On one hand, I'm proud of me. I got up early this morning and spent about 2-3 hours figuring out /any/ potential scenes I could write.
I also hit upon a great way to envision random scenes that works for me.
It's kind of funny, actually, the limitations we put on ourselves.
I just read on the Nano forums that someone considers using name and character generators cheating and a breach of ethics because it's like not really their story after that.
Personally, I have no qualms using ANY generators as a source for random ideas. Probably because I am picky and will let my Inner Editor chow down on the stuff that comes out of the generators. I would never select something that sounds 'wrong' to me, but should the generator somehow produce something golden, that the IE stops suddenly and cocks its head puzzled to regard it, then yea, I'll take that with both hands.
That's how I can use things like Mythic. I can make a GM's decision to ignore how the dice fall if I feel like it. If it feels wrong. But when I don't have a care either way as to how things go, when I want the random unpredictability, then yes, dice and generators all the way, please.
But despite it sounding rather corny, I can empathize with this poster's situation, because I found myself in similar straits regarding the "dares" thread.
That's what a bunch of Nanowrimo'ers will say. Oh, stuck for ideas? Go and rummage through the dares thread and pick up a few ideas.
On the one hand, there are a few flecks of gold through a whole bunch of dross. I can see that some of the 'dares' do have value as idea generators. But something in me, that innate Inner Editor, held out and dug in its heels and said NO.
Why? Because, so went my reasoning, any fool can see the valuable dares. The easy generic dares that prompt ideas. But yet, they are recognizable dares, and SHARED with thousands and thousands of Nano participants. Can you imagine the number of 'novels' that will all have a certain phrase in them? Or a certain event happening?
That's not original! That's not a "ME" idea! It's someone else's dream!
Rationally, I know people steal from each other all the time. Writers do that. Irrationally, I refuse to do something that I know a bunch of other people are going to be doing the exact same thing because a forum post dared them to do it.
If I was writing a "novel" for fun, maybe I would. Like a stream of consciousness anything-goes kinda drivel. But the moment I give myself a setting, I give myself limitations to work within that setting, y'see. Some things are acceptable, some things are not.
So, back to my brilliant idea that worked for me, and to record it for posterity. Or maybe next year. Or some month in the future.
I did a random playlist selection of MP3s. I have a fairly eclectic MP3 collection, that's why it works for me. I suppose one could do the same thing with a radio, or with Pandora or something.
Then for every song that played, I imagined the scene and setting that came to mind like a little music video.
As long as I kept focused with the world in mind (different worlds evoke different scenes), I found that I was generating a heap of scene ideas. I churned out about 25 of them.
Here's a little bit of voodoo. The time of day appears to matter. Either that or they were buried in my subconscious waiting for release. The first time I tried it was in the morning (which is a time that I am fairly energetic and creative), and the second time I tried to force it at 2.45pm in the afternoon (which is a time I personally loathe and just feel capable of lying in bed mostly). I got maybe 6 one-liners in the afternoon. Quite different from the morning's burst of creativity.
Second thing I did since I was slowing down from the morning charge was to fiddle around with a generator. I use Inspiration Pad Pro cos it's free and easy to make random tables. And I made a scene generator in the vein of Holly Lisle, in that a scene by her definition, involves a change. Quite possibly of emotion.
Write a scene that contains an emotion change from Awe/Reverence to Surprise. 2 character(s) are involved. We understand Big Al and someone else better from this.
I did that. :) In about an hour or so. The emotional changes aren't a huge range atm, though I did find a list that I want to expand the generator with eventually.
I gave it 1-3 characters, since scenes tend to get rapidly confusing beyond that number, and then I typed in all the character names of my novel.
Personalized randomness! And then to top it off, I numbered my random scenes from 1-30 and did a 1d30 roll to figure out which scene to write.
If the emotion change wasn't stated in the original idea, I used the generator to start me thinking.
Was kinda fun. Unfortunately I got all the way to a burst of nil energy before I even started writing a word of 'actual novel.' Sure, I got a bunch of Nanowrimo freewriting style notes down, but again, unlike SOME other people I read about on the forums, I do NOT count them as official novel words.
I have verbal diarrhea when it comes to freewriting. It would be SO cheating for myself personally if I were to include all the words in my notes using the excuse that "every word I write is a step on the path to the novel." It's TRUE. Every word I write in the notes needed to be written so that I could clarify my mind and thoughts.
Every word I write here in these blogs is something that needed to be voiced and vented and ranted away so that I have a mental runway with space clear for the project.
But just because it's a true statement doesn't mean it isn't cheating. :P How can one hope to write a published novel (of maybe 90k words) if one can't even produce a 50k draft of actual story words in a month?
Actual story words in this case meaning an attempt to describe it. He growled angrily. "Go away," punctuating his words with a bunched fist. Stuff like that counts. Even if it's cliche riddled and/or skimpy on the description.
Hmm, I think in this scene, he needs to be angry and chase whoever away and do...oh I dunno what he wants to do next, maybe eat? drink? This Corrs song sounds nice. Maybe he can go to the toilet.
That kind of freewriting does NOT, in my opinion, count as real wordage. Yea, it has to be written so that I can exorcise my thoughts and actually figure out what next and what the character may do, but it's not real novel words!
And cancelling out a whole bunch of stuff by whiting out the words is again, cheating, to me. :P I suppose it depends on what you cancel though. I wouldn't delete an entire scene, I'd leave it in there. So if you wanted to just white it out to see how the story flowed without it, fine.
But if it's something like He thought. No, he felt. No, wrong word. He declared to himself yadda yadda. Then I don't think you should be counting the first 8 words as part of your word count. :P Even if technically, they had to be written to get the correct word.
I mean, if you did that, then by the time you cut and revised...you'd end up with...a short story!
Granted, a short story is a heckuva lot more than not even trying or getting crippled by the Inner Editor, so yea, whatever personally works for people is fine for them.
I'm just sharing what's not fine for me. :)
Let's skip ahead a few hours. I notice I have an awful habit of procrastinating between writing scenes (like now, for instance) because I just feel like I deserve some celebratory time.
It wasn't until the evening proper that I started to really get serious writing. I've churned out 3 scenes in thrice as many hours. The first was pretty good at about 1200 words. The second was forced, 483 words or so. I gave up for a looong while, and then came back and did the third, which was a big cheesy action scene prompted by looping Clay Aiken's Invisible for 893 times (yea, I'm addicted to the song for some reason, it helped me think through the scene and think in general) which managed to top 1900 words or so.
Third scene would normally be a cause for celebration. Yay, it's more than an entire day's worth of 1667 words! But...I'm so behind! I need to be writing like 6000 words these two weekends if I even have the faintest hope of catching up.
The suggestion is to be at 35k by the end of week 3. Well week 3 is like in four days. And from bitter experience, I know just how 'writerly' I feel on weekdays after a hard day's work. aka NOT AT ALL. So that means I need to urgently boost wordcount this weekend.
Aieeeeee. And my most productive time (aka midnight to now) has been used up doing what, 3000-3500 words?
Oh noes. I feel like I'm reaching a limit in productivity when it comes to word output.
And no, there is no plot still. There are vague semblances of continuity in the random scenes, which I am leaving at the back of my mind with the hope that it can be glued together in the revision.
Ok, procrastination over. I stop writing this blog now.
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