Ugh.
I got off to a strong start, but work and life got in the way and everything I’ve attempted to write in the last week just wasn’t doing it for me.
I think technically if I wanted to “win” I still could, because I know I can spew out massive wordage in a relatively short time. But I haven’t written anything for almost a week and have lost my motivation.
I’ll be rooting for you more stalwart nano-ers, though!
The protagonist, Abbey, is the only person at the school who isn’t a supernatural creature. The other students are things like pookah, selkie, loup-garou, kitsune etc, with teachers & other staff who are Cailleach, Morrígan, bean nighe, dames blanches and so on. Basically everyone else is either a humanlike folklore being, or a shapeshifter who can take human form. And Abbey has absolutely no idea about any of this when she starts at the school.
So, you’re looking for a B-plot to occupy a bunch of supernatural folks and one (ostensibly) mundane girl while they meander toward the reveal?
The Ball of Bad Plotz says, “Prankster.”
Someone is playing practical jokes, some of them rather vicious, and they’re getting worse. Everyone is inclined to blame the red-haired loner boy (a fear dearg), but it isn’t his doing–it’s actually a ghost/curse/simple bad luck. Alternatively, depending on how the supernaturals work in your setting, it could be something he’s causing by accident or unconsciously. Your Scoobies could spend their time trying to find out who’s behind it and how to stop it (not to mention trying not to become victims themselves).
As always, Plotz should be used only for informational and entertainment purposes. The management is not responsible for any actual fainting, falling down, or falling apart that may result from use of this product.
I’m up to 18k as I wrote two character studies of them hallucinating their worst fear. Which then freaked me out and made me depressed (the first one was his girlfriend leaving and him killing her.) The second one wasn’t as bad AND it clarified his motivations (which are crazy, but that’s beside the point). I desperately want to share it, so y’all get to see it (I’m putting it in a spoiler box because it’s long, but it’s sfw). It’s NOT editted in any way, so fair warning.
Eric frowned, a slight tightening of the corners of his mouth. He could see the key just through the hole in the wall. He was not going to fail HER (they had asked why she was female if he thought women were illogical, but she was mother, lover, guardian. He could make her perfect if he tried hard enough and she could make the world perfect.) His breath was faster, his heartbeat skipping, his palms sweaty, his stomach lurched. Fear. (Alexithymia, they called it, an inability to distinguish emotions, and they made him learn symptoms, like the glitches and error codes he learned to make HER perfect, but he couldn’t remove them, not as long as he was subject to hormones and glands.)
He tried to control his breathing, envisioning neat rows of zeroes and ones. He was afraid. It was nothing; an irrational phobia, but it was just a hole, not one of the cuffs locking down on his wrists, grinding flesh against bone.
Zeroes and ones. Beautiful, logical, perfect.
He stuck his hand through. He could reach the key that would let him out. Let him back to HER.
He did not scream when the wall closed on his wrist. Others would have. He did not curse or struggle wildly, like others, less rational people would have. His eyes widened and he broke into a sweat, his heart pounding like a walking tape drive. He tried to pull his arm free, squeezing his hand as small as he could. He could hear the key drop to the floor over the pounding in his ears. Biology, weak and imperfect.
He made no noise, but his lips were moving, reciting commands like prayers.
System Error. Abort, Retry, Fail? Retry.
I/O Error. Abort, Retry, Fail? Retry.
GPF. Abort, Retry, Fail? Retry.
C-x C-e
Buffer Overflow. Abort, Retry, Fail?
His eyes were burning. Sweat in his eyes. He could feel his skin tearing as he tried to free his hand. Contaminants. Weakness that could fail HER.
Kernel Panic.
HCB.
The lights went out and the neat white on black letters behind his eyes broke into neon blurs.
He was not like others. He did not scream. He did not swear. If it was because his throat locked down so he could hardly breathe, that was irrelevant. If his methodical attempts to escape had changed to frenzied thrashings that pounded bone against concrete, he did not notice because that was when the sounds began.
Chittering dry sounds, that crackled like static.
He did not scream, but his computer prayers changed to purely human pleas to HER, as he collapsed, his biology too weak to even hold him up.
Nice, Tyger!
And it now occurs to me that one of my characters could find a loose sheet of manuscript paper and read what’s written on it. Free wordage!
Ok, that would be evil. And plagarism. I’m not that desperate for word count.
Yet.
I like that quite a bit, Tyger. It conveys a lot about the character in indirect ways. I would venture to guess (putting on my “Tell me about your muzzer” beard and 'stache) that he has abandonment issues related to a female upon whom he had some emotional dependence in the past. He was not able to understand why he lost her, and blames both her–and, by extension, all women–for being “illogical” and himself for “failing” her by being too weak and flawed. That is, of course, in addition alexithymia you’ve mentioned directly and the claustrophobia he’s demonstrated. On top of that, he has the supervillainous megalomaniacal delusions about a way to deal with his problems.
Are those the things you intended to portray? (Regardless, he’s a seriously messed up dude.)
One tiny nitpick: as far as I know, walking drives were disk drives rather than tape. I don’t think a tape drive would have the necessary angular momentum to pull it off.
Did I say tape? checks I meant disk :smack:
I wasn’t planning on him having abandonment issues. I was planning on him having a pretty normal family, with two, probably older, sisters. Then he got sent to war, which naturally, screwed him up (or rather shook loose a couple of screws) and made him love machines more than humans. I think I had more or less decided what was wrong with him, but I’m too lazy to find my notes right now. There’s undoubtedly some PTSD in there at very least.
