January--where did you go?

Ok, so I didn't get anything done on my nanowrimo project. I was scrambling to try and get my RPG ready for Chimaeracon, but judging by how much my co-designer and I have done, I don't think we're going this year. I have plugged some important holes, but I'm something of a perfectionist and an intuitive thinker, so I have to get each component "right" before I'm satisfied, but making the leap to the correct design has been difficult. I've considered setting up a game design blog and even a podcast (yeah, like the world needs another one of those) because I thought it would help me to focus my thoughts. Some of the best design work I've accomplished--particularly in the area of clarifying my design goals--has been in some form of conversation with others. Even if the person I'm conversing with doesn't offer anything in the way of insight, just composing my thoughts helps a lot.

The other thing that has been occupying my time is an anthology that I've been trying to get together. Just when I'm about to give up because most of my writers have flaked out on me, someone else comes along to give me just that sliver of hope to cause me to drop everything and start work on it again. I did just have another short story submitted, so I've been spending quite a bit of time working on it. The down side of working with brand new writers is that they require a lot of guidance and hand holding, so that has absorbed a lot of my sparse writing time.

I have been thinking about plots a lot again, mostly since I'm working on the second half of my nano project in the back of my head. I've been looking a lot at things like Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations (which is horribly disorganized and missing large gaps in plot possibilities) and 20 Master Plots which is better, but still not as systematic as I would like. I'm taking a more, I don't know, linguistic approach I guess. I've got something like 13 key verbs which I think sums up the action in all plots. My goal is to create a system that encompasses both plot and premise and which can account for all plots. Ambitious, I know. and it will only be possibly in a broad categorical sense. Still, I think it would be cool. I'll post more when my thoughts have a chance to gel.

A few thoughts on Nano 2007

It was an incredible blast getting back to real writing again. I may continue to do some short fiction, but there's not enough markets yet to justify spending a lot of time doing it. Not that it's any easier to get a novel published, but a dozen short stories has a dozen times the submission wait times as a novel for roughly the same amount of words. That (and the fact that I just seem to prefer taking my time telling the story and enjoy having lots of room to tell it) makes me think novels are a more worthwhile direction for me now. Of course after saying that, I've got a little piece of flash fiction I'm probably going to start shopping around.

It did feel good just cutting loose with an act of creativity. Making sure to hit that 1667 words a day was quite the grind but it felt good shoving everything else aside and just writing.

Now I have to finish it.

My outline just barely covered the 50k words of the contest. Unfortunately it's only half the book I'd intended and while I have a general idea of the rest of the story, there are a lot of details regarding how I get from point A to point B to point C... that still need to be worked out. I'm determined, however to have it finished and the outline for the next book ready by next November.

It's Over!

It's done! 51,172 words and I totally slacked off the last 3 days. I would have done more, but I caught up to my outline and I was suffering from some serious sleep deprivation. I rewarded myself for reaching 50k with a long nap.

The funny thing is that I set up the blog to document my experience as a first time wrimo-er, but I ended up not making a single post. What little non-novel writing I did during November was in the nano forums and even there I didn't put in much of an appearance.

I'm already planning on doing this next year and I already know what story I want to write. I'm just hoping I'll be a little bit better prepared so that it won't be quite the ordeal this time was and maybe I can get more involved in some of the social aspects of wrimo-ing. We'll see. I'll post more on this later.

And they're off!

NaNoWriMo has officially begun! For us it included a countdown at Dragon's Lair Comics Games etc. of which yours truly was a few milliseconds late booting his laptop because he was yakking. I discovered two things last night:

1) After ten years of focusing on tightening up my writing (and spending a lot of time editing other people's stuff) it felt very good to force the internal editor off and just write. Several times I saw a phrase that could have been cut down or even replaced with a single word and I made myself leave it.

I keep reminding myself this isn't about creating a finished product, heck I may not use any of any particular scene I am writing at the moment, it's just about brainstorming and getting it all out and hopefully, during the mad dash to the deadline, discovering something new and cool lurking in the story that I might not have been able to discover with a slower and more deliberate process.

