I think Critiquing isn't the point of NaNoWriMo. It's pretty obvious when you're pushing to get words out that they're not all going to be the best ones. And there isn't enough of the story yet to know if it's going to be any good or not. The point is to get it all out, and you can go back and clean it up later if need be. Keep going!
I think Critiquing isn't the point of NaNoWriMo. It's pretty obvious when you're pushing to get words out that they're not all going to be the best ones. And there isn't enough of the story yet to know if it's going to be any good or not. The point is to get it all out, and you can go back and clean it up later if need be. Keep going!
It may not be the point, but I like getting feedback on my work, even if the feedback is bad.
It may not be the point, but I like getting feedback on my work, even if the feedback is bad.
That reply was completely awful.
Just kidding. My problem with providing feedback for an unfinished work, though, is I'm not sure what's important at this point. Do I point out grammar mistakes? Are there things that seem meaningless now (and should have been edited out) but will prove to be important later (so should definitely remain)? I also don't want to make someone do too much editing at this stage, when it might wind up being completely rewritten after the author realizes around chapter 7 that the intro should have been done differently.
If there's something in particular authors want feedback on, it would help if they asked specific questions, like "Does this intro draw you in, or does it want to make you put the book down and choose something else? Why?" Amazingly enough, that's easier to answer than just, "So, what do you think so far?"
There are fundamentals of writing that can be established. Not necessarily pointing out writing or grammatical flaws, but scenario set up, character development, basic plot direction, etc.
Just kidding. My problem with providing feedback for an unfinished work, though, is I'm not sure what's important at this point. Do I point out grammar mistakes? Are there things that seem meaningless now (and should have been edited out) but will prove to be important later (so should definitely remain)? I also don't want to make someone do too much editing at this stage, when it might wind up being completely rewritten after the author realizes around chapter 7 that the intro should have been done differently.
If there's something in particular authors want feedback on, it would help if they asked specific questions, like "Does this intro draw you in, or does it want to make you put the book down and choose something else? Why?" Amazingly enough, that's easier to answer than just, "So, what do you think so far?"
Well, I think what I've written sort of avoids these problems, because I'm basically writing a series of connected, yet completely stand-alone short stories. I found that I lack the attention span to come up with a ginormous overarching plot so I decided to start with somewhat connected short stories. And by somewhat connected, I mean that they all have the same characters and setting. They just might not be in chronological order after the first one.
I think Critiquing isn't the point of NaNoWriMo. It's pretty obvious when you're pushing to get words out that they're not all going to be the best ones. And there isn't enough of the story yet to know if it's going to be any good or not. The point is to get it all out, and you can go back and clean it up later if need be. Keep going!
Agreed. Also critiques have a tendency to make people want to stop writing, the editor in your head starts convincing you you're no good... not necessarily a good place to be if you're attempting to write a ridiculously large volume in a ridiculously short amount of time.
Well I would assume that for the casual writer critiquing is nothing they'd want. For more serious writers or those attempting to pen together their first serious piece, it may be something they're more open to.
I like getting critiques because I really want to get better and I also want to make sure that I'm not dwelling too much on details and that my writing is as clear as possible. I'd prefer to get the critique from people who don't feel obligated to tell me that it's good, like my friends and family as well.
I mainly want to make sure that what I've written makes sense and also is entertaining. At least a little bit.
I couldn't take critique, I always get put down easy because of my low self-esteem.
I know by my self that my writing is bad and I feel okay with it, but I just have a tendency to take peoples words to close to heart and I loose the spark to carry on.
So I just want to live in my ignorant world that I am awesome at what I do.
Yet there was one who seemed to thrive, unaffected by the heat almost entirely. His body was not covered in the glistening sweat that seemed to blanket other runners, despite the fact that he had been running for hours. His hair seemed almost still perfectly in place, with no sign of moisture matting it together. Finally, despite his hours of running, he seemed as vigorous as he had hours before, his pace steady, his legs propelling him down the stretch of street pavement. He veered off toward the left, cutting toward a trailhead that marked the beginning of a local park whose trails stretched for miles. This was his usual routine, one he ran almost four times a week. His legs took him down the slight decline, toward the shade of the trees and the paths of the park, jogging past a pair of athletic looking individuals. One woman, one man, the duo waved to the jogger as he passed. It was typical courtesy among joggers, a comraederie they found with one another. That comraederie was found in marathons and 20k runs, as people encouraged one another with smiles and waves, urging each other to the finish line. He smiled at them in return as he blazed past, vanishing into the park.
