it'll be an offensive weapon. I'm kind of imagining it as a phantasm.
2009/11/05
Day 5
I'm almost exactly on target at 8343 words.
I'm two scenes into the Janis/Felicia plotline. Got them introduced and set up. They've taken the first step toward getting to know each other. Of course, that was pretty much the entire extent of what I'd prepared, so now I don't know what to do next. Thus, back to the mobsters.
Funny story about that. I had 8238 at the end of the second Janis/Felicia scene. Then I realized I only needed 100 more words to be right on target for a standard nano (8335). With 20 minutes to go before midnight, I flipped back to the mobsters storyline. The next scene was a midlevel boss meeting up with the Godfather. I decided they were playing cards. Then I decided they should be playing mah jong.
About 80 words into describing their mah jong game, I suddenly realized that these were the Italians, not the Triad. o.O Well, it was too late to start over at that point, so now, umm, my Italian mafia is learning how to play mah jong. >.> But I got in the 100 words I needed. :D
I'm two scenes into the Janis/Felicia plotline. Got them introduced and set up. They've taken the first step toward getting to know each other. Of course, that was pretty much the entire extent of what I'd prepared, so now I don't know what to do next. Thus, back to the mobsters.
Funny story about that. I had 8238 at the end of the second Janis/Felicia scene. Then I realized I only needed 100 more words to be right on target for a standard nano (8335). With 20 minutes to go before midnight, I flipped back to the mobsters storyline. The next scene was a midlevel boss meeting up with the Godfather. I decided they were playing cards. Then I decided they should be playing mah jong.
About 80 words into describing their mah jong game, I suddenly realized that these were the Italians, not the Triad. o.O Well, it was too late to start over at that point, so now, umm, my Italian mafia is learning how to play mah jong. >.> But I got in the 100 words I needed. :D
2009/11/03
Two scenes done so far
It's the top of Day 3, and I have 3131 words. The first two scenes of Birthright are done, and now I'm trying to figure out how to start the third. The Italian mob gets introduced in it.
(Why is there an Italian mob in my fantasy world, you ask? Well, because that's who they're quasi-based on and I haven't gotten around to filing off the serial numbers yet...)
Umm, anyway. So far I've introduced the opening conflict where the loyalist Triad guy is upset that his daughter won't be inheriting the family heirloom that he thinks should rightfully be hers. Instead, his parents are looking for someone outside the Triad to inherit it, because they don't want it to beome permanently Triad property.
Then in Scene Two there was a small bit of magic in which the mother summons the actual heir - a girl she's never met, who was a product of a one-night stand by her other son who was basically a drunken irresponsible slut while he was alive. Err. Anyway, so lots of infodumpy stuff came out when she explained about the box to the girl.
Scene Three, since the conversation in Scene Two happened in a public place, the Italians noticed the box too. And they want it.
That's what I have so far. At some point when I stall out on the main plotline, I'll switch over to the other plotline about Janis and Felicia.
Meanwhile, I've tracked down a number of former Hobgoblinites via the Nanowrimo site. :) I haven't gotten around to actually contacting most of them, other than ShebaJones and Ellsea, but hopefully they'll be happy to hear from me. The ones I've found are now in a spiffy new blogroll. *points left*
I'm also apparently the de facto leader of the local Nanowrimo group. We had our first meet-n-greet on Sunday. Two other people showed up, and we even managed to find each other. :) Based on how things are going in the forum so far, it's looking like this'll be the first year that the local group enjoys some success. In past years, what generally happened was that I'd go somewhere and be by myself. >.>
Meanwhile, my main bloggy group, the UCF, has a small contingent too. Tonight I converted one of them to using Jer's Novel Writer, and also shared my barebones basic version of Excel progress tracking. It's pretty much not intended for a large viewing audience at all, but at least it isn't filled with formulae pointing every which way. She liked it, so yay. :)
The SFFMuse chat has come to life again too. Lots of word counting, snippet sharing, and writerly conversations about what we're working on. We've picked up a few people from the #nanowrimo main chat as well (conveniently on the same server as SFFMuse's chat), though it remains to be seen whether they stick around.
So far there aren't many other RPoLians doing Nanowrimo this year, as far as I know. Though I keep trying to convince people. ;) The month is still young.
Tomorrow (defined as "after I sleep") I have a bunch of non-writing things to take care of - bills, some job apps (one of which I heard about today and is due Thursday o.O), a bit of housework. Hopefully I'll get it done quickly so I can get back to writing. I'd like to have 6k words by midnight.
(Why is there an Italian mob in my fantasy world, you ask? Well, because that's who they're quasi-based on and I haven't gotten around to filing off the serial numbers yet...)
Umm, anyway. So far I've introduced the opening conflict where the loyalist Triad guy is upset that his daughter won't be inheriting the family heirloom that he thinks should rightfully be hers. Instead, his parents are looking for someone outside the Triad to inherit it, because they don't want it to beome permanently Triad property.
Then in Scene Two there was a small bit of magic in which the mother summons the actual heir - a girl she's never met, who was a product of a one-night stand by her other son who was basically a drunken irresponsible slut while he was alive. Err. Anyway, so lots of infodumpy stuff came out when she explained about the box to the girl.
Scene Three, since the conversation in Scene Two happened in a public place, the Italians noticed the box too. And they want it.
That's what I have so far. At some point when I stall out on the main plotline, I'll switch over to the other plotline about Janis and Felicia.
