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| A previously sold (read: old) word count tracker for Camp NaNoWriMo Designed by Miss Write You can find other amazing (and really cheap!) trackers, calendars, and planner stickers on her etsy: WriteMissWrite |
So, I decided to not waste that time and try to plan. And plan. And plan some more.
Planning is hard when you're a Pantser at heart... especially when you are someone like me, who way overthinks everything. Ironic, no? Someone who overthinks everything also have a hard time planning things? Well, you guys should know by now what I say about me and Irony.
I am surprisingly analytical for a creative person. It's one of the reasons I actually haven't gotten that far in any original writing. I'm too busy poking holes in my stories - so that my readers won't be able to - that I don't leave enough time to plug up said holes, and until I do, I don't feel comfortable writing.
I stopped working on "The Race for Destiny" for a few reasons - one being that terrible working title - but the main reason was because my male lead Connor stormed out, and I can't figure out how to pull him back into the story, or rewrite that scene so he WON'T storm out. I really should get back to that story at some point...
I've been paused on my other Gyateara original stories because I haven't figured out the world-build yet. I want to make sure the main pitfalls of fantasy writing other authors fall into - unrealistic geography, unrealistic population density, undeveloped culture for the fantasy world, and being a Tolkien/D&D world rip-off - don't happen with my world or story. I keep finding things wrong with my world, though, even if it might not affect, and therefore ever come up in, any of my intended stories for the world.
Finally, I've been stuck with "Glitches" because I'm still trying to rework the story elements so it's not a direct rip-off of the X-Men comics. Although, I keep wondering more and more if that's really as big of an issue as I think it is.
"The Boys" just came out on Amazon Prime, and the power-crazed, unchecked superheroes in this gritty and bloody show are pretty obvious rip-offs of a lot of DC's The Justice League heroes, such as Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Superman, and Aquaman. That's solely based on the costume choices I've seen in promos. I don't have Amazon Prime, so I haven't watched it... Point is, they don't seem to care that they are directly ripping off famous superheroes. At the same time, though, "The Boys" is a satire of the superhero genre, so it is probably by design that the out of control heroes in that series are parodies of the well known superheroes, but with their morality skewed.
Going in a "this isn't supposed to relate to existing superhero media" direction, there's the manga and anime "My Hero Academia", where the main character goes to a prestigious school designed to train superpowered people to become superheroes. In the world of My Hero, the vast majority of the human population is now born with some sort of mutation and/or power - called a "quirk" in the series. Due to insurance and collateral damage concerns, all superheroes must be licensed and part of a "sponsored team" - basically, they have to be hired by a company in order to be a superhero instead of simply a vigilante. One could of course draw parallels between the main class of My Hero and the teenage classes of X-Men throughout the years, and more parallels between the League of Villains and The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and even more parallels between the ideologies of All Might vs All For One and Professor Xavier vs Magneto, and the idea of UA High School paralleling the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. However, the similarities between the two franchises is passing, at best.
Perhaps I only see how closely "Glitches" relates to X-Men because I know X-Men was the inspiring source material? Again, maybe my overthinking makes me see problems that no one else would, which ends up delaying my overall writing.
Which brings me back to Camp NaNo and "One and the Same."
My hold-up this time is trying to come up with the akumas for the story. I have my initial one that starts off the whole tale: Headliner. I STILL need to figure out how Ladybug and Chat Noir defeat her, though, and I just can't seem to think outside of the box enough to come up with a solution using a Lucky Charm. She's the least of my worries, however.
The story of “Peeping Tomcat” takes place over the course of twelve days, and, to make it feel more true-to-show, I wanted to make sure there weren't too many days in between akuma attacks. Aside from some "off-screen" akumas - as they were - during the week that Chat Noir was spying on Marinette, I had three akuma attacks showcased in that story. As for "One and the Same"? Well, I still don't have a concrete timeline figured out, which is part of the problem, but I do know it will be roughly a month-long story. I know for a fact that I have scenes spanning at least 16 days, and once I add on the closing scenes, I'm going to be at least at 21 days, if not that full 30 for a month.
Just for plot purposes alone - Headliner sets up the world and is the catalyst for Adrien to wonder how much the events of PT truly affect them - I have a total of three showcased akuma attacks that need to happen, and a fourth that at least needs to conclude within the narrative of the story for another plot point. Considering how many days pass throughout my story, though, I might need to sprinkle in some other akuma attacks in order to work in more LadyNoir moments, but I'm not positive on that yet.
