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I don't have a NaNo profile because I don't feel like logging into another thing, but I'm excited to have a fully outlined novel plan going into this November. Gods and video games at the end of the world.
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Oct 14, 2021 02:18
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 15:51 |
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Wayfaring Stranger posted:How do y'all outline your work? Right now I'm developing my plot nugget using the Snowflake method, then I was going to create a list of scenes, which I then slot into a rough 'Save the Cat' framework. I've been dabbling in short fiction to get comfortable with the micro-scale structures that help move scenes along, and that's exciting. But, as I'm using a Frankenstein's monster of hybrid planning models already, I'm always open to hear how actually successful writers go about it. YMMV, but... I'm a habitual pantser, though I've tried snowflaking and save the cat and neither got me anywhere special. They are certainly useful tools, but my outlining method has never ended up being super critical to any novel I've worked on. For this NaNo I plopped my butt down and wrote 300-1000 word summaries for all of my chapters, from 1-22, in order. Normally that doesn't work for me, but in this case I wrote the whole outline really really fast, while the idea was still loose and dynamic and interesting to me. The longer I spend practicing novel writing, the more I am starting to suspect that speed is as important to an outline as structure. It's better to get a bad version of your idea out fast, before it's lost its luster in your mind. I don't know about you, but for me, if I let a project linger too long in the early outline/draft phases, it becomes the least interesting thing in the entire world and I lose the ability to amend what feels like old, congealed ideas. It's as though a project can lose its elasticity if it lingers too long in any particular phase. That said, I know people who can contentedly putter on the same novel for many years and i don't understand. For this nano project, I did the chapter summaries in the voice of my protagonist (the book is in first person). I found that summarizing each chapter from my character's POV allowed me to focus on the plot beats that would most directly affect her, which helps me avoid my usual passive protagonist issue. It's also an opportunity to establish her voice before I actually get to the prose, which is useful. As of right now, I have a lot more confidence going into my NaNo novel than I do working on my other novel, and I think it really comes down to the speed at which I've generated the overall shape of my story. All that said, nothing really beats loving up in a lot of different ways for a long time. I've written a couple hundred thousand words of flash and short fiction and several bad bad novels, most of which I gave up on around the 60K mark. If I have any success with this NaNo project, it's because of those things and not so much my outlining method of choice.
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Oct 16, 2021 09:39
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I'm not counting outlining but that is because I did it in October. I think if I have to take a day in November to re-outline or write a lot of notes, I'd count those words because otherwise I'm just giving myself more work to do on subsequent days.
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Oct 26, 2021 09:25
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Devorum posted:Looks like I'm going to be job hunting and possibly preparing to move countries next month, so I'm not confident I'm going to be able to do it this year. I'm basically in the same boat. I made a stressful career pivot that in 1 year has etched lines into my forehead worthy of a chronically dehydrated alcoholic sea captain. I'm routinely going into overtime. I'll be happy if I hit 20K words, tbh. If I hit 50K, I am taking a week off work regardless of what's happening there.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:32
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3003 day 1 words, going to try and build a reasonable buffer for my inevitable faceplant later in the month
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Nov 2, 2021 10:58
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Forgot to update yesterday, but so far I'm at 6436! If I can shake off the post-nap groggy, I might try and tack another 1K on before bed.
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Nov 4, 2021 06:41
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I got roughly 5K and change to go, but considering i wrote nearly 12K in a 24 hour period this week that sounds like absolutely nothing I'm actually really happy with this draft, it's surprisingly my favorite novel i've worked on so far!
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Nov 28, 2021 23:37
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This was my first nano victory. I picked an absolutely poo poo month to poop a bunch of words out of my brain hole but by god they're there and a few of them might even be salvageable
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Dec 2, 2021 08:48
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 15:51 |
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New nano thread! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4016190
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Oct 30, 2022 21:44
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