NaNoWriMo 2014 Week One Recap · 5:40am Oct 5th, 2014
Well, when I asked at the start of the month, everyone who responded was cool with or wanted me to give updates on my progress for NaNoWriMoing my way into the nuthatch, so here I am. Let's get started with some straight up numbers:
2,526 words written so far, with an average of 631.5 words per day. Were that average to remain constant for the rest of the month, the estimated 31 day writing total would be 19,576.5 words.
So...bit of a rocky start.
I could probably get away with putting some blame squarely on outside, which has decided to turn all the air into something I'm allergic to. Writing between sneezing fits isn't exactly a great time, after all, but unfortunately I happen to be honest with myself. The real problem has been a mixture of the project both being sort of intimidating and me having not written for a long stretch of time leading up to this. The act of writing comes just fine when I do it, and the days I've written have been about on pace for me at my fastest, but I've fallen out of the habit of writing every day. That lack of having a writing habit in place with the neuroses of the individual project has made self-starting a bit harder than it normally is. As a result, I'm two and a half days behind already. That half does still technically have a chance to be hammered out to just two days behind, as I've written 845 words today and still have time to close that gap, but I just finished off the first chapter of this novel and I think I need a smidge of headspace before plowing on ahead.
So on that note, holy crap, I finished the first chapter of a novel. Part of me is shrugging at that, based on the few pony novels I have written (and I even finished 2/3rds of them! *cough*), but another part of me is breathing a major sigh of relief. As bookplayer talked about in her blog about fanfiction writing compared to original fiction writing, first chapters are horrible monsters that oughta be taken out back and shot. And she's right.
But, thankfully, that first chapter is over now. I'm probably gonna have to smack it around a bit before I'm happy with it enough to go on to chapter two, and lord knows how many revisions it'll see by the time I'm done with the whole novel, but at least I don't have to write it from scratch again.
Anyway, despite the setbacks of my near constant sneezing and lack of a daily writing habit, I'm not discouraged yet. Still have a long way to go before the month is out, and if I can get back on the writing horse all the way, I should be able to close up that gap without too many problems. And, hopefully, the writing should only get easier from here.
That's all I've got for this week on where things are at. It was mentioned in the comments section of my previous blog that there might be interest in hearing some general thoughts about writing as I go, so I think I'll ramble a bit now. I'm sorry if this section doesn't come out that terribly polished, but this is at least stuff I've been thinking about and find interesting. Maybe you will too. :P
So I've been thinking a lot about exposition lately. This is probably not surprising, as first chapters for novels carry with them a weight of required exposition; you're introducing characters, a setting, and are putting the pieces into play for the overall story, and it's all cold for your reader. It might not be ice cold for a reader, mind you; if it's a book someone picked up, they have the dust jacket blurb to go off of, and if the writer of a book is someone like Stephen King, Philip K. Dick, or another writer where there is a level of pop culture knowledge about what sort of story you're getting yourself into, it isn't quite an opening in a vacuum, but there is a ton that can't be taken for granted. It's pretty weighty compared to fanfiction writing, where any sort of fanfic is much closer to, like, the fifth or sixth sequel in an ongoing series instead of a first story, but even just on its own there is a lot that needs setting up.
Exposition is one of those thankless parts of writing that when done well, you don't necessarily even notice it's happening, but when it's done poorly, it's a slap in the face. I'm sure everyone can recall plenty of times when some fanfic, some book, some movie, or some video game just bludgeoned you numb with terrible exposition. I have a personal fondness for clumsy lines of dialogue that start out with a character saying "As we all know..." Woof. Might as well have the character address the camera directly.
Good exposition, on the other hand, is often harder to see at work. I personally think it's better with a light touch. Just enough to get everyone up to speed and then dive straight into the goings on and the doings of the actual story. Because, let's be honest, nobody cares about all the background details and they're often better being only hinted at. If that story is actually an interesting one, maybe it deserves to be told as its own story in a prequel, but in the here and now, we should know only enough to understand a character's motivations. Give the reader some whos to pay attention to, and start to paint in the whys for those characters with broad strokes. By the time the story is finished, a lot of those whys might be filled in as it unfolded, but at least there wasn't an info dump to start things out.
But, on the other hand, there are several books I've read that do start with that info dump, where we have a full and often intimate portrait of a character before we're even given a setting. The beginning of A Christmas Carol springs to mind, from its first line of "Marley was dead: to begin with," it goes on filling in a large amount of background detail, concerning itself with letting us know about Scrooge's business, his dead partner, he himself (in a paragraph that is one of my favorite paragraphs from fiction, period: "Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas."), and setting the stage on one specific day before the story even starts. There is, in fact, a little over 1,000 words of exposition before we even get to the story itself, and A Christmas Carol is under 29,000 words altogether.
So, in conclusion, what the hell do I know?
Anyway, that's all I've got to ramble about this week. Hopefully next week will be a bit sunnier in outlook on this challenge.
TTFN.
Any hints on what you're writing about?
That is 0.5% of a Tolkien trilogy. At your current rate I will be able to read your master piece (unedited and raw) sometime in 2016.
May I suggest a pact of some sort with a power that can grant you more hands to type with?
2508125
I'm almost always at least a little secretive with my projects, but it is (at least at the moment, who knows if it'll stay that way) a coming of age story about a large flying fox that gets raised by a family of actual foxes. Beyond that, I shan't say.
2508131
I am absolutely terrible at estimating the final word counts on things I'm writing, but I harbor extreme doubts that this story will get anywhere near Lord of the Rings-length. I'm guessing it'll turn up somewhere around 100k words instead.
And I'll take five or six extra hands, if they're being passed out.
2508147 Flying fox, like those bats? Or a fox that can fly?
2508162
The bats, yes.
*feels several thousand-yard stares directed at him*
Hey, my username wasn't picked out of a hat. Bats are one of my favorite animals ever.
2508164 Sounds like it might be cute, albeit a bit of a strange concept.
I understand if you want to keep this sort of thing under wraps, but I have to at least try to find out. Will there be tacos?
I haven't seen any form of check-in from you in ages.
I was beginning to fear you'd fallen off the planet.
Very glad to see otherwise, whatever you may be working on.
~(OvO)~
TYPHOON. Does this mean I have a job again?
2508461 This, lol.
Sorry to hear about the rough start (Pity noses are non-detachable) Glad to hear it seems to be going well either way.
I think having a good narrative voice can help sell exposition; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes to mind, as does Good Omens. Obviously comedic novels are probably not the best source in the world for such if you're not writing comedy, but it clearly can be done.
But man, so many games with their terrible voiceover introduction...
Hehe, my little sister already has hers at 70%. I don't know how she does that, though.