National Novel Writing Month 2012

Anybody in this year? I'm thinking I'm going to take another bash at it. Since my wife passed away I need something to fill the hours and this might be it.

Plus Storm just got himself published, and Dickynoo has put out his Harry Hembock books, so maybe that's the spur I need. What say you all?

Man, I always want to do this.

And I always get about as far as starting an outline and then get distracted by other things.

But I do have a germ of an idea rattling around in my head...

I know people at work who do this, but they never share what they wrote so I assume their stories are about something you don't talk about in public.
Like smut and/or fanfiction.

Myself, I'm too terse to make that many words. Plus storytelling isn't my creative outlet.

I want to do this, but I always get to the part where I have to name a character and I get frozen.

I'm in. And then I'm just gonna keep at it for like 3 more months/books.

I'll be doing a novel, but, not that month.

Early 2013.

I was hoping my girlfriend would be doing this with me this year, but she has too much going on with grad school to invest time in it. I will definitely be trying to finish something this year.

Oh btw . . . linky.

I'd like to participate, but between hosting Thanksgiving and working on tasks for my parent's upcoming 50th anniversary celebration and trying to get a jump on Christmas shopping early due to too many December activities, I don't see it happening.

I expect that I will be too busy this year to do this . . . but who knows.

After thinking on it for a couple of hours last night, I think I have enough of an idea to try it.

Let's see...50,000 words MINIMUM for a novel...let's say 21 days of the month actually used...that's about 2500 words a day...250 words/double-spaced page...that's...yikes!...10 pages/active day.

I'm sure it can be done, but you'll have to go like hell and not really care too much about fine-tuning.

No, the guidelines on the site specifically mention not trying to edit as you go. Just pour the thing out and worry about editing in December. Actual word count/day works out to like 1600-1700, which is do-able. Assuming you write every single day, of course.

Still, that's 8 pages a day.

I'd recommend putting a pretty detailed outline together in advance, otherwise you're likely to get 50 pages in and get completely lost.

Just pick a word and end it with "-ing."

I'm certainly no expert, but a few ways past this occur to me.

1. Just pick an ordinary name...Ralph Baker, Pete Hill, Cindy Jackson. Any old name will do FOR NOW. And, besides, who SAYS a name has to be meaningful or referential? If your story is grounded in reality...well, reality happens to ordinary people.

2. Give the character a name that's suggestive of his character or personality...Alistair Hightower, Betthany Little, Hank Bullard. I remember John Le Carre calling a not-too-bright character Fawley (say it out loud). Have fun with it, like inventing the suggestive names of Bond girls...

3. If you know a foreign language, use a meaningful word from that..Yevgeniy Durakov (durak is "fool" in Russian), Eugen Richter ("noble" in Greek, judge" in German), or Carlos Espada (espada is "sword" in Spanish). My favorite one of these is from Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code...Father Arringarossa ("red herring")...guess what purpose he serves in the plot!

4. Use historical/literary references...a guy fighting impossible odds can be named Hector (from the hero of the Trojan War) or Leo (after King Leonidas of the 300 Spartans) or Travers (commander of the Alamo). Is she beautiful? She can be Helen. Is he a martyr? Jessie or Chris.

I guess the point is: just pick something and go with it. Anything you don't like can be fixed later.

Exactly! In this day and age of ubiquitous word processing, you can name your protagonist John Smith or Janet Jones, type the entire novel, and with a few quick global Find & Replace changes, end up with Luther Mandrake or Bethesda Svelte instead!

(Also, I hereby claim dibs on both Luther Mandrake and Bethesda Svelte!!!! Hands off, you plaigarists!!! )

I know it's probably going to be futile...50,000 words is a bloody lot...but I'm going to try it. We'll see if I go bust the first day out of the chute.

I do have an idea that can fill a novel length story. I'm trying to rough up an outline and get all the characters developed first. I'm scrounging from several ideas I've had for other things in the last couple of years.

There's bound to be a lot of dialog in this, so that'll help on the length a little.

I have a beginning (even a first line!), a middle, and an end. I have a "theme." But I still need to work out some very tricky plot points.

#1 is the best.
History will make the name cool.
Whoever thought "Ashley J. Williams", would be a horror icon, right?

I have a novel written. I also wrote a script based on the same story. I'm too chicken shit to try and market them though so they sit doing nothing. Been that way for over a year.

one of my favorite tricks - and something I saw a couple of months ago done by a character in a Koontz book in creating aliases - is to pick any populated group of people - say baseball players - and mix/match the names.

for example, on the Blue Jays roster at the start of the year were:

Travis Snider
Eric Thames
Colby Rasmus
Kelly Johnson
Brett Lawrie
Adam Lind.

So if i need three male character names and nothing enthuses me, I might name them Brett Snider, Colby Johnson and Eric Lind
(although in reality I probably wouldn't use two guys on the same team)

You'd need to go to some other source, say actresses, for females of course but this is just an example.

^Another method I forgot to mention:

Play a movie on your DVD player and skip to the end credits. Blockbusters with huge production departments are best. Just start reading names. Sooner or later, you'll find a first name or a last name that you'll find interesting.

Just for larfs, I tried this with The Avengers crew listing at imdb.com and found these:

Last names:
Lassek
Stonebreaker
Denlinger
Misselhorn
Peliserro
Wilmarth
Zirlin
Medenwald
Oliveras
Lobstein
Rosengrant
Berglund
Chataway
Dumergue
Fourmond
Gerlach
Holzinger
Imamura
Liddiard
Noravian
Popravka
Sepulveda
Smallwood
Trowbridge

These names are all interesting and uncommon. They also call to mind certain characteristics.

I think I've mentioned here before that I occasionally take names from the headstones in cemeteries. Mix-n-match, of course.

I've also used the phone book.

My only experiences in this area were my 2 unsuccessful participations in Pocket Books' ST Dept's SNW Contests.

Remember them?

Expand those abbreviations?

If I'm not mistaken...

ST = Star Trek
SNW = Strange New Worlds

That's it. I should've just written it out. They ended the contests back in '06 at #10.

Gonna give a shot. Have some chapters already written.

You've posted my real name!

I demand you be banned.

Lanzman get cracking.......

It's 'Smallwood', isn't it

I dunno, a lot of writers tend to jealously hide their work(s) until it's completely done, regardless of content.

Oh and Paladin, don't worry too much that the content seems hollow. The main point of NaNoWritMo is the getting your story written. And yeah, an outline beforehand helps, but even then, most people will go back and clean up what they wrote after the month is over and they've reached their word count.