Another Year, Anoth...uh, the Same Novel, Actually.

Welp, officially signed up for NaNo this year. I’m nervous because this November is looking to be pretty busy - work, need to be making progress on documentation for design seminar and on my term project for web tech, and I’m going to try to keep working on my current book, which I’ve been writing a chapter a week for for the past two months. Don’t want to lose the continuity there, but that's a lot of extra writing to do.

In a move that will possibly(?) make thing a little easier, I’m cheating on this year’s NaNo. Instead of starting a new project (at this point, I swear I’m going to start forgetting the names of characters from all the unfinished novels I have lying around), I’m continuing Third Life from last year. I’ve made a couple chapters’ progress since last year, but not nearly close enough to finish the darn thing. Whether this hinders me or saves me from novel-start jarring, we shall see. 

No pain, no gain, as they say. And some writing’s better than no writing, I say. 

Looking to join in on NaNo? Wondering what the hell it is? Does writing a 50,000 word novel in a month sound like fun to you? Get the details here: http://nanowrimo.org/faq

PostNaNoLog : Reflections

Final Stats

Words : 50,000 (Microsoft Word)
Chapters : ~15
Pages : 91

Thoughts

Progress - Weirdly, I think this is the farthest I’ve advanced, plot-wise, during a  NaNo Novel. Usually I’m only hovering around chapter five by the end of it, and very little has happened. Considering this was The Year of False Starts and I had to do a lot of crossing out and rewriting…I’m really perplexed as to how this happened. 

Characters - Lots of surprises this year, from Roost and Peter especially. Roost proved herself more honor-focused than I’d ever expected from my snarky lady, and Peter has a streak of paranoia that should make his and Roost’s relationship quite interesting when I get them into the same scenes. Khulad and Casey fit more closely with how I pictured them - their interactions did surprise me in how easy they were to write, given the trouble I’d had with it in the past. I feel Xerxes was underdeveloped, though, and that she and Khulad didn’t have enough scenes. 

Scheduling - Oh boy. Well, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, things didn’t get off to a great start. Youmacon was fantastic, but meeting freakin’ Linkara andDoug Walker took my head right out of writing and straight into the clouds for quite a while. A visit to my friends’ place the next weekend didn’t leave me much room to catch up. By about halfway through the month, I did get my act together - at that point, I had to write nearly 3,000 words a day to catch up; I managed to get it to around 2,500 for the last week. Turns out that extra thousand words is a lot to pack in, especially when I was still busy with school. 

Music - My full intent was to use The Cider House Rules score for this novel. While I think it’ll still come into play later in the book, The Hunger Games has stolen the first part of this novel. “Healing Katniss” and “Reaping Day” in particular had a lot of scenes set to them. 

Week of Doom - The infamous “Week 2” doldrums usually hit me during week three. This year, I had Week 4: Oh My God It’s the Last Week and I Don’t Have Enough Words Noooooo!

War Strategy - Before NaNo this year, I did a lot of plot outlining and backstory work, which helped a ton. During the event, I installed and tested ZenWriter - I really like the program; it runs full-screen, allows you to put up backgrounds (I used setting-related ones), and even has some music choices and type-writer sounds. Unfortunately, its word-counter is much stricter than either the NaNo site Validator or Microsoft Word, making it a little frustrating when I needed to write a specific number of words. Still, it’s definitely a nice program to look into (and did I mention it’s free?)

2013 Plans - NOT to come into November fresh off an editing project. Inner Editor was very chatty, so I probably spent much more time rewording sentences and trying to avoid cliched phrases than I ought to have. I’d also like to take more time during October to prepare; what time I did take this year helped a lot, but I feel Roost and Peter, especially, were very neglected in the planning process.

PreNaNoLog : Lessons from a Litmus Test

Well, it’s been a quiet week here at Magnuson Studios, so let’s skip the boring bullet-pointed “here’s what I did!” list in favor of one interesting thing I can talk about in a little more depth.

On Tuesday I found a link to a Mary Sue Litmus test, and ran it on Khulad and Roost (figuring they’d be the most likely to cross into Mary Sue territory). They both scored very low, 11 and 14 points respectively (which doesn't mean I can lower my guard, of course ;) )

While taking the litmus test, I found some cool ideas that I’d like to incorporate into the characters. For instance, on Khu’s run I noticed these two questions:

“If your character is all or partially non-human, does xe react in very non-human ways or in ways more appropriate to xir species?” and ”Does your character act in odd and/or awkward ways that other people find strange and confusing rather than endearing, and these people aren't called or portrayed as foolish/stupid because of it?”

