NaNoWriMo 2015 - November 11

So Tuesday was pretty much a non-writing day. I'm fine with that, as long as Wednesday could turn into a writing day, and luckily it did. I got up this morning and suddenly that plot motivator issue I thought I had was solved.

I mentioned that supernatural incident that happened a couple of chapters back, well I had a ready made solution to my issue right there. What if that supernatural item wasn't just the treasure everyone was after, but had a magic boobytrap placed on it. It would make perfect sense considering who originally had it. Suddenly the plot was writing itself again. The boobytrap was triggered and my characters were back in peril again. Things quickly escalated and there was more tension, some fun dialogue scenes and another hint at the main antagonist.

Things progressed pretty well until right near the end of my writing run. The action scene I finished up felt a lot like the one I just did. I did shake it up a little bit, but I was worried that it might be too stale. I glanced at my outline and saw that my primary antagonist was supposed to strike in a separate scene. But what if she struck in the middle of this fight scene? That would make this even more chaotic and interesting. So I think I will have her appear, (but none of my protagonists will get a good look at her) and clash with my folks in this scene. That may mean some rewriting of the action scene, but I did get a good chunk of my word count today. Passed the halfway mark! So if I have to rework things a little bit tomorrow, I'm not too worried.

Music for this run:

• The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey (soundtrack) - Howard Shore
• Maleficent (soundtrack) - James Newton Howard
• Snowpiercer (soundtrack) - Marco Beltrami

Final Word Count: 25090

NaNoWriMo 2015 - November 9

Well yesterday hit an unexpected snag. Life walked in, figured it was time to throw a real wrench in things and did just that. So I didn't get much writing done at all. That said, the story progressed a little bit. But the first self doubts are creeping in. Once again, I'm feeling like I don't have a real driver for this middle portion of the story. Do I introduce the primary antagonist now? Do I have some of her minions show up? I was hoping to keep that whole thing bottled up till closer to the third act, but at this point it feels like the story is running out of momentum. Hopefully I'll get some inspiration on how to get to that next plot point before I pick up the story again.

Music for this run:

• Knowing (soundtrack) - Marco Beltrami

Final Word Count: 20301

NaNoWriMo 2015 - November 7

Had some fun today. First up was a car chase. I haven't had a chance to write one of those in many years. Starship dogfights - did one of those last year. But a car chase, damn I think I have to go back to the 1990s for one of those. Funny thing is, that old car chase is from a story that contains a few characters and situations that I borrowed and used as inspiration for this current story. Kind of funny how that all works out.

The car chase was not easy to write, since I'm not a big car guy. But with NaNoWriMo going on, I told my inner editor not to sweat the details and approached the whole thing like a film storyboard. I'm not sure how well it will read, but I think I got across the perils of two cars hurtling around curves on a lonely forest road.

When the chase ends a shootout erupts. That was also fun to write. Got to throw a few surprises at my protagonists as they fought for their lives and ended up getting battered and bloodied. These poor guys are going to need a serious rest after all this is done (if they survive).

After the corpses hit the floor, my protagonists had some clean up to do, and some more grisly actions to take. For them, this is really the threshold, they've been initiated in blood and now must pursue the course of action till the end.

Up till this point, I've kept the supernatural elements as merely hinted at. Both protagonists have seen things (or thought they've seen things) that they can explain away. But at in the scene I just wrote something happens that changes the whole deal. They both see it and they can't explain it. It is supernatural, and they are tied up in it.

I wasn't expecting this moment to play out like that, but it just happened.  It was one of those writing moments - you feel it happening and it feels so perfect for the story. I love when that happens. This was a good day for the novel, that's for sure.

Music for this run:

• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (game soundtrack) - Oscar Araujo
• Heat (soundtrack) - Elliot Goldenthal, Moby, Passengers, Kronos Quartet, etc.
• World War Z (Soundtrack) - Marco Beltrami
• Permanent Midnight (Soundtrack) - The Crystal Method, Girls against Boys, BT, Moby, Morcheeba etc.

Final Word Count: 19364

NaNoWriMo 2015 - November 5

So I was actually a bit nervous to take Wednesday off. I was on a roll on Tuesday night and thought that my scheduled break might do more harm than good. But taking days off between the writing worked well for me in previous NaNoWriMo runs, so I figured, why change a good thing. And the day off worked great. I was able to go over the upcoming confrontation scene in my mind and get some of the details a bit clearer. I also created a little makeshift map during lunch and planned out where I wanted everyone.

Stuff like that rarely comes across in my writing. But the planning helps me visualize those scenes and write them with a bit more ease. I still ended up stopping for a bit, considering the best way to approach it and then starting up again. My original concept was to have the scene play out and jump between the protagonists and antagonists as it occurred. But that seemed too cumbersome when it came down to it.

I ended up writing the confrontation from the protagonists point of view, jumping back and forth between the two gents (who are viewing it from different places in the desert). It worked out pretty well. I'm curious to how it reads when I come back to edit. I ended the chapter with the antagonists having a conversation about what just happened, so I was able to get their point of view.

Funny thing about that moment is that one of the characters just stepped forward full of personalty that I wasn't expecting. She made an impression and I'm looking forward to writing more for her later in the novel.

Next up was dialogue, my favorite bits to write. Had a lot of fun with three characters trying to talk circles around each other, but none of them really getting what they want out of the conversation. It probably goes on way too long, but it was fun to write. I'm taking Friday off, but Saturday or Sunday I'll be back at it. I've got a surprising situation for the protagonists to deal with in this next portion. It will be fun to write.

