Most of my chapter titles run three to six words long. Somehow this chapter title came out of me:
Chapter 7
Of the great celebration and a parade and much festivities and the departure of the heroes and a bunch of other things and of the shameless way that the author is padding - and I mean oh so ever shamelessly and vulgarly padding - his word count if you know what I mean and I think that you do, for such are the lengths a desperate man will go to in the course of a NaNoWriMo novel writing contest.
So what is your worst NaNo inspired crime against literature... so far...?
----------
http://fantasywriterguy.blogspot.com/
41,567 / 50,000
Nov 7, 2009 - 19 44
Writing historical fiction without knowing *exactly* if what I'm saying would actually have occurred. (I know my topic pretty well, but there are tiny details that my inner editor is absolutely convulsing about. My inner editor is like Hannibal Lecter in solitary confinement. :P He's locked up for a good reason.)
I'll let him out in December when the greatest plot-ectomy in history can begin. lol I will repent then.
37,077 / 50,000
Nov 7, 2009 - 20 00
FWG, if I came across that chapter title in the right sort of published book -- say, a Terry Pratchett book -- I would be sooooo delighted!
As for writing historical fiction without properly researching what really happened? Well, maybe you're writing an alternate history!
You feel dirty? So did my main character, so I described, in detail, how she took a shower. Now, she had never taken a shower before, nor had she ever encountered running water, let alone hot running water. Yep, it was good for LOTSA words!
Keep on, everyone!
----------Gale . . . www.ThornesQuest.com . . . or . . . www.stringingwords.com
17,073 / 50,000
Nov 7, 2009 - 21 02
I have a 600 word long explanation on how tactics in space warfare work more or less out of nowhere.
Battle in space is unique because of the panoply of tools that need to be implemented at the right times in the right way. Even a small ship if it uses the terrain correctly can inflict some massive damage if it moves right.
First are fighters, they are small ships that have twin plasma rifles. They each have a small MAM engine to propel them and so even though their speed is unmatched in short confrontations, they cannot on their own go into crunch drive. That being said, a space station or orbital can’t hold up for bery long against a carrier class letting loose its fighters on them. Along side the fighters are small ships called daggers. Daggers are as the name implies a knife shaped ship with no projectile weapons, but an extremely dense hull and a sharp shape. These things have some very specialized engines for massive velocity in a very short time. They ram other ships and can be a really cheap alternative to missiles against lightly armoured vessels. The really good dagger pilots can even perfectly aim for an AM container and blow the entire ship. That being said, it is no wonder why dagger pilots tend to have the highest death rate and it usually takes some sort of deranged mind to volunteer to fly one.
Missiles are a warships heavy hitting ballistics. They are rockets of varying makes, structures and uses. These can be anything from small explosives to take out an engine, or “nukes” powerful fusion bombs that are designed for planetary bombardment. One of these can level an entire city and tend to be very carefully used. So carefully in fact, that there has only been one Nuke bombardment in the last century and most civilians are not clear to know about it. Missiles come in many varieties besides that and they can be deadly, if you get them to hit a target.
Marines even have use in space warfare. They are typically for land or boarding situations, but a platoon of marines in EV suits on the hull of a ship firing weapons can actually be used as a good counter to fighters as they are hard to hit and can move along the hull. They can also turn basically anything into a small weapons platform be it a small moon, satellite, or whatnot. They cannot however keep on a hull of a ship that is actively accelerating so this is often a hard tactic. There are also carrier daggers filled with marines that will penetrate a hull and then open up allowing marines to board the ship. It is a favourite tactic of pirates. You get control of a ship and you don’t need any more repairs than a simple hull mending. It is hard to give marines a weapon to be any real damage against another ship, especially one that is heavily armoured, but they can focus fire in the right places and be quite a nuisance.
