NWT - Planning and Plotting Thread

[Luxuria]

I thought maybe having a thread to talk about our plans might be helpful. I have been thinking over what I want to write and I kind of got stuck. I know it's only 15K words, which is not that much. But the real question is, do I start a new project or work on a current project. Because I have a backlog of stories I want to write. So, here are the possibilities (Not in any order, really):

1. My Hades and Persephone Greek Myth Story - A re-write of a day short-story sprint. I hope to make it a full novel, because I have outlined it to be such. Funny though, the Hades and Persephone myth plot is not the main plotline, kind of.
2. That Dark Fanfic - another re-write of a fanfic I wrote ages ago and want to re-write to be darker.
3. More of Space Magic - Because I am kind of on a roll, but right now, I don't know what is going to happen next. Which is good and bad.

All of these excite me, but I just want to to discuss my options.

 

[Homer Potvin]

I changed your title from TNW to NWT...

 

[Luxuria]

I changed your title from TNW to NWT...

Thanks! Dyslexia strikes again!

 

[Louanne Learning]

One of the things that will be different for me, is to write without editing as I go. From what I read, to be successful in anything like this, do not edit! Just get the words out. So this exercise may just teach me some new skills.

 

[Luxuria]

One of the things that will be different for me, is to write without editing as I go. From what I read, to be successful in anything like this, do not edit! Just get the words out. So this exercise may just teach me some new skills.

Yeah, editing is not something I would advise doing during this challenge. But I would say the best way to avoid massive editing later is to outline and plot through the story first. Even loosely as it will help guide you and keep you on track.

 

[Homer Potvin]

One of the things that will be different for me, is to write without editing as I go. From what I read, to be successful in anything like this, do not edit! Just get the words out. So this exercise may just teach me some new skills.

Lots of different theories with that. You can go either way. When I was at my height, I was doing the 2K thing daily with some spot edits but that was a long time ago.

I'm going to be writing something for NWT. Not sure what yet. I'm waiting for inspiration... kind of like waiting for a kidney stone to pass.

 

[Night Herald]

I talked about doing the prequel novel to one of my main series in that other thread, but for a variety of reasons I'm starting to lean away from that. The main thing is that it wants very much to be a slow burn, and it'd tend to end up at around 175-200K, the typical range for my fantasy novels. I think it goes against the spirit of the thing to write a stripped-down 50K version of a book whose natural state is gonna be three or four times that length.

With that in mind I think I'll be going for the cyberpunk project I've given the working title Fr@riCyde. Right now that exists as a handful of kinda-sorta related unfinished shorts, but an overarching thingie has been emerging for some time. I've been very much in a sci-fi frame of mind lately anyway, so I think it's a great fit. It lends itself to a lean 50K far better than my bloated epic fantasy style does. I was thinking of Neuromancer, how lean it is and yet crammed with interesting stuff; it feels a lot longer than its measly 68K or so word count would suggest. If I shave some 18K off of that, I should have plenty of room to do my thing.

I'll spend the rest of October looking for common threads in these various WIP shorts, cobbling those together into a rudimentary outline, and if there's time left write some practice prose to nail the tone and voice as much as possible... I wanna be ready as can be for when it kicks off.

Oh, and I fully agree about not editing. I'm a habitual editor and I'm gonna have to really resist that urge. I might sneak in a little bit here or there if I had a great writing day with energy left over, but that'll just be a little treat after hitting the daily count.