I wrote 1618 words tonight, and finished the very long scene Where The Bodies Ain’t Buried.
This scene is as critical to the story as the previous Interlude…it clears up a question for Kettan that she’d failed to ask.
And you find out a bit of what happens to Nate.
The scene is posted, and for folks who are caught up with the story, will probably go out either tonight or in the Wee Small Hours of Thursday morning.
Last week was rough for me—I wrote massive wordcounts of nonfiction, but everything else that was going on kept me away from TalysMana. I’m hoping for better this week. I’d love to get back to doing 400-500 words a night. I end up with the same number of words, but I have more time to play with how I get them.
If you’re reading the story, this scene is about as dark as the previous one, but in a different way.
If you’re playing WABME, how are YOUR words coming?
{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
1015 Words of my own bit of Darkness.
It’s the first time my MC came up against the reality of what she was fighting. Sure a little demon had been annoying her, but he is a peon. Tonight she got a mind to mind with the my real Villain. It happened when she was investigating the sudden disappearance of the Werewolves she almost had an alliance with.
And If her boyfriend hadn’t pulled her out of the trap, she’d probably be dead. If she was lucky.
Said boyfriend now has some serious explaining to do, about why he expected something to happen, and exactly what his connection to the Villain is. And in the process he’s going to answer a few questions my MC hadn’t even thought to ask him.
And I don’t think my MC is going to be at all happy with the revelations.
No actual words written on the last few days, a lot of plotting done. I’m discovering new sides of the story that I really like
Also, I’d like to build and keep a decent buffer of pre-planned scenes so I don’t have to actually stop writing to plot my next scenes – yes, I know that was probably pretty obvious, but I chose to start with a pretty loose outline with only the first 4-5 scenes planned in detail, and blew up my initial buffer rather quickly.
I was gong to fill in the last missing scene but hubby’s grandfather (who was more of a father figure) passed away.
We were sort of expecting it but it’s still never easy. One good thing is that there may be a trip to Scotland in the future to spread his ashes.
Sorry to hear about that. My condolences.
Sorry about that, Jessica
I hope things get better soon, in the meanwhile, *hugs* to you and all of your family.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Jessica, I’m so sorry to hear that! It’s wonderful that you and your husband might be able to take his ashes back to his homeland. And from your blog he sounds like such a wonderful person. It was so nice of you to capture your thoughts about him. I feel like I got to know him a little bit too.
I hope you and your husband take care. My thoughts are with you.
Thanks for all the well wishes of support! Coming on here feels like getting a hug from a family member(s). :’)
I was helping to go through some of his belongings yesterday and apparently he was a writer too! No one knew! He wrote a story about a sailing trip he took with some buddies in ’88 and it was really funny, especially when you hear it in your head with his accent! I’m going to read a bit of it at the funeral Thursday.
I just read “Where the Bodie Ain’t Buried”. Will is sweet, desperately trying to make sure Kettan won’t freak. I like Will, can I take him home?
I liked that too, about Will, but also that he knew the possible range of responses. He seemed not only prepared to handle any of the responses but to be present and supportive … or am I starting to read into him traits not presented but I either assume are there OR want to be there?
Nope that’s what I read into him too. That’s why I wanted to take him home.
What a thrill it is to watch you work on this, even as I am on the edge of my seat reading the story! Yes it is dark, but I’ve got my fingers crossed for the good guys to pull through in the end…
802 words on my short story last night. I don’t have a lot of control on how long my stories are yet, and I’m real curious how long this one will end up being.
It’s great fun to write it though:D
“I don’t have a lot of control on how long my stories are yet,”
that is a very interesting concept to me. I think I have that trouble too. I thought WIP would be barely one book but it’s definitely more than 1 now. My next story (when I finish this series) is going to be a standalone. I know the whole outline so I know the size of it. But I can’t seem to get interested in it because it feels already written or something. and who knows, maybe that will grow to at least 2. yuk. at that rate, I would never have anything to sell.
gah, I have no idea how to get control over the size of a story. a new thing to worry about. my only hope is to finish and find lots to cut…
are there any tips for this issue, by any chance?
sorry to write such a long question. I feel like I’ve heard that phrase before. something about new writers tend to have trouble stopping their stories. Your post triggered that vague memory and now I’m worried.
I’m glad I’m not alone in feeling this way, but I wouldn’t worry about it!