My point is that I tried concluding Camp NaNo a series of different ways to try to help me get back on track. I tried re-reading some of my earlier written scenes in order to remember what was and wasn't already stated. That ended up making me do a full-stop on writing my already epically-long concluding chapters because I WAS rambling and repeating things stated earlier in the story. I then figured I needed a better grip on the outline so I could focus more on where to go with the story. I was still lost on the timeline and what needed to go where in order to bounce POV between Marinette and Adrien every other chapter, so I then worked on a chapter breakdown... That... didn't go terribly well as I still wasn't sure what to do with most of my second act.
I think I need to weed out some of those chapters, merge others, and file down my overall story, because PT was only 17 chapters long, and it was STILL over 84,000 words. Based on the count I have in that spoiler box, I'm looking at at LEAST 25 chapters, although it's probably going to be closer to 30. That would be fine if I was dealing with smaller chapters, but they don't seem to be all that smaller for OatS. In fact, here's the word count of the chapters I have thus far!
- Chapter 1: 4743 words for a mostly polished and complete chapter
- Chapter 2: 2620 words for an incomplete chapter that still needs the akuma defeated
- Chapter 3: 4780 words for an incomplete chapter that needs a major overhaul
- Chapter 4: 5260 words for a mostly polished and complete chapter
- Chapter 6: 3063 words for a first draft of a chapter... I'll get back to this one...
- Chapter 9: 4020 words for a chapter that still needs an opening
- Chapter 12: 5239 words for a mostly polished and complete chapter
- Chapter 13: 1894 words for the first draft of a chapter
- Chapter 14: 1587 words for the middle bits of this incomplete chapter
- Chapter this-is-the-start-of-Act-III: 1386 words in a dialogue-only chapter that needs action added in
- Chapter Lead-In to Finale: 2401 words for a chapter that still needs an opening
- Chapter Finale Part 1: 5701 words that I'll have to rework
- Chapter Finale Part 2: 4252 words that I'll have to rework
- Chapter Finale Part 3: 3742 words for an incomplete chapter I need to rework anyway
This breakdown doesn't include the random mini-scenes I'd like to have within the story, but I'm not sure what chapters they each belong in. It's also only about half of the chapters I think I'll need to tell my full story. A year after starting this project, and this is as far as I am...
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| Hacker Girl Facebook sticker by Birdman, Inc |
My point truly being though that I'm MAYBE half way through my overall story. Most of those chapters aren't even completed, I have mini-scenes I didn't include in the above counts, and yet I'm STILL at 50, 688 words! If I had managed to write all of this in ONE MONTH, I would have won NaNo! Let me say that again. My story, which, after a year of work, is MAYBE at about 46% completion, is already at FIFTY-THOUSAND SIX-HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHT words! Assuming my estimate of my story being 46% complete is accurate, that means this sequel to my 84,000-word story will be roughly 110-thousand words long!
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| Hacker Girl Facebook sticker by Birdman, Inc. |
I really wasn't kidding when I commented last week that everything I write becomes an epic. Heck! Even this post is hitting epic proportions again.
Sooooooo, yeah, trying to figure out my story, where to go with it, the outline, and a chapter breakdown to organize the outline a bit better all took up most of those closing 5 days of Camp NaNo. The final two days, however, I focused on figuring out those akumas. If I couldn't sort through the actual drama of the story, maybe I could at least come up with the akuma attacks.
Bad choice. I am complete trash when it comes to thinking up these akumas. I had sent Taurus Pixie a list of five akuma designs I had thought up, simply in order to vent at how none of them are complete enough to use. Poor thing tried to find a polite way of telling me "you way overthink" as she struggled to help me figure out any of them.
God bless! I did let her know that I wasn't asking for help; simply to vent.
Anyway, for the akuma villains I sent to Pixie, one was based on the character Cyrano de Bergerac, but I don't have much figured out by means of his attack, his end goal, how LB and CN will defeat him, or even a firm handle on the instigating event that caused him to become akumatized in the first place. I have another one where the villain can change at will - much like previous akumas: Pharaoh, Animan, and Animaestro - between the different classic Hollywood monsters: Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy, Dracula, Wolfman, Invisible Man, etc. That's all I have of that villain though, a vague concept of being able to transform between classic monsters. A third villain is one of the first I ever designed. This lovely lady: Vocalizer.
