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Post by Rikku on Oct 23, 2010 3:17:55 GMT -5
... At least you have something. xD Earlier in the day (read as: before I started frantically reading NaNo-forum threads in a last-bid effort to get some enthusiasm) I was fairly close to despairing this, because I don't have any particular love for my story, and what normally happens this close to NaNo - lots and lots of happyglee, fun scenes playing out in my head, bizarre plot ideas, disembodied dialogue - just wasn't happening. Having gotten some enthusiasm, I'm starting to get some ideas, and a lot more fondness for the idea, but. Something is better than nothing. I mean, all I have for most of my characters is 'driven by revenge, quiet, likes fennel' or 'wants power or something?' or 'I haven't actually decided yet but I'm sure he'll turn into a character as he goes along'.
So, y'know. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm fairly certain this story of yours will turn out decently, and that, if it doesn't, you'll at least have company in being horrible. xD And this seems to be turning into an excuse for me to ramble about my story rather than an encouragement about yours, so I'll stop now.
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Post by Amneiger on Oct 24, 2010 12:49:35 GMT -5
xD That does kind of make me feel better. Thanks. =D Also, a quick note before I continue with this - I think I have a better handle on Imperial names now. When they're born, they get an ordinary name made of letters. But when they get the WorldNet node, they also get a unique alphanumeric designator, one that was set aside for them when they were born. The designator is to identify each node and the person it's been implanted in, and tends to get used so much that after a while the person starts to think of themselves using the designator instead of the birth name. Now that I do feel a bit better about this, I think I can probably put up a few things I have for characters now. =D A lot of it is still rather simplistic, but eh. xD "But version 2.02 doesn't seem that different from version 1.53..."
J387 is, for the most part, the perfect example of the average Imperial citizen - uneventful childhood, uneventful surgery, and then a life filled with digital entertainment and downloading vast quantities of knowledge into his memory banks instead of manually learning it. The part where he isn't like most Imperials is that he got bored rather quickly with it all, and decided that maybe he'd try to find something to do that was more interesting.
J387 was taught that pretty much any dispute can be solved by sitting down with the other person and working something out.
“I was really small and didn’t know anything about being polite, so I just walked right up to it and said, ‘Hello, fish. You’re floating.’”
Jolis might have just stayed an ordinary member of her dryad tribe, never bothering to pay attention to the world outside of her forest if it hadn't been for a wandering mage who entered the forest. Jolis stumbled upon the mage and talked to him about magic, which interested her in becoming a mage herself.
Since then, Jolis has learned more about tree and forest magic; one notable ability is to convince birds to carry messages for her.
As the novel starts out, Jolis is just starting to wander herself, to learn more about the world cycle and magic.
I'm kind of planning for her to be kind of sweet and maybe a little innocent acting. She's worked a lot on magical theory, but hasn't really been out in the wide world before.
[/i]"Don't look at me, I'm just a dog!"[/i] J387's pet dog, which his parents gave him when he was 10. Dog is not an actual biological dog, but is actually a computer chip with a WorldNet transmitter in it. Imperial AI technology is still kind of rudimentary in that (A.) it isn't actually any smarter than a unmodified Imperial, and (B.) it's so resource intensive that about half of the processing work needs to be "outsourced" to large computer banks. Dog tends to take a more sardonic view of life, making dry comments on...uh...well, I'll figure it out eventually. I don't think that Dog is going to actually have many lines, but eh. [/spoiler] |
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Post by Amneiger on Oct 27, 2010 1:52:23 GMT -5
On the 26th of October my true love gave to me,
A reminder that NaNo's here sooooooooooooooon!
...So. Um. No real updates. Have more plot notes. Have been counting food cans and ramen packages. Time is short, have things to do to prepare (like get more homework done, pick places to send resumes), need to stock up on sleep hours. Must remember to run random name generators now instead of procastinating and waiting until November's actually started. Oh, and I thought of those two lines up there this morning.
