Alkorri's NaNoWriMo Motivator Machine!

Dear mods, this isn't game-related, I don't think? So I'm posting it here. Feel free to move it if not :)



Ladies and gentlemen! There seems to be a number of people here (four, I counted so far) who are doing NaNoWriMo this November. As a mere one-time winner, I just thought I'd offer my services.

What services, you ask? AHA! I offer many! Well... only three, actually.

1) Deadline Coach - Do you need someone to check on you everyday wordcount-wise? Make sure you're on schedule for the end of November? I am here to gently nudge you with no judgment or guilt whatsoever :)

2) Brainstorm Buddy - Stuck for ideas? Need someone to bounce off concepts when you're not sure where the plot is going? I've been there, believe me. I will happily listen and ask questions if ever you need someone to point out loopholes. Or you could just chatter at me and I will nod intelligently and/or applaud you along the way!

3) Sympathetic Ear - Sometimes you just don't want to be harassed. Sometimes you just want someone to understand when a train blows through your bedroom and demolishes your masterpiece halfway through. Hey, I've been there too, and I can be there for the low moments.

See that badge, NaNoWriMoers? That can be yours with the year 2014 on it! Rain or shine or volcanic disaster, feel free to post or PM if there's anything you need :)

I love it!

I would like to add my strategy, which may or may not be a good idea for other participants.

I have divided my story up into 20 chapters. If I write a 2500 word chapter each day, I'll be set long before the deadline, giving me leeway time (which I'll use) and editing time. However, I can also write a mere 2000 words, or the bulk of a chapter, in one day and still end up ahead.

I spent the entire time I had allotted for writing 1st and 2nd of November writing up character, world and chapter summaries. (I actually spent a little bit of Nov. 2 writing chapter 1.)

To keep my deadline pressure up, I'm posting each chapter to my blog as soon as I finish it. I realize not everyone has a blog, but you can do something similar via e-mailing someone (or PMing someone on the forums) and force yourself to produce stuff. Promises to other people are easier to keep than promises to yourself. It's a lot easier to say "I'll do it tomorrow" than to hear "Where's your chapter? I was looking forward to it." Use that guilt to drive your writing! If you finish, you won't feel the guilt of not finishing. Heck, this is basically Alkorri's first service.

And you could even apply some of these strategies to finishing games in RM. Who knows?

-Wallace

Awesome, wallacethepig. Good tips all around. I myself need a hard wordcount goal, so I made sure to prepare the outline days in advance of Nov 1, then consistently wrote 1,666 words every day, rain or shine. Once a week I took a break, so the next day I just wrote twice as much.

Yes, I applied the principles I learned from NaNoWriMo to finish my first RM game in September too, so it has been awesome.

May I suggest something for people doing NaNoWriMo, which can also be applied to game development? A Magna Carta. Before I started, I wrote down a list of things I wanted to be in my young adult novel, and elements I didn't want to be there. I printed it out and stuck it on my wall to see. It's just a guide of cool things I wanted to include, and sometimes just random elements to inspire me when I got stuck.

For laughs, here is my Magna Carta for NaNoWriMo 2011. Mind you I was mostly babbling back then.

Good lord, I can't believe some of the things I wrote for the second section ;D

My strategy involves copious amounts of planning long before November 1.  I start with an idea I want to play with.  Then I create a world where that idea is plausible --- since I mainly do sci-fi, I try to make sure the world is scientifically plausible (with certain justified handwaves).

This year I'm trying a fantasy story set with not mentioned until the end sci-fi backstory which answers a lot of the unanswered questions through the entire novel.

After that, I create the main characters and get a rough outline of the plot.  When I didn't pre-plan like this, I rarely exceeded 20,000 words because I would always write myself into a corner.  With this, I've won the last 2 years running (i.e. got 50,000 words or more), because if I get stuck, I can look at the outline for other ideas.  Or at the main character's qualities, etc.

For me, the planning gives me boundaries within which my imagination can roam freely, and focuses it enough so I can get to the goal.

Wallacethepig, I notice you mentioned 'editing', so may I advise something? Don't edit.

I feel that NaNoWriMo is just for churning out the words, and not caring (that much) about the quality. The purpose is to just hit 50k words. If you take the time to edit and go through line by line, it will be very hard to finish. You might start doubting yourself, questioning yourself. NaNoWriMo is about the unbridled pouring out of sheer creative energy. To plunge ahead without caring how good or how bad it is. Or at least, that's what the founder Chris Baty said :)

At best, what I do at the start of each day is reread the previous chapter, and then keep going. Hit that daily goal!