It’s actually not claustrophobia, but a fear of being restrained, which I have decided has no logical cause (why am I afraid of spiders and big open spaces? No clue. I just am). And yeah, he’s a seriously messed up dude.
I’m at 27,000 words, and my plot has taken kind of a crazy turn I wasn’t expecting, from depressing to fun. I’m not complaining, and I’m not at this time planning on doing anything with what I’m writing.
Onward and upward!
Finished issue 2, Bandit Masks Part 1: Fesnyng. (fesnyng is the traditional name for a group of ferrets) 24 pages, plus some extras. It ended up being a mix of setting up Jill and some gang stuff. Now I know who all the gangs in Shard City are, their names, who leads them, their colors and symbols, how they generally dress, and the general ethnicity (very few of the gangs are one specific race - they’re mostly over that).
I’m a little worried about it being too talky, but I briefly checked a comic at random and I’m probably over-thinking. I’ve got three or four good action or emotional beats. (Jill getting the ferrets doesn’t really count as action, exactly, but it’s meant as a very joyful thing).
The gang stuff is going to mostly get dealt with by the police or at least that’s the plan. The White Knight might drop in as backup, but the third issue is going to mostly be Jill. I swear.
I have a fair amount to type up, so I don’t know my word count. But first! Issue 3!
Broke 21K words today, and I still have five pages to type up. Wait, is a page just one side? Then ten pages. Eight scripted pages.
It’s always nice when fun little things like that help forward the plot. My avowed skeptic had a nasty nightmare about being stalked by a monster and seeing a ghost (who felt bad for her!) that got her talking to her supernatural-obsessed best friend in the morning, planting a little seed in the back of her mind that maybe something odd is going on after all.
Starting issue #4! And I actually wrote a scene that is a the White Knight vs a ninja with ferrets! And now I have no real outline. I’m tempted to try to write the documentary backstory story that scares me. How badly can I screw up, right?
Just passed 30k, so I’m still a little behind.
It’s going easier now that I’ve totally given up on the story. Crank it out to 50k, verify, then delete.
I’ve got plenty of other incomplete stories to work on that I still think have potential, which this dog definitely doesn’t.
Hooray! 50,000 just now, and the story’s still going strong! I’m very proud of myself–I’ve written longer novels before, but I’ve never “won” NaNoWriMo before. And I’ve still got quite a ways to go before this thing is done, too.
Good luck and encouragement to all the other Wrimos! You can do it! Just keep plugging away even when things don’t seem to be working–that’s what did it for me.
I’m very, very behind, but it’s still do-able. Goal for today is 5000 words. I’ve already done one session of 1700, so just two more to go.
I’ve written at least 5500 words today. I still need to type it up, which is what I should be doing right now. I want to do a bunch more writing tomorrow, but I have chores and stuff that’ll distract me.
Hey, glad to see so many doing really well this month. (So far, that is – knock wood!) I’m at just over 32K as of last night, so I’m basically on track. I do find myself ‘overwriting’, though; there’s gonna be a lot to cut, especially since my book needs to be no longer than 45K officially, so I kinda need to add 5K extra words for NaNo purposes. 
But that’s usually not a problem for me… I’m a wordy chick. Considering these 32K words leave me at roughly chapter 7 of an 11-chapter outline, I’m definitely going over the limit.
I know I wouldn’t be doing this well without my beloved Write or Die program, though. For whatever reason, I need that extra time pressure to force myself not to edit or censor myself as I write. Seems to release my brain from its usual “those words suck, and you suck for writing them” internal dialogue.
Actually I’m quite pleased with some of the latest scenes. For the first time I’m writing stuff from the hero’s POV, rather than the heroine, at least for a couple of vital scenes. Usually I prefer to write in tight 3rd person perspective, from a single character’s POV, and since these are romances, that usually means the heroine gets to be the star of the show. This method works well for keeping the hero’s motives unclear/up-in-the-air as far as the readers are concerned, since they’re only seeing things through the heroine’s eyes.
But for this book, my hero is going through some serious issues… well, more so than usual, since he’s already a werewolf: for this book, due to various temporal issues, his feral side is bleeding into his everyday existence (not just during a full moon) and thus he finds himself thinking of the love-of-his-life as prey, rather than human – a switch that horrifies him. Since for once I actually want the reader to be more aware of this than my heroine, this means switching perspective for a couple of scenes. And it let me get into some very creepy stuff as the wolf slowly takes over his mind and he starts thinking of the woman in his arms as an “it.” (Even creepier? I’m finding that sociopathic Jame Gumb-esque mindset waaaay too easy to channel! Yipe, what is in my brain?!)
Anyway, go us! Even if you’re way behind, don’t give up. Try to see how far you can get even if you don’t “win.” Writing more than you expected is winning, AFAIC.
Did you all watch Simpsons tonight? I was ROFL over Lisa ‘preparations’ before she could begin writing. I swear, I have done things sooooo similar throughout this month!
I am giving up.
I’ve been behind from the beginning.
The laptop died and I threw our budget out the window to buy another one.
I have been ill all weekend.
At this point I’m almost 20k behind with no clue how to proceed.
I have just finished a great short story which backgrounds three of my characters and I’m very happy with it, but I can’t see finishing.
After thee winning nano’s and a winning socno, I cannot do it this year.
Bugger the cold meds and work tomorrow - a third and last glass of wine is toasting you all!
Good luck to everyone else.
That’s too bad, maggenpye. Hope you feel better!