NaNoWriMo
There's a bit of story about what I'm working on that I find that I don't mind sharing. I put it behind the cut tag because it's a bit long...
I am a big fan of science fiction and fantasy stories with strong and consistent technology and/or magic systems. I have a number of magic systems that I've made up that have varying degrees of strangeness and potential for extrapolation. I think about them as possibilities for stories, and flesh them out a bit from time to time. When I start to actually write a story about one, I always got bogged down in the writing process and eventually dropped the project...
Recently though, I started thinking about writing again. Partly it was that someone I knew actually wrote a book, and I was able to buy a copy off the shelf at my local bookstore. I mean, how inspiring is that, I ask you? Another thing was that separately from that, I was introduced to a new author that is incredibly open to sharing his writing process, and does a weekly podcast about writing called Writing excuses (http://www.writingexcuses.com) so I downloaded most of the podcast series and started listening to it on the bus.
One of the first episodes introduced the idea that you need the combination of multiple ideas to have a good concept for a story. I did an experiment where I took a couple of magic systems that I had sitting around, one about a tree that grows spells, and another where magic is performed by binding the spirits of living things to perform a task, and put them together. I adjusted them a bit to work together, and started extrapolating from there, and the framework for a story arc started to form. I didn't have the magic system fully defined, but I was extending it logically, which was going to take time and thought. There were things about it that surprised me, the main one of which was that the logical result of learning to use magic that wasn't from the tree eventually would turn somebody into what superficially looked like your traditional vampire.
At this point, Katez-chan announced that she was signing up for National Novel Writing Month, and since stealthcello was out of town, so I was the designated encouraging parent and decided I would sign up too, so we could encourage each other, etc.
As I was signing up, I read all their advice, some of which I hadn't heard before. They suggested that you just start writing, even if you didn't have everything worked out yet.
So, on the spot, I thought, I'll use this new combination idea, not something I had put more thought into and already gotten discouraged with the writing piece. I didn't like the vampire part, but I thought I could make sure that any 'Vampires' in the story weren't like the tradition said, but I could play with the similarities to make an interesting conflict to open the story. Wrong.
Here I am, writing away, and one of the main characters (who knows about magic) is explaining that there aren't any real vampires the way another main character (who knows about vampire lore) thinks of them, but there really are these other things, that are kind of like that, where the legends came from. Fine so far, but a little while later, the story starts to feel like it really needs some action, so I have one of those guys come after them. I'm writing this as I go along, and I have to kind of stop to work on the magic system to see what he can and can't do, and what my main characters can and can't do. This is when I find that according to the magic system, someone like this wouldn't be killed by a knife, but they could be killed by stabbing them with a wooden stake (the complexity of the material, don't ask) The story needed it, the magic system worked that way, I gave in and wrote it that way.
The next issue was that the character that knows about vampires is a young woman, and I'd decided that she needed to look younger than she really was when I was putting her in, so that she'd be coming from a space where nobody took her seriously. At this point I'm determined that I was not going to let the story morph into buffy. These main characters had another job entirely, and they were NOT going to go out hunting vampires.
Now, the way some of the writing has been working is that I've been writing with pencil and steno pad on the bus, and typing that in evenings and weekends, but I've been getting behind on the typing in, and yesterday evening, I didn't want to write more story until I'd caught up with the typing, so I decided to flesh out an outline of the way the plot arc was shaping up. To make a long story short, to get from where I was to the end of the story, I needed to go through a phase where these two characters were going to have to suppress the danger of the 'Vampires' for the other people that were supposed to be getting on with this other job they have. All the way home, I tried to find another way, but nothing presented itself.
As Vixyish put it when I told her the story, "Dave's writing a vampire novel against his will." I can't even abandon the story at this point. I have over 18000 words entered and another 9 pages on the steno pad, so it's the most successful attempt I've ever had at doing this. I guess I'll have to console myself with the idea that the first novel someone does usually ends up being practice, and at least it won't bother me to use this one that way...