Panic! Yay! =D
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Post by Amneiger on Nov 1, 2010 3:01:00 GMT -5
*looks at Shade's post* 2k in half an hour? *jealous* If only I had better concentration. ;__; *is still only at 1390* Anyhow. Excerpt. The dawning of consciousness is not a black and white thing, a sudden light upon sentience that draws the resting one upon their feet. It is more of a gray world, a clearing fog, the way the waking world bleeds into the sleeper’s dreams. First there is the snatches of color, the faint feel of the blankets, an incongruity between warmth and cold, sunlight and whatever darkness is floating before the dreamer’s eyes. Then the world before the waking eyes begins to flash, becoming more and more insistent. Sound appears, low hums or spoken words that wend their way through the sleeper’s ear and sometimes melt into the dreams, sometimes not. After that, the sleeper begins to realize that they are sleeping, and that is the end of sleep.
Jolis’s first awareness of the world was simply that: an awareness. That is, she knew that there was something outside of the bizarrely empty and filled blackness that was what she was, like the niggling of the intuition that says that you have missed something. She was not thinking, not yet. For now she simply perceived, and she simply was.
After what seemed a very short while there was light. A faint light, that streamed into her awareness in tiny trickles that tickled what would become her eyes. The light seemed to be above her. Above. A new concept. She had not been aware of what aboveness was before this. She accepted the knowledge without questioning it. Above was above.
And after that came below. She was…rooted. Planted. This was as it should be. Moist…peat? Earth? Soil. Soil. Her mind settled on soil. She was in the soil, and part of her reached up towards the sun.
The day was warm. The sky was blue, with clouds drifting idly across it. There were trees around her, big thick ones with big branches and big clumps of leaves. She had been planted in a clearing with some other saplings, each of them spaced out so that they would not block the sun out from each other. Some of the saplings were young, and still had only the barest suggestion of a dryad’s shape. Some of them were almost ready to be born, their faces and bodies well defined and looking almost as if they were simply standing still for a moment instead of not yet having bodies ready to use. Jolis would be ready soon. Her branches were twining together into arms and hair; she could feel them, feel the faint, almost subconscious desire to use them, to move.
There was another dryad walking among them. The other dryad was walking softly, so as not to make noise. She was carrying a wooden bowl full of water, and she was gently pouring water around the roots of each sapling. The other dryad was coming down the row towards Jolis. Jolis watched her. The other dryad seemed happy; she smiled comfortingly at each sapling as she worked, and she wasn’t slumping or going slowly.
The other dryad reached Jolis. She gave Jolis another smile as she poured water around Jolis’s roots. Jolis could feel the water as a welcome coolness spreading through the soil. Her roots began to absorb it, and the coolness spread up through her body. The contrast between the warmth of the sun and the water felt wonderful.
The other dryad turned away and began to water the next sapling. In that moment, Jolis became aware of another part of her mind opening, and knew what she was supposed to do.
“Thank you,” she said.
The other dryad looked up, surprised. Then she smiled again at Jolis. “You’re welcome.” The other dryad turned back towards Jolis and gave her a bit of extra water, then went back to the other saplings.
It was a good day.
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 1, 2010 9:50:05 GMT -5
2k of rambly, primarily stream-of-consciousness, writing. xD
Pretty excerpt. =D I'd be more coherent but I'm not fully awake yet. xD
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Post by ♥ Lulu on Nov 1, 2010 12:35:18 GMT -5
A few things;
One: Your idea sounds awesome. Sci fi mixed with fantasy, almost? Which is probably what you're aiming for with magic vs. science XD Your characters too; I especially like your quote for Jolis - I think I will enjoy her :3
Two; I love both the sound of dryads and of leviathans. :3 Ever read Muddle Earth? It has a huge floating river thing, which leviathans made me think of /kindofofftopic
Three; whooo, intense worldbuilding! I'm glad I'm not the only one, even if I did slack this year, ehe.
Four; good luck with your 100k, I cannot wait to see more of this, if your awesome excerpt is anything to go by <3
/endramble.
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Post by Amneiger on Nov 2, 2010 2:02:49 GMT -5
Thanks to both of you. =D Unfortunately, most of what else I wrote today was basically infodumps that weren't nearly as acceptable as that excerpt. >>
Wordcount time. Should be 11,563, assuming that Word 97's Properties word count is correct. (Usually Word's spelling and grammar check adds a few more words.) I'm going to shake my fist at Shade now for being ahead. Curses! If only I hadn't spent those hours today playing video games! And I won't have as much time tomorrow, too...
