NaNoWriMo

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>tried to do it last year
>stopped 8 days in
Send help senpai

>irregular / on-demand shifts until further notice
>need all the overtime money I can get because mortgage
not happening

>>49645127
I wouldn't know what to write, much less where to start.

>>49645127
Did it (and "won") in 2011. Was a useful exercise in writing a lot every day and finishing something, but I don't think it's going to make any real impact on literature, and it won't automatically make you a better writer. If you're thinking about doing it, do it. Not much to lose. But depending on what you expect to get out of it, you may be disappointed.

Btw my story was super lame and cliché. It involved a quest to find and get help from a bunch of mythical beasts (dragon, gryphon, phoenix, and giant, who were all the only example of their kind) to save MC's village from a monster. None helped, but the quest hardened the MC enough that he could go back and win on his own. 50,012 words, most of it bad. Got some cool NPC and location ideas out of it, though.

>>49645685
Oh, and my tip/trick: Start with 5-7 days of 3000-4000 words, then follow a budget of 1500 words per day (or more if you plan to have off days). It's way better to get ahead early and possibly slip back down to on-budget than follow a budget and then have to work your way back after missing a day.

>>49645127
I'll try.... casually

>>49645127
Yeah, I'll give it a shot. Anyone need a writing buddy?

>>49646020
Sure senpai id be down

>>49646253
Sweet, my nano username's Keyboard. Hmu senpai

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I'm gonna write about someone buying a farm in the mountains and then trying to live Harvest Moon style but there are actual spirits in the forest and he makes a deal with one of them to swap places for one week in winter when everyone is wearing masks because of traditional alpine holidays.

>>49645127
I'm considering doing it. I'd like to have something accomplished for a change, even if literature isn't my forte

I think I'll do one of those "dubs chooses my next book's story" threads on /lit/, or roll on a list of a thousand prompts I saved from those "ITT: Write an anime plot" threads on /a/

Tried last year. Didn't get very far. I think I could do it if I could only get the ball rolling, but starting is the hard part.

If I can finish this 'real' book first, yeah I'm going to do it.

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>>49645127
Did it in 2011.

Twice after I fell ill.
The year after my pc died and my backup failed....

Going to give it a try this year, but I fear for my safety.

As for tips, I suggest getting a head start. Give yourself some leeway so that you won't get too far behind if something happens.

I'm curious, how much writing experience have you had before jumping into a nanowrimo? What's the longest thing you written prior? What size have you written the most and how many of them?

Tried last year, got like 17k words in before realizing I had no direction and giving up.

Since then I'm more into writing with an outline, so it all depends on if I can get a somehat interesting idea outlined by november.

Planning on writing a story but inspiration struck and I'm not waiting for Nanowrimo.

It's about modern gods coming into their own after all the old gods were killed.

>>49649594
I've worked as a technical writer and editor for four years. Currently I'm an English teacher.

You don't need any writing experience for Nano. The point of Nano isn't to make you a published writer, it's to expose you to the necessities of the craft.

1667 words per day for a month will get you a 50,000 word novel. That's not an easy task, especially if you've never really forced yourself to sit down and write for two or three hours a day.

>>49649983
>The point of Nano isn't to make you a published writer, it's to expose you to the necessities of the craft.
I realise that, yes. I'm just curious how much prior practice people had before having even a remote chance at that challenge.

Proclaiming "I'm gonna do nanowrimo!" when I can't manage even a short fic would be just laughable.

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>>49645458
no need to thank

>>49649983
>the necessities of the craft
Which is what exactly?

Also any other tips on how to start and keep going would be nice.

>>49650018
You don't need any experience. I did it my first year without having written anything longer than 2 or 3 pages.
>Proclaiming "I'm gonna do nanowrimo!" when I can't manage even a short fic would be just laughable.
You can "manage" to write anything. You won't be happy with it but you can write it. You just need to lower your standards.

>>49650752
As someone who writes basically twice the NaNoWriMo quota a month (though on different and often pointless projects), I can answer that.
There are a lot of people who will tell you to use all sorts of new-age tricks and philosophies to make writing easy, but the thing is it's not supposed to be easy.
In the end, you need to be hard on yourself and not forgive mess-ups, delays or procrastination. Set aside a neat two hours every day for writing, preferably with the same environment, refreshments and music, in order to create a good routine - I usually stop by a McDonalds in the neighborhood and order a coffee and two cheeseburgers, then start writing at one of the back tables until my laptop runs out of battery.
Write down everything you think of, and only go back on something when it's outright wrong in terms of established canon - editing while you write isn't only going to prevent you from concentrating, it's also likely to end up in you deleting perfectly good bits because you're getting self-conscious. Get into it and write as much as you can.
The clincher here is that you really need to be hard on yourself. It's probably easier with a low self-esteem, but the fact stands that there are no perfect methods or shortcuts but the old knuckle grease method. Every second you spend making mindmaps or following plot guides is a second you don't spend writing.
TL;DR: The best way is still the simplest. Find a place you can write in every day, your choice of caffeinated beverage and your choice of music (I prefer music with foreign lyrics or instrumental music, since it's distracting to hear the language you're writing in while you're concentrating) and buckle down. Start writing as fast as possible, and don't let small worries get you down. Fix outright mistakes and lies, not beauty marks or iffy spots. Don't use writing time on notes - if possible, eat a light snack while sitting in front of your computer and thinking about the plot, then get straight to it.

>>49650821
That's really the kicker. I cringe at my own writing even when given time, and I will cringe as I'm writing if I'm trying to shit out a certain quota of words a day. I can't seem to separate the process of writing and editing, but doing both together kills me.

>>49650912
Just edit in december or january that's what i do.

>>49650821
It's not about level of writin, I just can't make myself sit the fuck down and make vomit upon the blank word sheet.

>>49650901
That's all good advice, you need to make some kind of ritual out of it. Though I could never write in public.

>>49650991
Writing at home can be distracting (the fridge is so close and the Internet is better), so I prefer to put on my headphones and write in McDonalds when I can.
It's also a good exercise in concentration - if you can write when a party of suburban 14-year-olds drunk off Breezers and other horribly sweet alcohol settles down by a table two meters away from you and starts gossiping at volumes closer to screaming, I think you're pretty well set in the focus department.
It's the only thing that's still above my level. I've tolerated furries, homeless people and white trash, but the only thing that really gets my goat is drunken teenagers.

>>49651051

UK?

>>49651051

>writing in public

This cannot be stressed enough how fast you can get shit down with just a pen and a hamburger.

Today for me was a group of squeaky pakis who laughed like hyenas on helium and a chinese couple where them man couldn't put a muzzle on his barking bitch.

Still though got plenty of work done.

>>49652933
Denmark, but we share a few of the same problems.
Namely drunken suburban brats, crowds of immigrant twenty-somethings clustering in public areas, homeless people drunk off Carlsberg and a beer-swilling, fast-food-munching stratum of the population that does nothing but drink on the dole (80% of them seem to be former carpenters or masons) and watch football on TV while complaining about immigrants.

>>49650912
editing comes later.

all that matters now is word count.

>>49653257
take it easy hitler.

>>49653345
You mean you don't go on 4chan to complain about real life?

>>49653372
I do, but I left those complaints behind at 17.

>>49653393
Some people complain as a way of life.
I'm not even particularly mad at the things I complain about anymore, they just come out on their own.

>>49645759
You really produce anything if quality at 3-4k.

>>49653480
Saying that is admitting defeat.
There are people who crank out 10.000 words of good quality every day for years, and they do that because they're not afraid of trying. They do it because they don't make excuses, postpone, take pauses, "pamper themselves", quit early or otherwise sideline their writing because they don't care enough about it to put in a little effort.
If you're making excuses, you need to ask yourself why you're writing. If you're trying to snipe people who put in more effort than you like you seem to be (that grammar went wrong somewhere), you're probably just feeling bitter at other people being able to do better than you instead of trying harder to become better so you can get up there.
Writing, in my experience, works best as something with a hurdle you can barely even see. As soon as you say that something is "good enough", you admit that it needs less effort, and it always does. As soon as you blame others, "talent" or the world instead of your own laziness, you're sidelining writing in favor of your own comfort and should reconsider if that's what you want to be doing.
When writing a lot, you can't expect other people to be there for you every step of the way and reaffirm you - you need to write for the sake of the writing itself, and you can't allow yourself any luxuries or breaks.
There are some people who have talent, sure, but this isn't drawing where talent is 80%, imagination is 10% and training is 10%. Writing is, in my own experience, 5% talent, 20% imagination and 75% brutal hard work. If you're not about to collapse, you're not doing your best. It's not easy, it's not something that'll have people fawning over you and it's something you do solely for the end product.

