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Decedent posted:Hey thanks guys! Make a project thread! I did, three years ago, and people following along with that thread is literally the reason why I ended up publishing and I'm working on the sequel today.
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Nov 1, 2023 04:39
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How do I stop world building and start writing? So many ideas at once!
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Nov 1, 2023 05:48
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Waffle! posted:How do I stop world building and start writing? So many ideas at once! I find things go better if I leave gaps to fill in as I write. I guess you could call it Just In Time world building: a lot of stuff is undefined until it matters to a character. No matter how much you do there will be contradictions and inconsistencies to iron out after this month is over, so embrace it and allow yourself to discover and be surprised as you go. Good luck!
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Nov 1, 2023 10:28
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Waffle! posted:How do I stop world building and start writing? So many ideas at once! Technical discussions like this are probably more relevant in the Fiction Writing Advice thread, but... World-building is to service the story, not the other way around. You can make a bunch of notes if you have ideas you want to keep for later, but world-building is not writing the story. Consider building the world as it becomes relevant to the story. You think about what parts of the world-building is most relevant to the story and the characters you want to tell. Tell those bits as it becomes immediately relevant to the reader understanding the story. For my project, I'm doing very little world-building ahead of time. I don't even have names for anything I'm not immediately using. I didn't come up with a name which I liked for the country the story takes place in until a couple weeks ago. I have a vague sense of geography, a fractional piece of a continent centered around the country where the action takes place (ocean to the south, mountains and then desert to the east, swamps and then deep woods to the north, woods and mountains to the west), and a few very tiny scraps of history, most of which are immediately relevant to the main plot. The rest I'm building as I go. That's actually proven quite useful. For example: [Example omitted because a writer talking about their backstory is like a parent showing baby pictures: only interesting to those who cannot avoid contact.] I'm building the world around the story I want to tell, because the story and characters is more likely to be what's going to hook the reader. It's fine to have an encyclopedic knowledge of you world, but even ideally, the reader is only really going to ever see a fraction of it.
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Nov 1, 2023 13:12
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I'm doing this for the first time and very anxious. Posting about it will hopefully help me stick to it. That is all, ty.
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Nov 1, 2023 16:58
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I'm in, I guess. First time here, as well. I don't like structured things like this (also why I don't like taking cruises) but maybe I'll see what I can get done.Waffle! posted:How do I stop world building and start writing? So many ideas at once! I don't really like fantasy as a genre but in my experience the world-building problem comes up a lot with that genre (and sci-fi, I guess). No matter the genre, though, my advice is: you don't need to stop world-building so much as only world-build when it directly affects the plot. I'm going to use a wikipedia summary of one of my favorite films as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men quote:The year is 2027, when human activities have produced an ecocide with widespread deleterious effects on the environment; eighteen years of total human infertility, war and global depression threaten the collapse of human civilizations.[12] The United Kingdom has become a police state in which immigrants (derogatorily referred to as "'fugees") are arrested and either imprisoned or executed; still, as one of the few remaining nations with a functioning government, it is deluged by refugees fleeing chaos in their own countries. That's a very detailed version of the world. The "what if?" that sets up the world is "what if people couldn't reproduce anymore?" and the answer is "things would go to poo poo in various ways." The last baby to be born dies and that ruins hope for everyone. That's technically explaining "the world" but moves the plot along. The terrorist group leader being the protagonist's ex-wife is convenient, sure, but at least it moves the plot along. We also don't have to have him get familiar with some extremely elaborate backstory about how the terrorists come to be. We as the audience just basically get that enough to follow along with the plot. As far as I remember the movie doesn't explain how fertility ended. It just is what it is. We also don't need a ton of scenes describing the guy's divorce. Who cares. We know what divorce is. The movie has people in Britain hating the "refugee problem" (it even has scenes from the time it was filmed that directly reference abuses in Iraq by foreign powers) but doesn't really go into the specifics other than "the world is crumbling from war and people need a place to go." I don't think it describes the actual details of all of the conflicts (which one could write) but doing so wouldn't move the plot along. The Sean fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 21:08
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Pre-existing words: 1,621 Day 1: 1,423 Total: 3,044 Tiberius is arguing with a demon over the precise terms of a pact he has quite literally landed himself in. I'm scared. Is this what feeling motivated feels like? I think I remember this.
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Nov 1, 2023 21:33
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I'm writing! I write by hand a lot so can't always give updates on wordcount, but my plan is to have a first draft for a novella by the end of the month. Good luck to all.
