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mbarker.livejournal.comOriginal Post 11 November 2010
You don't want to know. I was stupid yesterday, and spent most of the time correcting student papers using the keyboard, because I really don't feel comfortable editing using the dictation software. And I'm paying the price -- my fingers feel pretty much as if someone had bent them into various unnatural poses repeatedly, leaving all the little muscles twitching and complaining. The really bad part is that there isn't any comfortable position. So today I am trying to be good and stick to the dictation software. Look, ma, no hands!
Anyway, where were we? Over here, http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/143199.html I talked about Chekhov's gun -- the principle that the various objects, characters, and so forth introduced into your story should do something. The gun over the mantle in the first scene should shoot somebody or something sooner or later in the story. When you're doing rough draft write-and-keep-writing work such as nanowrimo pushes us to do, it can be hard to go back and introduce foreshadowing, embedding those helpful little hints in what you've already written. That's really more for a second draft and editing pass. But, you can certainly put things in the scenes for later, giving yourself the luxury of expanding on it later. In this scene, have your character notice the Ming vase beside the door -- and later when he runs through the doorway, he can yank it sideways and drop it in front of the ravening zombie. I also mentioned the MacGuffin -- the Maltese falcon that we're all going to hunt for, or whatever. Things that the characters want to find or get. You can use those to help push things along.
Or maybe you would prefer plot tokens. Take a look at The Well-Tempered Plot Device by Nick Lowe, then set your character to collecting the six pieces of the miraculous key that will solve everything. How many places can those keys be? The answer, my friend, is written in your wordmill.
Today's well-aged posting looks like http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/143586.html and deals with some everyday ethical questions that you might use in your nanowrimo wonderings. Mistakes in change, by a person or a machine? How about some possible invasions of privacy -- do you peek, do you complain, or do you just take advantage? Those little nagging promises? Do you really have to do what you said you would? What about various prejudices -- how do you deal with different sexual preferences, religion, and so on and so forth? Even if you don't like those particular incidents, you can always tailor them to your own story. How does your hero deal with the bartender accidentally giving them too much change?
Sigh.
There's a pep mail from the Nanowrimo folks, and bits and pieces on the nano site, talking about Week Two. Apparently Week Two is where a lot of people drop out. There's something about pushing through the first week, and settling into the second week, that raises lots of questions. Which is good, actually, because I think part of what Nanowrimo is really about is looking at those questions, and making some decisions. Am I willing to keep cranking words, or do I really want to stop and clean up? Can I give myself permission to grind out 50,000 words before I stop to clean? How do I feel about discovering things while writing? And so on.
I've got a quote from a Zen buddhist monk over my desk. In part it says, "every day in life is training... my future is here and now..." It seems to me that part of what nanowrimo reminds us is that we are telling our story now!
Anyway. Don't let Week Two get you down. Use Nanowrimo as a prompt to decide what you are going to do. Write now, write here...
Write anyway you can!
You don't want to know. I was stupid yesterday, and spent most of the time correcting student papers using the keyboard, because I really don't feel comfortable editing using the dictation software. And I'm paying the price -- my fingers feel pretty much as if someone had bent them into various unnatural poses repeatedly, leaving all the little muscles twitching and complaining. The really bad part is that there isn't any comfortable position. So today I am trying to be good and stick to the dictation software. Look, ma, no hands!
Anyway, where were we? Over here, http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/143199.html I talked about Chekhov's gun -- the principle that the various objects, characters, and so forth introduced into your story should do something. The gun over the mantle in the first scene should shoot somebody or something sooner or later in the story. When you're doing rough draft write-and-keep-writing work such as nanowrimo pushes us to do, it can be hard to go back and introduce foreshadowing, embedding those helpful little hints in what you've already written. That's really more for a second draft and editing pass. But, you can certainly put things in the scenes for later, giving yourself the luxury of expanding on it later. In this scene, have your character notice the Ming vase beside the door -- and later when he runs through the doorway, he can yank it sideways and drop it in front of the ravening zombie. I also mentioned the MacGuffin -- the Maltese falcon that we're all going to hunt for, or whatever. Things that the characters want to find or get. You can use those to help push things along.
Or maybe you would prefer plot tokens. Take a look at The Well-Tempered Plot Device by Nick Lowe, then set your character to collecting the six pieces of the miraculous key that will solve everything. How many places can those keys be? The answer, my friend, is written in your wordmill.
Today's well-aged posting looks like http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/143586.html and deals with some everyday ethical questions that you might use in your nanowrimo wonderings. Mistakes in change, by a person or a machine? How about some possible invasions of privacy -- do you peek, do you complain, or do you just take advantage? Those little nagging promises? Do you really have to do what you said you would? What about various prejudices -- how do you deal with different sexual preferences, religion, and so on and so forth? Even if you don't like those particular incidents, you can always tailor them to your own story. How does your hero deal with the bartender accidentally giving them too much change?
Sigh.
There's a pep mail from the Nanowrimo folks, and bits and pieces on the nano site, talking about Week Two. Apparently Week Two is where a lot of people drop out. There's something about pushing through the first week, and settling into the second week, that raises lots of questions. Which is good, actually, because I think part of what Nanowrimo is really about is looking at those questions, and making some decisions. Am I willing to keep cranking words, or do I really want to stop and clean up? Can I give myself permission to grind out 50,000 words before I stop to clean? How do I feel about discovering things while writing? And so on.
I've got a quote from a Zen buddhist monk over my desk. In part it says, "every day in life is training... my future is here and now..." It seems to me that part of what nanowrimo reminds us is that we are telling our story now!
Anyway. Don't let Week Two get you down. Use Nanowrimo as a prompt to decide what you are going to do. Write now, write here...
Write anyway you can!
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