It's up to you, of course :) But really, the editing and polishing part can come after November. 

I may have misinterpreted wallacethepig, but I took him to mean that his 2500 words per day lets him reach 50k early, giving him the remaining time of the month to edit. I think that's viable, but I agree that trying to self-edit while writing can prevent you from reaching the 50k goal.

This is my third year participating. Year one was something like five years ago where I gave up at the 10k mark and never really gave NaNoWriMo much thought until several years later.

Last year I was very motivated, and I plowed through the 50k words. The story was a mess, but I continued to write it after November, reaching the climax, getting stuck, and it's been that way since. Eventually I'll try to actually finish it.

This year, I spent only the last week of October creating an outline for my story. I was quite excited because I started off with something very basic and as I continued to look for sources of tension and conflict, I kept finding ways I could add more layers. It's probably going to be a mess of a story anyways, but I'm motivated to write it, and I've reached 10k already.

For me, a big motivator is having friends also participate. I had a few friends do NaNoWriMo last year with me, and it was the most fun I've had in a long time. This year, most of them are doing it again, and so I just think back on how much fun I had last year and I get giddy with excitement! It's gonna be a good month, despite the fact that work is getting crazy with overtime.

So since seeing each other's progress can be a great motivator (someone might be 700 words ahead of you so you push yourself to write another 700 words more than you otherwise would have!), how about adding each other as buddy's on the Nano website? Add me! http://nanowrimo.org/participants/harmill

EDIT: Oh, and as for a tip that I used last year: use other hobbies as rewards for reaching your daily goals! I pretty play no video games during November, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make and it's easy for me to do. But if you find yourself having a hard time resisting the urge to play Minecraft or something, tell yourself that you can only play Minecraft if you reach 1666 words that day. The sooner your each your daily quota, the more time you have to play games!

EDIT #2: Jeez, I keep forgetting things I wanted to add. I write High Fantasy, and I find that listening to atmospheric / epic / emotional music really puts me in the mood to write. Currently, I listen to 1+ hour song mixes put together by the Pandora Journey youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Dendera91 . If you are into this kind of music, they compile the best of the best!

Thank you for the words of encouragement, Harmill! High Fantasy is my favourite genre as well :)

A reminder to first time participants of NaNoWriMo, make sure you register with the website! You can track your progress and once confirmed you have finished your goal, you will get your badges. You also get discounts for writing programmes.

I only want to edit things that don't make sense. I plan on doing what you said and reading the first chapter over again to spell-check it, though. The only reason I would edit would be if, when going over it again, I find a moment where I go "why does this happen? Why wasn't this explained to me?" and then I'll go back and explain it.

Yup, that's what I meant. If we break it down, 50,000 words/20 days = 2500 words/day. So, if I continue at this rapid-fire pace, I'll have the whole thing knocked out by the 23rd, leaving me an entire week to go over it again. (Of course, I don't think I'll actually achieve this goal, but I plan for a more modest 2000 words/day. At that pace, I'll be done in 25 days, or the 28th.) Those extra days are when I'll do most of the editing.

-Wallace

If you find plot holes or other things that just don't make sense in your early chapters, sometimes, for the sake of maintaining momentum, it's better to leave it the way it is but to keep writing with the solution in mind. If you're already 10k words in, and you decide that you need an extra character in your introduction, don't actually go back and write him/her in. Just add that character into your current scene, leave a note somewhere that you intend to introduce that character early on, and write on. Then, in December, or whatever month you decide to go back and edit, you can adjust that introduction to include that new character. It won't make sense to anyone reading that early draft, but that's OK. Your first draft can't be perfect, and there's no better time to do crazy changes like that.

If you've heard of Brandon Sanderson, this is how he writes his first drafts. They are  apparently confusing to anyone but him, because a character will just randomly appear 30% of the way in the book or a character will just get dropped with no explanation. But everything gets patched and polished in future drafts so I think the takeaway from this is to not worry if your first draft has inconsistencies like this.   ;)

Whew. Almos finished planning. Really should of done this earlier, but hey, we can't all be perfect. lol. I've tried nanowrimo a few times. can never get past 15 -20 000 words. but with any luck I might just get something finished this year. I'd be happy with that, even if it didn't reach the whole 50 000, though I'm still gonna try. will need to get as far ahead as possible quickly. lol.