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Nov 1, 2023 22:42
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Waffle! posted:How do I stop world building and start writing? So many ideas at once! Go to a room full of other people that are going to write, and well.. write. Don't talk, or if you do limit it to 5 minutes and .. write. Lot harder to not write when other people are writing.
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Nov 1, 2023 23:44
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Day one, 1928 words. Good enough! By the way, I would strongly recommend everyone to back up your stuff at least every couple of days. We've seen some goons lose their drafts in previous years, and it's just so depressing when you've worked very hard on it. I just dump daily versions on Google Drive.
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Nov 2, 2023 00:07
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Day one complete, up to 1,931 words here! Was hoping to do the reverse style where I write more on the first days, but these first few days of November will be more busy than usual, so not going to stress too much about getting much more than 1,667 words until things are less busy. I'm primarily using Google Docs, which seems reliable, although I'm backing it up on Scrivener, just in case. GarbiTheGlitchress fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 03:18
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2556 on the first day. It's not quite the Reverse Wordle Goal, but it's pretty off-to-the-races for working and having D&D. I like the concept of the Reverse, so I'm gonna try to go hard early and avoid having to use a desperation 7000+ word day toward the end this time!
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Nov 2, 2023 04:09
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4280 words down. Done for the night. Glad I spent some time noodling and outlining before this. Even then, my lil progression fantasy magical system and setting has had upheavals.
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Nov 2, 2023 04:52
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Day 1: Crappy. Only 314 words. I did have a lot of other stuff I needed to do today, but it's no excuse. Much of my time spent trying to write was incredibly frustrating as I got stuck trying one unsatisfying (or stupid) approach after another over and over. Not even trying for perfection, just to find something which at least halfway works. I don't consider a bunch of unusable false starts to be real word count. I also adjusted a previous scene slightly, which accounts for most of my actual additional word count. And no, I cannot just plow forward blindly at pace and ignore what I've written until December. I don't care if that's literally the entire point of Nano, my brain will not let me do that.
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Nov 2, 2023 06:17
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Bad start. 433. But it's a marathon, not a sprint.
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Nov 2, 2023 06:27
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I'm not sure I have it in me this time, but I'll keep trying. 
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Nov 2, 2023 10:26
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551 here, but I'm doing this around a load of other things, and don't think I'll hit the 50k. I'll try though! I'm mainly here to get one of the ideas in my head down somewhere.
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Nov 2, 2023 10:28
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Everyone here is doing marvelously! Keep up the words and keep checking in. I want to hear how you're doing. Day one got me ~1800 words of new work and 2 chapters of editing done. Day two has another ~1800 words. Let's see if I can keep the edit motivation going too. Last time I NaNo'd I was putting up 3-4k words in these early days and I finished by the 20th. So 1800 makes me feel behind. But every year is different. Do what you can when you can and don't sweat the deadline. It's never a failure to write and have written.
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Nov 2, 2023 12:08
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Forgot to check in yesterday. I got 3964 words done which feels pretty good. It's a real mess of actual story, setting and character notes, and clumsy exposition. So just like last time really, with the same philosophy: delete nothing. When I came back to do a first edit pass on my last nano book I ended up using some of the half-finished ideas that I'd left in little notes for myself, so I try to leave everything in
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Nov 2, 2023 12:14
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Had work and then was traveling yesterday so nothing written. Gonna make up some of that today during the 15 hour flight I have. Think I'll actually get the beginning scene written instead of picking some random spot.
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Nov 2, 2023 13:13
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I’m kind of vaguely doing this, but can’t be bothered to update on NaNo. Got around 500 words done on day one on my existing project. I think, more importantly, that I’ve just made a pact to sit down and write for one hour each day in November.
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Nov 2, 2023 13:33
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I should also state that I'm kind of doing nano but not trying to hit the 50k goal because I have hosed joints and can't really use a computer for more than an hour. 1400 was a lot for me and I kind of got carried away and sort of wish I'd been able to keep going while the ideas were flowing, but if I'm going to keep this going for a month I have to pace myself as well. Whatever your constraints, you can just set your own goals if 50k doesn't seem possible for you!
