What to write
I’m tossing around an idea for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I’m not married to the idea yet, but I’d really like to get the idea fleshed out and see how it feels.
Whoa. That’s actually really interesting.
I think I’ll stick to the traditional format for this year, but that would be something I’d like to follow up on in the future.
You should write a science fiction story about people who live on planets in a far away galaxy and there is a big conflict over trade routes, and the various groups get into a big battle because of them.
Then, you can have scenes where elected representatives debate the merits of various positions of the groups with respect to the trade routes.
Then, you can have a couple emissaries land on a planet where they find a little kid who has like, parasites, in his blood stream that give him the ability to race low flying rocket ships, really, really well.
Then, you can have the emissaries go with the kid back to this one planet where they enlist the help of under water creatures to fight an army of robots!
Then, the racing kid with the parasites can accidentally blow up the robots ship and save the day!
That would be AWESOME!
😐
I really like the idea of the story unfolding across blogs. It reminds me a little bit of seeing Death’s post, where I was wondering “What the hell is going on?!”
And the whole thing should start with each of you making an offhand aside in one of your posts about “Oh, and can you believe that she just did that?!”, linking to the initial post in the series. I’d be happy to contribute links as well.
What the hell *was* going on?
Hnrh. So, was the idea that this is a collaborative story? ’cause that’d be interesting, as well – essentially having blogs controlled by different individual “actors” – I wonder if you could generate a coherent arc, based on a general plot outline, or if you’d simply establish who the characters were, and improvise… wacky.
That’d actually even be good “exercise” before NaNo this year.
That blog-as-novel idea reminds me of those interactive web games that were so big for a while there. The lead-up game for AI wasn’t very interactive at all, you just watched things unfold.
The right way to do it, of course, is to set it all up before hand and automate the “telling” of it. So we wouldn’t get to read the novel until weeks later, when the automation was written and tested.
Right, but the distinction being, that it’s not done for the benefit of the “role-players” – it’s done for the benefit of the reader.
In another vein, I would like to have a series of writing exercises that lead up to NaNoWriMo where we all have to write the same exact scene independently in whatever tone or style we choose and see how they compare.
Hrm. I wasn’t thinking of a collaborative story, just a story spread across different blogs. Although making it collaborative would definitely enforce different voices on the different characters. And I think it’d be more interesting to have a well-developed history and let the interactions wander where they will. But I think then it does end up being basically role-playing.
Does NaNoWriMo have to be a novel? I’m wondering if I should use it as an excuse to try to put together some ideas from my blog into something longer. I mean, yes, I could do it any time I wanted. Except that I don’t.
The “No” in NaNoWriMo stands for Novel. 😀 But a novel could potentially be defined in a multitude of ways. The point is, if you feel like you can honestly tell people at the end of it that you’ve written your first novel (or at least the draft thereof), then it’s fair game.
Next year, the same group is also starting a national screenplay writing month. I wonder if it’ll be called NaScreWMo.
You should write about a strange little town with oddly named characters and of a life long love between a boy and a very special girl…
Then, surround them with the craziest characters you can imagine and wreck everything at the end!
I’m ALMOST done (wedding, thesis…excuses)…
Oh, and my next book is so good (even I think so).
I’m ALMOST done (wedding, thesis…excuses)…
Yeah, I’m waiting. *taps foot*
Also, ARE YOU GETTING MARRIED?!
not MY wedding…
Should’ve clarified…
PS…watching Rockstar Supernova right now and it’s simply AWFUL. Who’s this blonde butchering Vaseline?
Ah, ok.
I hate you and your three-hours-ahead-of-me-ness. Hehe. I bet that’s Jenny, the skinny tall blonde, who is totally alterna-emo-folk-rock chick who has no shot at winning.
On a completely unrelated topic, Seppo’s parents moved to Long Island. So we are totally gonna sneak up on you at some point. Bwahahaha.
To Long Island?
Sweet! Now a meeting’s definitely in the cards!
Sorry to semi-spoil the show for you. But she sucked so bad anyways…
How ’bout, instead of writing a novel in novel form, you set up a number of characters’ blogs, and have the whole story unfold in the comments and posts on those blogs?
It’d be sort of neat to read the story unfolding in real-time…
Hrm. That’s a much better idea than I thought it was when I started writing this comment. 😀