>>49653623

>10000 words everyday
>good quality

Haha

>>49645127
Just signed up, thanks, OP.
I'm actually going to just buckle down and do it.

Cliché rubbish is ok, right? I'm thinking wild west fantasy.

>>49653623
>There are people who crank out 10.000 words of good quality every day for years
No there really aren't. 10k a day is a lot for someone who writes as a full time position, and likely will be of poor quality. If you're writing full time it is better to write 2000 usable words than 10000 of drivel. Honestly you have no idea what you're talking about and are just shouting meme slogans and empty encouragement.

>>49653623
>this isn't drawing where talent is 80%, imagination is 10% and training is 10%
Holy fuck you have no idea what you're talking about. Actually kill yourself. As an artist people who take this attitude fucking disgust me.

>>49653623
>thinks working without breaks make you produce higher quality product
Do you want everyone to know you have no idea how the creative process functions?

>>49653623
This is some advanced level projecting, god damn.

>>49653738
>>49653788
See?
No matter how you camouflage it, you're being bitter. You're shielding yourself from having to practice by dismissing the results of harder workers as being bad by definition.
How do you think Worm, for example, got written? How do you think some original fiction writers on the Internet write their shit?
One of my friends is a member of a fanfic writing group on a certain site (so it's Spacebattles), the leader of which consistently pumps out ten thousand words a day. Why is it going to be bad just because it's a lot?
I really want you to answer this. I improvise most of my writing, and how much I write really depends on the day and my mood. Sometimes I crank out three thousand and sometimes ten thousand - and most of the time, the really long passages are the ones where I get in gear and write better.
Also, if you're writing full time, you have a quota, and will get fired if you put in a fifth of that for the day.
t. someone who writes north of 100.000 words every month and still doesn't like bragging with it because it's still too little
>>49653831
The creative process works through concentration and getting in the mood. I've gotten better by leaps and bounds since I started being hard on myself - back when I wasn't, I put out patchy, stylistically inconsistent, overly simple and shallow diarrhea. I wouldn't say I'm good now, but I'm much better than I was, because I know how to get into the mood and just write.
I really didn't expect this much anger from saying that you just need to work hard. I think I realize now why writers are stereotyped as lazy liberal-arts mooches who just sit around for weeks waiting for "the faucet to come on". I had that limitation once, and it only made me unproductive and dissatisfied.

>>49653911
>One of my friends is a member of a fanfic writing group on a certain site (so it's Spacebattles), the leader of which consistently pumps out ten thousand words a day. Why is it going to be bad just because it's a lot?
Why are you using fanfic as your standard for writing? Are you actually trolling?

Look at the writing habits of published authors. People who produce on a scale of 10k a day are in such a minority to be near non existent.

>>49653911
>t. someone who writes north of 100.000 words every month and still doesn't like bragging with it because it's still too little
Nigga, you're retarded. You have a fixation on entirely the wrong thing. You have to be trolling, I can't take you seriously.

Nigga, tell me how many published works you have if you produce 100k a month.

Or link your fucking writing, I want to judge it.

>>49653806
Say what you want, really. Just as the people here are pissed at me for saying something I thought was completely common-sensical and has only had positive results in the bucketloads for me, you might have had an experience that's completely different from anything I've ever seen in my life and any of my artist friends. It is possible, I admit that, but there's a lot more talent involved with drawing.
Everyone can put fingers to keyboard and write something. It won't be good, but the hurdle is literally only that you're literate and have capacity for creative thought. Everything else is just training - there are people who have a good grasp of it from the get-go, but these people just start off higher up than others, and don't necessarily have better qualifications.
With drawing, you're fucked if you aren't born with good hand-eye coordination, because without that you can's even get through training. If you have bad circulation, big fingers, difficulty with colors, nervous tension or the like, you're anywhere from severely impaired to completely fucked.
>>49653935
The part with the fanfic was something I was planning on using as a springboard and then slipped out of sight. I can't keep consistency with this post window.
Look, do you actually expect people who get published in this day and age to be competent? This is the age where 50 Shades of Grey gets torn off the shelves. Getting published is no longer a hallmark of good quality, because this is a market and not a hobby fair.
>>49653955
I'll be the first to admit that I write stupidly fucking densely. It's a matter of choice, though, because I just plain like details and detours - but I know that if I post it after all of this, I'll get beaten up for it because it's written for a very narrow audience.
I might be focusing on the wrong thing, but it's a matter of my mindset. If I don't write 3000 words every day, I write 0 words every day for months. If I slip once, it shows for months.

>>49653955
It's some yellow press isn't it?

>>49654000
You're just blaming others for your failings and admitting you're a shit writer. No one will take you seriously unless you post the fucking writing. Your projecting is off the charts and I got to ask. From your writing you sound exceedingly autistic, are you?

>>49654000
You sound like someone who will never be published and don't have a mind to. Honestly essentially all of your points are either blatantly wrong or very off base. You project harder than anyone I've ever seen and you write like an aspie. Fucking seriously it's sad.

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>tfw waiting on replies from publishers

>>49654023
How am I blaming others for my failings? I'm blaming exclusively myself, and that's how I keep on writing.
I'm not autistic (and I mean this), I just write a lot. I'm perfectionistic, that's true, but in the end I can't stand taking shortcuts or being lazy, even in posts on 4chan.
There's also a difference between putting up one's writing and hanging a "kick me" sign on your back. I told you that I write for people who like the stuff that I like, and there aren't a lot of them. I do it intentionally and knowingly, but after an argument like this, there's no way it'll be seen neutrally. If another thread pops up, I'll post some of my stuff, but as it is, I know that it's going to be seen in a worse light than it would be if I posted it in the beginning.
I'm fucking tired of the word "projection" being used incorrectly, though. It doesn't mean "being mad because you're shit", but "imposing one's own problems on other people while denying you have them yourself, as a psychological defense mechanism". An example would be a gay man who's frothingly Republican because he knows at some level he's gay and wants to protect himself against it.
>>49654065
If what I have to do to get published and not "write like an aspie" is to write like a lazy junior-high student (or worse yet, you), I'm completely fucking fine with not getting published.
Writing is something you do for writing's sake. Publishing is something people do for money's sake.
The two are only compatible when the writing that the author puts out is the exact same as what the market wants, and if not, someone took a loss in getting it out. Guess who it almost always is.

That guy has the right idea, writing is mostly just sitting down and shitting out words. The more you are used to just shit out words, the more you can concentrate on other things, the more you have already written, the more you can edit to make it better.

100.000 still sounds a bit high, though

>>49654123
He's correct on one point. To write you need to do it regularly and have dedication. Besides that? He's wrong on all accounts and acts like a 15 year old trying to convince others he's intellectual.

>>49654123
100k is retard high, he's claiming he writes "for a narrow audience" to try and cover for his failings in his own mind while attacking the habits of others. It's classic inferiority complex.

>>49654135
That's right, take your caffe latte pause and wait for the faucet to come on. I suffered through four years of listening to people like you in the classroom, and I'm not about to waste time on having my posts replied to with one-line ad hominems from people whose idea of a witty insult is to claim they're the same age as them.
>>49654150
I literally started writing that much because I wanted to put out stuff I didn't see elsewhere. You might think you're hitting the nail on the head because this is the Internet in which everyone is right behind their own screen, but most of the assumptions you make are cheap and smack more of projection than anything I've ever seen before.
See, Mom, I can sling meaningless buzzwords without knowing their meaning too.

>>49654185
>I'm not about to waste time
You're not doing a good job of convincing me of this.

>>49654150
What failings?

>>49654185
Go ahead, prove me wrong. Post your writings. Because right now you're just whining like a child.

>>49654206
It's in the claims of only writing for a narrow audience more than anything. Someone who produces in a level of more than a million words a year and is not published has been doing something wrong. Unless their goal is to not be published. He even states he does not write in a way that is publishable (his "I write densely" and "narrow audience" claims). However he is acting as if he is an authority where he obviously not only isn't but actually refuses to try and back his own position by providing writing. He's acting like a coward. It's attacking others while not exposing himself.

