Over the past few weeks, I've posted the first chapter of my NaNoWriMo. With each novel written, complete or not, I learned a bit. Below is what I learned with each story.
Title: Lethal Ladies
Year: 2006
Current Status: Complete
Learned: I learned that I can write an original novel. Prior to Lethal Ladies, the longest work I'd written was about 5000 words in a fanfic. It was a stretch, and, as mentioned in the commentary, the started to wrap up twenty-thousand words too soon. Lethal Ladies let me prove to myself that I could write.
Title: Digital Magic
Year: 2007
Current Status: Incomplete, abandoned
Learned: Romance is hard. I am not a romance writer. The A-plot should be the romance, but Jackie just wasn't interested. Later works would see romance slip in, but as a B-plot instead of the main attraction.
Title: Crossover
Year: 2008
Current Status: Complete
Learned: It is so much easier to write a story when I know the characters. I had worked with Nasty with Subject 13, so I knew her well enough, and had done some prep work with both Meredith and Vicki. The writing was easier, and it gets easier with each year.
Title: Tales of the Soul Blade
Year: 2009
Current Status: Incomplete
Learned: Stories can get away from me. So many dangling plot threads just when I wanted to wrap things up. I had a number of loose ends that needed to be tied off, from Grace's graduation party to their father's new girlfriend.
Title: By the Numbers
Year: 2010
Current Status: Complete
Learned: Not so much learned anything as applied earlier lessons. I had an outline this time around to see if it helped with writing. It did and it didn't; By the Numbers kept trying to go in its direction and had a completely different ending than the outline had. The outline was also sparse; it had the event and outcome without details.
Title: Bronya and Morwenna
Year: 2011
Current Status: Incomplete
Learned: I can create a setting out of whole cloth if needed, but I need a tool to help. With Bronya and Morwenna, I had in mind the Traveller Universal World Profile codes in mind to get an idea of what the destination world would be. I also learned that I really should ignore characters when I'm not ready to deal with them.
Title: Beaver Flight
Year: 2012
Current Status: Incomplete
Learned: Some stories work better as a different format. Beaver Flight would have been better if designed from the start as a serial, like /Subject 13/ had been. I also didn't know the characters well enough, and didn't have enough plot to fill the story between the key points I wanted to hit.
Title: The Devil You Know
Year: 2013
Current Status: Incomplete
Learned: This was another work where I applied what I had learned before. I spent time figuring out my main characters, Ione and Jack, and getting a rough idea of what could happen, though left it open enough in case the story went in an interesting direction. The supporting cast grew as needed, which meant that when November ended, I had characters whose stories still weren't done. But, the idea that each character has a story, whether it's important to the main plot or not, solidified.
Title: Unruly
Year: 2014
Current Status: Ongoing
Learned: Serials are fun! Sometimes, ignoring the format can free up restrictions and let a story run as long as needed, no more, no less.
Title: The Elf's Prisoner
Year: 2015
Current Status: Incomplete
Learned: Never choose the last minute idea. I did learn that I could write without a safety net. The story built slowly, though, but I did try to keep things going, with inter-party drama maintaining conflict when random encounters didn't make any sense. I called upon GM experience to fill in the gaps, both in action and in details. But it got weird.
And that's the past ten years of NaNoWriMo from me. If there's a story you want to see more of, leave a comment below. Next week will be an hiatus as I work out what comes next. I have two Unruly pieces in the works that just need to be figured out. I may also have a few game-related posts in this place.
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