NoNoWriMo

[rowyn]

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year, just like I haven't every year except for 2007. I did decide I'd write something during November, though. I haven't written much new this year, since I'd spent most of it revising A Rational Arrangement.

I figured I'd work on something that I already had an outline for. I'd finished an outline for a new M/F fantasy romance a couple of years ago, and thought I'd probably write that. Romance is fun to write and comparatively easy for me. But I'd been poking at my incomplete notes for Birthright, the sequel to Silver Scales. I finished Scales in 2006 and trunked it when I was unable to figure out where I was going with the sequel. alinsa had read the manuscript last year and kept reminding me that it existed. If I could finish a rough outline of Birthright, I decided, I'd work on that during November instead.

By the last week of October, I hadn't gotten very far on outlining. But on the last two days of the month, I put some time into it and finished around midday on the 31st.

So I've been writing Birthright again this month.

It's weird writing characters that I haven't written in eight years, and weirder having an outline for them when I was always making it up as I went along before. It does mean that when I get stuck, I can go look at the outline and see what I need to cover.

It's a much rougher draft than my drafts usually are. It includes things like "[Experimentation goes here. Include flirting]" and notes to myself to go back and change things later: "[Re-write the last scene with character giving her version of events to a third party, instead of character thinking about what she'll tell when asked]".

I was doing really well with it for the first six days of November, and then I went to Contra last week and lost all my momentum. Still, my word count for November is over 12,000 now. Enough that this is a thing that is happening, not "I wrote a page and gave up again."

Maybe I won't love the sequel as much as I did the original. I think that's been my biggest worry since I quit back in 2006; that it wouldn't live up to its potential. But the book I don't write won't live up to its potential, either. Time is going to pass either way.

I'm gonna finish this story.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Down to the wire, eh?

Does having the outline help? I've never been able to actually follow them.

[rowyn]

I don't follow them that closely, and I still prefer to write in order over jumping ahead to scenes that may not make sense by the time I fill in the gaps. But the outline is helpful in that it tells me things like "this is what the climax will be" and "this is how the protagonists figure out what's going on" and "this is what needs to happen so the end makes sense" (I have the problem of 'how does this mess get resolved?' a lot) .

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I have at least one story stuck on 'and then something clever happens' with no real notion of what that clever thing is supposed to be.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yay, the return of Birthright! ^_^ No pressure.

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

I imagine just having the general direction helps, too? "I'm done with this bit, what do I need to write next? Well, the outline says X, Y, and Z need to happen so that we can move forward, so lets work on X" type of things?

I have that problem in my day job, at least... "I have all these things I know I need to eventually do, what the heck do I need to work on *now*? What's blocking me from being able to do that other thing later?

Also, I obviously approve of the plan of "write Birthright". ;)

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Outlines help me a great deal. My Lady and I would use them to hammer out plot and sequence and character development before any actual text hit the page. Then I would copy each outline to its own chapter in the document, and write that chapter.

I used Word automation so that if I had to update the main outline, the chunks at the bottom of each chapter would get updated, too.

I was one of (and perhaps the loudest of) those in the original "Silver Scales should be published!" cheerleading gang. I'm pleased to see the sequel happening. I still have the assembled geometric puzzle pieces that formed one of the clues. And a picture on my system of the printed Silver Scales against the South Pacific as I re-read the story on a cruise to South America.

In short: Yay!

===|==============/ Level Head

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Gwendel was all fired up about November writing, and started writing a "Choose Your Own Adventure" sort of story. That is, she had fretted over how, when she is coming up with an idea for a story, she could imagine it going in so many different ways. She couldn't bring herself to just retell the SAME STORY with a slightly different branch -- it would be retreading too much of the same ground, after all. So I brought up the phenomenon of "interactive fiction" (Infocom/Zork-esque text adventure games -- where some writers have turned them into more story-focused "adventures" that follow characters more than traps and treasures and locations and such) -- and "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, which I think have enormous possibility as a model for writing a story when you are not confined to a physical book. (Hyperlinks!)

But ... she's come back and said she doesn't think she's going to make it through this month. We've had too many little troubles (her PC died, my truck's STILL at the auto shop, she had to get some major dental work, etc.) that have thrown her off her schedule. I've suggested that she ought to do her very own "DeNoWriMo." (In other words, devote DECEMBER to writing. Yes, I know it doesn't really make any sense in context of the original pseudo-abbreviation, but she got the idea, so that's what matters to me. ;) )

Regards outlines: I don't know what I'd do without them. I never follow them perfectly, but it really helps to at least establish that there's SOME way to get from Point A to Point B, and to even know what Point C *might* be, before fleshing things out. Sure, along the way, I might find some other path more intriguing, but having some sort of goal could help me make decisions when I see so many branching possibilities before me. (What will get me to *A* satisfactory ending, even if it's not the one I originally planned? Where shall we take this?) I'm talking about RPG campaigns here, just to be clear, since I don't have much to show for actually writing and finishing STORIES, but I think some of the same principles still apply.

Anyway, I sympathize! And I'm still jealous that you accomplish far more than I do in terms of actually seeing stories through to something resembling completion. You totally rock in that regard. :)

[rowyn]

Yup, it's usually good for "what should I do next?" too. I often ignore my outline in favor of "what happens next?" whether or not it appeared on the outline (one reason why RA is twice the planned size, alas). But if I'm not sure what happens next, or how to make it interesting, skipping to the next thing on the outline at least gets the story moving.

[rowyn]

I am still not sure how much I like making/using outlines, myself; I've been pretty happy using them as a loose guide to events rather than a detailed description of every section. Still, your method certainly sounds organized and constructive. :D

I am glad you're looking forward to the sequel! I've been re-reading the original, including many of the comments you and others made, and it's all full of warm memories. :)

[rowyn]

Nanowrimo apparently has monthly "Camp Nano" events, where you can set your own goal and write alongside a virtual camp of other people who're also writing towards a goal. I haven't tried it myself so I'm not positive about the specifics.

Given how long my books tend to be, and how I quit on Sign & Sacrifice despite "winning" Nano with it, I'm unwilling to push myself to hit 50k words in a month. I'd rather write at a sustainable pace that I'll keep up with until I've finished the book, and not risk burning out (again) and quitting.

Having an idea of what a "good" ending looks like when you start a campaign is very helpful! Though I love it when PCs manage to pull out something more satisfying than I'd imagined. <3

I have long been tempted to do a choose-your-own-adventure style of story online! I miss those. But it's enough work for me to write one version of a story, so I am probably not well-suited to writing a lot of them! :D

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

One cheesy way to do a CYOA is to have every wrong choice lead to immediate death. But that's really not very satisfying.

I've seen a lot of people try to do CYOA based on user prompts. I haven't seen any of them actually finish. Except for the ones where every choice but one led to immediate death. 9.9