Earlier this evening I was watching my cat sleep and began to think about what it might be like if he went to school and lived life as a human.

See, my cat is of the black variety and his name is Macbeth. So, what would the people treat him like? Would they be weary of him because he's named after a murderer and is a colour usually associated with "evil?"

I'm just wondering, with all the different plot points that are throwing themselves at me, if it would be possible I could get 50,000 words from this idea. Because it's a cute story idea and I've never written a children's novel before.

Hi, all.

During last year's NaNo, I tried to write a really cool idea (appropriated the tower of Babel from the bible and put it in the context of a post-drought world where people outside of the city walls were languishing/ fighting/ dying to get in, and people inside were living a strictly controlled existence (with a single, dominant tongue of course) so the city would thrive and they would all survive. the point was that everybody was human at the end and the city, like the biblical city, couldn't function; the broader point is that the novel was never finished, thanks to my inability to have an idea, choose it, and see it through to completion). okay, well, I thought it was a good idea--so good, in fact, that I'd like to finish it one of these days (although maybe in the form of a short story--that's where i usually live. but i digress...)

This year, I don't know what to do. I have all these BIG PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS swirling around in my head (what is death, and what are the implications of life just stopping so that your image and your existence go from continuous to suddenly stagnant? culture shock, reverse culture shock, and how people deal with both--how interesting it is that, even though two people from two different places can be very, very different, they can still be the same? and how you can feel so isolated from people who have grown up in an environment almost identical to yours? what's up with sex and infidelity, anyway--all cheaters aren't bad people, and all faithful people aren't good ones. what's with that? and all of these things sort of tie back into that creepy truism of all my writing that memory/ experience are a series of snapshots taken along this creepily circular pattern that we're all living. we're all archetypes, and we're all living and re-living these same old archetypal experiences, but in different settings with more or less technology, and more or less emotional involvement. the endings are all foretold.) and I just don't know what to do about them. How is a girl to choose with so many BIG IDEAS and so few actual concrete plot points?

I had been thinking about just writing the old standard "person travels to a foreign country. person lives in foreign country. see what person learns while living in foreign country, and what it's like to come back home" story (i've spent a lot of time abroad in the past year or so, so it's near and dear). But I feel so silly writing something that I have already read before. If I've seen it on a shelf, chances are that I don't want to read it again. And if I'm writing something I've seen on the shelf... well, chances are I won't want to keep writing past 7500 words or so.

Does anybody have any advice about turning big, swirling, abstract ideas into manageable pieces of ideas? Or would it be better to just leave the big ideas to ferment for another time and focus on some mundane event or other that can be twisted and turned into an epic-lengthed novel?

This is my first Nanowrimo attempt(the serious kind) and I usually do flash fictions, nothing longer than 3000 words. So, I'm more used to writing one scene at a time instead of one huge amount of scenarios. >.<

My question is: when writing something as long as 50,000 words, do you normally write scene by scene or do you jump around?

What I mean by jumping around is you write bits of the ending first and then some parts of how he met her and the some parts of the prologue and then back to the middle of the story etc and then by the end of it all, you join everything together.

I usually have issues writing scene by scene because I would write what I have in mind and they are not always in sequence with each other until I tie them all together. Is this a dangerous way of writing a one month worth of challenge?

I have read several books by writers describing their early years. They all seem to have some sort of literary background. For example, they won a poetry contest, or were great at storytelling, or loved playing word games.

I have none of that. For me, words never came easy. Even now I often stop myself. The ideas in my head run faster than the words. I know the idea but not the word and must stop and think about it before I speak. I bad with explanations and even worse with descriptions.  I also don't think of myself as very observant. The only thing I have going for me is my imagination. There are ideas, little bits of daydreams and even some night dreams than form in my head. They seem unique and wonderful and I sometimes commit them to paper. There are those who have occasionally wanted to read these bits and pieces. But I don't think that is enough to be considered a good writer. I often think I should just give up on writing and focus on other things. Yet I'm attempting Nano this year.