This time out I’m just more kind of curious what it feels like to write something under 10k words, because the size of the idea was definitely not a book length one.
So far everything I’ve written, or am in the process writing has had a definite End– meaning, I know pretty much where I’m going with it. What I don’t know, is how many words it will take me to get there. That might be where some planning would come in, but like you say, planning too much might ruin the surprise, and for me the tendency has been to fill in so much detail while planning, that I end up pretty much writing the scene I am trying to plan!!
The only tip I can offer is not to sweat it too much, because I’m finding so far that revision clears up a lot of these issues. At that point, one can step back and decide what stays and what goes, and that way get control over the word count.
Thanks Larkk. You’re so right and you’ve brought me back to my senses (at least temporarily). I’ll try to stop worrying so much until revision time.
I got the same answer from Holly when I wrote to her sweating about my book length. It was something like ‘Just write it, don’t rewrite it endlessly while you’re doing it or you’ll kill your story’.
I’ve had to put a stop to my habit of constantly going back over my previous night’s work and pruning and re-pruning scene by scene. It isn’t systematic and it distracts me from writing more. Let the words flow free!
That said, some kind of act structure, scene list or flowchart or something would probably be helpful if you wanted to write a story within a set number of words, and knew what you wanted before you started.
Then you could budget out how long each scene should be and aim for that mark. The trick would be not to sweat it if you went a little over or under. Hope that helps!
Monday was a productive day, primarily on back story. Got some important details figured out, but not need to expand on them a bit and clarify some bits. Then, after some mapping and languages, the second draft will be upon me…
1478. FRIKKIN’. WORDS. ON. MONDAY.
Good. Lord.
Shatnerspeak aside, I rule on so many levels. I went to bed at 2 AM but it was worth it. With a wordcount such as this, I completely made up for the two days I took off last week, and much more. Yay!
I wrapped up the end of the previous scene, in which Erthel comes to terms with how much she and her mother are really similar, and started the next one, in which Erthel and Maithel go to lunch at the local bloodline’s (Faurel’s family) estate. They’re about to discover a new side of the issue, and Erthel will have to make a choice, though she doesn’t know it yet. Heheh.
I’m feeling like I sank into Expositioland here and there, and I can already think of much more fitting places and scenes for some things I’ve shown, but meh. Such is the way of first draft.
Yay! that’s awesome. (and Shatnerspeak rules)
New record! *does the happy dance*
Sounds like the tension is escalating–nice!
And. Sometimes. Every. Word. IS. Its. Own. Sentence. (I’m an unashamed Star Trek fan; that was the setting for my PSA… hehe. Shatnerspeak ftw.)
*hi-fives Danzier*
I. Rule. Definitely.
I have to admit I’ve always been more of a Warsie than a Trekkie (gotta love Han Solo ♥), but both remain huge classics in their own right. One of my favourite memories is a scene, I think from one of the movies, in which Spock trains his intelligence/logic skills with a sort of computer that asks him to solve complicated problems and such – and the only question that leaves him befuddled is “how do you feel?”
)
(I also like to poke fun at redshirts and Kirk always getting some hot girl in whatever planet they end up
Did you both watch the new Star Trek? So great! and they had the token red shirt in it. Lot’s of laughs for Trekkies
and I loved the actors they picked.
Hi Gabby! I haven’t seen the new Star Trek movie yet because I’ve heard negative reviews from close pals and I fear that might influence me. So I’m letting the phenomenon “cool off” for a while, but I definitely plan to give it a shot sometime
Really? I could watch it and then watch it all over again. lol.
Well I’ve heard both love it & hate it reviews about that movie, even if mostly negative by close pals. That’s why I’m letting it cool off. I suppose a lot of the reaction depends on what one was expecting from a ST movie, and that’s highly subjective
I’d make the very fitting example of Pirates of the Caribbean (which I liked, but was harshly criticized for its playful tone) but this is probably not the place. If you take a look on my tumblr site there’s my email address, in case you’d like a little chat sometime with the crazy Italian lady (which is me)
Thanks! I just emailed you. Hopefully I got the email right.
Not a word on the story, frantically preparing for the imminent arrival of my mum and grandma from Aussieland in my little corner of Japan. Gulp!