@wallacethepig - I agree with Harmill. Ignore spelling errors, ignore plot inconsistencies, just keep going.

There's a lesson they taught me in my creative writing course: "Your first draft will always be s**t." It's not meant to be discouraging, but a lesson to hammer home the importance of just finishing a novel or written work, no matter how rough it is. After the writing is done, you can then make it shine by going back to reread, edit and give your masterpiece the polish it deserves.

This is true for game development as well. So many writers and developers feel they want to do the 'best' job they can, and get fixated on this idea of 'perfection', so much that they never finish. What many people don't realise is that the polish always comes later.

Remember, the goal is to Finish. Not write the perfect novel the first time.

@Paladin-Cleric - Excellent! I'm hoping that we can get past 20k words for you this time :)

What should you do if you're behind? Try to catch up by writing as many words as you should do up to this day? Write two days' worth of words each day? Or just write the same amount of words as you should have, and fail to meet the target? Or calculate a new estimate of how many you should write per day? What do you guys think?

There are times when you don't have an outline prepared and you're only starting NaNoWriMo like, three days in. No worries!

It depends what your goals are. If you're taking part for the fun and heck of it, that's fine. That's the spirit of the thing :)

But if you're determined to hit 50K by the end of the month, you just count the number of days left and calculate a new daily wordcount goal, like I did for Paladin-Cleric. I also added some leeway to take into account unforseen circumstances. And because I'm a believer in taking a day's break once a week, I usually tell writers to write double the next day. For instance, taking the whole day off Sunday, and writing 4,000 words instead of the usual 2,000 words on Monday.

What I find is, aside from planning the world, characters and plot up front, which REALLY helps me stay on track, is my actual writing goes in spurts.  There are days I'll write around 1,000 words, periods where I just stare at the keyboard and go "OK, even with my outline, now what?" That's because my novel has already diverged from the outline and I'm sure it will diverge further.

And then in a sudden burst, I'll have pages pour out of me at a rapid rush when I finally understand what I want to do.

Even Stephen King said he has books like that.  His Dark Tower series took 25 years to write, because years would go before he had the idea for the next novel.  But when he had the idea, some novels just flew (The Wizard's Glass novel he said he finished the first draft in a month)

As for editing, I do tiny edits but nothing wholesale.  I do just enough editing so if I need to go back to that spot for actual revision later, I know what the heck I wanted to do.    I think it's a bad idea to make significant edits until you have completed the first draft (i.e. NaNoWriMo) because the editing process has a completely different mindset than the writing process.  So you can't easily switch from editing to writing and back again.

My mom, who has 2 published novels to her name, spends most of her writing time editing and polishing the novels.  The first draft is the "easy" part, because the editing takes much longer. 

And in her new historical novel, she spent a lot of time doing research on the period (1600s) to be authentic in speech phrasing and the likes.  And then making sure what she wrote was actually understandable to people who didn't do extensive research in the style of speech used in the time.

It really comes down to this:  Do your best and realize when you go back over it later, you'll see a million ways to improve it.

Jim Butcher (of Dresden Files fame) said the only way to get better at writing was BIC time (Butt In Chair) doing more writing.  That's what NaNoWriMo is fantastic for.  I've found every novel I write every year getting better and better in quality, and I even notice I speak more clearly the next year --- like the constant writing helped improve my clarity in speech (word choices, etc).   

So let's all do the best we can.  Just like IGMC, we will improve as writers because of it, no matter how we do.

Paladin-Cleric, if you only get 20K don't get discouraged.  My first year that's all I could do.  It took me a few years to get consistently to 50K.  And next year, I'm sure you'll have a LOT more preparation in advance so you'll be able to zoom through your novel. :)

lol. sat down today to start my wod count. after an hour and a half I'm on 850 words... already I'm thinking of changing the plot slightly. Mmy main problem is that I write very succiently. Where some people can go on for pages discribing places, characters and things (which is epic when it's done right), I can't, because then I loose the fluidity of the characters and the place.