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| Image generated using Candy World's X-Girl doll maker |
Another "almost but not quite done" akumatized villain idea was The Masketeer - because Hawk Moth loves his puns... - a mask craftsman who takes on a musketeer appearance as he mind controls citizens by fusing one of his masks to their faces. I also pictured him with a lot of elements similar to Hexadecimal from ReBoot. Mainly, her porcelain mask that changes expressions with a hand wave:
Hitting a bit of a brick wall, and noticing that there are canon akuma villains that could be watered-down versions of Spider-Man villains - such as Volpina being Mysterio, Chameleon being... well... Chameleon, Weredad being Man-Wolf, Troublemaker being Will o' the Wisp, Queen Wasp having control over bees like Swarm, Lady Wifi focusing on livestreaming her attack like Screwball, Reverser having a very Green Goblin/Hobgoblin feel with his glider and throwing paper airplanes, MMA fighter Anansi having similar traits to Black Tarantula and the concept of 6-armed Spider-Man, and Animan possibly being a nod to Kraven the Hunter - I turned to more of Spider-Man's rogues gallery to try to find inspiration.
It didn't work, but I then remembered that Ladybug was loosely based off both Spider-Man and Sailor Moon. So I tried Sailor Moon villains instead. I instantly thought of an acrobat throwing juggling balls at our superhero duo. From there, I thought of the Dead Moon Circus - called Dark Moon Circus in early English dubs - and the Amazoness Quartet. Again thinking of Hawk Moth's penchant for puns, I made the villains a trio with the gimmick of sharing an acrobatic balance ball between the three of them, and called them the Grey Sisters... ya know, like the Greek myth of three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them? I even had the sisters' names spell out GREY: Gemma-Renee, Esmee, and Yvette. Because I wasn't heavy-handed enough with the naming, I also gave the sisters the last name Grise, which is the feminine French translation of the word gray. At least, according to Google Translate...
The more I worked on this trio the more I realized two things:
- They were becoming way too much for a simple chapter in my main story and thus they needed their own story where they're the main villain - like a episodic villain
- I STILL was having problems trying to figure out how LB and CN would defeat them, and I also wasn't sure how the acrobatic balance ball was really going to factor in practically...
Four days later and I STILL can't come up with something that awesome just on the fly by looking around the room. I have no clue how she does it! How does the Miraculous Ladybug writing team do it roughly 26 times per season!? No wonder they're beginning to reuse older villains, but giving them a new take on their powers.
Hmmm.... maybe I can do that....
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This trek towards figuring out new akuma attacks took me right up until Sunday. Waving the white flag on that train of thought, I went back to writing. After going through my notes on the outline dozens of times, I managed to get re-inspired on another chapter: chapter 6 of my story, as the outline falls right now.
The chapter is mostly to ease reader's minds as to "how is all this MariChat stuff going to work without them getting caught?" I just need to go back and make sure it's also in the story because it moves the overall progress forward. I have the bare bones written up - 3063; "bare bones" indeed... - I just need to go back and polish a few things. I also need to add in a conclusion to the chapter that will make the whole thing worth the reader's time. Something that gives the "which caused" to the story.
I need to track down where I found that bit of advice, but it was talking about the difference between good page-turning stories and lack-luster ones. I think it was a webinar, actually... where DID those notes go? Anyway, the key element to good stories, as laid out in this advice, is that each scene causes the next one. The final scene of the movie/book wouldn't happen without the one before it, and that one wouldn't happen without the one before it. So scene A - the inciting incident - causes scene B to happen, which causes scene C to happen, which causes scene D... so on and so forth. As opposed to the "and then" storytelling. "This thing happened, and then this thing happened, and then this thing happened." Each of those could be unrelated.
For instance, if I were to tell you that today I woke up, and then I took my husband to work, and then I started working on this blog, and then I stopped to have a quick breakfast, and then I went back to working on this blog. None of those actions caused any of the other ones, ignoring the "inciting incident" of waking up, of course. Regardless of if I took my husband to work, I would have still written my blog today because it's Tuesday. I could have gone all morning without eating, or I could have eaten something quick before writing my blog. The order doesn't matter. As such, I'm sure that list of activities I did today wasn't that entertaining of a story.
The Hunger Games, on the other hand, has that causality to it. There was once a rebellion, which caused the winning republic to create the Hunger Games in the first place, which resulted in the inciting incident of Primrose being picked to fight in the Hunger Games, which caused her older sister Katniss to volunteer to take her place, which caused Katniss to learn how to win, which caused her to try to "play nice" in order to get sponsors, which caused her to become even more pissed off at the whole spectacle of the thing, which caused her to stand out as the spunky teen who refused to play by the rules, which led her to become a crowd favorite, which allowed her to survive via sponsor gifts and made her an ally of weaker and more passive players like Rue, which leads to Rue's district jointly sponsoring Katniss - as well as starting the new revolution - when Katniss avenges Rue's death. The story continues with all of those A causes B causes C resulting in D which causes E, etc storytelling. I'm sure that is more enticing to continue reading. Right?