>>49654185
>projects hard
>makes a bunch of unsupported claims
>people call him retarded
>gets super defensive
This is a lot of buttmad.

Tried it the last 3 years, didn't get very far for any of them, but last year's was the best I've done. I still intend to finish what I started for it and then eventually try to get it "published" (probably just release it online or something, since I don't own the setting I used for it)

I've got a cool idea for this year, and I'm going to make another attempt, but I'm not confident in my ability to stick to it. Probably won't finish once again, but at least I'll have yet another bulk of writing to work from.

>>49654243
People that haven't published anything either and refuse to put no effort into writing more aren't on a stronger position than him in this argument.

I stopped dreaming long ago

>>49654293
I never argued to not put in effort. Writing takes dedication. However writing as much as he does will simply produce low quality drivel. If he was writing for himself then that's fine, but telling others to produce in a manner that will produce unusable text is pointless. At that rate he will have to completely redo the text, the fact he refuses to post his writing makes me even more sure of it.

Basically he is telling others to created a way that gets them no closer to quality work.

When one writes they need to think through what they write, consider each sentence and how it fits into the whole. Word vomit is just that, vomit.

To support my claim I point to the habits of great authors, those who write full time are much closer to what I'm saying than him. Even an EXTREMELY prodigious writer like Steven King does not produce on that scale. There is a reason for that.

>>49654122

Not either of the people you've been arguing with but saying that writing 10k words per day is some sort of goal you should strive for is just bad advice. Also kek @ your implication that you're only not published because you write too much... Superkek

>>49654000
>The part with the fanfic was something I was planning on using as a springboard and then slipped out of sight. I can't keep consistency with this post window.
So you write 10,000 words a day, but can't even keep track of what you've said in a few hundred on here?

>>49654185
>I can write all day AND shitpost on 4chan!

>>49654361
As I said, 100.000 is too much, but no writer except the really artsy ones, consider each sentence. This is bullshit. As soon as you found your style and became comfortable in it, it has to flow naturally. And it's always better to edit afterwards than to be stuck in this mindset while writing. You shouldn't show anyone your first draft anyway.

>>49654597
>As soon as you found your style and became comfortable in it, it has to flow naturally. And it's always better to edit afterwards than to be stuck in this mindset while writing.
It's much less pausing between sentences, and more pausing occasionally to consider the overall product. Often if you write purely by flow you'll move down a tangent that often only feels right in the mindset of writing and box yourself into a corner. Each sentence is too much, but each paragraph is by no means out of the question.

>>49654635
If it works for you, but certainly doesn't for me and other people I talk with.

>>49654699
Which is fine, writers are different. As long as you're not too far out there you should be fine.

Just to throw my two cents in, I only stop to consider my direction when I have to decide when events should occur. A closed scene (one where all the actors are already on the page and nothing surprising is about to happen) can be written without ever stopping unless I feel compelled to work in some cleverness or some foreshadowing. But as soon as there's a character or an event that can appear at any given time I felt like, I have to start considering where I open the scene up, how much exposition and dialogue I give before the thing arrives.

For example, in my novel, there's a scene that starts as the main character starts fiddling with his lighter after having sex. He and his partner chat for a bit, I open up his mind on the page and explain some of his behavior by explaining his backstory (via dialogue) and the whole time there's someone standing outside waiting to cut in and let him know his sister has been hospitalized, but hesitant to do so because they know he really fucking needs the stress relief. So I had to balance the needs of the writing along with the character of the interrupter to decide when to stop the chit chat.

Without the interrupter, the scene wouldn't have been able to carry a chapter, but the purpose of the chapter was the closed conversation to spill out his brains for the reader to see. And if I recall correctly, that was something like 6000 words I wrote in a couple hours, because it was mostly just a dialogue between two characters I knew well, who had never been able to talk alone.

>>49653806
>artist
>2016
>male

haha

>>49654361
King said that you should try and get down 1500-2000 words a day if you write fulltime.

Guys how do you write?

Do you plan or just go with it?

I usually have 4-5 scenes in mind, but little idea how characters get from point a to b. And while I generally know where I want my characters end up, I don't map the story so to speak.

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>>49654123
>That guy has the right idea, writing is mostly just sitting down and shitting out words.
It is always a very sad sight to see a rational point by latched upon by a shitter that ruins it.


...you go back to pol, captcha, dammit

>>49656446
And by that I mean that 10 000 a day is just ridiculous. One has to be either overly verbose or very inspired all the time.

>>49654572
Well hey that 10k words gotta come from somewhere!

Anybody give enough fucks to plunge his rants here into the wordcounter?

>>49656497
About 1500 to 2000.

>>49656446
Anthony Burgess said something very similar as I recall. After some sort of (brain?) cancer scare he knuckled down on his writing and would sit every day and write a couple of thousand quality words per day.

>>49656473
Then you should probably map the story. I have nothing but a simple text file for the next scene, roughly summarizing it. The whole story I mostly write down in brief notes, going from chapter to chapter, scene to scene, also in brief notes. There are programs out there which promise you to help making a plot, for me those are just fancy tools that don't make you more creative.

It's important to get these things out of your head before writing, but of course you should change things, sometimes you might discover that a plot would work better in a certain way you couldn't know beforehand. But you will never know that if you don't write it down first! It also helps you finding flaws in your plot before you are already writing these flaws down.

> tfw wrote a really shitty novel in like middle school
I'll sign up but there's no guarantee I'll be able to do it.

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>>49656473
It's a little of both.

I teach my students to look at stories from Vonnegut's point of view, as a progression of emotional highs or lows. It's a simple way of plotting out a story and it works for most of them.

The only outliers are those where the emotional tones are more or less inconsistent, like in Hamlet, where the audience is never quite sure if new developments in the story are beneficial or detrimental.

It's good to have 4 or 5 scenes in mind. Focus on those and make them great. You may find that developing one of your scenes leads you to a better story overall. My only advice is to not approach a story like a director approaches a film - having two or three kickass scenes and then a bunch of filler and exposition to pad it out. I would recommend extending the scenes you have in mind so they have a natural progression from one another. Don't make them "scenes" per se, make them almost like contained stories in themselves.

Source: Crime and Punishment.

The whole fucking story revolves around one dramatic scene. Raskolnikov spends the WHOLE FUCKING STORY trying to remember what he did during that scene, exactly, and trying to outwit his friends and family.

Ugh. I want to write a novel but if I do then it means that I can kiss GMing goodbye until the end of November or until I give up as I won't have time to do the planning needed for the game I hope to run.

Anyway. If I do decide to write a novel it would involve the MC getting thawed out of a cryogenic tube and finding himself in a world that seems to be a typical fantasy setting however a lot of things seem out of place.

Everyone's gets their substance from this gruel like food that emerges from "holy wells". The act of crafting is confined to the eccentric as "holy forges" can literally make anything.

Our amnesiac hero decides that in order to recover his lost past, he needs to go into the dungeons that connect the biomes of this strange world together. There he will find a host of strange creatures and even stranger goddesses eventually he finds out that everyone is on a spaceship and he is the sole survivor of the original passengers.

>>49657788
>>49656607
I wasn't looking for pointers, I wanted to know about your process.

>>49658209
Jesus, you're an ass. They both gave you examples.

>>49658209
Well fuck you too anon

>>49658238
Didn't mean to be an ass, just wanted to invite people to share and not lecture.

>>49658266
What's the difference, dude?

>>49645127
Done it once, last year, got up to 60000 and stopped though wasn't able to finish the story.

Going to be doing a re-write of an existing shindig a friend passed off onto me.

Got my fucking whips ready. Self flagellation a go once skeleton war activity ceases.

>>49651051
Does it really reduce distraction that much? I never saw the point in it personally, but I do get distracted quite easily so I may give it a try.

Who
>better prose than Joyce
here?

t. /lit/

I'm being facetious, but you do see this all the time there.

>>49650174
Son of a BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!

Fuck it! If she can get published, there's nothing fucking stopping ME!

>>49653335
I hear you, I believe you, but for the love of me I can't follow through. Very difficult habit of mine to break.

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>>49645127

I'm gonna try. I think my setting is developed enough, that my narrative concept is solid, and that I have enough loose ideas floating around to make it happen.

>inb4 I crash and burn within a week

Fuck yes, NaNoWriMo! I've been doing it for years now!

