Thread: What's Your Word Count?

I don't think I've stayed on an outline for more than a page before. *shakes head* It just feels weird. It's this storyboarding technique thing that does it, and it helps me to write fast, but it's still just weird.

You guys outlined? Whoa. I'm just taking it one line at a time. I thought my writing on the first two days was pretty good, all things considered. The thousand words I wrote yesterday, I hated.

Yeah...I spent two months researching and outlining and pumping myself up to write this thing. It's not only compressed in time but the most ambitious project I've ever set for myself. The outline is something like 5,000 words by itself, with all kinds of byzantine plot turns and if-thens, almost like a computer program.
The "storyboarding thing" is working scene-by-scene from the outline-visualizing the setting, keeping in mind the plot segment, and determining how the character will act, before writing anything down. It's really elementary and doubtless not new, but it is to me and it works wonderfully.
But that's different...if I had jumped in as you did, I'd have gone with a different story and made it up as I went along.

So I'm afraid that I'll finish my story before I reach my word count. I started on the 11th, and haven't been writing as much as I want to because I had to write an AP English essay yesterday, but I'm currently at 6,325 words.

Anyway - here's my problem. I'm taking my story one line at a time (like Sam) with a very basic mental outline, and I feel like I'm going through too much plot in too few words.

Does everyone feel like this? Any tips for overcoming this feeling?

~Christian

I felt like that when starting, as my tale was projected @30k, but it made itself larger without padding. You can expand each scene in greater detail, leaning on sensory information and conversations, tell more of it in passive voice which generally uses more words, add extraneous subplots, be mean to your characters...there are a lot of techniques to add wordcount.
Mine was to add commercials, but my mc spent most of the first half of the novel watching tv.

Well, I got my four-thousand written today, and now I'm absolutely knackered. Ten-thousand down, forty-thousand to go.

You are my hero moderan.

I quit today at 20,090. I still like about a thousand being caught up. Tomorrow should do it for me, then I'll try to get a padding built up so I don't have to play catch up again.

Originally Posted by Sam Winchester

You guys outlined? Whoa.

Not all of us treat it as something cavalier, although, I get that a lot of people assume it's nothing more than a useless endeavor with pages and pages of horrible writing that get left and forgotten come December. While there's certainly some, even a lot, of that (nothing wrong with it, either), there's a good many people who treat it as any other writing project with months of research and planning behind it. I'd hazard a guess that the people who fall into the latter category are among those who've gone on to find publishing contracts for their NaNo Novels.

I've been working on my story since mid-summer and have had a lot of fun doing it. Maybe next year you'll do it again and have the benefit of having more time before hand to plan your story out, if, of course, that's something that works for you.

Originally Posted by Beja-Beja

You are my hero moderan.

LOL...thanks, but why aim so low?

Originally Posted by valeca

Not all of us treat it as something cavalier, although, I get that a lot of people assume it's nothing more than a useless endeavor with pages and pages of horrible writing that get left and forgotten come December. While there's certainly some, even a lot, of that (nothing wrong with it, either), there's a good many people who treat it as any other writing project with months of research and planning behind it. I'd hazard a guess that the people who fall into the latter category are among those who've gone on to find publishing contracts for their NaNo Novels.

I've been working on my story since mid-summer and have had a lot of fun doing it. Maybe next year you'll do it again and have the benefit of having more time before hand to plan your story out, if, of course, that's something that works for you.

That's the aim...I've never subscribed to the idea that one has to cast unedited flotsam onto the page in order to make the wordcount. I just needed a swift kick in the ass and nano has done that. Along about March or so I anticipate starting an agent hunt for Milk and its sequel Identity Crisis. By then, given half of my daily nano wordcount, I should have two more novels and a story cycle entering the edit/polish stage.

Well, I'm just happy that I finally reached the halfway mark! 25,462 words!!!

Problem: My story is 3/4 done. I need to stretch the last 1/4 to 25,000 words?!! Yikes!!

Yay for you!!!
An extended epilogue? A "whatever happened to" segment? False endings/alternate endings? Hostile takeovers by plush Cthulhus (oh, wait, that was what I was gonna do)? Write a completely different piece?

I know I have a lot of scenes that can be enhanced, and a few places where scenes could be added, but I don't want to add just a bunch of junk. I'd like to have quite a bit of story left when I edit out the crap, y'know?

Some parts are real emotional, and I almost cry when I read them over! Some parts are funny, and a lot of it is just boring.

But I'm pressing on. I hope I can get 50,000 word by the end of the month!

urgh, haven't written a word for two days because of stupid work!! Only got to write 10,000 over tonight and tomorow though to catch up which should be easy-peasy

Updates? Success?