As soon as he was a short distance past them, just out of earshot, the woman turned toward her partner. "So Jack. What are you thinking?"
"Not sure Jill." He shrugged, eyes trailing the jogger as the young man turned around the bend. "Thermal conversion of some sort. Not sure we have a term for it."
"But a Gamma, for sure."
"As far as I can tell. We haven't seen any signs of him demonstrating violent power. He just seems capable of soaking up sun and converting it without needing to cool down. It'd be interesting if we could determine how his powers work but, this seems like a case of minimal intervention."
She nodded. "So, do we go after him?"
"You want to run him down?" Jack chuckled, patting his stomach. "I'm in good enough shape to run, but there's no way me or you could chase him down. Don't forget, he doesn't get tired as long as the sun's out, from everything we've seen."
"Alright then. We wait for night, then we move. The only question is, where do we find him? Where does our runner go once the sun goes down?"
"Good question."
Jill looked back up the trail, toward the street. "He's always running around the university. I'd be willing to bet he attends. If so, we might be able to get to him during classes. Maybe at a game or a track meet."
"We've got his face on file. If he's at the university, we'll find out. They've got visual IDs of every student they've got." Jack glanced downwards, removing a phone from his pocket and dialing into it. "I'll put in a request with SINAI and have them cross reference the school database."
A random excerpt from the middle of the beginning of what I've written, because the intro is far too long to stick in a post. Also, this is a much better example of my weird writing style than the beginning.
***
Frankly, though, getting any straight answers out of the man was a challenge at best and an exercise in futility at worst.
He'd probably have to get him drunk first, he thought, viciously skewering another pickle with one, very sharp claw.
Vassago filed that task under Things He Would Regret Doing But Had To Try Anyway. It was a new mental folder, but filling up much faster than expected.
"Eh...heh...heh...I was wondering...heh...if I might borrow that jar...heh...I got a new brain and that jar...looks just the right size..."
The pickle Vassago had been about to eat slipped off his claw, back into the jar with a soft plop. Suddenly, he didn't really feel like eating anymore. He also had another addition to his aforementioned folder: his newest employee.
Here's my start... still not sure if I'll continue through the month, but if I don't try I won't know...
The Tayle Of A Confused Vampyre
Timothy thought the afterlife would be simple. Well, simpler than his actual life, anyway. He stared at where his reflection should have been in the mirror and scratched his nose. Waking up undead was supposed to solve all of his problems. He’d read the books, seen the movies. You’d have to be living under a rock not to. One nip on the neck and you become a gorgeous Vampyre, with teenage girls falling at your feet. Well, the books and movies lied. Nobody was falling at his feet. Except that one time, and Timothy was pretty sure it’d been the rock she tripped over, and not his rakish charm and good looks.
He sighed and plumped down onto his bed. This was definitely not the way it was supposed to be. He should be out prowling through the night, instead of watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory in his bedroom. He stared at the cold pizza, willing it to taste…like anything but cardboard. He was disappointed… again. He wiped a stray piece of cold cheese from his lip. Of course, it could just be the pizza, not the undeadness. To be honest, those pizzas were never that great. He grinned, that thought cheering him a little.
He folded his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling. What he needed was advice. But from where? He wasn’t exactly best friends with any Vampyres… either they were avoiding him or there weren’t any around. Or… the other option was that they were right there and he had no clue. He supposed that could be right, nobody had a clue he was a ‘creature of the night’. He grinned again, he loved that phrase – creature of the night – it conjured up some great imagery. He looked over at his creature of the night screensaver, blinking away merrily on his monitor. He’d made that in Photoshop. It’d taken ages to find all the clip art of zombies and werewolves and stuff, and arrange them all around the dripping blood font. But the most time consuming of all had been cutting the background away from his own photo and placing it prominently on there.
Staring at the screen, Timothy had a brain wave. Of course! He could get all the information a Vampyre could need online! He started googling, but none of the searches brought up anything interesting, except ‘sexy lady vampyres’ but that site was a whole other thing. He bookmarked that one for later. But all the other stuff… it was just endless chatter about how sexy teenage Vampyres were, or it was the deep old stuff about garlic and stealing virgins. Timothy was sure he wasn’t sexy sparkly, and really sure he didn’t want to steal a virgin. Well… fairly sure. He spent several minutes thinking about it, to be absolutely sure.
I almost got to the end of the first segment of mine. Counting what I wrote earlier...I'd say I got about 35k. And just because NaNoWriMo is over doesn't mean I'm going to stop any time soon.