I talk it over in #writescribbles on Rizon, sometimes. I got into it long after I started writing, so I don't have any specific tips or tricks, but I always ignore the quota and just slam out as much as I can in a day. Sometimes I run way over the limit, sometimes slightly under and I have to push myself.

>>49645127

I intend to use it to finally complete the Novel I've been working on for the last four years.

>>49658266

Act like a student, get lectured.

>>49658196
Then don't nano it with everybody, just set yourself writing goal of per-day words for novel that still leave you with enough space to prep your GMing.

>>49660396
Joyce who

>>49661855
James "Arse Full of Farts" Joyce, pioneer in stream of conciousness writing in which he wrote the thoughts of the narrator telling the story rather than their spoken word. I hope you fucking despise periods.

https://archive.org/stream/MollyBloomMonologEnd/MollyBloomMonologhyEnd_djvu.txt

>>49645127
I'd love to write more. The main problem is being in school, where I have to write a lot, anyway. Just none of it is stories, all economic analysis and metallurgical processing documents. Wooh.

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I should start reading actual books again. Fanfic is plentiful but really, really bad at having planned story arcs instead of "chapters as the world presents".

>>49661924
I actually find I write more creative fiction during semesters - mostly greentext, unfortunately - likely because I do so without having to physically change my environment much from academic writing, yet the quick scenes are a calming break from the relatively uptight schoolwork.

>>49645127
>Exam Schedule released
>Nov 2nd
>Nov 7th
>Nov 15th
>Nov 21st

Maybe next year...

>>49660396
>>49661907
>pioneer in stream of consciousness
>Joyce, not Woolf
Please.

>>49645127
Probably not. Work and school overlap hilariously so.

I'm going to go for something short maybe.

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>>49660396
>I'm going to write my special snowflake novel that no one but me can understand.
>That'll show them!

Joyce is garbage.

>>49645127
50,000 words is too much for me at this stage. I'm going to try and write something for The Bard though. Baby steps, and all that.

>>49645127
I'm writing some easy YA to try and build proper habits.

Someday I hope I'll have the competence to write an oversized fantasy series.

>>49645127
Maybe. I used to love writing, and then life kicked my ass. Lost my love for writing.

I've been thinking about it more, lately. It's been years since I wrote anything proper, but the ideas don't stop coming. Once you've conditioned yourself to think like this, it doesn't go away. It doesn't help that I have these dreams, occasionally, that have setting, plot, characters. Then I wake up and think "that would make a good story" only to remember I don't really write anymore.

I think I might return to the story I failed out of this the last time I tried it. Pure Id-fic science fiction. Just start over, do it right this time around.

Tried a test run yesterday. Only managed about 380 words before I ran out. Gonna try again later today. How do I get up to that 1667 mark. Help me /tg/, how do I do this?

I was going to write an epic about gay gryphon porn, but I was worried I'd get sued by Mercedes Lackey.

>>49664463
I think it helps to visualize things. To have a clear picture of where you're going before you start. Say you're studying for some course or another, which is easier: Tell yourself to study for X hours that day, or telling yourself to study X amount of text that day?

I'd wager the latter. You have a clear beginning and end. In effect, you're lifting an evaluation you'd be making constantly in the former (have I studied enough?) and just deciding it a priori.

I've written 2000+ words in a day with comparitive ease, but they weren't on stories. They were on character bios for characters I used to play on forum RPG's. I already knew what was going to be there, I just needed to type it out.

So I think you need to make a quick plan: What's happening in the bit you're about to write about. Which characters are there, what they're doing, and where the scene is going to end. That's the same way of taking a doubt you'd normally have during writing, and putting it aside for the time being.

>>49664463
Outline your goal for the day.

"Today I'm going to develop this side character some more."

Then move on to specifics.

"She's going to be of some importance to the story, so I have to tie her into the setting somehow. She has to have something useful to contribute to my main character, so I have to figure that one out. And finally she has to have a believable motivation for helping or hindering my protagonist."

I think it was Kingsolver who said she had to write hundreds of pages before she ever even got to page one.

I just smashed out 2900 words in a day.

It was for an esoteric anthropology essay, but still, words!

>>49665509

How do you do it? I'm only 2,000 words into a 40,000 word Masters Thesis, which is due this November. I'm starting to get worried.

>>49664486
XS already did that one.

And better.

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>>49645508
>have a decent bit of money saved up
>potentially getting laid off just in time for NaNoWriMo
My NEET destiny is calling.

>>49660471
Spend some time this month reading stuff you like. That always gets things flowing for me.

Alright lads, I'mma do it. With no understanding of what makes for good story structure, with no analysis of what makes people enjoy reading a work, I'm just going to bash something out.

I can write individual scenes and edit well, but I can't get to a full novel. Every time I think I have a good idea, it just sort of peters out.

>>49665548
Oh shit, that's a big deal. You've at least done your research, right? I can crank out a fully formed essay in a day as long as I have my research in order.

>>49665611
>Alright lads, I'mma do it. With no understanding of what makes for good story structure, with no analysis of what makes people enjoy reading a work, I'm just going to bash something out.
If you're going to be that lazy, at least follow the 27 chapter structure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94F-3Z6CJJw&index=1&list=PLw366ja7A0_cxTj-ZPftTqst5LV_Tnilt

>>49661577
Shut up you faggot.

Nobody gives a fuck about some shitter teaching highschool english.

>>49665847
I feel you. I'm so overdosed on media every time I get an idea I promptly realize where i nicked it from. Really takes the wind out of your sails.

>>49665914

Remove rod from ass, stiffneck.

>>49665878

Sitting on a mountain of research, both primary and secondary. It's trying to write something with all that that's the problem.

>>49665939
remove the bull from your wife

>>49645127

How long should a novel be before it's published? is 60k words good enough or does it HAVE to be 70k? I've heard that publishers would rather do fewer words for new budding authors so it saves them money in case the books don't sell.

Anyways, my story is about a world at war, Napoleonic level of tech. It's fantasy/post apocalyptic.

There is an evil empire (who in a previous age conquered all of the psychics so that they had all of them, and use them as soldiers) fighting terrorists and a group of free peoples who just want them to fuck off. A terrorist manages to sneak a baby psion out of their fortress-monastery thing and into the hands of the free peoples. The rebels spread rumors of a legend of a chosen one who can use psychic powers but is not with the Empire and will destroy them from without. It scares the empire but everyone else praises her. One of the psion warriors is imprisoned for treason, which has never happened before, so he joins up with the terrorists, or just one rebel cell.

He runs into a girl who turns out to be this young psion, now a refugee as her home was annihilated by war. He was never supposed to meet her, that was supposed to be the job of another cell. So this rebel psion takes this girl under his wing, giving her this grand delusion that she's some chosen one that can do literally anything when the most she can do really is telekinesis. He was also one of the rebels spreading the information back before he ran into her. So is trying his best to sell this to everyone he can to keep this facade going.

I've finished two volumes at around 60k and am working on the third and sorta planning a fourth idk. I just hope nanowrimo can help me get it done. I finished the first one (completely unedited) during NaNo in 2012 at 50k with maybe half a week to spare. It really got me going.

Hopefully I can finish another.

>>49665973
Make a plan, a big map, break everything down into little sections of ~1500 words, then lump info under each section. Do it right now. Then, starting tomorrow, sit down and write one section per day.

Assuming it's due 1st November you still have 23 days to write it. That's about 1600 words per day. In fact, even if it's not due until the end of November pretend it is due November 1st, that way you have all of November to edit, revise and polish your work.

It's totally doable!

>>49666187

It's 3am right now, but I have to meet my supervisor in the morning and explain my lack of progress, so I'll do everything then.

Thanks for the advice, this has been eating away at me for weeks.

>>49666213
You've got this anon. Go conquer that thesis.

>>49665914
>>49665981
Is everything alright, anon?

Need some help for what I'm writing, important question. How do you perceive war? When I say the word, what pops into your mind? Now, what would a personification of war be like to you?

>>49666528
I usually have a few images that I relate to war.
>trenches from ww1
>armies facing eachother (knights/vikings, etc)
>desolate/ruined cities, like britain in ww2

>>49666528
The FDR quote.

>War is young men dying and old men talking.

For me war is an enormous waste. Talent gone to waste, families torn apart

>>49666528
I picture many soldiers in formation, armed and armoured for combat.

