NaNoWriMo 2016 is Here!

​

Hey, everyone! November is finally nearly upon us! You know what that means, NaNoWriMo, is on its way!


What IS NaNoWriMo?:


NaNoWriMo is the craziest thing you can ever do if you’re a writer - your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to write 50,000 words of a novel (fanfic, a poetry collection, short story, or anything else you guys are interested in). There are 30 days in November, that’s around 2,000 words a day.


So now that we’ve sufficiently scared you, here’s what we’re going to do to help you:


First, we have this thread! This is where you can post what you’re doing and maybe pieces of your writing, plot, or characters that you’re having trouble with or that you would like someone to look over.


Next, we have a brand new discord chat, if you want a quicker way to contact each other about your writing projects. All of you have to do is respond to this thread, and you’ll gain access right away.


Also every night during NaNoWriMo, we’ll have “write-ins”. Joining is optional, of course, but every night at 6:00 EST, we’ll all get into a call and for an hour, we’ll write, write, write! Each night, myself and/or @Calxiyn or maybe even other staff members, will be there to join and encourage you all!


If you have any questions, post them in this thread, and make sure to tell us what you’re going to be writing this NaNoWriMo!

Here's the official website if anyone wishes to check it out!

List of Participants:
Heart
Skittles
Glen
Calxiyn
Hero of Time
Maka
Mixt

 

This is so exciting and I'm super happy we can do this this year! I'm going to try and work on my novel instead of a Fanfic, since I just completed a 80,000 word Fanfic THIS month lol.

My novel right now is about a girl named Sonya who becomes paralyzed after her boyfriend (Dima) shots her accidentally when attempting to kill students in a school shooting. (Super cheerful, I know). I don't really have a "plot" sorted out, I don't really know if it HAS a plot. It's sort of like Fun Home (the Musical) in a sense where it's an older version of the main character going through her life up to that point and trying to figure out where things went wrong. Writing it is going to be a scary adventure, but it'll be nice having other people writing at the same time so it's less scary XD

 

What is 'Fun Home'? I'm not too found of musicals but this fanfic sounds very interesting.

 

It's not a fic of the musical xD it just kinda has the same idea. But anyway, Fun Home is about a women who's looking back on her life and is writing a graphic novel about her childhood and her gay father, it also centres around her own sexuality and things.

I say that "Sonya's Been Shot" (What I'm working on) is similar because there isn't really an Antagonist, it's all about personal struggle and the conflict is internal.

The musical was based off a graphic novel of the same name.

 

I am so doing this. Calls are a little early but should be able to make a few of them.

I'll be writing a novel that I hope to one day be published, and one i've been trying to get the motivation to start for a few months. It's set in a universe that was created by @Maka Albarn in what is hands down one of my favourite roleplays, and centres around a guy who seems to be discovering telepathic abilities happening all of a sudden at the same time as he begins having strange dreams. Turns out, he was a pretty powerful telepath who wiped his own memory in order to gain some control, and those memories are slowly starting to return, and with them comes the slow return of his "dark side" that simply wants to abuse the powers and wreak absolute havoc across the city.

 

Is this more of a fanfic or a novel? (I know you said novel but then you @ Maka so I wanted to just double check). I agree about the calling, maybe like once a week or month? I wish I could work on this y'all have some great ideas and I'm so inspired but 2k words a day is so much with a tight schedule ahhhh. (I should try and make time)

 

(And I'll tag @Glen cause he mentioned the Calls too lol)

Obviously every call/write in isn't mandatory. Although I'm sure we'd all love everyone to be at every one, It's mostly to help you be able to reach those 2,000 words.

I write 1k/45 minutes, but let's say most people do 1k an hour, that's an hour with us forcing them to write that may really help them finish for the day.

And I think it's important to also remember there are some nights you probably won't feel like writing, but you can join in the write ins to motivate other people and assist them as well.

Tldr: NO PRESSURE GUYS haha

 

A full novel, just using the universe she created. I did ask for permission and everything, but yeah definitely a novel.

 

How cool! I'm excited to read what you get started!

 

You'd better make sure she signs a contract ;P

 

Glenn, I or another staff member will add you as soon as possible.
Thanks so much for joining!

