/nano/ Nanowrimo General - The 6 P's Edition

[Anonymous No.11974502]

Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance

OFFICIAL /LIT/ COMFY WRITER THREAD, come write that shitty novel you've been thinking about for the past 2 years and help fellow anons write their shitty novels too.

NANOWRIMO - National Novel Writing Month: write a novel (50k words) in 30 days challenge (avg 1667/day). Begins NOV 1:
https://nanowrimo.org/

>I have a good idea, but I have no clue where to start
Start with developing an interesting setting and character based on your idea. Do your research and make them believable. Give your character a desperate desire and an overwhelming obstacle(s) that stands in their way. Let the events play out. Don't try to impose themes on your work from the onset; they'll arise organically as you write. Similarly, don't try to force a certain direction on your story that doesn't feel natural.

>b-but I don't have time to write!
Download a writing app on your phone, whenever you have 5-10 minutes free write 100 words. Find a 30 minute window somewhere in the rest of your day to write the rest.

>I can't write because I'm insecure about how bad my prose/story/character/etc is
Get the fuck over yourself, writing is hard as shit and if you're a beginner then your first 1mil-2mil words are going to be 99% cringe-tier garbage. Accept that in order to get good at anything, you have to go through a period of being really shitty at it. Don't take yourself or your writing too seriously; decide not to give a fuck and just get lost in your story, which is fun even if you suck.

>Story structure resources:
STORY CIRCLE: http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit
SNOWFLAKE METHOD: https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/

>Suggested books on writing:
Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

idfk suggest some more resources pls.

[Anonymous No.11974567]

Post your story ideas, I'll help develop it / poke holes in it.

>inb4 I don't want my idea stolen
Ideas are cheap, and yours probably isn't worth stealing desu. If you're that worried just water it down to the basic gist.

[Anonymous No.11976541]

>it's like the third NaNoWriMo I remember
>still revisiting my 100k words novel
>still can barely sum it up
>feel like I am a long weekend away from finishing it for half a year now
Though now that I told all of my FWBs that I am going to send out queries this year for sure ... guess there is no way around it.

Hope it goes better for you, anons.

>>11974567
Challenge accepted.

Though how about something slightly more precise. How to create emotionally investing conflict, when your main protagonist is a laid back piece of shit, who shrugs everything off? Whether it's failing to reach goals, death or losing friends; this faggot either looks for another way or accepts when that fails. On an internal level I can still work with it but externally it's ... tricky, when the outcome is either "okay, this sucks, is there another way?" or "okay this sucks, no other options, oh well"

And playing around with the theme of detachment itself, I fail to find a way not to turn it into a corny "starts caring more". I considered amping it up too, but then at best it'd become another actively spergy cliche character or at worst too disconnected from majority of the audience.

[Anonymous No.11976827]

>>11974567
I was considering to make short story based on a longer story that I actually am planning to make into a novel or multiple novels. Maybe like a prequel or an introductory novel ? I'm not too sure at the moment

first untitled idea:
An apeman finds something from a very advanced alien race (A race that would rank beyond what we can put on the kardashev scale) that fills him with knowledge and power to the point that he could be considered a god.

This new knowledge feels strange to him, he used to work purely on instinct as an animal and now is filled with all these thoughts and feelings that he couldn't even experience before. He took some time to think about what his place in the world is now, the other creatures (even the ones he was once part of) seemed incredibly simple and crude at this point.

He evolves some of the other apemen to what we see now as homo erectus and helps them spread through the world.

Sometimes he would get bored with his omnipotence and would appear before them as a terrible beasts they had to prevail against (king richard against the dragon comes to mind) or what some of the religions saw as their gods, he would speak to them or give them visions to guide them a little when they were lost.

Eventually after thousands of years seeing how the modern man was developing with crossing the seas and finding their own way, he thought it was time to end his travels.

He went up to the moon, a quiet place where he could be alone and think about what to do next. The men on the earth haven't found out how to come here just yet but it wouldn't take too long now.

He gazed upon the world he once walked upon as a simple animal, he wondered if there was any purpose to him now that the apes that feared the darkness were now stronger than he could have ever imagined and then turns to dust, finally finding peace himself.

The device that made him a god falls back onto the earth, waiting for the next one that is worthy to find it.

That's the rough outline I have now, I probably wont make 50K words but at least I'll get some practice with writing.

[Anonymous No.11977218]

>>11974567
I‘m attempting to write a knight adventure about a group of, well, knights in a foreign kingdom on the search for what their leader saw in a angelic vision.
As they terrorize the countryside and get in trouble for being huge dicks in general each of the group's members either die, go missing or get imprisoned until only the leader remains who continues the search on his own.
It‘s a bit of a parody, but not a comedy, of Arthur's graal and the first crusade.

[Anonymous No.11977284]

Bump! I don't want this thread to die, but I probably won't be on much until tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.11977303]

Remember to use nano for your nano.

