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.

 

[Tallyfire]

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.

You might find it’s quite different writing 15K words. With 50K, I found I just didn’t have the time or the mental power to do anything other than get the words out because that was a challenge in itself.

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.

Nothing says you have to finish the novel story-wise in the 30 days. The word count is the only metric. I only plan to start and I probably won’t reach halfway.

 

[Sandor]

I was struggling to come up with a plot for a novella, kind of bouncing between things. I had a project idea but it seemed better for a longer novel. I looked in novella and it said its best to have a shorter single focused idea - setting, characters, plot and so forth. I've settled on a story after the title came to me while reading some random articles online while listening to the song "Between Villains," by MF DOOM, Earl Sweatshirt and Captain Murphy I think.

It's called "Between Swordswomen." I wanted something to set up the setting I've been focusing on, Verth, which I've been writing in. I also wanted to set up some of the characters in the setting - Hemlock, Drought and Majji specifically. It's going to be a novella about Hemlock and Majji ending up in a duel, basically. Nothing to complex or involved.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

After some discussion with agent and editor, I switched the order of my next two books. That means I am doing some major gear shifting and conjuring right now. Successful follow-through with NWT will put me in the position of getting the bones of a story down before I sign the new contract and am faced with an 18 month deadline. Era is 1913-1920, location is rural extreme northeast Texas, themes are the struggle for autonomy in a restrictive society and the price of being different. I'm spending the next few days fattening up my outline, thinking about characters, and noting some directions to take them. Working title is Reva Dell. It is a literary historical novel with undertones of magical realism.

 

[Tallyfire]

I'll be starting the story I've been wanting to write for a long time, which I'll call Space Station for now because it's set on a grand space station, the only one in the galaxy. It'll mostly be about a team of humans and aliens who handle off-station adventures, with some galaxy-wide myths thrown in for a general sense of impending doom. Think Stargate: SG-1 set on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - less military and pew-pew, and more diplomacy and discovery.

Since I still only have a fairly loose idea of the story, my main goal in writing is to develop the world and build rich characters.

 

[Tallyfire]

Is anyone else just itching for Saturday to come? I am full of ideas. Can't wait to start getting them down!

 

[Luxuria]

Is anyone else just itching for Saturday to come? I am full of ideas. Can't wait to start getting them down!

I get it. I didn't realize it was this Saturday. But good to know. And yeah, I am kind of torn between two different stories.

1. Space Magic - I think I figured out what I want to do with it plot-wise. Which is great, because now it's just a matter of putting all the pieces together in the right order.

2. My Greek Myth story has been calling my name lately and it might be only 50K to complete and it's all outlined. The way I do that, anyway. The down side to this one is that I would be switching from Space Magic, which is in book 2 out of 3 at the moment.

 

[Luxuria]

Damn it. I read my outline for the Greek Myth story and fell in love again. AHHHH!! It's SO GOOD!!!

 

[Homer Potvin]

I'm doing 50k of something. Probably just open the laptop and let her rip!

 

[Night Herald]

I'm still not quite sure what I'm gonna do. I keep being indecisive, and I don't have any sort of outline. Also, I'm suddenly losing at least a week of November, so I'm gonna switch my target to 25K with the option of increasing if I hit a good pace.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

The idea I'm going to try out will be longer than anything I've tried before. The concept is real world, two main characters with eight significant episodes. As universally agreed, ahem, on our previous forum, life is a series of disconnected experiences that we retrospectively connect with a delicate line to suggest causality and cohesion. What I envision is a collection of eight almost stand alone short stories, put down in ragged chronology, but each leaves gaps that prevents it from cluing the reader into what's happening. Only taken together does it make sense as to how these characters ended up doing the things they're doing.
I'm home alone for the next week or so and hope to get a good start in that time. I've always edited as writing, so never really ended up with a first draft, more a first finished version of whatever with subsequent edits relatively superficial to the overall piece. I might try writing without editing for a bit, see how it sits, and get a first draft done. I heard a writer talking on radio about this issue a while back and a colleague asked her why she wrote with the brakes on. My answer would be because I'm afraid I'll crash, but, hey, time to get right out of that comfort zone.
I just wish one of the rules for writing wasn't that the first novel has to be shit.

 

[defaux]

just wish one of the rules for writing wasn't that the first novel has to be shit.

This is partly what holds me back. Bella's story (I can say, now that the first chapter contest is closed) is kind of my baby. My intention is to crack out as much of it as I can using this November thing as a cattle prod. Part of me wonders if I should pick another idea for my first attempt. I have a couple other solid concepts floating around.

I still think I'm going to try for Bella, even if the first draft is garbage, it isn't going to spontaneously materialise before me if I don't stop procrastinating, no matter how much I massage the outline.

 

[Tallyfire]

I just wish one of the rules for writing wasn't that the first novel has to be shit.

Part of me wonders if I should pick another idea for my first attempt.

I have the same worries... I love this idea to bits, but I know a lot of it will be crap while I learn the ropes of novel-writing, figure out the universe and the characters, refine my/the novel's style, figure out how to tell the story, figure out what the story is... I have a lot on my to-do list for "become a better writer."

The post elsewhere in the forum asking how many revisions people go through is reassuring to me. Sixteen revisions? Fine. If that's how it'll be, then so be it.

 

[Catrin Lewis]

This is partly what holds me back. Bella's story (I can say, now that the first chapter contest is closed) is kind of my baby. My intention is to crack out as much of it as I can using this November thing as a cattle prod. Part of me wonders if I should pick another idea for my first attempt. I have a couple other solid concepts floating around.

I still think I'm going to try for Bella, even if the first draft is garbage, it isn't going to spontaneously materialise before me if I don't stop procrastinating, no matter how much I massage the outline.

It's important to let your first draft be crap, as long as the basic idea runs through it. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

I have to. Now that I've finalized the text of my second novel, I have a horror of imperfection. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a thousandfold more polished and reads a darn sight better and smoother and more natural than it did when I first began it. It's become its own thing, almost like it wrote itself, and I struggle to recall the effort it took to get it there.

But I did a large chunk of it as my NaNoWriMo project a few years ago, and it was crap. A lot of those 50,000k words got edited out. But that crap was there to be edited, and if NaNo hadn't been there to get me off my tuches, the novel wouldn't be where it is now.

So again, I tell myself, "Sure, this is trite, banal, pedestrian, and cheesy. But editing is a thing. Later, it'll be a thing. Right now, write."

I haven't had time to do my version of outlining for my novella project, Talents. Too busy getting myself into a new set of wheels. So all month I shall be thanking the Lord for word processing software. I.e., if I write a scene out of order, I can shift it where it belongs, once I decide where it belongs.