My first supernatural novel (the one my nanowrimo this year is a squel of) took me three months to write after extenstive preparation, hit just over 30,000 words after Ii went back and edited and added more in. When Ii sent it to an editor to catch any mistakes, he commented on how surprised he was that I had interwoven 3 intense threads of the story together in such a short piece of writing without it seeming rushed in any way. Most authors he said would have written 30,000 words for each thread and it probably wouldn't have been better, just longer.

So my writing style leans more towards just telling a story, and telling it in exactly the amount of pages and words it takes. Which is why 50,000 words seems (to me) to be such a huge goal. lol. Ah well, we'll see.

Have I wished everyone luck yet? If not GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!!!! I hope you all reach your goal.

Good luck to everyone! I would love to particpate again some day. Perhaps when my children are older, I will get to try again!

@Paladin-Cleric of Awesome:

From my understanding, you can get about 500 words to a page. If that's true, then a 50K word novella would be around 100 pages.

I know the feeling. I definitely prefer short stories because, as I say, "the idea juice doesn't have time to peter out." In other words, I can turn an idea into a short story without getting bored with it, but if I tried to turn it into a novel, it probably wouldn't work out.

If you need to add a little more padding to your stories, try putting in descriptions. Instead of "We walked up to the old, creepy house," say something like "The house was old. It looked like no one had lived in it for a long time, and it had this feeling of dread surrounding it. I felt a chill down the back of my neck as I walked up to the front door." If you this consistently, you can add a LOT of words to your word count without falling in to traps like "very, very, very" and "He was, like, you know, one of those crazy, um, whatchamacalits, vampires! Yeah, a vampire!" (If that's your character, though, no harm done, but it IS a little annoying.)

@whitesphere:

This is me. I would say this is fine, but be wary: if you don't write enough in one of your lulls, you'll end up way behind, and won't be able to find the time to finish your novel, inspiration or not.

I agree. I just want to edit for things like grammar errors, and I don't focus on the big picture. If I miss a comma or don't capitalize something, no harm done. I just go back and fix it. I won't worry about the bigger flaws until it becomes absolutely necessary (i.e., after Nov. 30th).

I would also like to wish good luck upon everyone participating. Don't feel overwhelmed. Work at your own pace, and don't worry if that's a little slow. This isn't the last NaNoWriMo, and even if you only write 20K words of your story, that's still 20K words more than what you would have written without NNWM. Just keep chugging along, and as long as you're persistent, you'll get it done!

-Wallace

P.S. I don't know about you guys, but I'm actually finding myself feeling MORE productive when it comes to life matters other than NNWM. By adding a 50K novel to my to-do list, the other things on said to-do list are getting done faster than they would otherwise. The power of time management is great, isn't it? I guess I'm just one of those people that works better when I have too many things to work on. Or maybe it's just because I'm eager to get back to writing, so I knock out all of the other things I have to do quickly.

@Paladin-Cleric - Congratulations on your first 2,031 words! I know you started late, but you're doing great :) You should be able to reach the finish line if you are consistent and keep going.

 

And that's the thing about writing. I find that I may have a rough outline, but characters have a way of coming alive and suddenly you feel the story changing. Look out for those moments. It will feel right to alter the plot slightly, so don't batter your storyline back into submission just because you want your novel to "follow the script" :)

 

Don't fixate too much on the 50k word thing. Just keep an eye on your daily goal. Some writers just type just enough to tell their story, and if it's short of 50k, they just start another.

 

@wallacethepig - A page is usually about 300 to 350 words. 

 

I agree about time management, however. I did NaNoWriMo back when I was working a job, updating my blog every step of the way, and writing on another full-length novel. I found that the more things I had to do, the more I made sure to set aside time to complete my NaNoWriMo wordcount for the day. It helped that I didn't have family pressing on me however.

 

@whitesphere - Indeed, I have to 'switch off my Inner Editor' and just churn out of the words. I found this to be very effective in keeping me on track. After I finished, I was pleasantly surprised by the pace of the story, and part of you feels pleased that you can accomplish something like this unaltered.

 

@mlogan - Thanks for reminding me. GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE :)

For those thinking of starting late, go for it! I started the IGMC contest on June 6th, and still finished, so it can be done I'm sure. If I was any better at scene descriptions I'd consider this, but I'd probably write something like "The sky is blue...oh so blue. Blue like...her hair".

Say, maybe I should still go for it and see if I can win the award for most comedic book?

Nobody judges the content of what you write, bgillisp.  The only thing they do is run a word count and you win if you wrote 50,000 words.