The last major part of a ship’s arsenal is the laser. It’s short range, energy wasting, but can really be effective in a pinch. A laser flyby can melt a line right through a ship’s hull and even carve a fighter in half. It has some major drawbacks however. Lasers cause a lot of excess heat and can therefore only be used for a short duration and usually has to be cooled off before it can fire again. They are also intense on energy drain and therefore are mostly saved as a last minute lash out to get a final killing blow. You’d more often see a laser on a mining ship for cutting rock than being used in combat. That being said many non-combat ships if forced to fight usually only have this at their disposal. A laser cutter has many uses like a hammer or an axe, but can quickly be turned into a weapon when push comes to shove.
that was more or less completely out of context with what was going on, but I think I have the basis for a very cool RTS computer game what do you think?
11,071 / 50,000
Nov 7, 2009 - 21 11
I desperately try not to pad.
----------And, I think I do a very good job.
I might, subconsciously pad, but I never intent to.
...
Well ... in the current nano, I wrote a scene 4 times over [adding and changing things each time. It got exponentially larger]. [It was a time loop], but some of those words had been written the first time over and over, especially since I used the same paragraph to start them all.
----
I'm from Hamilton, land of hysterical fiction filled with flying monkeys, dancing bananas, and sexy, cozy, violence
38,392 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2009 - 05 06
I wish I was padding a bit more. I have a character based on Slavoj Zizek in my book, whose work I only sort of half understand at the best of times anyway, so anywhere where it's essential to make him talk about his theory at a lecture etc. and I'm not quite sure what to write, I type some gobbeldy gook in orange-coloured font and invariably end the gobbedly gook in an ellipsis.
I also titled his new book "Enjoy Shit"--but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind that.
26,711 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2009 - 22 53
that was more or less completely out of context with what was going on, but I think I have the basis for a very cool RTS computer game what do you think?
Sounds to me like you know what you're talking about!
----------http://fantasywriterguy.blogspot.com/
17,073 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2009 - 23 03
I've been developing the world for a good few years now so there's a lot I want to get accross and a bunch of gaps I feel like filling. It seems like uneventful trips make for good peeks into how my universe works.
35,483 / 50,000
Nov 9, 2009 - 07 31
I also titled his new book "Enjoy Shit"--but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind that.
Ha ha ha! I love it. Is this the return of the big Other? Which is poop? I feel almost inspired to perform a poststructuralist reading on the title alone based on some of the obvious variations:
"Enjoy, Shit"
"Enjoy - Shit!"
"Enjoy: Shit."
"Enjoy; Shit"
Putting a Zizek proxy in a novel is sheer genius / potentially crazy, Lucy! Awesome.
38,392 / 50,000
Nov 9, 2009 - 08 22
That's so funny, Elizabeth--the return of the big Other! I think that's better than my enjoyment consists of defecation (metaphoricallly, metaphorically!)...I may have to work that in if you don't mind my stealing it.
Also really funny because I have a scene where Kabac/Zizek and his publisher argue about the punctuation for the title, and the editor makes a list a lot like yours on her white board :)
I've been able to mimic the way Zizek speaks pretty well in the dialogue scenes after watching The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, which I really recommend, it's so good, but I still totally don't understand some of his heavier theoretical work. I can always fill in later though. His new book is pretty approachabe too (in real life--First as Tragedy, Then as Farce), so I suppose I could avoid the heavy stuff altogether.
35,483 / 50,000
Nov 10, 2009 - 20 24
Really I think distinguishing between the return of the big Other and defecation (metaphorically, of course) is just splitting hairs.
Sweet!
Awesome. We all need a little more Zizek in our dialogue.
Meanwhile, my only pseudo-celebrity guest star is a cat named Mr. Darcy. I am working that for all it's worth, though. At the end of a torrid sex scene, as my MC and her not-so-nice boyfriend are lying spent on her bed:
"Mr. Darcy wandered into the room and hopped up on the armchair in the corner."
35,483 / 50,000
Nov 10, 2009 - 20 24
p.s. sorry for the threadjack.