The "I'm ahead of my daily goal, but panicking that I don't have anywhere near enough story to hit 50k" shoutout

Ah I know what you mean! Right now, I'm just making up new characters to fill up the story, because I'm scared the story will end before the 50k.

You're doing well so far though, good luck with the new characters.

I'm thinking of introducing ever more crazy situations because at the moment each chapter is quite short, I need something to really run with. Fingers crossed..

I'm ahead as well, though I just barely made it yesterday.

I'm still pretty certain I won't make it. This week's a lot easier than the ones coming up, real life wise.

I discovered my story would end early if I didn't create some filler. Like anthropomorphic animals and zombies. In a realistic fiction book. (I managed to keep it realistic, I give myself that much credit.) Right now I'm stretching out scenes as far as they stretch... I still have plenty of story left, but I need a guarantee it will last over 20k words.

Granted, I write short stories, not novels; hopefully my advice will still be of use.

Keep a notebook of all the ideas you get, lines that strike you, and interesting characters/settings. Even if they seem a little stupid or limiting. Think about it for a few days, and add any details you could use for each one.

Then, I start a story, with just the barest idea of what sort of creature it is. Sometimes I have three different beginnings and two abrupt plot turns before I find the right groove. Just keep it in your word count!

Only once I'm a little ways in will I make an outline- otherwise I feel too limited.

If you're really stuck, pick the best part of the story and dump it in something new and crazy. Good luck!

Sexy exciting words for the thinking man or lady.

Short stories written: 4
Chairs used: 6
Midnights: 6
Thoughts of giving up: 5
Enjoyment level: 73%

Don't scrap it. Think about what would happen if you used parts of those six or seven other ideas. Steal characters from them. Steal conflicts from them. Steal good lines and key incidents from them. Mix them up. Combine characters from them. Change their backgrounds to fit the one you're in but find ways to put in everything you ever liked in a novel.

Novels have room for more than one story. You can go off on a tangent into the barmaid's love life and the argument she had with her mother that put her in a rotten mood to make her spill the MC's beer. You can even show something about the MC's personality by how he treats grumpy barmaids without understanding why they're in such a bad mood.

Think about what would have been the end of the short story.

What is the Worst Possible Consequence that could happen if the character got what she or he wanted? What would be the nastiest side effect? What trouble would it cause? That's how I build novels.

In the beginning, for the first ten to fiftceen thousand words, it's all introducing new characters, new troubles, new advantages, new allies, new everything. Anything that comes into my head goes in the book. Jackson Square had a lot of goths playing Vampire in it during 1992, the Vampire game was fairly new and gaining ground as a fad. So you had people running around at night dressed as vampires and you had a lot of depressed teens hanging out there too along with college age people and street people and otherwise bored or frustrated or artistic goths. So I threw in a goth chick I saw one night who was swanking around wearing a black nylon nightgown with lace edging for a dress. I changed her appearance a little, made her black hair real, built her looking the way she obviously wished she did.

She turned out not to be a throwaway character, she stole the show and is a very powerful, intense, almost bossy character a lot like a mother cat. She only looked like a stereotype from a distance at first sight.

Around the middle of the second chapter I start showing consequences of things the characters did, fishing in "consequences" for what happens next along with new things I think are cool in novels. In this case, it was that since Magic was looking for his human familiar, the Goth girl being goth might be just wanting a black cat and trying to catch him for herself. So maybe she's a good choice for a cat. The consequence of Magic saving his brother Night's life was that Night wandered along in chapter three and chose the girl for his familiar, while both of the humans got together in the immediate-pheromone romance that folks eighteen and nineteen get when the chemistry is there and they more or less share a subculture. His is "Artist," and hers was "Goth" but he convinced her to learn to draw and she's teaching him some streetwise.

That's more consequences. Their sitting up all night talking while falling in love is consequences, they each have a desperate need for acceptance by each other. They are in the rosy-clouds stage of love but there's already some romantic friction, she just informed him that she has a very low idea of marriage and is scared he'd turn into his boring dad if they got married.

I write in an Organic Linear method. That's making it up as I go along. Pacing comes out of how much of the next events are new things I throw in that would stir the plot and complicate it, or resolving previous conflicts, or tossing in consequences of what the characters did to deal with the last one.

Beginning -- mostly new stuff, new characters, anything that remotely fits the setting can happen.

Middle, about fifty-fifty new stuff I just thought of that would be cool (Somewhere in it a house burns down because I got plastic firemen at the Kick-Off Party, how's that for prompts?) and consequences of things the characters did to deal with previous conflicts.

End, much more consequence driven. That's when I comb the rest of the book making sure every potential conflict does get resolved some way that pushes toward everything being resolved in a final conflict. This is where the consequences of the characters' character or lack of it will really show. Wimps wash out. Heroes prevail probably because they did stand up for doing what's right in some petty situation that they didn't realize was connected to the main conflict.

