
Ask HN: What Novel Are you Writing This Month? - kiba
It's the start of the National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000 words novel in the span of one month.<p>What are you writing?<p>I am writing the "Courier War" which is about a tax-evading robotic courier network. My goal was to write 1666.67 words a day so that I will achieve the goal in 30 days.
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cstross
I'm not in nanowrimo because I was 56,000 words into this one before November
1st, but ...

I'm continuing to write "The Apocalypse Codex", the fourth Laundry Files
novel. At the start of the series, Bob Howard, a slashdot-reading sandal-
wearing geek, accidentally got himself conscripted by the Laundry, that branch
of the British secret service concerned with applications of Computational
Demonology -- defending the realm from Lovecraftian horrors.

Ten years on, Bob has been shunted onto the management promotion fast-track as
the emergency generated by the return of the Elder Gods gathers pace. In this
installment, he's been put in charge of a couple of external contractors
(hint: the Laundry _never_ uses contractors -- officially) and tasked with
learning just why a certain televangelist is cosying up to the Prime Minister.
"I feel like I've been given a sack of catnip and a laser pointer and told to
go play with the kittens behind the fence labelled 'Siberian Tigers'" he
complains -- except the tigers have run into a big game hunter, and the fecal
matter is about to hit the wind farm ...

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johnfn
I'm doing an experiment: I'm writing a novel without knowing what it's about
at all beforehand. I find things out only as I write them down.

So far: It's fairly close to real life, with a touch of sci-fi (which I expect
to become more than a touch pretty soon). The setting is - currently - a big
building in a city, and I'm trying to work hard on character development
(since I always have trouble with that).

I'm finding the biggest problem with this strategy is that I need a motivator
to keep my characters going. But it seems to be working for now. We'll see in
a couple of days :)

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runevault
Good luck with that. I made an attempt at a novel (not during NaNo) where I
had an intro situation/scene in my head and an idea at the ending, but that
was it.

Around 30k words I was in a hole I had no idea how to get out of, so I
sidelined the story until I have the time/energy to go back and fix it,
building a proper plot structure with an attempt at keeping as much of what
I'd already written as possible. But it's low priority compared to NaNo and a
series I've had in the back of my head for something like a year.

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jonnathanson
Agreed. Writing something as long-form as a novel without planning it out
ahead of time is going to lead to frustration and, ultimately, a weaker final
product.

Would you build a house without a blueprint?

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runevault
If you a) have enough of a fundamental understanding of how to structure a
story and b) are willing to do as many rewrites as it takes to tighten up the
work and fill in small holes/do a better job of foreshadowing.

Is it more work? Pretty much guaranteed. But for people who are incapable of
writing with an outline (get bored or what have you) it CAN be done, but it
ends up being significantly more work.

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jonnathanson
There may be people out there more "capable" of writing without an outline
than others, but would you bank on most neophytes' being those exceptions to
the rule? I wouldn't.

I would advise that most hobbyists or newbies stick to the techniques that
have worked since as far back as the days of Aeschylus and Euripides. When
you're Hemingway, feel free to break tradition and do your own thing. But
assuming one is Hemingway before writing one's first novel is often a
misguided assumption.

You don't need to outline exhaustively, mind you, but some sort of
architecture is probably advisable. It will make for a better story, which is
ultimately what the exercise is supposed to be about. Too often, new writers
forget that they're supposed to be writing for an audience, not for
themselves.

~~~
jonnathanson
Understandable, and I don't mean to imply that there are absolutes applicable
to everyone. Rather, I'm a believer in statistics. By far the majority of
hobbyist writers will benefit from an outline. Also, I've found that
overconfidence and newness to the hobby are correlated. So it's just a matter
of saying to most beginners that they should strongly consider outlining. Not
necessarily that everyone absolutely should be outlining, but rather, that
it's a good starting place for most people.

I suggest newbies try outlining before deciding categorically that they don't
need to do so. That's all.

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runevault
I've found in general people take advice better after going through with a
choice and discovering it doesn't work :). Then they have a better
appreciation for the alternatives and more willing to listen, especially when
you can relate it to what they've already experienced.

~~~
jonnathanson
Ain't that the truth, right? People need to experiment and figure out what
works best for them. Perhaps it's for the best that some folks will give up
after trying writing and not succeeding to their own expectations. And the
ones who persist after a few initial setbacks may never go on to become great
success stories -- but they'll have cultivated a personally enriching hobby,
and the quality of their work will improve with practice.

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pjscott
An as-yet-untitled fantasy adventure, where I'm including every cool idea I
can fit in there, just for the fun of it. There will be a world with Escher-
style gravity, and another place with a fractal tree structure where long-
distance journeys happen in logarithmic time, and the characters will have
very best dialog I can muster. This time, I'm going to try to use
foreshadowing, and avoid expo-dumping.

Good luck, everybody.

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shrughes
I'm not really sure what I'm writing, but I'm writing something. There is no
focus character development, some action, and so far it mostly consists of the
author trolling the reader. So far the protagonist has walked through a
desert, talked to a discoloration, survived a gunfight, won the admiration of
street urchins, and started the perilous admissions process for some kind of
school. It's basically ridiculous(ly bad), and there is no plan for the future
plot or really even a well-laid-out setting. But hey, Nanowrimo is not about
the plot.

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techtalsky
I'm actually doing a variant I like to call NaRaRaMo (national rap rapping
month) where I write, rehearse, and record (and post on youtube) a rhyme every
single day in November. One so far of course.

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psawaya
That sounds amazing. Link?

