Strangely, no. 
There is a small amount of dialogue in mine, but I use reported speech. And no zombies or werewolves in any state of health, nor are there likely to be, even allowing for the "never say ‘never’ " rule.
Bah, I was really bad an abandoned my first story at 2000 words on the first day. But I managed to write a complete short story in 3700 words tonight so that makes me feel that I got at least something out of it.
You can read the story here if you like. Email is at the bottom of the story if anyone wants to give me feedback.
One thing I know is that for me, dialogue feels like a lot of words, and isn’t, while exposition doesn’t feel wordy and is. Dialogue is also easier for me to write. I just find that at the end of it, my word count isn’t where it needs to be.
And this is even with dialogue where everyone talks like Cmdr. Data because contractions are not kind to word count.
No werewolves yet. But, I can see myself running out of plot and just siccing a pack on a few of the characters.
I’m having a stupid, stupid, stupid problem.
Dialogue punctuation is very different in English and Spanish. And while the story is coming out in English, every time I get dialogue it feels weird. Guess I’m too used to writing manuals and descriptions and not enough to writing dialogue (
me)
Would it read absolutely strange if you guys saw dialogue written like this:
- Well, let’s go, - said Cris, grabbing her handbag - we’ll have time to talk about that later.
?
- It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Make it a quirk of style rather than an inability on your part. It’d be a few hours’ editing if it needed fixing at all, and I don’t think you need a fully-edited and finished product for this job - said Mal, adding - Don’t sweat the petty stuff. Get the important parts written!
But then you’d end up with fifty pages of werewolf/zombie sex.
Which I’d totally read, by the way.
I cracked 20K last night, thanks to a six-page, mostly-dialogue banter/sexual-tensionfest with expository tendencies. I prefer to put my exposition into dialogue whenever possible, so it sounds more like somebody telling a story and less like me trying desperately to purge my brain of backstory.
My characters don’t seem to be cooperating with their helpful color-coded notecards, but they’re still sticking close enough to the script that I can’t hate them. The funny thing is that I’m 20K in and I actually haven’t yet gotten around to the central mystery and conflict. Hell, I’ve still got at least three major characters that haven’t been introduced yet.
Which means I’ll hit 50K with acres of story left to tell, and never bother to finish it. 
Heh. I can get a LOT of words out of dialogue, myself. Probably 5k of the 10k I’ve got so far is in various bits of conversation. Some expository dialogue (having a reporter and a scientist is good for getting that out), some dialogue actually moving the plot forward, plenty of characterization, and a number of conversations that serve to do nothing but pad the word count.
Seriously, this amazes me – or am I misunderstaning? I think of reported speech as what you find in narrative vs. written out scenes. Like:
“After leaving the bus, Mary questioned the ticket agent and learned she would not be able to catch a bus to Baton Rouge until the following day.”
vs.
"Mary stepped off the bus and looked around blankly for moment before she spotted the ticketing window. She got in line behind a woman carrying what looked like a tuba wrapped in tissue paper and waited patiently.
“G’morning, what can I do for you?” The middle aged woman was fussing with the papers on her counter, not even looking up.
“I need a one-way ticket to Baton Rouge,” Mary said. “As soon as possible.”
The ticket agent typed a few words into her computer. “9:15 tomorrow morning, arriving 3:30 p.m., regular fare $64.” She looked at Mary. “Anyone traveling with you?”
“But…I have to go there today!”
The agent shrugged. “Can’t do today. Leastwise, not on this bus line.”
And so on and on, at enormously useful for Nano-time length. Let’s see, that’s 27 words versus 134! Yippie!
So…am I misunderstanding you? Or is your story mostly narrative? In which case I pity you: you’ll need at least six times as much plot while I just have to piffle on endlessly. 
Half of my 8000 words (at least) is dialogue. I love dialogue.
That’s the spirit! Or, instead of werewolves use insurance salemen or a Seventh Day Adventist missionary – then you can have more dialog!
Tempting, very tempting. But this is supposed to be a YA fantasy.
Dang! And here I was all chuffed over reaching 15k.
No, no! What you do is add one final line:
“End of Volume 1”
and there you have all the characters and plot ready for NEXT years Nano.
Nobody ask me why that plan came to mind so readily.
Not the most productive day for me so far. But I did manage to get 410 words just going back and adding in some physical descriptions of the characters.
- I’m catching up. The 30 minute sprints are the only thing keeping me in this. My characters have found a THING.
I’m joining the threat late–hi everyone!
This is my first NaNoWriMo, though I’m really familiar with it because my husband’s a writer and does it every year. So far, I’m keeping up with my daily goals–I’ve just passed 12000 and can write some more tonight.
My novel is several loosely interrelated stories that are sort of “spinoffs” of things that either happened to me or that I dreamed about, et cetera. For instance, there’s a fake encounter with an old best friend and a story of something that I always worried about happening but that never did.
I’m finding that I have a very hard time “showing, not telling,” and that this is detrimental to my word count. I have a very hard time writing dialogue, and there is way too much internal monologue going on. Arrrrrgh!
I’m glad I don’t have to keep writing from the end of the novel, I can go back and add more details and events to the stories as I want to revisit them. And I have a “handout” my husband got from an organizer somewhere–it has random plot ideas and points that I can use when things get stuck. What a lifesaver!
You’re right, dude. Here’s an instance:
Which should clue the reader into everything he needs to know about what this story is about. 
More plot? Well, I like a challenge.
Aaaand here I am again with today’s authenticated wordcount: 20019.
I jsut want to say that I am damn impressed by all of you. I’ve always been like, “man, it would be cool to write a novel!” but then realize I can’t write*. I have to live vicariously through you people! DOn’t let me down!
*: Yes, I know the point of NaNoWriMo is not to write anything good, jsut to write, and so in theory my complete lack of grasp on the English language shouldn’t factor into it, but on the other hand…
I managed a little over 2000 words today. It involved a LOT of padding, though. <_< I have no idea what the zoo scene accomplished, other than giving me an extra couple hundred words, and I only needed one scene dealing with the semi-clairvoyant dream…but NaNo’s all about quantity, not quality (although I’m keeping the quality as high as I can manage while still getting my word count high as I can).
Great. First my mom, now you! I CAN’T HANDLE THIS KIND OF PRESSURE!
I cracked 12000 today.
Work has been slow as hell for the past couple of weeks, so tomorrow may be a good day, too.
There are a lot of people who have gone awfully quiet. I hope everyone’s doing okay!
Malacandra and **Starving Artist’s ** exchange made me realize that when you’re writing in first person POV it’s easy to forget to have your characters interact with others via conversation. So last night my female protagonist had conversations with both her child’s daycare provider, and Hypnos, god of dreams.