I tell others around me about Nano and they simply shake there heads or change the subject. No one sees me as a writer.

My question is: Can someone like me be a writer? 

I have a vague idea of what I want to do... at least, an idea floating around about a young girl being stalked at her school by a guy she turned down. Is this too cliched? Do I care? I'm not sure. However, I do want to accurately portray all of this, so does anyone have any links I can peruse about how the police deal with stalkers and the like? Perhaps similar crime stories, things of that nature?

EDIT: Because I'm a tard, and apparently don't read rules properly. My bad.

So, I'm curious...what do you guys think of including writer characters in novels? Or talking about the writing process through the mouths of your characters in novels? Or even talking about reading fiction books as a hobby for your characters in your stories? It seems rare; I almost get the impression that writers, when needing a character who does a creative craft of some kind, default to music instead, even though it's probable that they know writing better.

Would any of you ever write a story that figured writers and/or their novels predominantly in the plot? And do you like to read stories like this?

In my shoes, I keep flinching away from it, like to do that would violate some inherent rule of writing etiquette. That being said, as a reader I love to read about other professions...when an author incorporates a non-writing hobby, I usually find that it makes the book so much better in that little area. IE, you can tell when someone has a character that's, say, a cook and they really don't know how to cook themselves. There's no...reality...to it. And you can also tell when the writer knows how to cook, because the descriptions of cooking are so much deeper (if that makes sense). This holds true for biking, gardening, deep sea diving, mathematics, physics, biology, and more. So, I'm interested in what other people think of this.

Your thoughts?

I've been thinking about my story and my characters for almost a month, but now I'm considering abandoning that completely and writing 500 100-word stories for nanowrimo instead, as an exercise in writing concisely.

How bad of an idea do you think this is?

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And don't forget the following links kiddies:

The October 2008 Rules for the Community
and yes, they will change come November.

The 2008 LJ Link and Pimp Post

and of course...

The 2008 LJ NaNo'er Regional Meet and Greet Friending Thread

So we've all mostly got some sort of 'novel' in mind...which is the whole point of the month of November, right?

What if, in the midst of writing that, a person gets stumped, and turns his attention to some short bit? I'm on a rp list, and while I can understand not including bits co-written with others, I do occasionally write stand alone 'chapters' of a couple of pages for the characters. Could those be included in my over all word count, even though they're not part of the novel-in-progress?

Just curious :D

My self-published novel The Bird Shaman gets reviewed by Faren Miller in the October 2008 issue of Locus, and she thinks pretty well of it. Self-published POD science fiction does not get covered by Publisher's Weekly or Library Journal or the NYTBR, ever so far as I know, which makes a Locus review an awfully important event for the book in question. By such slender threads does legitimacy dangle. It happens that Faren M reviewed this novel's entirely legitimate (St. Martin's) siblings, 16 and 17 years ago--I know, that's a long time--and so is uniquely placed to speak with authority about them all. And here is part of what she says:

"Judith Moffett began the trilogy now called Holy Ground back in 1991 with The Ragged World (reviewed in #360), a science-fantasy mosaic novel set in a future world where various human lives encounter the extraordinary when powerful aliens and their gnome-like intermediaries the Hefn intervene to save us from ourselves, in a near-future Earth threatened with ecological collapse.

"Sequel Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream (reviewed in #379) had the traditionally difficult middle-book task of chronicling failure without driving the reader away... Middle-Book Syndrome nearly capsized the entire ambitious project, for Moffett lost her big-name publisher and it has taken 16 years, and resort to a very small press, to bring the trilogy to conclusion withThe Bird Shaman. For fans and interested readers of the previous books, is it worth the wait? Indeed it is!"