2) I also discovered that wrimos are cool people and really fun to hang out with. I regret that I probably won't be able to make many other write-ins as they're all on the opposite side of town from me and all seem to be on Sunday morning. Still, I was glad I made this one and look forward to at least seeing the others online.

Below are a few snaps of the event. Unfortunately some shot didn't come out that well, but hey, it was pretty crazy.

(click each to enlarge)

Our fearless leader

Mike thinking what the heck have I got myself into?

Knuckles aka Todd

Yours truly

Ok, I've wasted enough time on this post. Now I've got to get back to writing!

5 Days to Go !!!

Well, I'm holding my breath and preparing to plunge in. I'm not as prepared as I'd like to be, but I have been working on my Snowflake. I wish I had had a chance to post more often. I was kind of hoping to use this blog to organize my thoughts as I prepared for November, but I guess I'll just have to be more spontaneous. Well, this is my first nanowrimo after all, I expect I'll be better prepared next year. The one good thing is that I've managed to collect a ton of writing music to keep me motivated for the next 30 days.

(EDIT--I've completed the first two steps of the snowflake process. I had previously jumped to the outline stage, so I'm actually a bit farther along, but I ran into problems because I hadn't done stage 3. If I can get that done and a good list of scenes, I think I'll be alright when November 1st starts...maybe.)

Let the Contest Begin—Sort Of

Well I'm signed up and beating my brains out trying to come up with a more detailed outline. In fact I spent all last weekend reviewing notes I'd accumulated for years from other writers, trying to figure out what it actually takes to make a story. Why do some stories work and other not work? What elements have to be present to qualify as a story? You know--the big questions. I did mention I've been working on my plot with mixed success, right?

So what does it all boil down to?

Stories are about characters and/or their goals being transformed through conflict.

Usually this takes the form of a outer conflict producing an inner change. I say this because the character is usually spurred into action as a result of some outer force--some sort of change in their circumstances upsetting the status quo.

The basic structure goes something like this:
An inciting incident produces a need (your thematic subject) that motivates the protagonist to pursue a goal, but an obstacle (the antagonist) prevents this, causing conflict. The character struggles with a series of successes and failures until resolution (change occurs).

Either:

1. The protagonist is transformed--because the type of person they were could not accomplish their goal and they must be changed into the type of person who could accomplish that goal.


2. The protagonist’s motivation/goal is replaced with a more desirable motivation/goal.


3. The protagonist is destroyed (unable to pursue any goal).

I should probably mention that protagonists often have more than one goal. Frequently they are torn between two desires, the one they think they want and the one they really want, but don't know until a conflict forces them to choose—clarifying their real desires in the process. This sort of inner conflict is particularly rewarding because the suffering is ultimately self-inflicted and active characters making choices is always better than passive characters that are simply being acted upon. So even if you have a transformational plot where the goal doesn't change but the character does, he needs to struggle with the cost of that change, producing that same inner struggle.

NaNoWriMo signups are almost here!

Wow! September is almost over and I haven't blogged anything! I had started to blog something about a post I ran across on Exploded Fiction which caught my eye, but I got distracted and didn't finish.

I hope that's not a bad omen. I have to admit I'm feeling a little nervous about NaNoWriMo starting up soon. While I can't wait to sign up, I remember how difficult it was to write a novel at my own pace and I know doing 50k in 1 month, what with holidays and family and regular life on top of everything isn't going to be easy. If I were back in school and didn't have a wife and kids, things might be different.

It doesn't help that I tend to edit as I go. It's hard for me to just spew words down on page--especially since I've been writing this epic story in my head for years now. (I fully expect the final product to be at least 100k.) I need to make some serious progress on it, but I've also totally failed to finish my outline. I have a beginning that may or may not be the right beginning and I have an ending. I've got a number of scenes that I want to stick in, but I'm not sure exactly where. My problem, in large part, (besides second guessing myself) is that I don't have the protagonist's story arc fully figured out, which leads me to question whether or not I should change the focus to another character.

I guess I'll just have to step back and look at this as a massive brainstorming session. Write everyone's story and then go back and cut and prune. I'm sure once I start things will go better. It's just the waiting that's driving me crazy.