>>49666528
War brings out the worst and best in men, bravery and despair in the face of the enemy, moments of enjoying life and moments of death, compassion or cruelty towards prisoners, technology that can kill you or save your life, finding your own strength but for the purpose of killing, victory or defeat.

> can write decently well but plot is beyond me
How do I into stories? Anything I try to write ends up with a plot too short to contain a plot worthy of novel length, usually just short-story type stuff.

>>49668103
One guy goes through several adventures, with hints of connections, then they all tie together in the last one.

>>49668103
Then write short stories. Alternatively, fuck arbitrary length stipulations: the day of the 'don't send us your manuscript unless its 90,000 to 120,000 words' is dying. Kindle has rendered the need for a certain length, so that the book on the shelf looks like 'good value', completely moot.

>>49666528
Tanks rolling through a desolate, crumbling city.

Personification is a wounded soldier fighting on to protect his friends family etc.

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>>49666528
>When I say the word, what pops into your mind?

A whole bunch of really dumb shit. Like, really dumb. So dumb, it hurts.

Dumb shit like crawling through a half mile of raw sewage to try and recon a building, only for friendly helicopters to fly overhead and spook the enemy into heightened alertness and forcing you to withdraw through the same sewage you came through.

Dumb shit like an enemy combatant taking his infant son up on a rooftop and trying to engage armored vehicles with an AK, getting both him and the child killed.

Dumb shit like a platoon of dismounted infantry surviving only because the enemy's tanks happened to be on the far side of a hill at the precise moment they chose to move into a village.

Dumb shit like a senior officer misplacing vital supplies, charging ahead of his troops to attack locations where there is no enemy, and advocating the bloody torture of POW's, just because he can.

Dumb shit like a human being, barely old enough to start looking forward in life, being sent to kill another human being because of some dumb shit other human beings have said or done.

So, my personification of war would probably be a dude clad with weapon and helmet, alternately beating his chest and pissing himself in fear, shouting an violent stream of obscenities from his gaping mouth in between munching on bits and pieces of human flesh, with some carrion bird hovering next to his ear, telling him that what he's doing is a good thing.

>>49665548
Masters thesis is grim as fuck. I found it best with mine to start with the intro, and lay it out as paragraphs - I introduced each of the concepts (In mine it was some biology, geology and then some biophysics stuff), then I managed to hack out a bit about how I was going to show the fusion in the last bit.

Then I wrote my conclusions in a one line will eventually make a paragraph format - I'd done the work, so I knew my endpoint. I went back and filled in the gaps, discussion and results are a lot easier when you know what you want to say about your discussion and results first.
Save methods for penultimate - it seems easiest to write, but in reality it is the section that will make you want to tear your hair out the most imo.
Finish on abstract. Easiest to sum up the thesis when you have already written it. Write the abstract like it was the cliffs notes you give to your family when they ask what you are doing.
Good luck Anon!

>>49669369
edgy stuff

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>>49670434

Real life certainly is edgy. Every one of those points is paraphrasing actual accounts, mostly from the Iraq War.

>>49645759
>It's way better to get ahead early and possibly slip back down to on-budget than follow a budget and then have to work your way back after missing a day.
This. It also helps if you're excited and inspired early on, it's easier to write than when you're halfway through and kind of slogging.

Also, never ever ever look at your wordcount until you're definitively done for the day. Either you're short, and you'll stress about it, or you're over, and you'll suddenly lose all motivation to keep writing. Remember, your goal isn't 1667, it's 50k.

>>49650962
>I just can't make myself sit the fuck down and make vomit upon the blank word sheet.
You're not alone anon. I don't really care for the "write anything even if it's shit and you know you'll delete it in December" advice - it just doesn't grab me either. I know my writing isn't perfect and amazing, but it should at least be decent enough that I, at the time, think it's fine, even if after I read it later I see flaws.

It's possible to write 50,000 decent words. Not great, not fantastic, you're not going to hammer out the next great American novel your first try, but decent.

>>49653335
That isn't true.

If you type "a a a a a" you'll get 5 words. They're nonsense words, but words.

So clearly wordcount is not all that matters. They still must form coherent thoughts. I understand the logic of "It doesn't have to be perfect," but don't then go in the opposite extreme and say its quality is irrelevant. If the quality is too low, you get discouraged and stop writing, or lose interest and stop writing.

>>49645127
Fuck it. I'll try for a short story.

An entire goddamn novel isn't possible with my schedule though.

>>49666120

Anyone?

Also I think I may try publishing a couple short stories to kindle on Amazon, because why not.

>>49670960
>Sophistry, the post.

His intention was clear.

Take your autism pills.

>>49674378
Never rely on a wordcount. If the publisher gives a shit, they'll tell you. Otherwise, write what you want.

>>49674493
Try reading more than the first couple sentences. Read the whole post, and then reply to it.

My point is that there is -some- level in which quality of the words being counted matter. In discarding one extreme, that anon embraced its opposite, which is equally wrong. It's perfectly okay to want your 50k words to be, if not truly stellar and exceptional, at least acceptable for now.

>>49674798
>that anon embraced its opposite, which is equally wrong.
No one said anyone was going to type "a a a a a" 50,000 times. You are beating up a strawman.

>>49674951
Again. Please read posts before replying to them. I didn't say anyone said type "a a a a a". I specifically used that as something we would agree is NOT acceptable. You fucking retard.

The point, which I am explaining in increasingly condescending terms until you understand it, is that word count is not all that matters, not by a long shot.

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>>49675003
>>49674951
>>49674798

Children, please. You're arguing the same point. Wordcount is clearly not a sole point of judgment for quality.

The problem is that the NaNoWriMo novel checker USES wordcount to award victory. Not only that, it has no plagiarism checker.

Ignore the picture, I accidentally put it in the post and I'm too lazy to close and reopen the thread.

OH FUCK
I just remembered that I promised a girl I'd read her's from last year and get back to her with the notes I took.

She never brings it up but now I need to do it fuck thanks anon

>>49675071
It's also pointless entirely, because nanowrimo "win" means nothing to anybody but yourself.

"winning" by copypasting lorem ipsum couple thousand times is also possible but there's no point.

The quality also really doesn't matter past "being coherent speech". It's practice to learn to write quantity. You can improve the quality by writing other stuff and by editing.

>>49675245
So? Nobody here is arguing against those points.

>>49675071
>The problem is that the NaNoWriMo novel checker USES wordcount to award victory. Not only that, it has no plagiarism checker.
That's because "winning" is meaningless. It's not like it's a competition, there's no first prize, there's no cash prize. Well, I guess technically there are a few discounts on writing software and shit like that, but still, nothing worth getting worked up about.

So I fail to see in what way that's a problem.

>>49675356
By itself, it's not, but look at all the people worried about wordcount.

>>49675260
I'm just adding onto HOW ENTIRELY AND RECURSIVELY POINTLESS the argument is.

>>49675388
And this is exactly my point. Yes, people worry about wordcount, but not in a vacuum. People worry about the number of words of acceptable quality and coherence they have. Advising them not to worry about the coherence of their words isn't just meaningless, it's actively bad advice. People get discouraged when they feel their shit isn't worth continuing.

>>49675411
Anon, I don't think anybody on Earth who wants to write would ignore the quality or coherence of their writing. Who would take advice like that?

>>49653623
>this isn't drawing where talent is 80%, imagination is 10% and training is 10%. Writing is, in my own experience, 5% talent, 20% imagination and 75% brutal hard work
Drawing is 99% hard work. Talent is hard work, talented people are talented at working hard first and foremost.
>I-i don't have the talent!
Is the excuse people that don't want to dedicate themselves use. If you work hard and know what you're doing, you're going to get results, that's the bottom line.

Same with writing, same with lifting, same with anything else.

Are you at Mcdonalds right now, by the way? A lot of what you said could be summarized in 2 or 3 sentences and not lose any meaning or substance.

>>49675432
It is surprisingly common advice, and even visible in this thread, that "only word count matters" or "editing is for December" or "vomit out anything you can and worry about the results after the 30th."

And that advice is just as actively toxic as over-focusing on editing and fixing.

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>>49669369
>charging ahead of his troops to attack locations where there is no enemy
COVER ME! SUPPRESSING FIRE!

