|
|
Post by Thorn on Oct 31, 2016 5:49:19 GMT -5
Heya! While Thorn isn't intending to do full-on NaNo this year, she loves the idea of trying to write a bit every day in November, and so this here thread will chronicle her epic quest to do just that. =)
I currently have a few WIP projects which may see a bit of attention throughout the month (although new and different things will probably crop up too):
*Twilight of the Age of Exploration- a roleplay for some RL friends, set in SPACE! Still need to finish outlining a mini-quest, plug some worldbuilding plotholes, and refine some of the mechanics before we begin (current target is late November.)
*Skyrim Fanfic- while cleaning my room, I found a humorous Skyrim fanfic I started writing years ago. It could be fun to get back to it as a breather in between 'srriousbizniss writing projects'.
*Geographer Gabby- man I really hope I can find the inspiration to work on this one. It's a children's serial story about a lady who hangs out with spirits and encounters some monsters and it's probably pretty much Supernatural Lite but shhhh.
|
|
|
|
Post by Thorn on Nov 1, 2016 3:47:56 GMT -5
I'll record seven days in each post, along with excerpts of that day's writing. So to start off, Tuesday the first of November! * Spooky Shenanigans: I wrote some stuff for my NTWF trick-or-treat house, I guess that counts? * Unreliably Narrated: the totally-not-exaggerated tale of the origins of Nyx Nightshadow's amulet. Not yet finished, but here's the opening, which features a hopefully in-character Espin ( Gelquie ). Inspired/encouraged by a conversation I had with Lizica . : so I worked on a few things today! My Halloween house again, as well as a little more of 'Unreliably Narrated' (still not finished), and a couple of other things. Reiqua I appear to be taking you up on that points challenge, as both of these things revolved around a dare! =P Skyrim Fanfic Thing- I decided to use GLQ's musical/play dare to explore my characters. I've pretty much decided that even if I scrap the entire scene I started today, the protagonists will definitely win over Balgruuf with a musical number when I get to that part in the fic proper. Shoutout to 'fantasynamegenerators.com' for giving me placeholder names for the protagonists. Geographer Gabbie- I think I'll spell her name this way, it looks nicer. I'm using the puzzle dare for this piece, and as a bonus working on this has given me an idea as to how Gabbie goes about closing the doors to Neverywhere! (A.K.A. 'place where monsters come from'.) So thanks for linking this dare, Reiqua ! It's certainly helped me at least. As with the previous project, this is intended as an exercise to help me explore my world and characters in more depth, but I will probably end up incorporating aspects into the final product. Thursday the third of November: Geographer Gabbie- worked on this one a lot today! First of all, she's now an apprentice 'neverender' rather than a 'geographer' (placeholder name even though I love the name 'Neverywhere', since I discovered Neverwhere is a Gaiman book.) Secondly, Vuni is now called Sands. Thirdly, I wrote something like 800 words of their first adventure while word warring with Reiqua today- such funz! =D
Gabbie's mentor is currently named Bailey, but I'll probably change that because having the names of two main characters end in the same sound is notgreat.
Friday the fourth of November:Redid the opening and worked on the first fight scene of Gabbiestory! Insofar as you can do that while having a non-combat protagonist...anyway I made some good progress, right up until I got distracted by Skulduggery Pleasant, which was inevitable really given that a) that series grew up with me and retains a very special place in my heart, and b) I am trying to finish my reread of book one quickly so that I can go on to reading the marvellous new book Nat sent me!
There are some minor issues with Gabbie's personality, and Sands really needs to do more than just provide exposition (although I did joke to my brother that maybe it's a characteristic of spirits that they must ensure absolutely everyone is on the same page)...but I'll sort those out on my next reworking.
I didn't post an extract yesterday so today I'll post the most recent line of dialogue from each of my three protagonists.
Bailey (?) Cooke:
(exasperated parent vibes ftw!)
Gabrielle Garland:
Sands:
(so far their personality can be summed up as 'exposition' and 'backseat driving almost every aspect of their friend's life'. But they also glow on occasion and can shape-shift so hey, totally makes up for it? Somehow.)
Saturday the fifth of November:
War of the Words x2 with Reiqua again! Did some work on both writing and planning the first Gabbiestory.
The mentor-character has changed names so many times that I'll just refer to her as 'Mentor' here for the foreseeable future. I did a lot of thinking about her character while hanging out in self-scan today and am really excited to write her character development process.