To convey adequately how glad I am that she thinks so is difficult, but I expect you can guess. I'll add that even if you're not a fan or an interested reader of Volumes I and II, The Bird Shaman was deliberately written as a stand-alone; there's no need to be familiar with Ragged and Time to follow the action. Though it helps, naturally, and copies of both are still kicking around Amazon, to say nothing of the hardcovers and paperbacks of both titles stored in my attic.

A lot of things don't change because of this. But things do change a little bit, for the better.

Alright I'll come right out with it. I'm a male *chauvinist pig. Well not really, but I found as I was making my list of important characters that they were all male with the exception of one female. I've got Tolkien syndrome. I'm just not good at writing females or making them realistic. So, gals (and guys who can think like gals, I guess), my plea is for some ideas of good female character traits or tips about writing women so that I don't turn my story into one huge sausage fest.

I should probably give a little background to this story. Modern supernatural setting, there's a secret global organization that isn't entirely moral about their methods of killing the 'underkind' of the world, namely vampires, werewolves, and other such fabled beings. Vampires are the result of a virus that was on a comet that struck in the Arabian desert in present day Mecca that infected and spliced its DNA into human hosts. Werewolves are believed to be the sons and daughters of Caine. Then there are the Atlantians, and my reason for needing female writing lessons, they're an alien race that crash landed on Earth all those long years ago and being warlike took over the city of Atlantis until the locals tried to revolt. They sank the city to protect what was left of their technology from getting into the rebel's hands. They're a female ruled society and subsist by sucking out a person's life essence. Pretty nasty folks with some high tech stuff. They will be the later antagonists. Alright, that should be enough of a background.

I just don't want to write the helpless young maiden or the girl who has to prove she's just as badass as the guys. I just can't think up anything without it falling into those stereotypes. Any help at all would be appreciated. I don't necessarily want names and full bios, but a few general tips and ideas would be helpful and appreciated. Thanks in advance.

--I believe this is an acceptable post but being my first time to post here I wont balk if it gets deleted. I did read the rules but I'm paranoid like that.

Iiiiiii can't wait until tomorrow :)

For the way this works, I direct you to the (first post). Remember not to uncover your popsicle sticks until you're ready for them. That is, don't uncover your first non sequitur until you have completed the first line section.

And, as always, reply to this post with your results. We had some really long entries last time, so if you feel that your post might break LJ's comment machine (and believe me, I've done it!), feel free to post it in your journal and tag this thread with a link instead.

------

( The First Sentence )


( The Non Sequitur )


( The Last Straw )

If you enjoyed this, please pick up "The Writer's Toolbox", which is where I got the sticks from.

Obviously, this can vary according to what genre/audience you're writing for, and how your characters roll  - but, just a general question:  What point of view are you most comfortable writing in? 

Myself, I think I write best in first person - or, maybe that's just what I'm most comfortable with, anyway.  Last year's NaNo attempt, I forced myself to write my characters in third person, and I think that might be part of the reason my story fell apart around the 30,000 word mark.  I thought about rewriting that whole story into a first person POV, but I do wonder if it'd help or hinder the narrative.

POST YOUR DAILY INTRODUCTIONS HERE!



And don't forget the following links kiddies:

The October 2008 Rules for the Community
and yes, they will change come November.

The 2008 LJ Link and Pimp Post

and of course...

The 2008 LJ NaNo'er Regional Meet and Greet Friending Thread

this year the book i'm writing is about someone who is mistaken for having a terminal illness but really doesn't
so in short he is going to live like he is going to die

it needs to be something that can be easily confused with nothing at all.

it needs to have mild, little to no symntoms so that you can think you have it but not

help?

So, I'm realizing now, it would be a good idea to have a map of the world my novel takes place in. But, I'm an awful artist, only barely competent on a computer and I own a Mac. Also, I'm a broke student.

Does anybody know of any freeware or shareware or, heck, even demos, of map-making programs for the Mac? I've been tearing apart every search engine I can think of and so far, all I've found is a couple of vector drawing programs.

Thanks in advance!

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