Music for this run:

• Tomorrowland (soundtrack) - Michael Giacchino
• Hellboy (soundtrack) - Marco Beltrami
• Wolverine (soundtrack) - Marco Beltrami

Final Word Count: 14617

NaNoWriMo 2015 - November 3

So today was the start of the great unknown. Well at least as far as this novel goes. I had planned my scenes out pretty well up till this point. From here on in I have vague ideas of scenes and a general direction of the plot and conflict, but the details are murky. This is usually where I start slowing down in my word count and yeah that did happen.

I also find myself getting distracted as I try to get into the writing zone. To avoid this, I shut off my internet browser and just focused on Word and iTunes. Less distractions meant more writing. I ended up looking up how to spell Quonset hut. Wikipedia to the rescue!

Most of my writing today focused on describing a key setting in the desert. One of my weaknesses as a writer is my lack of description for setting. In this case I wanted to establish a creepy atmosphere to the place, so I went into quite a bit of detail. I'm thinking some of that will get cut in the editing process, but I feel that going overboard in the first draft is better then writing less, at least for setting material.

This particular setting has appeared in two of my previous stories. It was the location of a bloody finale in one of the first short stories I ever wrote. I also used the same location in my Nanowrimo novels from 2009. In that case, I opened the story there for a bloody confrontation. This time it appears near the beginning, but it is the site of another violent encounter. I put a little homage to my previous stories with a blood stained wall in a key location. it's an in joke for the five people who have read both of those stories.

Coming up next is that confrontation, the first major one of the book. I'm feeling a bit intimidated because I don't have it planned out too well. But I have an end point firmly in sight, so I'll just need to dive in and see what the characters do. In any case, there will be blood.

Writing Music for this Run:

• The Ghost and the Darkness (soundtrack) - Jerry Goldsmith
• A Passage in Time - Dead can Dance
• Passion of the Christ (Soundtrack Suite) - John Debney

Final Word Count: 10625

NaNoWriMo 2015 - November 2

Wasn't sure how far I was going to get today. I knew I'd have a couple of interruptions for sure, but things actually went pretty well. I cranked out another chapter and started in on the next one. But I'm getting to the point of the story that I don't have planned out as well. This is usually where I start running into issues with meeting that word count. But we'll see.

I have a better grasp of where I want to go now than I did yesterday. I spent a few minutes today writing down the motivations for the three factions involved in this story. Essentially my protagonists get involved in a much larger struggle they know nothing about. At first I just had some vague idea of these antagonists being... well antagonists. I needed to know more than that, so I wrote a few sentences about what was motivating them, and that actually helped create some additional conflict in the story.

The thing is, my protagonists don't know why they were hired, it's not their job to know why. But once they find out why (because what is the fun if they don't know) then it will impact how they react to the antagonists. It should make the later portions of the book more interesting since one group of antagonists is actually trying to protect people and the protagonists are actually getting in the way without knowing it.

And my characters did their first bit of off roading today. I had originally planned for a dialogue scene in a club. But things went awry and it turned out to be a dialogue scene in a bed with naked characters! Wow. Didn't see that coming!

Anyway, a good night of writing, but it did feel like I lost some steam as I started the next (unplotted) chapter.

Writing music for this run:

• Carlitos Way (soundtrack suite) - Patrick Doyle
• Hard Rain (soundtrack) - Christopher Young
• Priest (soundtrack) - Christopher Young
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes (soundtrack suite) - Patrick Doyle

Final word count: 7531

NaNoWriMo 2015 - November 1

So I decided to give National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) a shot this year. I'll be tracking some of my progress, thoughts and mental anguish on this ancient blog. Been a while since I've posted something here, but I can't really reconcile putting these updates on my Movie Review blog.

So I'm working on one of my favorite genre's to write, supernatural thriller. It's got a definite Lovecraftian inspiration to it. But this story is also a bit more action oriented than my previous works. In a way I'm actually adapting a couple of my older stories in a new guise. Swapping out some characters here, some settings there and changing the overall outcome. The goal is to introduce the world these stories (yes I'm planning more of these) and set up the main characters. This is a kind of origin story with hints at the larger conflict I've got brewing.

One of the big differences here is that main characters are both male. Oddly enough that is rare in my fiction. I usually have one female protagonist. I think I'll have to focus on making sure both my male leads don't sound like the same guy talking.

I didn't get as much prep work completed as I wanted. I really should have character bios hammered out for both these guys and the main antagonists. I've got a basic idea about both of them, but with my week long business trip cutting into my writing time last week, I did't get the prepping work done.

Still I did create a basic framework for the story, and that will be my guide as I write. I like to create a basic outline for most stories, but I don't hold myself to it. Too often the characters take things in unusual directions that are just too fun to ignore.

11/1/2015
Charted out my course for writing. I want to give myself three days off a week. That means I have to write about 2,777 words a day to meet the 50,000 word goal. That sounds really doable, especially if I can get ahead in the word count.

I ended up spending a few minutes formatting my document before I actually got started. I spent too many minutes messing with fonts, styles and line spacing. Ugh, I really should have done that last week.

I also ran into an issue where I wanted to put an accent on a character's name and spent too much time trying to figure out how to do that in Word. Realized I was wasting time and just wrote around it. This is a speed run for a first draft, it doesn't have to be perfect, right?

Writing music for this run:

• Heat (soundtrack) - Various Artists including Eliot Goldenthal, Kronos Quartet, Passengers and Moby
• Original Soundtracks 1 - Passengers (U2 and friends)
• I Like to Score - Moby
• Collateral (soundtrack) - Various Artists including James Newton Howard
• Lost Highway (soundtrack) - Various Artists including Angelo Badalamenti, Barry Adamson, Trent Reznor and Smashing Pumpkin

Final word count: 4,420