I do tend to write books with heroes in them. I take anything that was annoying or rotten or nasty in life that either happened to me or someone I knew and then I make it ten times worse, scale it up, make it larger than life and shove it at these sympathetic characters who are usually people I come to love as I'm writing them.

So you are in a good position to try this style of plotting. Just throw in anything you like in novels of that genre, whatever it is. Originality is in the details. Every superpower has its drawbacks -- one of the biggest is just jealous people hating the successful, anything good your characters start with will tend to make malicious people try to take them down a peg. People can get jealous of something as petty and simple as a good mood if they're having a bad day -- and normal people can get vicious on a bad day, it's not just something uber-villains do.

Have fun with it. Do it your flavor, your way. What do you want to read today? That's what to put in. What would be the most fun in the next chapter? What challenge, what adventure, what opportunity that has its risks inherent in what it is could make the plot roll along wherever it's going -- you find out where when you get there. If someone becomes a rock star with a record contract, goodbye sleep, they are practicing and working on music day and night to get it done while distracted by parties with a lot of drugs and a host of people looking to rip them off. Everything has its price. So you play one side and then the other, see what the villain wants, let the villains have some wins too.

It's fun. let it go. Write whatever cool thing comes into your head and then when a lot of it is down, start assuming the pieces fit together and stick them together till they make sense. Think paranoia. Then pick the most interesting version out of the paranoid elements.

There we go, edited so my post wasn't inserted into your quote.

robertsloan2 is leading a SFFmuse membership drive in 2009 and writing and editing LOTS this November! Ari Cat sheds his infamous Cat Hairs of Inspiration on you

Nanowrimo 2009 Double My Best - Four 80k novels!
Magic in the Streets 82,964
Greenwood Road 84,709
Medicine Show 75,978
Greenwood Gates 48,338

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Thanks for the tips. I do actually keep a note of ideas. I think I am going to have to be much wilder in ideas. And I just thought - FLASHBACK!! haha. Part of the problem is the story concerns very few characters and not many of them are human... don't ask. Flashback solves that somewhat and allows me to break into other storylines and do things that have been suggested.

Thanks a lot.

I'm pretty far ahead of the daily goal word count, but I'm getting concerned.
I just introduced the big plot turner of my story and while i know it will definitely keep me in the game, i'm not sure how i feel about being able to make it to 50k.
Give me until i reach 20k and then i'll start worrying for real haha

you are the circle, I am the square

On a related note, I'm considerably ahead of my daily wordcount, but have consequently discovered a new worry: I very nicely outlined a story that would take right about 50,000 words, so now I'm afraid that although I'll make wordcount, I'll end up without enough story to last me to the end of November.

NaNo '08 - Triad: A Tale of Somnium (Won!)
NaNo '09 - Lessons in Falling, Lessons in Flying

I have a very nice plot in mind, but it all seems to be going too fast - I have a funny feeling that it's going to run out before I hit 50k :/

Maybe you can start a second story after you finish the current one?

Before today, I felt guilty and panicking about the fact I was so far behind, and now I'm slightly ahead of my daily target I've become concerned that I'm going to run out of words/ideas/brain quite quickly =[ I won't give up hope yet!

"I’m not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they’re gonna do. I’m just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it"

That's where I am at too. I'm worried I won't make it especially since I didn't finish my outline before starting NaNo this year. Just take your time, and the worst that happens is you don't make it. It does not mean you have to scrap everything, just start another one and count it towards your count.
You could be a "NaNo Rebel..." and compile a bunch of shorts into one big book?

I'm about 1/4 of the way through my outline and it's only 1/6 of the way through the month.

Just look for parts of your story that could have say a dream sequence?

I wish you well!

Luna Rae

Currently away from home... in Missouri for education.

Damn, I know what you mean. I am loving my story and it is pretty much worked out end to end in my head, but I have no idea if it will make it to 50k... Maybe 40k? I am almost having sleepless nights trying to think of new chapters to add in case! Good luck all!

Good idea about being a rebel! Thanks, and good luck everyone

Don't worry, I had the same problem. I got this idea in my head about a satire fairytale comedy with RPG elements and it would not go away until I thought something up to get writer's block off.

I covered barely 1000 extra words last night (in the middle of watching Glee I might add). I fell behind on my goal to be ahead by a day because of writer's block, and I'm going to aim to get to 11667 today or bust. Even if I have to babble on about random crap. December is for editing after all!

http://cupcake_writer.livejournal.com

2009: Welcome to Hell. A novel about Gods in high school.
2010: Thermals (tentaitive title). Steampunk. High adventure/fantasy of an all-female crew of airship pirates.