I'm finally starting to find Gabbie's voice, I think. She's a tricky one: she's snarky and verbally rather aggressive, but also pretty sensitive. Her character development will also be fun to write, and I think I finally hit on how it'll go while walking along my street earlier tonight (I got home and wrote those notes down as quickly as I could so as not to forget!) In any case I need her to appeal to a young relative, whom this story is largely for, and I should be able to manage that.
Sands hasn't changed much since the last time I wrote about them here. I'll work out who they are eventually though, I'm sure! At the moment pretty much everything I know about them relates back to Gabbie, which I guess isn't a bad thing given that she's the protagonist? So long as I flesh them out more as I go.
I had a cool idea for something the Special Weapons of the neverenders can do, and will have to edit it in on my next rework of the first story. The thought process behind it was really lame, it was pretty much just: "you're making up this world, literally anything you want to happen can happen, what do you think is awesome...oh! Now THAT would be cool..."
I also wrote a list of possible alternatives to 'Neverywhere', none have clicked quite like that did so I'm still searching.
Sunday the sixth of November:I refreshed my memory r.e. Twilight of the Age and made a few tiny edits to one of the mechanics documents. Found a major flaw in an NPC family tree which is totally fixable so that's all goods. Still very excited about introducing my rainbow space unicorn/goat aliens to other people, and I read over the species notes + the notes for the one fleshed-out NPC of that species today. Am also looking forward to introducing my friends to the 'corpse surgeons' and venus flytrap/dinosaur hybrid alien things ('kaingh'), and well just a lot of things really. They've already sent me their plans for their PCs, and I only hope I can pull off a world worthy of their awesome ideas.
Gabbiestory (current working title is 'Ten Dragons') didn't get a lot of new material today. I redid the first instalment to include the cool idea I mentioned at the end of yesterday's write-up, and started on the second instalment. I also did a small writing exercise (using a generator on springhole.net, love that place!), which I suppose I can share part of here.
I'm sharing this because, until now, Lithos only existed in my notes as a character I wanted to debut some time down the track. I hadn't really worked out her motivations or her personality, and I think this little exercise helped a lot! Obviously the above writing is terrible and simply an exercise, I will reuse ideas of course but the above as is will not appear in the final product. =P
[Lithos is a dragon, one of ten themed after the first ten elements of the periodic table- hence her name, she's lithium. It's a difficult theme to work with though so I might change their theme to something more traditional, like gemstones or colours or...yeah no, I do want something more unusual than that. Will keep thinking!]
Monday the seventh of November:I originally intended to run Twilight of the Age of Exploration later this month. However, I have only ever GMed forum-based roleplays, never an RL one. And since Twilight is my baby, I want to make sure it is at its absolute best mechanically before running it!
So I ordered a hard copy of 'Fate Accelerated' this morning and plan to play a few one-shot games with friends and family before moving on to the more daunting task of GMing something utilising a system I created myself what kind of crazy idea was that Thorn huh you silly. In the meantime I might work on Twilight more, but probably not enough to bother talking about it here.
In actually relevant writerly news: I wrote some more of the second instalment of Gabbiestory/Ten Dragons today! Both Gabbie and Sands' voices are coming through nicely now, and I have even managed to develop Sands' backstory a little (not that it will make it into the story, but it's good to have an idea of where a character is coming from regardless!) There might be a little too much dialogue right now but that's a common part of my process, I'll trim it down later on.
I need to find a word to replace 'brow' since this connotes eyes. Forehead? Face? Frontal aspect? =P
Extract two, from near the end of today's section:
So that's seven days down! I'll start a new post for the next seven tomorrow night. |
|
|
|
Post by Thorn on Nov 8, 2016 5:13:56 GMT -5
Woohoo! On to the next seven days! Tuesday the eighth of November:Work was kinda tiring today so I didn't do a lot after getting home (although I did watch some more of The Clone Wars and finally got up to the story-line I've been anticipating 5eva, huzzah!)
Before work I recorded a couple of ideas in my story notebook regarding the Gabbiestory. First, I worked out how I could structure the thing (given that it's looking less and less like a serial by the day, and more like a collection of highly related short stories.) Second, I jotted down a quick exchange between Gabbie and Sands because I was having trouble working out the latter's motivation in a particular scene, and writing this dialogue down helped a lot.
(I also wrote down one more potential spookeh fortune, for those of you still awaiting them!)
With regard to the not-a-lot of writing I did after getting home: I managed only 156 words, not including edits of other sections. May have to take part in another Word War at some stage to push through this part, as I'm certainly not moving very fast as is!