And to go off of what Cal said, no one should feel pressured; the point of NaNoWriMo, is to write, as much as you can of course, but don't be hard on yourselves either. If you want to set up your own personal goals of less or more words a day/week, feel free to do so! But no matter what, please remember to have a good time and enjoy what you're doing :)

 

Count me in. It'll give me a reason to work on my novel again. It's about a group of female pirates that travel to every corner of their world to stop a great evil ;p

 

I can't believe I'm doing this. But count me in.

I'll be picking up an old idea of mine. It's a fantasy about two characters and their individual journeys as they syphon away people's experiences. One takes in the good, and the other the bad ones. Going into what that what they gain and lose as they go, along with good old fashioned light vs darkness as they meet.

Since this is way out of my element, I'm thinking I'll be going easy on the word count. But I'm also so out of my element that I'm not sure how much would be appropriate. So I think I'll start with a 1000 words per day goal, make some adjustments by ear as we start, and by the end of the first week nail down exactly what I want the rest to look like.

 

*happy dances*

Thank you guys so much for joining! I'll be sure add you to the chat for this :)

 

I know this wasn't planned but I hopped on to do a plot point planning write-in! Anyone who wants to jump in is welcome~~

 

So today I was able to hop in quickly and do a write in. From 6:00-9:00, I wrote out a scene by scene outline. I estimate that if every scene is 500-1000 minimum words (some are very long though), that I have at least 7,000-14,000

And that... isn't a lot? Lol. I thought I planned around half way through the book, or at least a quarter, but that's NOT EVEN CLOSE. Obviously we'll see how long everything is in the end, and I'll tell you guys how much of this outline actually helped for NaNoWriMo.

As for other things I wanted to do as Pre-NaNo stuff, I set up my sponsor page, profile on NaNoWriMo (adult) and the Kindergarten through Grade 12 NaNoWriMo site.



Because I did that, I had to write my "back cover" synopsis and this is what I got:

 

In about 20 Minutes our first Write In will be starting :)

If anyone else would like to join NaNoWriMo at any point during the month, feel free to join us :)

 

I was able to get 2210 words done today! It wasn't as much as I wanted, but considering I had to rewrite all of my scene by scene outlines. I got inspired and a friend suggested I do something different.

I'm having two POV's now instead of one, Chloe and Sonya. They're in the middle of a huge fight and they're trying to figure out what went wrong during the year that could have caused "this" (This being the shooting, but a new reader would only see it as referring to their broken down friendship). Chloe and Sonya have two different perspectives on the same scene, which makes it very fun to write. You see how different two characters remember the same event, and the lack of understanding between them that could cause so many problems within their relationship.

I'm NOT starting the book at the shooting anymore like I had originally planned. As for my plot outline, I'm thinking that I have about 30,000 words done - so half way through the novel is pretty much planned out and it's just me writing!

My favorite lines for the day are:

----------------------------------------

“You want to know what happened to the person you knew?
She turned into a miserable, wronged misanthrope who remembers her perfect, planned out future exactly how it should have been, and strives to remember nothing that actually happened.” (Sonya speaking to Chloe, Chapter 1)

----------------------------------------

From the moment I saw him I knew I hated him. Whether it was because of my mother’s prodding to try and use me to climb the political ladder, or because of the way Sonya looked at him, I knew that I hated him. (Chloe first seeing Dima, Chapter 1)

 

Wow, this is so cool. I wanna join in too!

My story is called Enter Into Tepiniz; Paradise, Or Is It?, and I've been working on it since I was 16 years old. I got up to like chapter 11, and then stopped because life got in the way. But it keeps coming back to my mind, so I want to finish it really badly.

Theme: Dark Fiction
Age Range: Adolescence to Young Adults I think
Setting: Fictional Town of East Texas, another world called Tepiniz
Point of View/Writing Style: Third person point of view from Kristine (my main character)
Synopsis:

Spoiler: Sorry it's long

It's about a girl named Kristine who moved into a small fictional town in East Texas. The town is really weird and creepy, like children and teenagers are not welcomed there and treated indifferently. She's instantly an outcast, but finds friendship in two friends, Sam and Reyna. The small group of friends are bullied, and eventually shoved and locked into this old abandoned house that is a town urban legend. Those who go in the house are usually not found ever again, dark stuff happened behind closed doors in the past, and people had kept it as a dark reminder of what happens when a stranger from the outside is welcomed into their midst.