[Anonymous No.11977305]

>>11977218
Look up stories about knight errants, they were essentially roaming knights without a master, maybe this will help your with your story.

[Anonymous No.11977309]

>>11977303
>not writing it by hand in paint
fucking plebs
but really I'm just using word to write my stuff, is there software that's better suited for writing something as big as a book.

[Anonymous No.11977327]

>>11977309
I joke, but pretty much any text editor will be better at handling large documents, especially when it comes to navigation and editing.

Vim, for example, has text objects, meaning a single command can interact with large groupings of text. `cis` = [c]hange [i]nside [s]entence. This can be used to delete, select, copy, etc.
https://blog.carbonfive.com/2011/10/17/vim-text-objects-the-definitive-guide/

[Anonymous No.11977349]

>>11977327
I like the idea of vim but after trying it a few times it felt like too much work to use it daily.
I think there was a free piece of software that was specially made to create novels and such, like it would help you with prose and if you made senteces too long and such.
I can't for the life of me remember the name.

[Anonymous No.11977367]

>>11977349
Why not just use your brain?

Anyway, I have a 600+ page book about text processing written with vi.

>it felt like too much work to use it daily.
Not to be presumptuous, but you might have been thinking in the wrong paradigm. When working with text files like this you need to think in order of "lines" in how you arrange it on screen (remember: the screen is not reality). I start a new line ever sentence, comma, speech, parenthesis, etc. as well as when a new thought comes to me. With this you can easily amend and alter your text. You'll be running the text through another program anyway before presenting it (even if its only `fmt` to clean up the paragraphs), so don't worry about things looking "ugly" during composition.

[Anonymous No.11977410]

>>11977367
It's more that I would have to get used to how vi/vim works to be able to use it as well as i'm using word at the moment.

[Anonymous No.11978132]

What's up bois? Who what here /cheater/?

[Anonymous No.11979479]

>>11977327
>>11977367
Vim looks pretty powerful but I don't think I need that much control. I might change a character's name but that's the extent of it. Why would you need to break after every parenthesis, comma, etc?

[Anonymous No.11979489]

>>11978132
Nah I can do 50k. How much are you going to cheat?

[Anonymous No.11979938]

>>11978132
What's the point?

[Anonymous No.11980032]

what prevents someone from just using an already finished novel? I can't understand that

[Anonymous No.11980157]

>>11974502
>Suggested books on writing:
I have heard good things about On Writing by Stephen King. Personally, Lamott's Bird by Bird was helpful.

>>11974567
A burglar's daughter manages to escape after a burglary in process. She ends up on the streets of London leading a gang of homeless children, supporting the group through burglary. Somewhat like Oliver Twist, their actions are noticed by crime and police alike, and the burglar's daughter has to give herself up (proving her father's pleading testimony that he wasn't alone in the house) in order to save a gang member.
It's nothing like I've wanted to write before so it gives me hope.

[Anon No.11980180]

>>11980032
as >>11979938 said
there's no point. it's an exercise in writing. winners don't win anything.

[Anonymous No.11980304]

>>11979479
So I can more easily edit later. Say I have a piece of dialogue that is 3 screen lines long, I can delete it all in a single command with 3dd (or go right in to insert mode with 3cc).

[Anonymous No.11980547]

>>11980304
It also makes 'cutting'/'copying' into the clipboard registers more convenient. 'I want this here, and that there' is easy when you can put 'this' in to register a and 'that' in to register b, then put each register's contents where you want them. Obviously this is a minor example but the ramifications in a large document are massive.

Emacs has a similar concept with the kill ring.

[Anonymous No.11980656]

>>11974502
https://nanowrimo.org/forums/writing-groups-and-clubs/threads/445906

[Anonymous No.11981446]

I already started because I can't be fucked waiting. I'm at 3k words-ish of a fantasy novel.

My plan is to write 2 novels, self-publish them... Probably will give the first one away for free and charge a little bit for the second one.

[FM !!BhuDntq3ZHf No.11981491]

>>11974502
Should we use this as the standard OP?

[Anonymous No.11981509]

>>11981491
I'd be cool with that. Cohesion would limit confusion and it'd help with the scatter-brained onslaught of NaNoWriMo threads.

[FM !!BhuDntq3ZHf No.11981555]

>>11981509
I will clean it up a bit and save it as a repostable txt.

[Anonymous No.11981907]

>>11981446
What are the fantasy novels about anon

I'm working on a couple of novels myself, I'm hoping that after a couple of reworks it's going to be good enough to publish them.

[Anonymous No.11983116]

I'm so tired of writing this outline. I feel like i'd have more chapter if i wrote the damn book by now.

[Anonymous No.11983221]

Huh, I might give this a shot. Thanks for the idea.

[Anonymous No.11983306]

>>11974567
a mechanic who finds a damaged robot and puts its brain into a sexbot she was building for herself
set in the nearish future (100 or so years) after a total collapse of the internet and most computer systems