>>49675494
True enough. For what it's worth, the idea of 'editing is for December' is completely right, at least for me, but I've been writing books since I was a teenager. I can edit in real-time without slowing wordcount. I save the major edits for after the main writing is over and I can process the bulk of it at my leisure, since I separate simple editing (spelling, etc) and complex editing (cutting scenes, etc) in my head. For an amateur, somebody who is struggling to grasp storytelling and technical stuff at the same time, maybe it's a more deleterious practice.

>>49675494
The advice to edit later is not "toxic" you pedantic tool.

No one has argued that only word count matters.

>>49675562
You have the right idea, and I do the same thing. Heavy editing and revision IS for December, or at least for after the book is done - and ideally for some time after that, too, once you've had time and can look at it with fresh eyes. But there's nothing wrong with deciding a sentence comes off awkwardly, or some description or a scene or whatever is better inserted somewhere else, or correcting typos, et cetera.

I just take exception to the people who take the idea that anything other than typing more words is bad and hurts the process.

>>49675566
see
>>49653335
>editing comes later.
>all that matters now is word count.

>>49675578
>One person = everyone

See "pedantic tool."

Focusing on word count is not a sin, especially for an amateur writer who is attempting Nano for the first time.

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I'm going to be aiming for a novel idea in my head for a while.

I'm not going to tell you any of it.

Talking about your ideas, while can be a good creative exercise, never replaces the truly good skill of ACTUALLY FUCKING WRITING IT

>>49675604
>everyone
Calling someone pedantic is not sufficient cover for your goalpost moving. You said "no one has argued that only word count matters." I pointed to someone who has argued that all that matters is word count.

Why do you feel the need to call people names instead of admitting you were wrong about something?

>>49675946
>I pointed to someone who has argued that all that matters is word count.

You were speaking in general terms. You bashed word count as a reasonable goal with your ridiculous "a a a a" argument.

Here's some advice:

"...my average was 1800 words a day; here in Florence my average seems to be 1400 words per sitting of four or five hours."

- Mark Twain

"I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words."
- Stephen King

"My minimum is 1000 words a day...Those 1000 words might well be rubbish - they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better."
- Sarah Waters

"I set myself to 600 words a day as a minimum output, regardless of the weather, my state of mind or if I'm sick or well. There must be 600 finished words - not almost right words."
-Arthur Hailey.

Word counts are not the devil. Focusing on word counts at the expense of quality is not a sin, since any good writer knows they will end up rewriting their output several times any way.

You haven't the slightest idea of what you're talking about.

I always try, every year, but I don't think I will this year. I might just add on to a previous attempt, but since I'm deploying halfway through it doesn't make sense to spend my free time writing when there's friends/family to hang around. I'll probably keep pounding away at my cyberpunk novel.

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>>49676265
>You were speaking in general terms.
You:
>>49675566
>No one has argued that only word count matters.

After being proven false, you: >>49675604
>>One person = everyone

I didn't say "everyone says word counts are the only thing that matters." You did, however, say "No one" was saying that. And yet, there are posts in this thread saying they are the only thing that matters.

This isn't a matter of opinion, it's a simple matter of fact.

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>>49676351
Oh no, you can't actually back up your statement so you accuse someone of a fallacy.

How about you actually speak about word choice? Let's get back to your retarded "a a a a" statement.

Nifty website, by the by. Useful for high school students learning debate.

>>49675432
>Anon, I don't think anybody on Earth who wants to write would ignore the quality or coherence of their writing.


I actually wrote about 5000 words of extremely low quality smut last month just because no one woud cater to all of my exact fetishes so I decided to try and write a story that did, even if the quality was super low.

In retrospect, it was not a great idea. I can barely read it now. Also, the sex scenes are incredibly short and unsatisfying.

>>49676782
>you can't actually back up your statement
If linking to your own posts doesn't constitute "backing up your statement" then literally nothing does.

>>49675411
>Advising them not to worry about the coherence of their words isn't just meaningless, it's actively bad advice.

Usually, when I see people give this sort of advice, it's published writers telling newbies that it's okay for their shit to be imperfect on the first pass. A common problem among new (or amateur) writers is to stop to edit, rewrite, and finagle until they get the perfect sentence instead of ever actually finishing anything. That's far more harmful to learning to finish something than setting aside major edits until you have, at the very least, completed a chapter.

Hell, a lot of professional writers don't do any revising at all until the second pass, when they know what the story looks like later and what things need to be fixed early on.

I don't think I've ever heard someone who has actual knowledge tell people to vomit words onto the screen without any regard to coherence, just to do what they can to get the thing done and worry about making it high quality once the finished thing is in front of them.

That said, I don't give a fuck about NaNoWriMo

>>49677062
>I don't think I've ever heard someone who has actual knowledge tell people to vomit words onto the screen without any regard to coherence
Check out either this thread, or the NaNo forums.

>>49677051
Actually, restating your argument and clearly arguing your major contentions constitutes "backing up your statement."

So, again, let's get back to your absolutely retarded "a a a a" example.

>>49677072
The posts quoted just say that the editing phase doesn't matter, not that baseline coherence doesn't matter, because the guy HE quoted said that he couldn't handle his words not being perfect on the first pass.

>>49677105
I have clearly and repeatedly explained what this argument was conveying, so I will try to use smaller words for you this time.

Nobody is seriously suggesting typing "a a a a" to pad a wordcount. Nobody has ever contested this. This is entirely you failing to understand the most simple demonstration I could possibly attempt to convey to you, because you are retarded.

The only, and I mean ONLY, point that example was making is that there -is- a level below which coherence and quality are unacceptably low. Thus, word count is NOT all that matters. That is all. I was not suggesting that anyone was advocating entirely false wordcount padding. Merely that, IF wordcount were "all that matters" as stated, then such behavior would logically be okay. Because it is not, that disproves the notion that wordcount is all that matters.

And because that notion has been disproven, the conclusion I have reached from that is that at -some- level, re-considering what you've written, even during NaNoWriMo, is an important part of the process.

As for your retarded fallacy, you moved the goalpost when you incorrectly stated that nobody said only wordcount is important and, when proven wrong, changed your argument to say that not everyone said it.

>>49677118
No, the post I originally replied to said nothing about any "phases." If I am wrong, please quote where in the post I originally replied to mentioned anything about phases. In case there is any confusion, I am referring to this post: >>49653335

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>>49677157
Sorry, I forgot a disapproving reaction pic, because this seems to be the level of intelligence you're most suited to discussing with.

And from the current state of the thread we clearly witness the prevalence of autism among the wanna-be writers population.

>>49677595
We all just wish we were one of the cool kids like you.

>>49670960
Check your autism at the door please.

>>49676265
Agreed,

>>49675356
Don't respond to tripfags.

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>>49678114

.>Shit, he's right, I got that totally wrong
>Better call him autistic. Only an autist would actually bother to call me on my dumbassery.

Look, it happens to everyone. Everyone misreads a post once in a while. It's not that big a deal.

>>49678126
Got what last?

I told people to focus on the word count, the implicit meaning being that they should write and not edit.

The autist decided to "argue" this point by claiming that writing "a" over and over again would still increase the wordcount.

You can read about your behaviour here.

http://www.autismkey.com/the-literal-mind-of-autism/
http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/november/autism-and-learning.html

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>>49678158
wrong, not last. Obviously I got that one wrong.

>>49678124
>Don't respond to tripfags.
Hah, I didn;t even notice the tripping.

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>>49678158
You got the point of the "a a a a" thing wrong, and continue to do so, despite it being explained to you in terms so simple your average child can understand.

At this point, I'm assuming your fixation on autism is pic related.

Again, rejecting one extreme does not mean embracing the other. Rejecting the "all that matters is the word count" logic, which is all I argued for, does not equal "word count is literally useless." In another stellar example of your apparent inability to keep track of a simple conversation, you routinely conflate this point.

>>49678246
I understood it, but the entire argument was based off of an intentional misunderstanding of my initial post...

You're debating against a claim that was never made and being overly literal. Hence why everybody is laughing at your autism.

>>49678312
>that was never made
see >>49675578
and >>49676351
How many times does it need to be pointed out to you? Are you really this illiterate?

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I have fucktons of stories to be told and I have taken part in NaNoWriMo for few years now.

But just recently I quit writing longer text entirely. Partially due to my depression just getting stronger and stronger, but mainly due to all feedback I got just flat out saying that I am not that good of a writer in the grammar sense. Seemingly my writing style is "wrong" or something, no one ever specified further than that. This after years of telling that I write just fine. So I really have no idea how to continue writing from something like that. Thus I dont.