Current count - 18111
I am a big fan of science fiction and fantasy stories with strong and consistent technology and/or magic systems. I have a number of magic systems that I've made up that have varying degrees of strangeness and potential for extrapolation. I think about them as possibilities for stories, and flesh them out a bit from time to time. When I start to actually write a story about one, I always got bogged down in the writing process and eventually dropped the project...
Recently though, I started thinking about writing again. Partly it was that someone I knew actually wrote a book, and I was able to buy a copy off the shelf at my local bookstore. I mean, how inspiring is that, I ask you? Another thing was that separately from that, I was introduced to a new author that is incredibly open to sharing his writing process, and does a weekly podcast about writing called Writing excuses (http://www.writingexcuses.com) so I downloaded most of the podcast series and started listening to it on the bus.
One of the first episodes introduced the idea that you need the combination of multiple ideas to have a good concept for a story. I did an experiment where I took a couple of magic systems that I had sitting around, one about a tree that grows spells, and another where magic is performed by binding the spirits of living things to perform a task, and put them together. I adjusted them a bit to work together, and started extrapolating from there, and the framework for a story arc started to form. I didn't have the magic system fully defined, but I was extending it logically, which was going to take time and thought. There were things about it that surprised me, the main one of which was that the logical result of learning to use magic that wasn't from the tree eventually would turn somebody into what superficially looked like your traditional vampire.
At this point, Katez-chan announced that she was signing up for National Novel Writing Month, and since stealthcello was out of town, so I was the designated encouraging parent and decided I would sign up too, so we could encourage each other, etc.
As I was signing up, I read all their advice, some of which I hadn't heard before. They suggested that you just start writing, even if you didn't have everything worked out yet.
So, on the spot, I thought, I'll use this new combination idea, not something I had put more thought into and already gotten discouraged with the writing piece. I didn't like the vampire part, but I thought I could make sure that any 'Vampires' in the story weren't like the tradition said, but I could play with the similarities to make an interesting conflict to open the story. Wrong.
Here I am, writing away, and one of the main characters (who knows about magic) is explaining that there aren't any real vampires the way another main character (who knows about vampire lore) thinks of them, but there really are these other things, that are kind of like that, where the legends came from. Fine so far, but a little while later, the story starts to feel like it really needs some action, so I have one of those guys come after them. I'm writing this as I go along, and I have to kind of stop to work on the magic system to see what he can and can't do, and what my main characters can and can't do. This is when I find that according to the magic system, someone like this wouldn't be killed by a knife, but they could be killed by stabbing them with a wooden stake (the complexity of the material, don't ask) The story needed it, the magic system worked that way, I gave in and wrote it that way.
The next issue was that the character that knows about vampires is a young woman, and I'd decided that she needed to look younger than she really was when I was putting her in, so that she'd be coming from a space where nobody took her seriously. At this point I'm determined that I was not going to let the story morph into buffy. These main characters had another job entirely, and they were NOT going to go out hunting vampires.
Now, the way some of the writing has been working is that I've been writing with pencil and steno pad on the bus, and typing that in evenings and weekends, but I've been getting behind on the typing in, and yesterday evening, I didn't want to write more story until I'd caught up with the typing, so I decided to flesh out an outline of the way the plot arc was shaping up. To make a long story short, to get from where I was to the end of the story, I needed to go through a phase where these two characters were going to have to suppress the danger of the 'Vampires' for the other people that were supposed to be getting on with this other job they have. All the way home, I tried to find another way, but nothing presented itself.
As Vixyish put it when I told her the story, "Dave's writing a vampire novel against his will." I can't even abandon the story at this point. I have over 18000 words entered and another 9 pages on the steno pad, so it's the most successful attempt I've ever had at doing this. I guess I'll have to console myself with the idea that the first novel someone does usually ends up being practice, and at least it won't bother me to use this one that way...
Current count - 18111