Edit: Oh, almost forgot to mention; I realized that there had been a bunch of people who had made me their buddies on the NaNo site, but I'd forgotten to make them buddies back. Sorry, everyone! I've fixed it now.
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Post by Rikku on Nov 2, 2010 3:19:56 GMT -5
^_^ Jolis is pretty! Dryads, in general, seem to be, actually. xD But still.
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Post by Amneiger on Nov 3, 2010 1:30:49 GMT -5
*mumbles to self* won't break...won't break...
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 3, 2010 1:48:08 GMT -5
*hugs*
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Post by Amneiger on Nov 3, 2010 2:05:43 GMT -5
Thanks, but...3k. Scratch that, 4k. Huh. Under completely normal circumstances that'd be really good, a couple of days' worth. At the speeds we're playing with here? Might as well be in the Andromeda. It's pretty discouraging.
17505. Sickening. Poor priorities, but still. Can't stay up too late today either because I have to get up on the Wednesday schedule tomorrow.
Anyway. Lulu, I forgot to answer your question from yesterday. No, I haven't heard of Muddle Earth, so unfortunately I don't know what the floating river thing is, and I can't think of what sperm whales have to do with rivers that aren't actually in riverbanks. xD
Rikku, thanks. xD Although I'm hoping that at least I can keep writing something pretty for her.
I have decided that all golems shall now be serious and dour folk. Very frowny and intimidating people. For some reason I've been having characters who are big and threatening and tend to radiate malice. One in Thieves, and now one here. Cardenis probably screams bad guy, even though I'm not sure if he actually is one yet. He might be. Maybe. But not definitely.
These NaNo stats are weird. Why is it saying that I'm two days ahead of schedule? My first assumption was that it checked how far ahead of the general schedule you were, divided by 1667, and used that to calculate the days. At this point I'd be around 10 days ahead of the 1667xday schedule.
Bad things I have done:
I have referred to J387's father as J387's father. No proper name (which would only have been one word). I didn't have a name ready for him beforehand, and just went with it.
I was writing about peanut lollipops when I stopped, looked at the phrase, and went back and changed all instances of "peanut lollipop" to "peanut butter lollipop."
Disturbingly enough, immediately after first writing the phrase "peanut butter lollipop" I went and Googled it to see if there really was such a thing, and got stuff about dog treats. >_< I decided not to change it because peanut butter is delicious anyway, and it got me word count.
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 3, 2010 2:12:49 GMT -5
Re: NaNo stats. 'Two days ahead of schedule' means 'you have had two consecutive days in which you are ahead of the required word count for the days in question', I think.
Re: Wordcount. Seriously, dude. It doesn't matter that much. I'm forsaking homework for this. I'll need to slow down tomorrow, I know, so that I can study for a test. It's not that big a deal, being behind on day two, when your 'behind' is the same as most peoples 'oh dear lord that's a lot'.
