Many members of our community are taking part in National Novel Writing Month. We invite them to use the comment thread of this post to share stories and support as we enter the home stretch.
The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)
Trigger, rape. Prompt I was given: Katy Perry's "Firework". Story that's falling out: party A coerces party B into sex with party C; which definitely counts as raping party B, and possibly also party C because he and party A are not in cahoots. My brain, I swear...
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Nov 22, 2011 at 08:54 AM
61118! I'm into part 3 of the book, the final chess tournament, and I'm very well on target to hitting 70,000 by the end of the month (and possibly 80,000, which will hopefully be the correct length for the end of the first draft). (The rules I've read are: novels are defined as works that are 70,000-100,000 words long, and the first draft should be cut by at least 10% to reach the second draft, so the first draft of a full novel should be at least 78000 words or so. Granted, this doesn't apply to everyone, but I'm using it as a good target.).
Things are going pretty well thus far. I've gotten through one of the major speeches (the incumbent World Champion, Ashaz, gives his rebuttal to the new motion at FIDE to prohibit chess players with certain mental conditions {including one that Ashaz has} from playing). Hopefully, after NaNo is done, I can have someone somewhere beta it, since it's supposed to be really strong oratory and I haven't written anything like that before. I've also gotten through the introduction of William Nolt, who's been built up through the whole book, and so hopefully that is suitably dramatic/weird. Th plot points so far also all got in -- everyone qualifying for the final tournament, Washington becoming estranged from his parents due to the scientist's machinations, the conflict at FIDE, etc.
Most of the characters are working as planned, except for Razanov, the ex-chess champion for Russia, who's a lot more fleshed out (which is good!) and Nolt, who seems to think he's in a book by Lovecraft, which is a lot of fun. It's interesting, since Nolt is clearly a villain -- he's killed at least one person off-camera, and is considered by everyone to be genuinely dangerous -- but I'm trying to write him as somewhat sympathetic, which I think makes for interesting counterplay. I've also gotten to show a more dangerous side of Caissa, Ashaz's hallucination, which I had a lot of fun writing.
Most of the character-writings are going well. I've killed off one character and have revealed at least something about all the newer players. The only character who seems to be getting dragged along is Mirela Holonek, the reporter. She did some important things in part 1 (revealing in print that Washington is using a math-based strategy, and revealing that Ashaz is seeing things that aren't there), and was suitably villainous (getting Washington drunk so that she could pressure him into telling her how he was playing, for instance), but in part 2 she's mostly useless, so I need to either figure out what to do with her, or have her killed off before this point. I think I can make her more relevant -- her primary function is as an antagonist, telling the players things about each other that each one would rather not be revealed to the world -- and there's definitely a few things that haven't been revealed yet that could be.
Posted by: ZMiles | Nov 22, 2011 at 11:05 AM
32,000 words down as we head into the last week. My win dat is still in december... need to be writing not reading!!!
Posted by: Lou Doench | Nov 22, 2011 at 12:46 PM
After a grueling and exhausting* last couple of weeks, I am planning to start writing again today or tomorrow, more likely tomorrow given how long it's been since I had a decent night's sleep.
I am a few hundred words into the first scene. That's pretty much all I got.
*But triumphant!
Posted by: Froborr | Nov 22, 2011 at 01:41 PM
The thread on writing seemed the most appropriate place for this: Anne McCaffrey apparently died yesterday.
How very sad :(
Posted by: truth is life | Nov 22, 2011 at 08:08 PM
I heard that. On the one hand, she's one of the greats, she got a lot of people into speculative fiction, and it's a sad thing that she's gone. On the other hand...tent pegs.
And I wrote a hundred twenty words this morning but then I had to leave for work, and now I have no idea how I was going to get from there to the part that's been playing in my head all day, and I can't skip to writing that part, it doesn't work that way.
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Nov 22, 2011 at 08:19 PM
Added four hundred sixty words of setting the scene. This is not good, because the minimum word count for the challenge is a thousand words and if the first six hundred are setting the scene then I'm letting myself in for a lot more than a thousand words of fic. At least I shouldn't have a problem making minimum word count?
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Nov 22, 2011 at 10:04 PM
I finally wrote more stuff today, that got me to 10,001 officially (that is, despite the 1000 or so words I deleted a week ago). I'm not going to get anywhere near finishing, but I've never spent so much time working on one topic before. And I've come up with a lot of interesting ideas. So I think it's all good.
Posted by: Laiima | Nov 22, 2011 at 11:47 PM
Made word count. \o/ Still lots of story to go, and that's even if I leave everything after a certain point to the reader's imagination. /o\
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Nov 23, 2011 at 07:42 AM
70000!
I've finished my first goal, so I guess I'll set the second one: I will try to finish the full first draft before the end of the month. Dunno exactly how long that will be, but things are really building to a head now. Shouldn't be more than, say, 80k.
Posted by: ZMiles | Nov 24, 2011 at 10:55 PM