Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazMarch 10, 2012 - 4:25pm
Let my intimidation campaign begin (seeing as how the words aren't flowing I might as well try to distract my opponent):
For Boone's Eyes Only:
Nikki Guerlain
from Portlandia
March 10, 2012 - 4:29pm
@chestie I wouldn't trust my butt unicorn or not around that Brandon fellow. He's got shifty eyes and weird notions about cuddling.
Jason Van Horn
from North Carolina is reading A Feast For CrowsMarch 10, 2012 - 6:59pm
I have not written a single damn word. Anyone else?
I've got like five ideas kicking around. So I basically know my premise and a general idea as to the ending, but that's it. Strangely enough most of my endings seem to play out in the same way as well. Hmmmm.
avery of the dead
from Kentucky is reading Cipher SistersMarch 10, 2012 - 7:01pm
Went out to dinner and thought of a really smart idea, then worried you would all be too dumb to get it...
I can say that without retribution, because you won't know which one is mine! Bwahahahahahaha!
Dave
from a city near you is reading constantlyMarch 10, 2012 - 7:05pm
Me too, Van Horn. I'm still writing them in my head, to see which is better.
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazMarch 10, 2012 - 7:11pm
I am throwing shit around my brain, waiting for something to stick. I never start tapping out words until that switch is in place and starts trippin'.
Brainstorming period.
Dave
from a city near you is reading constantlyMarch 10, 2012 - 7:21pm
That's how I know it's good, when I don't forget, and the story is still there.
Dave
from a city near you is reading constantlyMarch 10, 2012 - 7:21pm
Or something like that
Moderator
Utah
from Fort Worth, TX is reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtryMarch 10, 2012 - 7:34pm
My story is going great! I spent the afternoon with a realtor looking at houses. Then I spent the next three hours at Home Depot getting a rough estimate of renovation costs. Then we went to Braum's for ice cream. In a moment I'm going to leave you all so I can look at more houses on the MLS.
So far, that is my writing experience of the day.
avery of the dead
from Kentucky is reading Cipher SistersMarch 10, 2012 - 7:39pm
Utah loses his own competition in the first round because he doesn't submit his story to himself on time.
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazMarch 10, 2012 - 7:49pm
He-he.
aliensoul77
from a cold distant star is reading the writing on the wall.March 10, 2012 - 7:57pm
I wrote a 1000 words and now I'm letting it ferment. I want it to ripen, once the smell becomes pungent, I will go back in and try to make wine of it.
Covewriter
from Nashville, Tennessee is reading & SonsMarch 10, 2012 - 9:09pm
I discovered something about what I'm doing wrong. I'm always so happy to get the bones dow -- to have a start and ending -- a complete thing. I think it's done because i got the first step finished.. Now I'm tyring to flesh out the characters and I'm getting to know them. I'm sure this is elementery for most of you guys, but some of these obvious things are revolutionary to me haha. Great day. Now time for myself to figure out how to write a story. I don't have anything to say about jumblies or Chuck or kissing squirrels, but I am laughing and loving the comments you post.
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazMarch 10, 2012 - 9:21pm
Good job Covey. Sounds like you are doing really well to me.
Nikki Guerlain
from Portlandia
March 10, 2012 - 9:41pm
I'm currently amazing myself. Of course I'm playing with myself. But still, it's pretty amazing. And Bob's like for shizzle mama let me give you here some of this and he spurts glorious demented goo onto paper. When it dries I will scrye the meaning of all this for all you nonseer types by flinging the stuff into your brains until you're a bunch of slack jawed semi retarded space monkies.
Richard
from St. Louis is reading various anthologiesMarch 10, 2012 - 10:08pm
@jason - nothing yet, still chewing on the idea
@avery - utah missing his own deadline would be priceless.
Covewriter
from Nashville, Tennessee is reading & SonsMarch 10, 2012 - 10:28pm
What I thought was good now seems shitty. I don't think i can get good by next Sunday.
Covewriter
from Nashville, Tennessee is reading & SonsMarch 10, 2012 - 10:31pm
I'm going to claim that a fifth grader got my access and took over and wrote the story.
Jose F. Diaz
from Boston is reading Wolf Hall by Hilary MantelMarch 10, 2012 - 10:35pm
I'm at 2,000 words and I realized that I will run out of room before I can get to a climax and resolution. If I do it will just come off as rushed. Why couldn't it be 4,000 words?
Covewriter
from Nashville, Tennessee is reading & SonsMarch 10, 2012 - 10:38pm
Because the time frame to write for the contest would have to be longer? I dunno.
Jose F. Diaz
from Boston is reading Wolf Hall by Hilary MantelMarch 10, 2012 - 10:39pm
I just wrote these 2,000 words in the last hour and a half. It cannot take that long to write 2500 words.