However, I haven’t stopped. Dug into the Culture Clinic book with my partially completed language in hand, because my heroes’ homeland felt just a leeettle too much like Ye Olde Medieval England and I wanted to mix it up. Finding the balance between ‘knights and ladies’ and something that feels fresh and original, and mostly importantly feels real, was not easy.
To that end I put in many hours of work on the culture today, though I don’t know what the word count would be, but the dress, fashion, eating customs, home life and marriage customs are all set down. Hopefully it’ll work.
But to be honest I’ll be glad when I can shuffle the heroes off to somewhere more exotic (which will be soon. and very very exotic. Yay 5,000 year old serpent ninjas and talking dinosaur people!)
Also I’m slightly blocked on the main story, but I think the voyeur princess may save me. If she sneaks off and starts spying on all the various other characters again I can insert snippets of what they’re doing as nice little vignettes instead of big clunky dialogue scenes that cut randomly between each other.
This story is amasing.
Hi all!
1–Holly, the scene is very intense–way to go! I can’t wait to see what happens next. And I’m quite glad that Nate bought it.
2–533 words on PH2, putting a little more tension in the thinking scene. I didn’t think it was holding my attention well enough, so I messed with it, just little tweaks. Then I started in on the bad guy, who’s going slowly insane, and how he manages to sneak up on MC and crew. MC had just decided to try to find the displaced army, but now he’s unconscious, and his friend has to take the reigns for a minute.
Oh, plus 5 more: “cognitively impaired” has been replaced with “a prisoner of his own mind,” which is what I was going for. Yay me. : D
wow, 30 words.
doing a lot of musing and questioning and banging of head against wall. i have an inkling that something is there but what it is escapes me right now. giving myself time cause i feel it has the potential to be a game-changer for mc (…whatever that means/just seems to fit…).
(right now it’s one of those ucky transition scenes but i don’t think it’s supposed to be). i don’t want to give up yet.
Hi Gabby,
I know that feeling of “ucky transition scenes”. I’ve learned how to spot them at the beginning though, especially through Holly’s helpful courses and workshops. I think what it really did it for me was HTTS in particular, but even the other courses were huge helps.
What I’ve learned, is that you can have a transitional *sentence* – to convey a long passage of time, a long journey or whathaveyou in a few words – but not a transition scene. A scene moves the story forward, while a transition should move you over the boring parts – which is kind of a contradiction. If you’re making the transition longer because there’s some genuinely important information or event taking place, maybe it needs to be shown in a scene of its own, or you might find a way to convey the same information somewhere else in a more interesting way.
The usual disclaimer is that this advice comes from my own experience (and reading), so it might not apply to the problem you’re facing – or I might have gotten the whole issue all wrong.
yeah, that’s exactly what I’m facing! can’t decide which one it is yet. keep thinking i’m missing an obvious opportunity with my characters. i guess i’ll have to just write it out and see if i have one of those aha moments.
261 words tonight. Just eeked by my minimum. But I’m okay with that. I’m aiming for 250 words a day every day this week. We’ll call it a stretching of the muscles as I ease back in. Next week, I’ll up it to 300 a day.
Hi Kait, I just wanted to say that it is good to have you back
This is a great exercise, watching you write. You make it look so effortless. I put all the emails from Rebecca in a folder and was suprised to see 16 chapters now.
My WABWM has gone south for a while. Evil Day Job (thanks DasteRoad for the phrase), health issues, challenges with other life stuff– has piled on too high for a while.
I have several websites I want/need to start SOON so that maybe in a year I can ditch the EDJ (Evil Day Job) but it seems like free time, like weekends, get eaten up by other stuff.
Well, no more!! Last weekend I put my foot down, and got the rug pulled out from under that stern, firm foot and landed on my sweet tuchkas. THIS weekend, I plan to put my foot down with a pillow behind me in case someone shakes the rug-free concrete floor I plan to stomp on.
You understand the metaphors here … tough to get family, loved ones, even friends, to understand that just because I am not at work, does NOT mean I am available 24/7 for them.
Easier said than done …
There you are!
*hugs*
And yes, I get your metaphors, and yes, it’s easier said than done. Evil Day Job, by the way, it’s not my doing: it’s a phrase I picked up hanging out on Holly’s blog, but I have no idea who started it
Just remember that I’m cheering up on you no matter what, okay? I look forward to see you hanging around here with your writing more often! ^_^
Oh btw: I got your email, and I’ll reply soonish!