Discussion Q2 Volume 39

@pdblake oh that’s horrible! I’m sorry 😞 I’ve lost work before. Almost lost a whole novel when kids dumped water into my laptop. 

If it’s a message from your muse then so be it! You’ll bring it back even better. 

Posted by: @pdblake

Really annoyed. My world building file got corrupted and I had no recent back up. Just typed a big chunk of it over the past few days but about two weeks work altogether.  

Tbh a programmer should know better and I'll repeat that along with copious expletives while I redo it. 

At least it's reasonably fresh in my head.

I'm sorry you lost the info, but I'm glad you have it relatively fresh in your head. I wish you the best of luck in getting everything put back together!

I keep a lot of my worldbuilding notes on Google Docs these days, in large part because it lets me transition easily between my computer and my phone. ...My phone is basically my notebook, these days, honestly. (I've even drafted stories on my phone in Docs before--although I always have to do proper edits on my computer, because I can't get a feel for the "bigger picture" on my phone. I'll end up with duplicate words or phrases because I forgot I included them a few paragraphs back and/or they're included a few paragraphs in the future. Definitely one of those things that isn't necessarily good for everyone, but works marginally well for me in a toddler-oriented world.)

Today I made a back up  

I keep notepads next to my laptop. Every character is written as they appear with a little info on who they are, what they do, and where they're from. Then when I'm writing I can look to the left and know who is doing what.  

My hubby and I were just getting a worldbuilding wiki set up on our NAS today. It'll be a while before I can start really loading stuff into it, though, since I have a major novel editing project I want to get done before Superstars in February. I back my computer up to our NAS we put in three months ago, and the Scrivener project files to DropBox as well. It's not fireproof but I feel a bit more covered than I did before.

Posted by: @kd-julicher

My hubby and I were just getting a worldbuilding wiki set up on our NAS today. It'll be a while before I can start really loading stuff into it, though, since I have a major novel editing project I want to get done before Superstars in February. I back my computer up to our NAS we put in three months ago, and the Scrivener project files to DropBox as well. It's not fireproof but I feel a bit more covered than I did before.

I don't do anything except periodic backups to a USB drive, which is...insufficient. I used to use a NAS for simple storage of key files, with some really simple scheduled scripts maintaining the backup, but I've never really invested in anything more well structured.

Which is daft, now that I think about it, because I do have a fully-fledged and paid-up cloud storage thing, so all I really need to do is take five minutes and configure it...right, I'm off to play with configs.  

@pdblake that stinks. I hate losing work.

@craydimensional I've rewritten a lot of it now. Back to where I was, or near enough. Seems it was a dying usb stick because it corrupted again along with several other files. Thankfully I backed up this time, in triplicate. Waiting on a new stick now. 

My new Q2 story is steaming ahead, and I'm really liking it, but have an issue with the middle at the moment. It feels like it'll follow a fairly typical act structure, at least given reasonable bounds of what that actually means--I have act 1 set and done, and act 2 (such as it is) is mostly coming together. The end of act 3 I know, and I've got my denouement down. But that bit inbetween the end of act 2 and the mid-point of act 3 is very mysterious, and also of course, very important, because it's the major pivot. Irritatingly, for want of a better way to put it, it feels like I know the color of what it needs to be, but not the shape. Leastways, not yet anyhow.

Still, I'm enjoying it. Tonally it's very different to my Q1, and provided I can stick that middle, it concludes with one of my favourite endings for any story I've written (even though I haven't actually written it yet, I know exactly what it will be--I'm saving it for now, and looking forward to getting to write it--a nice reward for figuring that piece out, in time, or I hope so anyway).

I also have a secondary story prospect off to one side, which is a little bit weirder, and which I'm tinkering with when my first-choice prospect gets sticky and doesn't want to move. That's been fun, too, and in the meantime I'm writing down every other hare-brained idea that comes to me, including ideas with not enough substance, titles without a story, and other flashes of an image that doesn't go anywhere yet. Maybe some of them will coalesce into something interesting later, but in the meantime, I have my hands happily full with the two I'm juggling.

@doctorjest I don’t start writing until I have my ending and last line that sticks the landing in my head, and then I write toward it. It’s very satisfying typing out that line at the end, like the boom of a judges gavel dropping at the final verdict in a trial. Have fun when that moment comes!

I am working on KYD to nail down hearts desire in story.

I part-way solved my late bridge problem, but in doing so, opened a whole massive can of worms that I need to untangle now. Questions, questions that need answering. So today's writing is likely going to be almost entirely exploratory, trying to figure out the nature of several things that are at the heart of this story. The broad strokes are in the right area, but none of the specifics yet feels quite right, so I need to keep on through it until I find whatever it is that does.