So, back to my point, I need to make sure my story has that same level of causality. I know for the most part that certain chapters cause others, which is why previous chapters, as much of a headache they may be, must be there.
Chapter one leads directly to chapter two, which causes the reflection in the back half of chapter two. This leads to actions in chapter three that results in the meet-up in chapter four that starts the whole MariChat dynamic that makes up the core of this story. The akuma attack in chapter 5 results in more reflection that causes chapter 6, and I just need to make sure chapter 6 leads somewhere as well. Further on, an important meeting for Marinette leads to a semi-crucial chapter late in Act II, which leads to Marinette potentially seeing Adrien differently, and definitely has Adrien view her differently. Fast forward to Act III, and one chapter leads to a poor reaction on Marinette's part, which leads to the next chapter, where Adrien gets angry with her, which leads to the next chapter's main turning point in the whole story, this then leads to the climactic confrontation between the two characters.... which I've dragged out for three chapters....
Then I have the ending chapter, resulting from the conclusion of the climax.
So, I have that skeleton of causality... my biggest issue is that I can't figure out the "because, which causes" that ties the other chapters together, and I have a few chapters in there that are there just "because they need to be?" but aren't necessarily caused by anything leading into it or causes anything that follows.
But, hey! I did write SOMETHING this past week! I did write that one "does this go anywhere?" chapter. I did write those 3000+ words. That's... good... right?
Well, this weekend, I also watched the "cringe episode" - as the fandom calls it - in English with Wolfhearted. Poor guy probably has a bruise on his already sunburnt arm as I smacked him instead of Adrien, Nino, and Marinette during my watch of "Puppeteer 2." I then talked about the episode a touch with TaurusPixie, and in doing so I truly raged about the fact that Tikki and Plagg know who Ladybug and Chat Noir are, and yet they let that mess of an episode happen!
In turn - see? causality! - I thought about that episode through the perspective of Tikki, and how much it actually must have hurt her to just let things play out due to her inability to let Marinette and Adrien know who the other truly is.
I quickly wished Pixie a farewell on Facebook as I raced off to write!
Well... "raced" isn't the right word. I slept REALLY wrong Sunday into Monday, and I could barely move my shoulders, upper back, and neck yesterday. So I more or less shuffled to the front porch, hoping the warmth and sun will help relax my muscles, and typed away for about two hours. Regardless of how quickly I moved to do so, I still wrote another 2300 words yesterday.
Why is it I can write more than 2000 words two days in a row NOW? Meh, anyway, if you want to check out my take on Tikki's perspective of "Puppeteer 2" you can find it in my normal spots. Be warned, it obviously is filled with episode spoilers since it's a companion story.
"Painfully Close"
There is a Tumblr blog that I started following about a month ago called ao3feed-LadyNoir. It may have, at one time, focused solely on promoting LadyNoir fics uploaded to AO3, but now it seems fairly indiscriminate. From what I can tell, any and all stories that include the Love Square ship, and is posted to AO3, FFN, or Wattpad seems to be fair game. The person(s) that runs the blog doesn't simply promote stories they think are good, but will boost any story that is uploaded.
Since I've been TRYING to stay off of Tumblr so frequently, I never really noticed when this blog updates. I figured it was two or three times a day. They would round up any new fics, or updated fics, and boost them. Well, either I hit the "magical hour" when the blog does this, or they actually get alerts, because they promoted my story within a half-hour of me posting it!
Much like my own promotion, theirs doesn't seem to have reached too many people. On the other hand, I have read a few stories that the blog suggested, but I've neglected to go back to Tumblr in order to like and/or reblog their boost of it. I need to do that in order to help promote stories I enjoy...
Anyway, my point is, more people could have seen the post than I realize. Also, regardless of how many people saw the post, I did have five people like their promo of my story, and one of those people proceeded to then follow my Tumblr. I've also had a nice influx of people on AO3, and it could very well have been thanks to this blog.
So, thank you, ao3feed-LadyNoir! I really appreciate you existing to help boost Love Square stories like that.
Speaking of, how about some stats? I'm a bit beyond 24-hrs now, but let's see what I got.