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Post by Amneiger on Nov 3, 2010 2:52:28 GMT -5
I know it's the same as most other people's overly abundant pie-in-the-sky overachievement, but something about this just makes me feel very competitive. It doesn't feel quite like an instinct, it's just...yeah. Anyway, to take our minds off of all of that, here is what I think is probably the least sucky thing I've written today. It's not good at all, but still. The school children from the school bus that J387 had seen earlier were being led in a long line among the plants by a teacher. Each of the children looked about six years old and seemed to have some sort of peanut butter flavored lollipop. It all reminded J387 of a science project he’d done for school a few years ago. The assignment had been to genetically engineer a life form with some sort of identifying trait. Most of the other students had wanted to make flowers that grew in rainbow patterns or squirrels with fluorescent blue fur. (They had been banned from doing anything too morphologically absurd, such as fish with fifteen heads.) J387 and the other students he’d been assigned to work with had decided to create a quick growing peanut that would grow to full size and begin producing new peanuts in three hours instead of three weeks. Unfortunately, they had procrastinated on the project (J387’s excuse was that he had other homework) and wound up having to improvise it on the day before it was due. They hadn’t had time to fully test it before turning it in; they had only been able to check to make sure it would grow to full size in three hours as they had planned. The teacher had kept the plants around overnight, and when they had gone into the lab the next morning they found that J387’s project had not stopped growing. Upon further inspection, it was found that most of the other plants and some of the lab equipment had been crushed under a giant nine foot long peanut that had gotten to that size overnight. A few of the other students had suggested making J387 and his group eat peanut products for an entire year as punishment for demolishing their projects. (The teacher had said that they would keep the plants around to see how they would grow, and maybe let the students take home their projects if they wouldn’t cause too much havoc to the local ecosystems if accidentally released. That more than anything had motivated the class to work hard, even the traditional slackers who spent their days sleeping in the back of the classroom and mumbling that they’d download everything off of WorldNet when they turned eighteen, so why bother? It was fairly clear to J387 that these people didn’t understand that school wasn’t so much about the topics themselves as learning how to study and master material that didn’t necessarily look useful or interesting right now. He didn’t bother trying to explain it to the slackers; they would have been too lazy to do anything about their own futures.)
In any case, J387 had not been ordered to eat the peanut, but instead had to work extra time helping to build replacement lab equipment. (Who knew solar lamp tubes could leave burns on fingers that quickly?)
J387 came back to the present. He could just hear the teacher’s voice on the other side of the farm. “Plants get energy by using a process known as photosynthesis. Can anyone tell me how plants can do photosynthesis?”
One of the children, a little girl in a pink dress, flung her hand with the peanut butter lollipop up wildly. “I know! I know!” she shouted. “It’s with chlorophyll! Chlorophyll is green!” she continued without waiting to be called on. “It’s green because it isn’t good at absorbing green light! It’s good at absorbing red light, tho – where’s my lollipop?”
The girl looked in a bewildered fashion at her empty hand, then down at the ground at her dropped peanut butter lollipop, and began to cry.
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Post by Amneiger on Nov 4, 2010 2:13:08 GMT -5
22547. Was hoping that since Shade slowed down I could catch up to her. The gap closed a little, but I was really expecting more of myself. I better not be tiring out already.  Oh, and it turns out that Dog likes flying, which is good because I just turned him into a VTOL airplane. |
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 4, 2010 11:00:53 GMT -5
I am an overachiever.
Get that into your head. I am an overachiever. I need to write more than the average, because I know I can. And, yes, part of it is for the competition, but even if I were just writing for myself I would keep ahead of the curve. I wouldn’t be this far ahead of the average, no, but I would still be ahead of average. Probably I’d be hitting 20k today for an average of 5k per day. But I’m not. I’m going to hit 30k today. Why? Because I want to. Because I can. Because I need to write.
Understand this. I’m used to being able to speed ahead of most people. I do it with most things in my life. Writing is just something I happen to be very good at, very fast at, and which I love a lot, which means I try more for my writing than I do for a lot of things. Do my accomplishments make yours less? No. That’s what I want to say, most than anything else. I am an overachiever. Yes, I agreed to race people. However, if that starts bothering people, that I’m ahead, I will not race. The happiness of those around me matters far more than a number.
This isn’t about beating everyone, though that’s often the phrasing I use. This is about having fun. I really do have more fun when racing people than when writing alone. I love seeing those numbers go up, and there’s more of a thrill in knowing that I’m writing faster that someone who’s keeping near me than there is in that I’m just writing fast. That’s why I race. It’s for that thrill, that rush, the glee and obsessive focus that is part of competing to me. And that goes away when I hear people being sort of ‘arg she’s ahead why can’t I do better?’.
If that happens, the game isn’t a game anymore. And I don’t want that. Ever.
Soyeah. Just want to put that out there. <3 VTOL airplane? xD That sounds neat. And like it'll be very useful on the magic-planet as long as it works there. And also, in that park-excerpt, I like the characterization you have of those incidental characters. And the description of that science experiment; sounds like a fun world, where genetic manipulation is part of schoolwork. :3 |
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