Characters? Check. World Building? Check. Core Concept? Check. Plot? Ch...um...hmm  

Posted by: @babooher

Characters? Check. World Building? Check. Core Concept? Check. Plot? Ch...um...hmm  

Plot? We don't need no steenking plot...

For me, I spent my day making my story more difficult and complicated, so that was delightful. Here I thought my Q2 was going to be nice, clean, and straightforward...hah.

@storysinger 

I love this, StorySinger. I usually keep that kind of info just on another Word file. I leave it open when writing and flick back and forth as needed. I like the idea of always having the characters right there, though. Even with my story doc open.

@disgruntledpeony I'm not sure my opinion means much on here, but here I go: I take hardly any notes. My story worlds I try to learn as well as our own. We don't take notes to navigate the basics of our own world. Of course, I don't function very well in our world anymore. I'm lost in the unrealities of the books I read and the stories I write. 

Of course your opinion matters Corbin. This forum is all inclusive, to all civil people.  

Reading and writing every day has enhanced my skills. I usually write in the near future which makes world building much easier.

I tend to keep organized notes that help remind me of the minute details I need to know about my world. It kinda reminds me of taking notes for history class, so I know how each of the nations in my world interact and respond to one another. This also helps with my characters, as I've had to go back and reference their bios to remind myself of how they would react in specific situations.

The notes definitely help, since without them I'd probably forgot a lot more than I remember.

I just gathered up and organized all my notes yesterday for my current Q2 story WIP, and I discovered that my stack of notes far exceeds the length my story will ever be! But I guess that's the whole theory of the iceberg versus the tip, right?

Posted by: @babooher

Characters? Check. World Building? Check. Core Concept? Check. Plot? Ch...um...hmm  

Yeah. Got the world building done (and backed up). Just fleshing out my MC and then onto the plot. 

All my writing today is ugly and horrible, but I am at least writing. I'm not always good at that, it hurts to be writing things that I don't like. But I think I'll catch the wind soon enough--more often than not, sheer bloody-mindedness pays off eventually...

Posted by: @corbin-maxwell

@disgruntledpeony I'm not sure my opinion means much on here, but here I go: I take hardly any notes. My story worlds I try to learn as well as our own. We don't take notes to navigate the basics of our own world. Of course, I don't function very well in our world anymore. I'm lost in the unrealities of the books I read and the stories I write. 

 

 

My favorite, and least favorite, thing about writing is that completely contradictory approaches can be equally effective for different authors.

Kelly Link revises any paragraph between 20 and 100 times. L. Ron Hubbard said that it was important to reach a place in your career where you didn't need to revise at all. Most authors I've read about or listened to fall somewhere on that scale, but rarely the exact same place.

It's great to try different methods, find what works best for you, but if you've found it, don't worry what others are doing. Heck, for my now-querying novel I have a whole 'nother book of world building notes and a substantial wiki. For my WIP short story I have zero world building, just a one paragraph plot outline.

You do you, even if it's different yous for different projects.

Posted by: @corbin-maxwell

@disgruntledpeony I'm not sure my opinion means much on here, but here I go: I take hardly any notes. My story worlds I try to learn as well as our own. We don't take notes to navigate the basics of our own world. Of course, I don't function very well in our world anymore. I'm lost in the unrealities of the books I read and the stories I write. 

 

 

Nothing wrong with that! Some stories, I don't need notes for. Sometimes other stories take place in a shared world, though, and for that I tend to find setting notes are more necessary because I need things to be consistent from story to story. (Essentially, the bigger the project I'm working on, the less I'm able to simply hold things in my head.)

I'm in for Q2 with a reworked SHM. 

Posted by: @corbin-maxwell

I'm in for Q2 with a reworked SHM. 

Nice! Fingers crossed for that! I know some folks had a lot of luck with taking that approach.

I'm really having a hard time getting my brain into any sort of gear tonight. The teeth just seem to keep slipping. 

It appears some devastating news is coming our way. I’ll post more as I get solid verification and not secondhand.

@wulfmoon The contest announced it on Facebook.  Devastating is accurate.

Posted by: @chwalter

@wulfmoon The contest announced it on Facebook.  Devastating is accurate.

Nvm. Just seen it. Commiserations to his family and all those who knew him. I never met him but through this competition and the wotf workshop I'd like to think I knew him a little. 

Think I'll go read one of his books. 

This has now been posted by John Goodwin. “I am very sorry to have learned of the passing of our beloved friend and Writers of the Future Coordinating Judge, David Farland (Wolverton). My heart goes out to his family and a tribute to Dave will be following.”

This is unbelievable. My condolences to his family and friends.