This coming of course from someone who's english is not their first language. It is kind of depressing to drop out of a creative artform, but if I am not that good at it, then I just aren't. Maybe I could pick up drawing again or something.

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>>49678819
>This coming of course from someone who's english is not their first language.
*whose

>>49678819
Look on the bright side, if the main complaint is grammar then it's something you can actively study.

Imagine how shitty it'd be to invest years into writing then be told that your characters have no emotion, or that your themes are pointless. Like, how the fuck does anyone even fix that?

>>49678819
>that I am not that good of a writer in the grammar sense
*grammatical

>>49678819
are you writing to get published or writing for yourself?

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>>49678839
>>49678889
Yeah, exactly.

>>49678852
I guess. Atleast my themes and characters haven't been criticized so I assume those are fine. But it's just so funny, when I am chatting with people or writing outright smut, my grammar seemingly is completely fine. Then if I try to write anyting longer or more serious the grammar suddenly goes to shit.

Though if someone actually gave you that feedback, I'm legit sorry for you. I have no idea how to actually fix that.

>>49678899
For myself, pretty much. My plan was that if some writing came out really well, I could try to do something with it but getting published wasn't a direct goal.

>>49678852
You fix it by focusing harder on how characters express emotions in text. Like for one example, a lot of novice writers rely too much on adjectives in dialogue to tell us when a character is sad, or upset, or whatever. When I learned to ensure an emotion or meaning is clearly visible in the dialogue itself, and that words like "said" are workhorse words - they're impossible to overuse - I saw rather pronounced feedback from my writing buddies saying my dialogue scenes felt much better.

As for themes, get better themes? Find a new way to express the idea, or express more complex and multifaceted ideas that the work can more fully take time to examine thoroughly. In the literal sense, this is an art, so there's not one objectively best way to improve on it, but that doesn't mean your success or failure as a writer is determined by some kind of cosmic chance, like, oh, sorry, these are the themes you were born with, they suck, too bad, try painting.

>>49678819
>Partially due to my depression just getting stronger and stronger, but mainly due to all feedback I got just flat out saying that I am not that good of a writer in the grammar sense.
*Sentence fragment. Should read something like, "I quit partially due to..."

In seriousness though, I've been published professionally and I still make errors like this all the time. And I'm a native English speaker. Relax, this is why God invented editors.

>>49678927
Fuck, I meant adverbs, not adjectives. Novice writers rely too much on adverbs in dialogue.

>>49678819
This is why it's human to write and divine to edit.

Keep writing.

Just make sure that your editor is a native speaker.

One of the best things you can do to be a better writer is read more. Read literally anything, though of course you should focus on the genres and styles you like most and are most inspiration to you. But pretty much anything can help. Even a shitty book can help you write better if you go at it with the mindset of "Why is this book shitty, what mistakes does it make, and how would I have written it to avoid them?"

It can be hard to see your own mistakes, but a lot easier to project how you think it "should" be done in others' works. And for non-shitty books, you can see how successful writers you like do certain things, or approach certain scenes, and learn from it. This doesn't mean lifting someone else's style, of course, just learning from people who have already blazed this trail before you.

This year I'll participate for the third time.

First time I gave up in a week or something.

Second time I "won" and was surprised that I could still go on for a long time but decided to just cut it at that point and focus on stuff that was actually important.

That was like 5 years ago I think, back then I was a hikki so all I needed was to sit and write every day, now I'll have to actually plan ahead.

For the people asking for pointers, here's what works for me:

1.- Do not fucking read what you wrote, that is not the point of nanowrimo, just keep writing.

2.- Plan ahead as much as you can, if nothing else decide where your story begins and where it ends.

3.- Designing characters and world-building will keep you busy and will make you eager to write the actual prose (according to Rowling she had a complete file for each of Harry Potter's classmates, even for characters who's name was never mentioned in the books, she also had perfectly defined the limits of magic even if such a concept was never mentioned or important during most of the story).

Also I'm gonna give you one trick I used, on days when I had absolutely nothing to write about I just had a character dream some shit, that chapter usually ended with the character waking up.

>>49679002
True but that has absolutely nothing to do with the thread, lurk moar.

>>49679096
>True but that has absolutely nothing to do with the thread, lurk moar.
I saw the OP asking for tips and tricks and several posts of general writing advice. The rest of the thread seems like a ton of arguing about something utterly inconsequential, I scrolled up as far as logical fallacies and figured the rest of the thread wasn't worth reading.

OP asked for tips and tricks, I posted a tip. Maybe you should lurk moar.

>>49679114
Tips and tricks for nanowrimo you imbecile, if he spends his november reading he will not have time to write, fuck if he tries to write good he will slow down and miss, you are literally ill-advicing him.

>>49679199
>november
>write good
>ill-advicing
You're beyond hope, brother.

>>49666528
Hiding in a crumbled building angry and frustrated, waiting for the firefight to end so i can go out to scavenge for food

What genre and setting are you guys doing?

Since we are on /tg/ I assume there's going to be some fantasy and sci-fi.

>>49666528
Long periods of boredom, discomfort and bureaucracy, punctuated with bursts of extreme violence.

Guess I better get outlining, though Im also working..taking a civil service exam...moving...running a game of Degenesis rebirth. Fuck it I'll find time in there somewhere.

>>49679432
Urban fantasy.

>>49679432
High fantasy as novels, but short stories can be any kind of fantasy, horror and... "normal" or how you would call it.

>>49679432
as mentioned in another thread, Fantasy meets STALKER/Roadside Picnic.

>>49679432
For several years, I did a novel set in my own campaign setting, this year, I'm going 40K.

>>49650901

>tfw only has a big desktop to write on, no laptop
>tfw my brain already zones out my room as a workplace because it's been ALWAYS chill/timewasting place for decades

I should really invest in a laptop

>>49679432
I thought I'd mix things up and do Fantasy.

I've always wanted to try it and did so twice, but for one reason or another I just couldn't finish

I think I just don't have the basics yet. I wanted to try writing something completely original at first but I run dry soon.

Is writing fanfic for this shameful? I feel like I'd have an easier time with an universe I already know well and I don't think I'm anywhere near being published or have ideas worth of it right now, so fanfictioning it up would be solely to develop the basic skills of "stop being a lazy cunt and shit out your wordcount already"

Anybody have any good resources for medieval tech-level battlefield medicine (non-magical)? What kind of injuries did common weapons do? What was survivable, eg. what are your chances with a severed artery? How long would it take to heal? Would you be any use as a soldier afterwards?

Assume reasonably fit and healthy ordinary humans.

>>49684072
they're in the minority but some people do fanfics.

>>49684135
Historical or fantastical?

Historically European medicine had surgery down to a fine art. There were no finer surgeons on the planet than those from Europe (until about the nineteenth century). However, other areas suffered due to a pervasive belief in Europe that the Greeks and Romans had perfected medicine during their reign. As a result, no one questioned incredibly archaic practices such as bloodletting and quicksilver. European doctors also had weird fad cures, which came from the fact they learned as apprentices or through the church. Present to a European doctor with an infection and, depending on where they were trained, you were as likely to get prescribed bedrest as your were part of your skull removed and salt rubbed into your brain.

Islamic doctors had a better grasp of general medicine, but weren't as good with their knives. The Europeans also had no qualms about lopping off their own limbs to save a soldier, something other religions found distasteful.

In Europe the practice of removing wounded men from the battlefield didn't come around until the fifteenth century, and the practice of triage didn't exist until the late-seventeenth century. It's odd: as weapons got deadlier, people began valuing human life a lot more.

Cont...

>>49679432
I'm still trying to decide between Urban Fantasy or sci-fi.

Both story ideas are pretty small in scope and share enough similarities that at least one is going to need a major revamp to be distinct from the other.

>>49684379
Briefly:
>What kind of injuries did common weapons do?
Cut and slash. Followed by piercing. Europeans were better at solving the latter, Islamic doctors better at the former.
>What was survivable, eg. what are your chances with a severed artery?
Survival rates were higher than you'd think, given the primitiveness of some of the techniques. If a slash wound was bad surgeons would amputate, those people have about a 60/40 chance of surviving, a rate which went up after 1300 and the first school of dedicated amputation surgery was established. With other wounds it came down to the individual's personal strength and ability to fight off infection. No one associated sickness and uncleanliness before ~1850. Islamic doctors prior to 1600 had the edge, due to cleanliness rituals in general of which the Europeans had no analog.