Covewriter
from Nashville, Tennessee is reading & SonsMarch 10, 2012 - 10:54pm
Agree. I wrote mine fast but not i think it's shitty.
Covewriter
from Nashville, Tennessee is reading & SonsMarch 10, 2012 - 10:55pm
I don' twant to go back to it now. I'm avoiding.
Jason Van Horn
from North Carolina is reading A Feast For CrowsMarch 11, 2012 - 5:47am
My dog ate my writing prompt
wickedvoodoo
from Mansfield, England is reading stuff.March 11, 2012 - 6:34am
That's because your dog works for me now.
Bekanator
from Kamloops, British Columbia is reading Ugly Girls by Lindsay HunterMarch 11, 2012 - 8:48am
I know my plot but I'm having difficulties getting it the hell out of me. Took me two days of free writing to find the right beginning for this thing. I've realized that the story I'm writing is a story I'd normally just give up on were it not for WAR.
Americantypo
from Philadelphia is reading The Bone ClocksMarch 11, 2012 - 11:42am
I'm about a thousand words in. Feel pretty good about it so far, but we'll see how the voters feel in a week I guess.
Regardless, I'll have a story under 3,000 words to submit places, so that'll be good. Word length was really limiting the number of places I could send my work.
Americantypo
from Philadelphia is reading The Bone ClocksMarch 11, 2012 - 1:44pm
For those of you struggling with a low word count, just hyphen stuff!
It-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night.
One word! Boom.
Jose F. Diaz
from Boston is reading Wolf Hall by Hilary MantelMarch 11, 2012 - 1:56pm
So I try and break it down like this.
500 words to snag you and build the setting.
500 words to develop characters fully
500 words to build to a climax
500 words to give a resolution
500 words for exposition.
I try and work within this to make sure I make my word quota. To be honest it doesn't work out so well some of the time. It just helps me to mentally try keeping on track.
Nikki Guerlain
from Portlandia
March 11, 2012 - 2:23pm
That coo joseph I do something similar. I build mine like mini movies.
First I collect the words/language I want to use centered about one specific moment of weirdness. The reason I do this is that i try to evoke as much through language itself to make it carry more weight. If a picture is worth a thousand words then as writers we can use a choice few words to paint a picture in the reader's mind that says a thousand words thus building a rich and interactive experience.
Then I build a logical context for bringing this moment into being. Because the weirder you are the more clear you have to be with logic as well as emotional responses.
Then after I do that I build a spine for it by choosing the emotional journey I want the readers and the characters to go through using my handy dandy emotional template I got from a screenwriting book.
Then I figure out how much weight I want each emotional portion to be and do a rough estimate of how many words that section will get based on percentages. Of course I adjust as I go etc but as long as I concentrate on the emotional journey I'm creating I can't go wrong.
After my first draft I go back through and try to make more connections between the things in my story, change names to make more ironic, perhaps change the sex of a character or a cat to a dog.
Anyhow yeah don't know if that really helps anyone but it really works for me.
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazMarch 11, 2012 - 2:30pm
Interesting. Very interesting.
Flaminia Ferina
from Umbria is reading stuffMarch 11, 2012 - 2:33pm
500 words in and happily procrastinating.
manda lynn
from Ohio is reading Of Love and Other Demons (again)March 11, 2012 - 3:30pm
joseph, just change all those 500s to 250s and work harder to say the same stuff with fewer, more carefully chosen descriptions and sentences. you don't need so many damned WORDS.
i haven't written shit yet :)
Nikki Guerlain
from Portlandia
March 11, 2012 - 3:36pm
Yay manda go! You unwrite the living dogshit out of it. That said, I'd love to play Nintendo with you sometime.
manda lynn
from Ohio is reading Of Love and Other Demons (again)March 11, 2012 - 3:37pm
i don't play video games - but i'll play scrabble!! if you wanna play scrabble i will clear my schedule.
Jose F. Diaz
from Boston is reading Wolf Hall by Hilary MantelMarch 11, 2012 - 3:38pm
I know I don't need so many words, but I love writing dialogue. It's like having a conversation with myself, but funner.
manda lynn
from Ohio is reading Of Love and Other Demons (again)March 11, 2012 - 3:42pm
i do, too. i always have to go back and cut half my dialogue because i realize i'm just letting the conversation play out because i'm enjoying it...
you can always trim out a bunch of the dialogue for this then add it back in later if you want to lengthen it back out before you submit it anywhere.
Nikki Guerlain
from Portlandia
March 11, 2012 - 3:44pm
Scrabble it will be. I should fly over and have a sleepover sometime.
Chester Pane
from Portland, Oregon is reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazMarch 11, 2012 - 4:39pm
Words are over ated.
Scrabble is confusing. I can never figure out where to put the wood blocks.
I love that one game with the dice trapped in the bubble. That clicking jumblie sound.