Now, a quick disclaimer about my Tumblr promo. First, I posted a promo for the story, listing the normal three locations to find it: AO3, FFN, and DA. Then, a few hours later, I went back and reblogged that promo, but included the full story in the reblog, in case people preferred to read on Tumblr. The trick there though is that Tumblr has no way of distinguishing these two versions of the post when tallying those notes. So I don't know if the fourth and/or fifth likes, which came after my reblog, were for the promo as it was, or if the likes were for the full-story reblog. I'll have to switch up my tactics next time...FFN: 258 views, 9 faves, 9 followers, and 1 review by the awesome ChubbyUnicornMama
AO3: 310 views, 40 kudos, 1 bookmark, and 1 comment
DA: 18 views, 1 fave, but no comments
Total Results: 586 views, 50 faves, 10 followers/bookmarks, and 2 reviews
Tumblr Notes:
- My Promo: 7 notes; 5 likes and 2 reblogs
- AO3feed's Promo: 5 likes
FFN Review:
1. I love the Tikki perspective! And, much like Tikki, I think we were all yelling at Adrien not to interrupt Marinette as she tried to get her actual confession out! *bangs head against wall* Great story, though!
AO3 Review:
1. Tikki's constantly watching a soap opera. I love it.
Also, two of the likes on the AO3feed promo were accounts who also liked my promo, so that actually drops my overall likes to 8.
I would also like to note that one of the people who left me kudos on "Painfully Close" also left me kudos on "Acting Weird." I don't know if they found me through the Tumblr promos; if they started with PC and went to AW, or the other way around; or if they had always been a reader, and I just never noticed them before. However, it's cool to see repeat-readers of my stuff.
Speaking of repeat-readers, it seems "Painfully Close" was good enough to entice two new people on FFN to favorite and bookmark the story, as well as favorite and subscribe to me as an author! Awesome!
Final note with regards to my writings: I made some awesome acquaintances at my Camp NaNo cabin! One of them - who went by Many-Eyed Katsu at Camp, but goes by DontTrustLoserCandy on AO3 - actually left me a kudos on "Woven Heartstrings." That story is over 32,000-words long! It's a novella! As far as I can tell - from our discussions in the Cabin, as well as based on the bookmarks they have on AO3 - DontTrustLoserCandy isn't in the ML fandom. However, they still took all that time to read one of my stories.
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SPEAKING OF AWESOME WRITING BUDDIES!!!
TAURUS PIXIE!
While I was finishing up writing, editing/polishing up, and posting "Painfully Close", she was doing the same for A GIFT FOR ME! Back in April, for Pixie's birthday, I wrote her the Lukanette story "I Was Thinking Of You." Well, turnabout's fair play, so naturally she had to "torture" me as well with her own Lukanette story for MY birthday!
So, please, go check out her story for me:
"A Frozen Moment"
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| Maki Natsuo from Love Lab created by Ruri Miyahara |
Pixie, you are such Awesome Sauce!
I love my creative friends who gift me one-of-a-kind things like this and ChibiSunnie's annual personalized birthday cards!
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You WILL get there in your story. Forcing it out is never the answer, it has to flow! Taking a break helps, and you have awesome friends to bounce ideas off of. (And sorry... it took me like an hour to see your story posted this time....
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know I'll get there eventually. I am DETERMINED to get this written. It's just frustrating that my Muse is taking her dang time! :P
DeleteAlso... "Oh, no! Not a WHOLE HOUR? Whatever shall I do?" :D I appreciate you reading all of my ML stuff. I don't care when you get to it. <3
I'm sorry to hear that OaS is still continuing to frustrate you. I felt exactly the same with Immortal Bond over this past year. Oh god...it's been nearly a year since I put it on hold. I really need to get my act together. Maybe to help your more analytical brain, use the same tactic to come up with an akuma as I did, only make a note of it and create a spider diagram or something?
ReplyDeleteAlso, yaaaaay! I'm so glad that you love my gift for you that much! I love having creative things too, and I've love the amazing stories that you have come up with for me! And don't forget, feel free to vent to me anytime you want if a story is being a pain in the ass. I'm also more than happy to help if you need any advice. I could even come up with akumas on the spot for you, lol. It would save you worrying so much about them, lol. Good luck!
I didn't answer you here either. :(
DeleteOatS is the "second child"... always annoying and trying for the parent, but becomes greatly rewarding once the "rebellious/problem times" are over. :D I just need to be patient. I mean, I DID already write 50,000 words for this thing. It's coming along, just at a snail's pace. :P
I might have to take you up on the akuma idea offer... you may grow to regret offering it. ;) :3 <3