Wednesday the ninth of November: I did a bunch of planning for a) Gabbiestory, b) a Fate Accelerated session with younger siblings, while hanging out in self-scan today (I spent a lot of time there today. I don't really mind, it's generally my favourite part of the store anywayz.)
When I got home, I put some of the Gabbiestory related ideas into action in another Word War with Reiqua! Which helped me finish up my (major super hyper ultra mega) rough first draft of the second chapter/story/instalment/whatever, I don't even know what to call it anymore.
In this section Sands and Mentor are dismissive of an idea Gabbie has, and she is annoyed about this because they are her best friend and mentor, respectively. It's very rough and will be redrafted in the near future (the first instalment is in an acceptable form at present, after three drafts, just to give an idea of what's still in store for the second.) However, I'll share an extract anyway.
Thursday the tenth of November:I hadn't planned to write much today. But then Reiqua sent me a hilariously worded challenge, so...yeah, I just had to accept! xD
I didn't really know what to write, so I just went with what came to mind. I'm happy enough with what I ended up with, though I think it would work better later in the story and thus it will likely ultimately get moved.
An extract for yer reading pleasure:
Friday the eleventh of November:Spent half an hour working on Gabbiestory. I used Twillie 's prompt/dare, which actually worked really well! One of the major themes of my story is ((spoilers for those who actually care about a rando's ramblings)) that neither humans nor monsters are essentially 'bad', and by working to come to an understanding of each other they can work through this prejudice. Which is...more or less the most cliche theme I could have gone for, I know. Originally I wanted the story to just be a fun one about humans fighting monsters, but then I realised that I am uncomfortable writing senseless violence for my (much younger) sister. So I decided that while some of the monsters earlier on are total meaniefaces, others later (starting as early as Lithos, the third dragon to appear) have more to them. And thinking about it now, Sands is kind of a monster and is the first one we meet so...foreshadowing, maybe, since Sands is Certifiably Well Intentioned? Anyway, so thanks Twillie for the cool prompt! What I got out of it will probably end up being re-written and incorporated near the conclusion of the story. Working on this gave me a lot of ideas for how to work backward from here though- including some stuff regarding Gabbie's weapon, tentatively named the Empty Blade, which won't debut until the end of the story in any case but which needs to be marked as suitably distinct from Mentor's Starblade when it is. Ergh I hope all that makes sense, I'm pretty tired which is mostly why I've stopped writing for the night now. xD Have an extract regardless! Most of this piece is a bunch of spoilerstuff but this one bit should be okay, if very rough: and Sunday the thirteenth of November: Didn't work on Gabbiestuff at all, or any other writingstuff that I can recall. Saturday I don't have an excuse, Sunday I was doing some early birthday stuff with family and then squandered the rest of my free time on Tumblr, reading, and playing Fire Emblem: Awakening which I've just started and already suck at hulp.
So, yeah.
I did have the epiphany that some parts of my story feel like 'How to Train Your Dragon', which did absolutely nothing for my concern that this work is highly derivative and unoriginal. Monday the fourteenth of November:
Went back and edited the first two chapters, and got started on the proper actual third one! I saved my original attempt at the third one though (the chapter where Gabbie goes to save Mentor from a dragon), because I think I can incorporate that into a later point in the story. I'm feeling good about my newest draft of this third chapter so far!
Extract tiem:
|
|
|
|
Post by Reiqua on Nov 8, 2016 5:32:08 GMT -5
Well I am most likely up for another Word War tomorrow night if that suits you! I was just coming to see what you were up to because I hadn't visited your thread for a few days, when you created your new week post \o/ Glad to see our wars have been making good progress for you! They've certainly helped me  Also I'm liking the look of how Gabster's story's coming along - sounds fun! ((Also just noting that I unofficially won this evening after also returning from work tired and writing a stupendous total of 374 words xP)) |
|
|
|
Post by Thorn on Nov 8, 2016 5:54:59 GMT -5
I'll get u back tho! Tomorrow night it is, I'll sort a time with you after dinner n stuff. :-P
Thanks for the nice positive words, they are especially good to hear when I'm having trouble with a story. <3 Off to sleep now though, else I would definitely discuss our current works in more depth!