So is anyone here taking part in Script Frenzy this April? It's a challenge made by the people behind NaNoWriMo where you try to write 100 pages of scripted material for screenplays, stage plays, web series, TV shows, short films, or graphic novels.
I've been thinking about it for a few years, and I've decided to try making a graphic novel this year.
I'm participating in my fourth NaNoWriMo this year. I haven't won one yet, but I'm hopeful this year, even though I started a week late as it only occurred to me that NaNoWriMo was going on yesterday.
I’m writing that novel about a gender fluid starship captain, and so far it’s flowing from my brain right into text. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up that momentum. The website says I need to write 2,057 words per day to reach 50,000 (the minimum word count for a novel) by the end of the month, so it should be doable.
Jennifer, you just became a necromancer. Congrats.
Anyway, I always wanted to compete in something like that, but I'm sure my stories are not nearly good enough for that. And I don't really want to show them to anyone.
Good luck to you though, go win that thing.
I'm participating in my fourth NaNoWriMo this year. I haven't won one yet, but I'm hopeful this year, even though I started a week late as … moreit only occurred to me that NaNoWriMo was going on yesterday.
I’m writing that novel about a gender fluid starship captain, and so far it’s flowing from my brain right into text. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up that momentum. The website says I need to write 2,057 words per day to reach 50,000 (the minimum word count for a novel) by the end of the month, so it should be doable.
Comments
It may not be the point, but I like getting feedback on my work, even if the feedback is bad.
That reply was completely awful.
Just kidding. My problem with providing feedback for an unfinished work, though, is I'm not sure what's important at this point. Do I point out grammar mistakes? Are there things that seem meaningless now (and should have been edited out) but will prove to be important later (so should definitely remain)? I also don't want to make someone do too much editing at this stage, when it might wind up being completely rewritten after the author realizes around chapter 7 that the intro should have been done differently.
If there's something in particular authors want feedback on, it would help if they asked specific questions, like "Does this intro draw you in, or does it want to make you put the book down and choose something else? Why?" Amazingly enough, that's easier to answer than just, "So, what do you think so far?"
Well, I think what I've written sort of avoids these problems, because I'm basically writing a series of connected, yet completely stand-alone short stories. I found that I lack the attention span to come up with a ginormous overarching plot so I decided to start with somewhat connected short stories. And by somewhat connected, I mean that they all have the same characters and setting. They just might not be in chronological order after the first one.
Agreed. Also critiques have a tendency to make people want to stop writing, the editor in your head starts convincing you you're no good... not necessarily a good place to be if you're attempting to write a ridiculously large volume in a ridiculously short amount of time.
I mainly want to make sure that what I've written makes sense and also is entertaining. At least a little bit.
I know by my self that my writing is bad and I feel okay with it, but I just have a tendency to take peoples words to close to heart and I loose the spark to carry on.
So I just want to live in my ignorant world that I am awesome at what I do.
Yet there was one who seemed to thrive, unaffected by the heat almost entirely. His body was not covered in the glistening sweat that seemed to blanket other runners, despite the fact that he had been running for hours. His hair seemed almost still perfectly in place, with no sign of moisture matting it together. Finally, despite his hours of running, he seemed as vigorous as he had hours before, his pace steady, his legs propelling him down the stretch of street pavement. He veered off toward the left, cutting toward a trailhead that marked the beginning of a local park whose trails stretched for miles. This was his usual routine, one he ran almost four times a week. His legs took him down the slight decline, toward the shade of the trees and the paths of the park, jogging past a pair of athletic looking individuals. One woman, one man, the duo waved to the jogger as he passed. It was typical courtesy among joggers, a comraederie they found with one another. That comraederie was found in marathons and 20k runs, as people encouraged one another with smiles and waves, urging each other to the finish line. He smiled at them in return as he blazed past, vanishing into the park.
As soon as he was a short distance past them, just out of earshot, the woman turned toward her partner. "So Jack. What are you thinking?"
"Not sure Jill." He shrugged, eyes trailing the jogger as the young man turned around the bend. "Thermal conversion of some sort. Not sure we have a term for it."
"But a Gamma, for sure."
"As far as I can tell. We haven't seen any signs of him demonstrating violent power. He just seems capable of soaking up sun and converting it without needing to cool down. It'd be interesting if we could determine how his powers work but, this seems like a case of minimal intervention."
She nodded. "So, do we go after him?"
"You want to run him down?" Jack chuckled, patting his stomach. "I'm in good enough shape to run, but there's no way me or you could chase him down. Don't forget, he doesn't get tired as long as the sun's out, from everything we've seen."