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Nov 2, 2023 14:24
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I wanted to get an early start, but my toddler woke up at 3am having removed her diaper and was waving it around and yelling. And my elder kid is in gymnastics this morning, so that means writing by hand. Fountain pens make this part of process so much more fun tbh 
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Nov 2, 2023 14:52
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thunderdome winner
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Got nothing down yesterday because of some appointments and a helping of mental illness, so I'm considering today my first day. I'm going with my sci-fi road novel comedy, because the characters are the most fleshed out in my head and whenever my ADHD craves novelty and feels stuck I can pivot to some new absurd scene
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Nov 2, 2023 16:33
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didn't start until late yesterday but got 540 words done and shockingly didn't spend all of my time going back and rewriting it over and over so i am going to call it progress
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Nov 2, 2023 17:24
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160 rough words yesterday, i think i need to get back in the habit of "sprints" to actually get real writing done - too many distractions!
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Nov 2, 2023 17:33
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Getting really into this story which is nice, already wrote 5 pages by hand which should be about 2000 words last I counted. Not quite on target but it's nice. A minor downside is I had been planning to write an easier story before I tackle this one, but oh well, the heart wants what it wants.
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Nov 2, 2023 17:41
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Chernobyl Princess posted:I wanted to get an early start, but my toddler woke up at 3am having removed her diaper and was waving it around and yelling. And my elder kid is in gymnastics this morning, so that means writing by hand.
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Nov 2, 2023 18:26
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Worked on edits in chapter 2 of my existing project yesterday. Net: +451 words. Hoping to spend at least another hour editing today and get into chapter 3. I don’t really know how to measure words here since I’ll need to write new stuff but also hope to drop the manuscript’s overall word count by ~25%. Guess we’ll see! I’m pumped to see everyone’s progress, big or small!  Keep going!
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Nov 2, 2023 18:29
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Day 2: 1,423 Total 4,487 Wrote way more than I intended. Noise cancelling headphones are a godsend.
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Nov 2, 2023 19:13
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a friendly penguin posted:Ooh, your notebook has numbered pages. That helps so much. When I did nano in a notebook I hand numbered. But I also didn't use fountain pens then. Hmmm. Must resist temptation. Leuchtturm notebooks are, in fact, where it is at for writing with fountain pens in particular. The pages are nice and thick so even the really juicy ones don't bleed through. And the color is properly neutral for the shimmer inks to show off their glitter. Give in to temptation, it's more fun!
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Nov 2, 2023 19:22
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Chernobyl Princess posted:Leuchtturm notebooks are, in fact, where it is at for writing with fountain pens in particular. The pages are nice and thick so even the really juicy ones don't bleed through. And the color is properly neutral for the shimmer inks to show off their glitter. 
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Nov 2, 2023 19:32
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It's going slow but by God I am squeezing blood from this stone
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Nov 2, 2023 20:51
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Writing a more serious story is definitely harder than conspiracy erotica. Gonna start my day 2 sesh in a few minutes so we'll see how this murder scene discovery goes.
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Nov 2, 2023 22:58
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Still write the murder scene, but as conspiracy erotica.
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Nov 2, 2023 23:58
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"Looks like the victim was reading some conspiracy erotica when he was murdered. Weirdest poo poo I've ever seen." "It's not the content that unnerves me, it's that there's so much of it..." Waffle! fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Nov 3, 2023 |
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Nov 3, 2023 00:03
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Ending the day with 2,527 words written for a two day total of 4,304. I have a busy weekend, we'll see if I can keep it up.
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Nov 3, 2023 02:42
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Day 2: A good day today, I got 1521 words down [Two day total: 1835]. The scenes flowed fairly smoothly. I could try and write a little more, but I'm a bit tired, and since I need to plan a mini-heist, I think I need to take at least a little time to figure out what the heck the plan is, and how it goes wrong. I finished two scenes in my Chapter 2, and left space for a brief flashback one which I didn't have enough of a grasp on to put down into words yet. Based on a story structure outline, I added something: quote:2 - Something Peculiar To that end, I added an additional attempted murder of my protagonist, one which they don't even realize was an attempted murder - but the reader probably will, which should help add some tension every time the assassin shows up in the story. Writing can stress me out if it isn't going well, but I doing things like Sudoku can help me sleep if I have insomnia, so playing a bit of that could help destress me and get me back to writing quicker. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Nov 3, 2023 |
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Nov 3, 2023 04:40
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day 2: 3710 words total: 7990 words I'm pretty good at backloading stuff like this, but I fully expect it to droop down low within a week.
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Nov 3, 2023 06:04
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Got up to 4037 words on day 2! Still considering whether I should write in third or first person; choosing first for now as this feels like a good opportunity to learn how to write in that style.
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Nov 3, 2023 15:16
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