|
|
|
|
Post by Reiqua on Nov 15, 2016 4:10:25 GMT -5
Can I just say that I've loved seeing your updates go up here - I'm pumped to read the Gabatron's history once it's in a semi-presentable form  Also, please don't beat yourself up for having a theme that you think is cliche, or feeling that your story overall is unoriginal. I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking an old theme and doing something new, different, exciting and perfectly worthwhile with it. Sure, originality is good, but having a new go at an old theme is original in a way! Here's an analogy because I thought of it and it made me giggle xP Imagine I sit down to paint a still life of some flowers. (Apart from that being highly unlikely because I can not art). As I start setting up my art supplies, I realise 'oh no, this is so cliche! I'm pretty sure a lot of people have done still lives of flowers before...' I raise a hand to my forehead dramatically (not unlike Nyx is doing in your profile, actually), and rack my brains trying to think how I can escape from the trap of the cliche and overdone still-life-of-flowers. Perhaps I could change my subject, and create something really unique like a still life of the sun instead. Or, or maybe I could go for a completely different take on still lives of flowers! Instead of painting it, I could create it as a collage of broken pencils! Yes, that would be unique!! So I remove my dramatic hand from my forehead and set to work breaking a thousand pencils into small pieces to create my masterpiece!! But then a realisation hits me! I could just paint a regular still life of flowers! It's not like the fact that someone else did that once makes my end product somehow worthless - I mean, it's still art because I did it differently to them, right? And so, happy in this conclusion, I go ahead and paint my flowers in the conventional manner. And by some miracle they actually turn out all right! (This is a story okay, just pretend I can art for the purposes of now) Then, just as I take a step back to admire my finished work, my seven-year old brother, Adam, walks past. "Reiqua," he says, brow furrowed, "did you draw that?" I assure him quite happily that I did. "Oh," he says uncertainly, "I'm pretty sure Monet already did a still life of flowers... so isn't that plaigarism?" I say not a word to the hapless Adam, but beat a hasty retreat up the stairs and, brushes still in my hand, throw myself onto the bed and begin to cry stormily. Adam was right - I'm incapable of making anything worthwhile! Perhaps I should've broken up his pencils after all... Lol, so anyway please don't view that analogy as condescending - it's not quite a parallel to your story but as I said, I thought of it and it made me giggle. But my point was, I like the sound of Gabbiestory and will be very interested to read it someday! (Also you've been working on it for such a high percentage of days in November - you should totally have just made it your NaNo xP) |
|
|
|
Post by Thorn on Nov 15, 2016 5:11:13 GMT -5
Reiqua Aww, thank you for all the effort you obviously put into that post! :-D I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. I didn't do a full NaNo because I decided I didn't want to spend all my spare time writing, but I think what I ended up doing is a nice compromise which is still relaxing and works well for me. I'm very bad at finishing things but if I do manage, of course you can read it some time! :-)
|
|
|
|
Post by Thorn on Nov 16, 2016 5:49:30 GMT -5
The next ten days! I'll start with the 16th since I missed the 15th, again. =P Thursday the sixteenth of November: Worked on a bunch of Warm Fuzzies! I don't want to fall behind on these, I want to write fuzzies of the same quality I hope to receive, of course. So I decided that since I'll be busy tomorrow, I should do a whole chunk of brainstorming and actualwriting today.
If anyone involved in fuzzies who doesn't know me very well is reading this, I just want to let you know that it's a-okay to drop me a line! Stalking my 'recent posts' and such is fine too- but if you would prefer to chat, this is me letting you know that that's all goods and I would defs respond.. =)
Saturday the nineteenth of November:Did some stuff for chapter three of the above story. Am tired so will elaborate on this tomorrow. =P
Sunday the twentieth of November:Warm fuzzies tiem woo! Will try and sort more on my story tomorrow...or today rather, since I'm actually writing this with hindsight. Monday the twenty-first of November:Worked on Gabbiestory some more! At present Gabbie is divided between calming civilians and attempting to close a portal, cos Mentor thinks she's 2cool to do anything besides actually fighting the dragon (she is best role model, I actually love writing her.) Sands was with Gabbie but then panicked and went to help Mentor, but since they're panicking they'll probably just muck something up.
Also Gabbie may or may not have a bicycle now, inspired both by my own intention to buy one if they ever fix the cycle lanes in this dang city, and Cassie's frequent referencing of them. Saturday the twenty-sixth of November:In which Thorn forgets to update for several days, whoops. Not sure if I did much writing anyway.
So yeah, on the twenty-sixth I worked on some encounter tables and an NPC cheat sheet for Twilight of the Age (I hadn't even considered random encounters until I was reading through Lost Mine of Phandelver, believe it or not!) |
|
Quintessential