I just might have a story premise if I can manage to hold off the doubt demons.
Flaminia Ferina
from Umbria is reading stuffMarch 11, 2012 - 5:00pm
It wasn't procrastination, it was Research! For realz.
I might have a plot here, fellers LitRzorz.
Fritz
March 11, 2012 - 5:57pm
@nikki. I love the variability in writing. Its all about the exploration of technique for me. Yeah, that sounds right. Explorer
R.Moon
from The City of Champions is reading The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion; Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schimdt PH.D; Creating Characters by the editors of Writer's DigestMarch 11, 2012 - 7:11pm
i don't play video games - but i'll play scrabble!! if you wanna play scrabble i will clear my schedule.
- You rule! I hate video games and love Scrabble!
R.Moon
from The City of Champions is reading The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion; Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schimdt PH.D; Creating Characters by the editors of Writer's DigestMarch 11, 2012 - 7:13pm
I just write. Whatever comes to me, comes to me. I don't try to over analyze it. Write shit first, then polish to a diamond. With that said, I just started today and got 1000 words in.
manda lynn
from Ohio is reading Of Love and Other Demons (again)March 11, 2012 - 8:42pm
@ r.moon & nikki - when this is all over, we play scrabble. HUGE scrabble party. maybe there will be a cake. it might be a long rectangle cake that says CAKE in scrabble-esque letter blocks.
Nikki Guerlain
from Portlandia
March 11, 2012 - 8:43pm
sweet.
R.Moon
from The City of Champions is reading The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion; Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schimdt PH.D; Creating Characters by the editors of Writer's DigestMarch 11, 2012 - 9:00pm
@manda: I once won a game of Scrabble with chihuahua. I'm not a big fan of cake. How about Alphabits? Or Cheerios that spell out: oooooo
manda lynn
from Ohio is reading Of Love and Other Demons (again)March 11, 2012 - 9:53pm
what if it's an ice cream cake? or what if it's just cardboard boxes covered in icing to replicate the look of a cake that spells 'CAKE'? in keeping with the spirit of a party, you know, having a cake....
Liana
from Romania and Texas is reading Naked LunchMarch 11, 2012 - 10:55pm
I have my IDEA!
R.Moon
from The City of Champions is reading The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion; Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schimdt PH.D; Creating Characters by the editors of Writer's DigestMarch 12, 2012 - 4:12am
Ice cream cake is cool. Can we listen to Cake while eating cake? And could we listen to Cake while the tv is on?
avery of the dead
from Kentucky is reading Cipher SistersMarch 12, 2012 - 5:06am
Let my intimidation campaign begin (seeing as how the words aren't flowing I might as well try to distract my opponent):
For Boone's Eyes Only:
@chestie I wouldn't trust my butt unicorn or not around that Brandon fellow. He's got shifty eyes and weird notions about cuddling.
I have not written a single damn word. Anyone else?
I've got like five ideas kicking around. So I basically know my premise and a general idea as to the ending, but that's it. Strangely enough most of my endings seem to play out in the same way as well. Hmmmm.
Went out to dinner and thought of a really smart idea, then worried you would all be too dumb to get it...
I can say that without retribution, because you won't know which one is mine! Bwahahahahahaha!
Me too, Van Horn. I'm still writing them in my head, to see which is better.
I am throwing shit around my brain, waiting for something to stick. I never start tapping out words until that switch is in place and starts trippin'.
Brainstorming period.
That's how I know it's good, when I don't forget, and the story is still there.
Or something like that
My story is going great! I spent the afternoon with a realtor looking at houses. Then I spent the next three hours at Home Depot getting a rough estimate of renovation costs. Then we went to Braum's for ice cream. In a moment I'm going to leave you all so I can look at more houses on the MLS.
So far, that is my writing experience of the day.
Utah loses his own competition in the first round because he doesn't submit his story to himself on time.
He-he.
I wrote a 1000 words and now I'm letting it ferment. I want it to ripen, once the smell becomes pungent, I will go back in and try to make wine of it.
I discovered something about what I'm doing wrong. I'm always so happy to get the bones dow -- to have a start and ending -- a complete thing. I think it's done because i got the first step finished.. Now I'm tyring to flesh out the characters and I'm getting to know them. I'm sure this is elementery for most of you guys, but some of these obvious things are revolutionary to me haha. Great day. Now time for myself to figure out how to write a story. I don't have anything to say about jumblies or Chuck or kissing squirrels, but I am laughing and loving the comments you post.
Good job Covey. Sounds like you are doing really well to me.
I'm currently amazing myself. Of course I'm playing with myself. But still, it's pretty amazing. And Bob's like for shizzle mama let me give you here some of this and he spurts glorious demented goo onto paper. When it dries I will scrye the meaning of all this for all you nonseer types by flinging the stuff into your brains until you're a bunch of slack jawed semi retarded space monkies.