(unless you were joking, but I still think NaRaRaMo is a great idea)

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techtalsky
I was not joking. This is the link to the playlist... which still only has one
rap: <http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=43D4E838F379E338>

The second rap is coming in mere minutes though.

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failquicker
I'm writing "Everwake"

It's about a future where our preoccupation with productivity led us to
genetically engineer away our need/ability to sleep. In this future sleep
becomes the drug of choice and the domain of the counter culture.

I have a framework I wrote last month and a good friend of mine is a sci-fi
editor. She agreed to give me notes, mainly so I would leave her alone.

Not really going to set a word a day goal. With me, I find that sometimes only
a few hundred words eek out. While other days 3000-4000 come out freely.

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cstross
Hmm. Are you familiar with "Beggars in Spain" by Nancy Kress? (Hint: past
decade Hugo-award winner.)

NB: if not, do _not_ go and read it just now. Finish your own work first,
_then_ read it.

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harscoat
It's called "The Xi", it's about the "Firefighters Foreign Legion". They are
on a sacred mission ;) I served 5y. in the Paris Fire Brigade, hence the
inspiration. Now since it is a hobby, I just need to write a little bit
regularly to finish it one day (I should do 1500 caracters without space/day)
it turns out that it is hard! That's one of the main reason w/ my cofounder we
started Quantter. It allows you to track your progress not only on performance
but more important on regularity, and your friends can cheer you on when your
regularity drops. One line per day & your novel is on the way;) Looking
forward to reading your stories guys!

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tjmc
What am I writing? This link to a friend's website:
<http://101reasonstostopwriting.com>

Unfortunately he abandoned it after only 17 reasons. Perhaps he convinced
himself?

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mattdw
A scifi-ish novel set in the slums of Jakarta and ranging over the rest of a
near-future Oceania. 3200 words in, pretty much on target for the 50k month,
but that probably won't be the end of the novel.

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kiba
Mine is science fiction too as it is about predominately robots that carry
stuff from one location to another evading polices. Pretty fun stuff.

But I don't know what your story's about?

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mattdw
Mostly about a small girl trying to find her brother, who's been kidnapped
from the slums and taken to NZ for some nefarious purpose I haven't discovered
yet.

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iuguy
I would love to write this month but:

I'm running an event on targeted attacks and Advanced Persistent Threats.

I have a research paper to finish on a class of vulnerabilities.

I'm preparing for my Tigerscheme SST exam.

I'm taking part in the HN November launch month.

I'm growing a comedy moustache for prostate cancer awareness this Movember
(<http://uk.movember.com/mospace/552354/> if you want to donate, all donations
gratefully received!)

My November is unfortunately too packed to the gills. Of course, I could
always write a novel about my november.... No, wait...

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joeld42
I used my app to generate a topic for my novel, here's my blog post about it:

<http://www.tapnik.com/post/nano2010>

The topic was "Mistaken Judgement / Corporate / Cannon", so far the novel is
about a burnt out software dev at a large and increasingly irrelevant company
in the pacific northwest who travels to mars in a cannon. It's in the modern
day but with the astrophysics of the age of reason transplanted -- mars has
atmosphere, canals and forests, etc..

I'm "jdavis" on NaNoWriMo, add me as a writing buddy!

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runevault
Shooting for 100k words on a fantasy novel with a working title of The Hand of
Power. Already sitting on 3270 words after a full day at work too, so making
good time towards the 100k mark.

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kiba
What is the Hand Of Power about?

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runevault
My easiest answer is to copy my synopsis:

When a King dies, his son must discover if he needs to follow in his father's
footsteps, of tread his own path of rulership. All the while holding onto a
family secret dating back generations, one which helps them keep power... so
long as no one knows about it.

Meanwhile his most trusted adviser finds herself crippled during an attack on
the new King, destroying her both physically and mystically. She must discover
who she truly is and how she can help her Liege in her new situation, while
coming to understand just how dangerous the world really is.

edit: My "big theme" is exploring identity, in the young monarch's case
figuring out who he is as a ruler, in the Elementalist's case figuring out how
to handle life after her magic is crippled. All while dealing with strife from
those who would depose him.

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grandalf
Just wanted to mention a site I made called One Page Per Day. Lots of people
are using it to do NaNo this year:

<http://www.onepageperday.com>

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pjscott
How does that work? Wouldn't you need to write several pages per day to finish
NaNoWriMo? If we estimate 250 words per page (typical in ordinary-sized books)
then you'd need to write more than six pages per day to finish on time. Do you
give people very large pages? Or does the name actually mean "At least one
page per day"?

~~~
grandalf
it means at least one per day :)

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Jach
While I'm not expecting to finish, and it may be more of a novella than a
novel, I started a story based on a weird dream I had a couple nights ago. It
involves stupidity, romance, danger, escape, other good stuff, and is all
taking place in a world fairly similar to Minecraft's.

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petewailes
I'm finishing (so it doesn't really count) Children of Vitruvius, a future-
punk/sci-f novel on the conflict of humanity's desire to do things because it
can, against doing things because we should.

I've about 60-70k words left to go, so going to do that instead.

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shabda
<http://github.com/shabda/nanowrimo/tree/master/outline/>

I am writing it with markdown and git.

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pjscott
That's pretty cool. I'm using Git and a simple text-based markup of my own
devising, which is automatically translated into LaTeX (with the excellent
memoir document class) so I can do proofreading on a nice-looking PDF. I was
getting a little jittery while waiting for November to start, so that software
was fun to write.

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drinian
Someday, I'd like to try this. But right now, every day, I write the book.