"Alright then. We wait for night, then we move. The only question is, where do we find him? Where does our runner go once the sun goes down?"
"Good question."
Jill looked back up the trail, toward the street. "He's always running around the university. I'd be willing to bet he attends. If so, we might be able to get to him during classes. Maybe at a game or a track meet."
"We've got his face on file. If he's at the university, we'll find out. They've got visual IDs of every student they've got." Jack glanced downwards, removing a phone from his pocket and dialing into it. "I'll put in a request with SINAI and have them cross reference the school database."
***
Frankly, though, getting any straight answers out of the man was a challenge at best and an exercise in futility at worst.
He'd probably have to get him drunk first, he thought, viciously skewering another pickle with one, very sharp claw.
Vassago filed that task under Things He Would Regret Doing But Had To Try Anyway. It was a new mental folder, but filling up much faster than expected.
"Eh...heh...heh...I was wondering...heh...if I might borrow that jar...heh...I got a new brain and that jar...looks just the right size..."
The pickle Vassago had been about to eat slipped off his claw, back into the jar with a soft plop. Suddenly, he didn't really feel like eating anymore. He also had another addition to his aforementioned folder: his newest employee.
***
The Tayle Of A Confused Vampyre
Timothy thought the afterlife would be simple. Well, simpler than his actual life, anyway. He stared at where his reflection should have been in the mirror and scratched his nose. Waking up undead was supposed to solve all of his problems. He’d read the books, seen the movies. You’d have to be living under a rock not to. One nip on the neck and you become a gorgeous Vampyre, with teenage girls falling at your feet. Well, the books and movies lied. Nobody was falling at his feet. Except that one time, and Timothy was pretty sure it’d been the rock she tripped over, and not his rakish charm and good looks.
He sighed and plumped down onto his bed. This was definitely not the way it was supposed to be. He should be out prowling through the night, instead of watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory in his bedroom. He stared at the cold pizza, willing it to taste…like anything but cardboard. He was disappointed… again. He wiped a stray piece of cold cheese from his lip. Of course, it could just be the pizza, not the undeadness. To be honest, those pizzas were never that great. He grinned, that thought cheering him a little.
He folded his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling. What he needed was advice. But from where? He wasn’t exactly best friends with any Vampyres… either they were avoiding him or there weren’t any around. Or… the other option was that they were right there and he had no clue. He supposed that could be right, nobody had a clue he was a ‘creature of the night’. He grinned again, he loved that phrase – creature of the night – it conjured up some great imagery. He looked over at his creature of the night screensaver, blinking away merrily on his monitor. He’d made that in Photoshop. It’d taken ages to find all the clip art of zombies and werewolves and stuff, and arrange them all around the dripping blood font. But the most time consuming of all had been cutting the background away from his own photo and placing it prominently on there.
Staring at the screen, Timothy had a brain wave. Of course! He could get all the information a Vampyre could need online! He started googling, but none of the searches brought up anything interesting, except ‘sexy lady vampyres’ but that site was a whole other thing. He bookmarked that one for later. But all the other stuff… it was just endless chatter about how sexy teenage Vampyres were, or it was the deep old stuff about garlic and stealing virgins. Timothy was sure he wasn’t sexy sparkly, and really sure he didn’t want to steal a virgin. Well… fairly sure. He spent several minutes thinking about it, to be absolutely sure.
I should have done something.
I've been thinking about it for a few years, and I've decided to try making a graphic novel this year.
Do I need an excuse to write? Count me in.
I'm already working on my novel and, while not working on my novel, I sometimes write something for my zombie novella.
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I'm participating in my fourth NaNoWriMo this year. I haven't won one yet, but I'm hopeful this year, even though I started a week late as it only occurred to me that NaNoWriMo was going on yesterday.
I’m writing that novel about a gender fluid starship captain, and so far it’s flowing from my brain right into text. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up that momentum. The website says I need to write 2,057 words per day to reach 50,000 (the minimum word count for a novel) by the end of the month, so it should be doable.
I've always wanted to try NaNoWriMo, but November is usually a hectic month for me.
Good luck to anyone attempting it.
Holy foly moly shit, brought back from the dead from 2k11. Wow, congrats.
Good luck to everyone who does/writes thisss
Jennifer, you just became a necromancer. Congrats.
Anyway, I always wanted to compete in something like that, but I'm sure my stories are not nearly good enough for that. And I don't really want to show them to anyone.
Good luck to you though, go win that thing.