@jason - nothing yet, still chewing on the idea
@avery - utah missing his own deadline would be priceless.
What I thought was good now seems shitty. I don't think i can get good by next Sunday.
I'm going to claim that a fifth grader got my access and took over and wrote the story.
I'm at 2,000 words and I realized that I will run out of room before I can get to a climax and resolution. If I do it will just come off as rushed. Why couldn't it be 4,000 words?
Because the time frame to write for the contest would have to be longer? I dunno.
I just wrote these 2,000 words in the last hour and a half. It cannot take that long to write 2500 words.
Agree. I wrote mine fast but not i think it's shitty.
I don' twant to go back to it now. I'm avoiding.
My dog ate my writing prompt
That's because your dog works for me now.
I know my plot but I'm having difficulties getting it the hell out of me. Took me two days of free writing to find the right beginning for this thing. I've realized that the story I'm writing is a story I'd normally just give up on were it not for WAR.
I'm about a thousand words in. Feel pretty good about it so far, but we'll see how the voters feel in a week I guess.
Regardless, I'll have a story under 3,000 words to submit places, so that'll be good. Word length was really limiting the number of places I could send my work.
For those of you struggling with a low word count, just hyphen stuff!
It-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night.
One word! Boom.
So I try and break it down like this.
500 words to snag you and build the setting.
500 words to develop characters fully
500 words to build to a climax
500 words to give a resolution
500 words for exposition.
I try and work within this to make sure I make my word quota. To be honest it doesn't work out so well some of the time. It just helps me to mentally try keeping on track.
That coo joseph I do something similar. I build mine like mini movies.
First I collect the words/language I want to use centered about one specific moment of weirdness. The reason I do this is that i try to evoke as much through language itself to make it carry more weight. If a picture is worth a thousand words then as writers we can use a choice few words to paint a picture in the reader's mind that says a thousand words thus building a rich and interactive experience.
Then I build a logical context for bringing this moment into being. Because the weirder you are the more clear you have to be with logic as well as emotional responses.
Then after I do that I build a spine for it by choosing the emotional journey I want the readers and the characters to go through using my handy dandy emotional template I got from a screenwriting book.
Then I figure out how much weight I want each emotional portion to be and do a rough estimate of how many words that section will get based on percentages. Of course I adjust as I go etc but as long as I concentrate on the emotional journey I'm creating I can't go wrong.
After my first draft I go back through and try to make more connections between the things in my story, change names to make more ironic, perhaps change the sex of a character or a cat to a dog.
Anyhow yeah don't know if that really helps anyone but it really works for me.
Interesting. Very interesting.
500 words in and happily procrastinating.
joseph, just change all those 500s to 250s and work harder to say the same stuff with fewer, more carefully chosen descriptions and sentences. you don't need so many damned WORDS.
i haven't written shit yet :)
Yay manda go! You unwrite the living dogshit out of it. That said, I'd love to play Nintendo with you sometime.
i don't play video games - but i'll play scrabble!! if you wanna play scrabble i will clear my schedule.
I know I don't need so many words, but I love writing dialogue. It's like having a conversation with myself, but funner.
i do, too. i always have to go back and cut half my dialogue because i realize i'm just letting the conversation play out because i'm enjoying it...
you can always trim out a bunch of the dialogue for this then add it back in later if you want to lengthen it back out before you submit it anywhere.
Scrabble it will be. I should fly over and have a sleepover sometime.
Words are over ated.
Scrabble is confusing. I can never figure out where to put the wood blocks.
I love that one game with the dice trapped in the bubble. That clicking jumblie sound.
I just might have a story premise if I can manage to hold off the doubt demons.
It wasn't procrastination, it was Research! For realz.
I might have a plot here, fellers LitRzorz.
@nikki. I love the variability in writing. Its all about the exploration of technique for me. Yeah, that sounds right. Explorer
I just write. Whatever comes to me, comes to me. I don't try to over analyze it. Write shit first, then polish to a diamond. With that said, I just started today and got 1000 words in.
@ r.moon & nikki - when this is all over, we play scrabble. HUGE scrabble party. maybe there will be a cake. it might be a long rectangle cake that says CAKE in scrabble-esque letter blocks.
sweet.
@manda: I once won a game of Scrabble with chihuahua. I'm not a big fan of cake. How about Alphabits? Or Cheerios that spell out: oooooo
what if it's an ice cream cake? or what if it's just cardboard boxes covered in icing to replicate the look of a cake that spells 'CAKE'? in keeping with the spirit of a party, you know, having a cake....
I have my IDEA!
Ice cream cake is cool. Can we listen to Cake while eating cake? And could we listen to Cake while the tv is on?
Yay, Liana!!!
*Claps and cheers*