The teens are locked in the cellar of the place, and in the cellar there's a cedar chest with odd carvings on it. They open it up to find a stairway leading downwards. Not seeing any other way out, the teens hop on in and go down the stairs. Suddenly they're enveloped by light, and then bam. They end up in a different dimension where the humans turn into old fashion toys from the late 1800's to early 1900's. The place is called Tepiniz, and it was originally designed as a sanctuary for lost or forgotten toys, almost like a heaven. And then this evil marionette appeared in the world, angry at mankind and experienced in dark magic, so he put a curse on Tepiniz and opened a gateway for children under the age of 18 to be enticed, come in, they turn into toys based on their personality and that time era, he makes them happy and comfortable as possible. Then, when they forget where they came from because of the dark magic, or don't want to go back to the real world, and if he has their name, he takes their souls and eats them up, and they're never seen or heard from again.

Then someone else (who I haven't developed fully yet as a character) countered the curse the best she could, opening a way out from Tepiniz. She also placed a magic mirror at The Way In for the mirror to give them a toy name so they could protect themselves against the curse, and held on to the keys to the Way In and the Way Out, waiting for someone to carry them and close the gates once and for all to free all the children who had been lost previously.

SOOOO, back to this small group, Reyna turns into a rag doll with a noose around her neck, Kristine turns into a porcelain doll, and Sam turns into a stuffed dog. Tepiniz's dark magic also has a way to make fears from the Real World more of a reality in this world so they will become too afraid to go back. Kristine struggles with grief and PTSD, Reyna deals with abuse, and Sam deals with self-harm. The story mostly focuses on Kristine though and how she works through her pain while helping her friends work through their pain.

I'm planning to divide this book up into a triology. First book focuses on them trying to get out, second book focuses on the keys and "losing" to the bad guys, third book is when the good guys fight back and end things once and for all.

My Goals/What I want out of this: .... Pretty much trying to find motivation to finish and to keep my thoughts organized. Cause this is one complicated story I took on. I made a map to Tepiniz too and even went back to develop each setting at a time. The Way Out is hidden away in mountains on the other side of the world, so they meet people who are wanting to help the children find a way out, break the curse, and stay out of the evil marionette's clutches. But with my schedule and my depression, kind of been fighting myself to not abandon this.

I even went back and started to rewrite it cause my writing style changed. If it hasn't left my head, I guess I need to finish it

 

Yesterday I was able to complete 2,025, and today I completed 2,059 words! This has brought the total past 6,000 words!



Over the past few days, it's been a lot of character building. With the two POV's, you see that Sonya and Chloe are very different. Chloe dislikes Dima, who was officially introduced yesterday, while Sonya thinks he's "cute". Chloe thinks Dima's house is "scary" and "vampire-like" to a degree, while Sonya thinks it's amazing and cool. These contrasts really show the personality of both girls, and it'll be interesting to watch them grow and develop into the people they are in the presence time of the book - as right now, they're only looking at past memories.


There's also that saying "there's three sides to every story, one side, the other side, and what actually happen", and it's true. Chloe sees things one way, while Sonya sees the other. Because it's not omnipresent, you never really know what the real truth it, but you may be able to find something in the middle.


Chloe thinks Sonya is ignoring her, so she puts her earbuds in. Sonya turns around to speak with her and attempts to include her, she sees she has her earbuds in and doesn't want to disturb her. Their perspective of a situation is very different, and since they're both telling each other their sides of the story, at least how they REMEMBER it. (Remember is important, as memories can lie), they can come to an agreement about the truth.


As for Dima, his character development will be important. He goes from someone who is very meek and quiet, to the character we see later in the novel who is rebellious and strong. That development is starting to build now and it's exciting to try and do such slow burning changes to a character.


My favourite lines for the past 2 days are:


I stood between them so she would feel comfortable, even if she ignored me and instead talked to Dima. I was an invisible wall between what hurt her and what helped her, and I got no credit for doing it. (Chloe speaking about her relationship with Sonya (in the past), Chapter 1)


I was supposed to protect her, and maybe she was right - maybe I caused her loss. And the biggest thing I caused her to lose was herself


(Chloe speaking about Sonya (presently), Chapter 1)


“Lorenzo is up to no good, you should have just pushed him out of his seat.” (Sonya, talking about Lorenzo, Chapter 2. Wow that was savage)

"You weren’t even paying attention to me! How do you know where I’m looking?”
“Because I have a sense for this stuff!” Sonya announced to me. “I can feel it in my bones when Lorenzo is near, and even more so when you’re staring at him.” (Sonya yelling at Chloe for staring at Lorenzo, Chapter 2. I enjoy Sonya's dramatics)