RKB Writes Ramblin' about Comics, Movies, Televison, Screenplays, Macs and X-Box

[NaNoWrimo] Advice on getting to 50k…

A few brief words of advice about getting to 50k.

A few NaNoWrimos back I tried to write a sci-fi space race with zombies.

It was a sort of unofficial sequel to my zombie NaNoWrimo novel from the year before.

Unfortunately, I got to 25k and after several Write Ins of starting at the blank page I hit page break and started a new story. Suffice to say I'll be going back to the zombies once I'm done with the current work in progress. In the end, I made it to 50k and have two stories to edit soon or later.

I've never been a fan of first person, but I've come around recently with the amount of Urban Fantasy I've been reading. So this next suggestion only works with third person.

All of my works in progress is third person with several different points of view.

One of those views is the villain.

This allows for a few things to happen: First, you don't stay with Harry Potter for the entire book and you get to stretch out the universe around your characters without talking heads, info dumping and the James Bondian villain explaining it all.

It reminds me a bit of why I hate the plots of Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, the Empire POV lacked immensely due to there was no Empire POV and the Jedi's were complete idiots.

At least in New Hope, Empire and Jedi there were some Empire POV that moved the plot forward.

Starting in the middle of the conversation helps a bit if you don't want to deal with the slow build up.

Deathbar Count update later on tonight...

[NaNoWrimo] Well, she’s unconscious now. That’s awesome*.

*Once again more banter from a Write In.

Write Ins are fun when you have different genres going a mile a minute.

Last year I mentioned at one of the Cranston Write Ins we had mythical, sci-fi and then we had someone from the Newport Naval College making damn sure she had the dates right for Ancient Rome for electoral process, such as it was.

This year at the CCRI Write In, a conversation started up about how to assault a police officer's house, somehow get the heroine drugged and kidnapped while not killing the cop. This ranged from how smart are the bad guys, cutting the power to the house, drugging the food to digressing into the fact if you use a silencer too many times it stops being, well, silent.

This was the first time we had a Write In at a College and the Student Lounge and rather large spaciousness worked out well for table space, electrical outlets and no Weather Channel Jazz!

The randomness from the night before had dialed down to a one, the students ignored us but most of them were drooling over the rather large bowl of still %50 off Halloween Candy that will probably last us the rest of the month.

As for a word count, I have finally gotten past sharselune for the moment.

The NaNoWrimo DEATH BAR count is:

[NaNoWrimo] Weather Channel Jazz

The name of these posts come from bits and pieces of conversations with NaNoWrimos at our local Write Ins.

The title of this dove tails loverly into several aspects of Write Ins: Background music.

Since this November and dependent on the place you go to, music is a playin'. In our case on Thursday Night at Brewed Awakenings in South County it was 90's and it felt like High School all over again.

Saturday night's Brewed Awakenings was generally quieter than most since we have not approached what I like to call: Oh, wouldn't it be fun to barrage our customers with the new Justin Beaver Christmas CD.

Panera in Cranston it was Weather Channel Jazz for half of our Write In and standard loud Jazz afterwards. Loud enough that all of us with headphones in our ears were complaining about it. Blasting the Imperial March was not helping.

Many times people don't seem to care about this large group of people taking up the entire table with their laptops. Sometimes the occasional look from someone with a family of six was planning on using it but they find other seats and alls right in the world.

Today, our general randomness dice rolled a twenty and we had people asking us what classes we were studying for to people wanting to know how they can read our stuff to one even asking advice of how his own work was going.

Overall with this first week over, I think our Write In locations are going to work out well even if we're maxing out at close to 10 people at every Write In. I'm happy more people are coming out, I'm just worried if it continues we're going to run out space.

Next year, I've vowed to do a few things: First, get on Warwick Public Library and Newport Library earlier in the year and take up a collection to use Providence Public Library or Cumberland. That leaves Panera and Brewed for the weekends is the plan for 2012.

As for how the story is going, I'm close to the 13k range and adding that atop the 26k written pre-NaNoWrimo, I'm happy even if my numbers from last year were far higher than this year.

Now back to some writing before The Walking Dead arrive...

[NaNoWrimo] The obligatory NaNoWrimo First Day post…

So with NaNoWrimo upon us, now what?

Well, a couple of things:

First: Back yer stuff up. USB Stick, Dropbox, iCloud, Google Docs, some sort of easy to use cloud and or physical back up that you can easily carry around with you. Emphasis on easy and portable because you don't want your gear to crash on you loose all your work. This also means going into the word document preferences and adjusting your auto save to every three minutes or less and making sure to create a backup of the document as well. Triple redundancy is yer friend.

Second: Word War Buddy. Find one. Yes, that means step 3.

Step 3: Go to your region's bulletin board and find a local Write In. Meet people. Be friendly. Ask someone if they will poke you every so often so you won't fall behind. The comments from people who have never gone to one and suddenly find their writing output going through the roof is always nice to hear. Sure, this draft is going to suck but it's 50k words, you can edit in January.

Four: Why? Because NaNoWrimo is fun exercise to rub your sticks of creativity together and see what it's like if you decide to do this writing thing full time.

Five: Edit in January. Seriously. Just put it on the back burner and worry about the holidays then come back to it.

Six: If you find M$ Word is too expensive try Scrivener (Mac/PC) or Storyist. They both may have a learning curve but it's better than having to go through several folders trying to find that little tid bit you were looking for.

Seven: Find a writing group. Check Meetup.com

[Plotting About] Rhody Writing Group, NaNoWrimo and Snow…

Yep friends, it's that time of year again: NaNoWrimo is upon us in 2 days.

That means the noise ratio which has been generally quiet in these parts is gonna go up with posts about word counts.

The good news is today started off generally well even if the weather starting to act up to the south of us.

The Rhody Writing Group meet up went well. The group is coming together well I think and the pieces of work are getting a getting better because of the feedback. The Title of this Meet Up was: Caribou Caterers and No balls in sink.

Once the meet up was over, half of us drove up to Johnston where the weather was changing to a mix. I decided to have the kick off at Brewed Awakenings. Overall, it worked out, a few glitches popped up: address mix up and table's not being reserved for us. It beats trying to find parking to get to Blake's Tavern. Stickers were handed out and everyone went over what they were doing this year. While we did that, Fox News talked about the snow shutting causing a great deal of outages in Jersey, PA and CT due to the storm.

Thankfully, RI is only getting the east side of the storm so the rain/snow/mix line is taking it's sweet time getting here. The trees may be a problem but the fact everyone had their houses decorated for Halloween hopefully won't be too damaged.