>How long would it take to heal?
Depends on the severity of the wound and your ability to fight off infection. Social rank is tied heavily to your time allowance to heal. The higher your social rank, the more likely you were allowed to sit out the next battle. Those who were badly wounded but still upright were given support roles, or put in with the reserves. Those who were lightly wounded were sent once more into the breach.

When a higher nobleman was wounded they were often sent home for long periods of rest in darkened rooms. In some cases, to their detriment: if you've just suffered nerve damage, a broken leg, or some other mobility issue, laying down for months is the worst thing you can do.

>Would you be any use as a soldier afterwards?
See above. If you were able to do something, and you couldn't pull rank, you'd be doing it.

I'm a history student and I've always found this area of history interesting. See
>Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds and the Medieval Surgeon by Piers D Mitchell
and
>Wounds in the Middle Ages by Kirkman and Warr
hopefully at your local library. Great books, not too long, not too technical.

>>49684379
>>49684460
That's really useful information, thanks.

>>49684460
>No one associated sickness and uncleanliness before ~1850
That's not entirely true. For instance it was known in some areas that wounds should be cleaned and bandaged, and that bandages should be regularly changed. It was known this was done to ward off infection, even if they didn't know why.

Hell, even a lot of animals know to keep wounds infected. A dog, for instance, will impulsively lick a wound.

>>49684581
>For instance it was known in some areas that wounds should be cleaned and bandaged
I almost wrote "Almost no one" but I thought 'nah, I'll be good, who'd call me on the 1% exception to the 99% true rule of thumb.' Once again anon you have taught not to underestimate 4chan.

By-the-by, cleanliness of wounds was not the main issue when it came to changing bandages. They were more interested in reapplying the poultice, some of which were effective, some of which were not. The most famous one - the eponymous 'poultice' - is a recipe dating back to Roman times which involved mixing turpentine, clay, honey and spider webs together and applying it to the wound daily, changing the bandages as they went. Some of that was actually antiseptic. But to give a full example of how little association there was between cleanliness and wounds: when honey could not be found, animal grease was used instead, and when clay could no be found, mud took its place. Also regional doctors all had their own concoctions.

Maybe I would enter this month. Unfortunately, my narration is pretty bad, I wrote some half-decent half-programmed text adventures and some Scooby Doo porn, but I never quite mastered how to convey things happening in form of an actual text.

>>49679432
Space opera.

I wouldn't call it sci-fi because I don't focus on any actual sci.

Remember that the entire point of this event isn't actually to write a quality novel, it's to get practice and write under a deadline that most aspiring writers would never end up doing in the first place.

>>49679432
I'm planning out a cyberpunk anti-terror novel set in Europe as they come under siege by a death cult led by a three thousand year old jew who was literally the guy that caused the biblical plagues. The "hero" is Longinius, because he's the only guy running around with a weapon able to kill a god, and therefore can kill Pestilence incarnate

Also featuring a twenty-something tomboy who gets thrown into the middle of everything.

If I am to enter, which of my ideas should I pick? Weird ones or more standard ones?

When I read about it, it always sounds like people write some weird stuff.

>>49684880
The one that'll be easiest to write.

>>49679432
Alpine fantasy because it's rarely ever used.

>>49646436

>>49684135
Look up injury man. It was a proto field medical manual used in the middle ages. Essentially an injury man was an illustration of a man with a shitload of injuries. Just... So fucking many. Everything from sword slashes to being literally clubbed with a ham hoc. And it had these common injuries and an index of how to treat them. And besides being interesting they are also very kek worthy, as I said, they woukd have serious injuries right next to things like being stabbed by a bunch of swamp reeds.

As for specific shit, I know that gunshot wounds (and the ensuing powder burns due to the close range) were treated by boiling dog fetus's and an sticking them on the wound and pouring boiling turpentine over it. This sounds like bullshit, I know, but it was a throw away line in a journal of some bloke I had to read for my Renaissance class in uni.

Medieval medicine was fucking nuts. There was a rumor that if you boiled your plague sores with some meat and onion and basically made it into a stew on your body you'd be cured. Also, tying a frog to the sore.

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>>49679432

It's half fantasy, half hardboiled detective fiction. The setting is at an Interbellum tech level, with dragons and airships and post-advent-of-total-war politics and shit.

>>49676928
>I actually wrote about 5000 words of extremely low quality smut last month just because no one woud cater to all of my exact fetishes so I decided to try and write a story that did
I started writing for the same reason. And I found that in the process of setting up the sex scenes, I got my characters into interesting situations, and I ended up writing more than I expected to resolve those situations. That might be a useful writing technique - write porn then edit out the lewd parts.

>>49645127

Maybe I'll use NaNoWriMo to finish my draft. I'm about halfway through the plot, but I don't know if I'm halfway through the writing.

Man I need to just sit down and get my ass in gear.

I save da thread

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>>49679514
>>49680172
>>49682592
>>49683795
>>49684431
>>49684734
>>49684831
>>49684999
>>49685249

Sounds interesting guys. I'm going with dark fantasy/horror myself.

Can I get a basic outline? Or at least one thing you really want to make happen in your novel.

>>49692473
No you'll steal it!

>>49692473
Well I'm
>>49684431
The urban fantasy one is about a kid who finds a dragons horde and legally seizes it and the sci-fi one is about a kid who collects drones and loses one to a VR addict gang.

They're both small in scope and are kind of pulpy in what they'll be about and the protagonists have some shared characteristics. They have a more conventionally successful sibling, are over looked by their parents, skilled at fighting and fearless. Also both stories are blatant origin stories for further adventures.

Where they differ is in attitude and allies. The fantasy one is a jock, a cocky little shit and really a loner who is a bit full of himself and the sci-fi guy is quiet and humble , bordering on self deprecation. He loves those who call him friend deeply and openly and is the opposite of the fantasy guy in terms of how nice he appears.

At heart fantasy MC is a nice kid. He wants to use the cash to go somewhere he thinks he'll belong and immieditly comes to other people's defense when what he sees as his fight starts effecting others.

Sci Fi guy is not nearly as nice. His motives stay self benefiting throughout and he's kind of petty. He's in the position of being more innately dangerous than his opposition. Instead of a "Oh sweet Jesus my plan went fucking wrong why was I so stupid " you get a moment where he realizes he could ease off but doesn't because well why?

The cast in the fantasy one is also smaller just consisting of the guy's immediate family, the dragon's minions who are really nothing characters and the cops sent to try to find the kid and convince him to hand the horde over to the government before the dragon finds him.

The sci fi one on the other hand consists of the MC, a 1% MC the kids works for as a gofer/apprentice mechanic/future prospect , the VR gang, the kids family and his drones.

There's also some fighting style differences. Clever grappling and running away screaming compared to bare knuckle and crowbars.

>>49645127
I'll be working on a VN, it's about a PI with dim psychic abilities in an early XXth century-like setting.

Simple story, hoping to ramp up to a series.

>>49695600
I'm still waiting for people to share their outlines.

If not that then what moral alignment is your main character(s) ?

Tried it a couple times, made some good progress but never really "won". This year I want to use this month for outlining and worldbuilding.

...Both of which I've never done before. Any tips on how to do either? I'm pretty much a short story writer by nature.

>>49695958
I haven't written it, but it's a sequel to a story I wrote a few years ago about my custom 40K chapter, the Blue Daggers.

>>49695958
>If not that then what moral alignment is your main character(s) ?
I really fear for your characters if you use this.

>>49696301
don't be so dogmatic. Alignments can be a useful shorthand.

>>49696301
I could fit my character into one.

>>49696301
Well he didn't specify D&D rigid alignments shit.
So it can be just asking for simpler ones.
Good?
Bad?
The one with the gun?

I'm currently doing some worldbuilding right now on Twitch if anyone is interested.

BorisNikolayev handle, I'm in the writing section of the Creative category.

First time doing this, so my set up is beyond simple, but looking forward to chatting with anyone that pops in.

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>>49699787
that feeling when you kill a thread and the one person who stays in your stream says "hmmm" before leaving after you explain what you are writing about

>>49700918
Well, it's a bit early to worry about NaNoWriMo, really.