Meanwhile, I've tracked down a number of former Hobgoblinites via the Nanowrimo site. :) I haven't gotten around to actually contacting most of them, other than ShebaJones and Ellsea, but hopefully they'll be happy to hear from me. The ones I've found are now in a spiffy new blogroll. *points left*
I'm also apparently the de facto leader of the local Nanowrimo group. We had our first meet-n-greet on Sunday. Two other people showed up, and we even managed to find each other. :) Based on how things are going in the forum so far, it's looking like this'll be the first year that the local group enjoys some success. In past years, what generally happened was that I'd go somewhere and be by myself. >.>
Meanwhile, my main bloggy group, the UCF, has a small contingent too. Tonight I converted one of them to using Jer's Novel Writer, and also shared my barebones basic version of Excel progress tracking. It's pretty much not intended for a large viewing audience at all, but at least it isn't filled with formulae pointing every which way. She liked it, so yay. :)
The SFFMuse chat has come to life again too. Lots of word counting, snippet sharing, and writerly conversations about what we're working on. We've picked up a few people from the #nanowrimo main chat as well (conveniently on the same server as SFFMuse's chat), though it remains to be seen whether they stick around.
So far there aren't many other RPoLians doing Nanowrimo this year, as far as I know. Though I keep trying to convince people. ;) The month is still young.
Tomorrow (defined as "after I sleep") I have a bunch of non-writing things to take care of - bills, some job apps (one of which I heard about today and is due Thursday o.O), a bit of housework. Hopefully I'll get it done quickly so I can get back to writing. I'd like to have 6k words by midnight.
2009/10/31
Nanowrimo 2009
Once more unto the breach...
I've prepared notes to finally get around to writing Birthright this year. I've detailed out the treasure box that everybody wants. I've detailed out all the opposing mobster factions that want it and why. I've even come up with most of what I need to get a good start on the Felicia/Janis secondary plotline.
What I don't have at all, so far, is anything whatsoever about the originally-intended protagonist. o.O
She's supposed to be a 12 year old girl, living in poverty with a single parent and a half-brother who is getting sucked into a life of crime. But everything about the plot so far is stuff that happens to her because of the box; she has no motives of her own. I don't have a good feel for what she's like, or what her purpose is in the story, other than as a plot device. This does not bode well for the original story I had in mind, I think...
On the other hand, I'm not sure what story I originally had in mind, either (if there ever was one).
On the good news front: it is possible to get back into Hobgoblin.net - by signing up anew. Whatever is keeping out the established membership, it doesn't block new members, so I signed up with a different name to be able to reach the members-only portions of my past blog posts. Those have now been copy/pasted over, leaving just one completely-private post that I still can't reach. No Birthright notes were in them, however.
On the bad news front: no luck on the job. The interview went well enough, but they went with someone else. So I'm back to idling while I continue sending out apps and collecting rejections. At least this means more writing time. Some of it will be spent building up my list of science articles at BrightHub - the pay isn't great, and the pageviews seem to be lower than eHow, but it'll be good to have a variety of writing samples that I can show off for better-paying gigs later. Also, they're pretty fun to write due to actually being about stuff I'm interested in, which is definitely a plus.
On a somewhat neutral front: this year I'm test-driving Scrivener as my writing software. It has rave reviews, it's in active development, and there's a Nanowrimo-specific trial going on, so I'm hoping it'll be useful. On the other hand, I really liked Jer's Novel Writer, which I'd been using since 2005. Jer is busy with other things in life at the moment though, and not paying much attention to JNW. I suspect what will likely happen is I use Scrivener to organize my notes, and Jer's to do all of the actual writing. But we'll see, depending on how much I like Scrivener's full-screen mode.
Anyway. Last day before the writing starts. I'm going to sleep some, relax some, maybe get a pizza, and probably start at midnight. Should be fun. :)
I've prepared notes to finally get around to writing Birthright this year. I've detailed out the treasure box that everybody wants. I've detailed out all the opposing mobster factions that want it and why. I've even come up with most of what I need to get a good start on the Felicia/Janis secondary plotline.
What I don't have at all, so far, is anything whatsoever about the originally-intended protagonist. o.O
She's supposed to be a 12 year old girl, living in poverty with a single parent and a half-brother who is getting sucked into a life of crime. But everything about the plot so far is stuff that happens to her because of the box; she has no motives of her own. I don't have a good feel for what she's like, or what her purpose is in the story, other than as a plot device. This does not bode well for the original story I had in mind, I think...
On the other hand, I'm not sure what story I originally had in mind, either (if there ever was one).
On the good news front: it is possible to get back into Hobgoblin.net - by signing up anew. Whatever is keeping out the established membership, it doesn't block new members, so I signed up with a different name to be able to reach the members-only portions of my past blog posts. Those have now been copy/pasted over, leaving just one completely-private post that I still can't reach. No Birthright notes were in them, however.
On the bad news front: no luck on the job. The interview went well enough, but they went with someone else. So I'm back to idling while I continue sending out apps and collecting rejections. At least this means more writing time. Some of it will be spent building up my list of science articles at BrightHub - the pay isn't great, and the pageviews seem to be lower than eHow, but it'll be good to have a variety of writing samples that I can show off for better-paying gigs later. Also, they're pretty fun to write due to actually being about stuff I'm interested in, which is definitely a plus.
On a somewhat neutral front: this year I'm test-driving Scrivener as my writing software. It has rave reviews, it's in active development, and there's a Nanowrimo-specific trial going on, so I'm hoping it'll be useful. On the other hand, I really liked Jer's Novel Writer, which I'd been using since 2005. Jer is busy with other things in life at the moment though, and not paying much attention to JNW. I suspect what will likely happen is I use Scrivener to organize my notes, and Jer's to do all of the actual writing. But we'll see, depending on how much I like Scrivener's full-screen mode.
Anyway. Last day before the writing starts. I'm going to sleep some, relax some, maybe get a pizza, and probably start at midnight. Should be fun. :)
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