Khulad should definitely have picked up some more draconic reactions and “gestures” after being in their care for so long. Despite the dragons’ ability to speak and some of their very human understandings of things, they do have some more animalistic practices and responses; some of their behaviors are probably comparable to a wolf pack (note to self, project for next week…)

In particular I was thinking that Khu ought to growl at the dragons sometimes, just something he learned because the dragons have some wolfy aspects to their society - but his growl’s not going to be very animalistic, it’ll be very human and sort of weird to Casey and Roost and Peter in that sort of ‘I feel embarrassed for you’ kind of way.

Having been in similarly embarrassing situations - from both ends - this should be both a breeze and blush-inducing to write. I’m so looking forward to it!

For Roost, I found a much simpler but important-to-remember question: “If your character has a short temper, sharp wit, snarky attitude, or is otherwise prone to verbal assaults, are the tongue-lashings and/or snarkings xe gives other characters always deserved and/or justified?” I admit, sometimes I lean toward characters reigning their tempers in around their friends, despite the fact that they ought to lose control of it at least once in a while. Something I’m working on, though.

Barely more than a week left until NaNoWriMo! =D So much left to do organization and plotwise, but I’m really itching to just start writing the story already and see what happens!

PreNaNoLog : Week 2

Wednesday - Posted my log for PreNaNo Week 1

Thursday - Wrote a short Peter excerpt to get a start on his characterization. May post this later, but it's not all that interesting except as a starting point. I also wrote short personality analysis and a bit of backstory for Peter (including how he and his dad were separated)

Friday - Began the name hunt for Peter and his father; I'm currently debating between the last names Vaughn and Green. For Peter's father's first name, I've grabbed Henry, Logan, and Blake. It occurs to me that, being a Nerdfighter, Henry Green is either the best or weirdest combination to go with (I'm leaning toward Vaughn as a last name anyway, so it shouldn't come to such dire straits).

Saturday - Started looking up first names for Casey's family members and a last name for the whole bunch. Got first names for everyone, but didn't make any decisions on a last name just yet.

Sunday I'll be going to the library in search of information on...well, everything, and during the week I'd like to wrap up naming Casey's family, the rest of the dragons, and probably a few Graybacks. By the end of the week I'd like to start plot outlining. Got a midterm Wednesday that might make all this a little difficult, but what's NaNo without a looming test, eh? 

[A Very Late] PreNaNo Log : Week 1

I fully intended to keep a log this year of my NaNo preparations. One of the first things I really wanted to do was post a summary of the story, though, so it wouldn't be completely confusing when I talk about the characters and parts of the plot.

My first attempt was both poorly-written and revealed some plot issues that needed to be taken care of, as well as some research I still need to do. Hopefully I can go library-prowling this weekend and get what I need. Last night I gave it another go, though, and am reasonably pleased with the result.

So here we are. Gear up your movie trailer voices, ladies and gentlemen (it'll probably help you get through this).

"Three generations ago, three events changed the world forever.

A plastic-eating bacteria ravaged the planet and destroyed nearly all of humanity's plastic and plastic materials.

Days later, a virus that mutated its victims into ravenous, violent beasts called Scourges was unleashed in hundreds of cities and towns across the globe. Without supplies, shelter, or many weapons, huge numbers of people were transfigured or killed. What remained of humanity banded together and were forced to begin life anew.

It was a few years before the dragons began to appear - never outright hostile to the human towns, but certainly dangerous if disturbed.

Casey *lastname* has spent her entire life in one small town, helping her parents breed and raise the wolfdogs used to sense nearby Scourges. The wolfdogs are no help, however, when Casey and her family's caravan are attacked on their way to a neighboring city - instead, it's a white dragon named Xerxes and a bizarre 'half-dragon' named Khulad who save her from the Scourges and their virus-spreading bite. And Khulad may know more about the dragons and the reason for their appearance than anyone on earth.

Miles away, a soldier on a desolate battlefield prepares to finish herself off as the Scourge virus begins to ravage the arm where she was bitten. Before she can finish the task, Roost is led to a laboratory and given a chance to retain her humanity by Doctor *lastname2*.All he wants in return is Root's help getting information on the Scourge virus from his son Peter to someone who can use the data to begin work on a curse, while dodging the corrupt officers of the militarian Grayback police force. A simple-enough task - though it remains to be seen if Roost's arm, trapped as the scaled, powerful, claw-tipped arm of a Scourge will be more help or hindrance.

Can two humans, a half-dragon boy, a Scourge-infected woman, and a pack of dragons keep themselves, each other, and their struggling world alive?"

...Still there? I know, I know - brevity is not my strong suit around 12 AM.

Oh, and the novel's called Third Life : I Still Need a Subtitle.

My mission this week (already more than half-over, awesome) is to get research done and to get started on name hunting...the state(s) where this will be taking place...basic stuff like that so I don't keep having to asterisk things...a subtitle...

If you're participating in NaNo, I hope your planning is going well. If you're not participating in NaNo - why not? Go check it out now and consider joining the party!