NaNoWriMo 2013

I've been meaning to post about doing NaNoWriMo all month, but I've been busy writing my novel instead.

For those not in the know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month.  The challenge is to write 50,000 words in one month, specifically, November.  50,000 words in 30 days works out to be 1667 words per day.  Theoretically those words should go together to tell a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end within those 50,000 words.

Last year I did it for the first time.  I thought, "Hey, I'm a professional writer.  I've been published.  I've been produced.  Things have been made with my writing in them.  I can do this standing on my head.  I will finally write my Great American Novel."

My problem was, I wasn't sure how much story would fit into 50,000 words.  It turns out that 50,000 is a short novel, like The Great Gatsby, or Old Man and the Sea.  You know, the ones you read off the required reading list in high school based on their page count.  It's a little over 100 paperback pages.  I outlined my story and I still didn't know if I would have too much or two little.  I decided to divide it into two acts, and if I got through my first act with only 20k words, I'd write my second act.  If, on the other hand, I got to 50,000 words and was at the end of my first act, then I'd end the story there.

So I gave myself a daily goal of 2000 words per day.  That way if I missed  a day or so, I would have a nice buffer zone of words banked, and I'd still get my 50,000 words.  I only missed one day; when we woke up at 5am and flew back from Florida and I got home and was totally exhausted.  So in one month last year I wrote a little over 58,000 words.

But something happened in the writing.  I was setting up all this stuff that had to pay off in Act II.  I got to the end of Act I somewhere in the low 60's, but the story wasn't done.  I kept writing.

In the 11 months since NaNoWriMo ended last year, I have written another 30,000 words, and I was still nowhere near the end of the story.

Here we are, halfway through this year's NaNoWriMo, I've got another 33,000 words and I can just see the end in sight.  Technically that makes me a "rebel" this year, since the rules state you have to start the novel on November 1, and I continued a piece of writing I had previously started.  It doesn't much matter.  The point of NaNoWriMo is that when you win, you've the prize is that you've written a novel.  So if it took me two consecutive years to win, then so be it.  My novel is longer than a standard NaNo novel.

So here's my status tracking widget:

This Is My Milwaukee

About two weeks ago, while traveling around the internet, I found this:



Which was really weird and interesting. People started talking about it over on SomethingAwful and Unfiction picked it up.

After a brief discussion on QuarterToThree, a lot of people said, "I wish I had the time/energy/inclination to follow up on this, but I don't. I'd really love it if someone would just keep track of it for me in one thread so I could read about it and kind of, almost participate in an ARG."

Behold! I started the TIMM thread at QuarterToThree which I'm keeping updated. Yes, there are two wiki's, a sub-forum on UnFiction, and a thread on SomethingAwful, as well as various other places to keep up, but that Qt3 thread is mine. So there.

Also, the format there is a little better than here for keeping it up to date and readable, with comments from other posters. So I thought I'd link to it here, but over there is where I'm posting updates.

The Evolution of the Shooter

After years of sheepishly admitting that I've never played it, I finally played through Half-Life. Yeah, the original one. I started Halo at about the same time, so it was a nice contrast to play the 1998 shooter during the day, then the 2001 shooter at night. My TV has a wicked glare, so there is no console gaming (especially something as dark as Halo) during the day. Since it's summer, that means that I've finished Half-Life while I'm barely halfway through Halo.

We talked a lot about the wide road theory of game design when putting together Immortal Throne. That is: we're building a road, or a strictly linear game. Essentially the player travels the road and sees the things you've set up, and fights the battles you've placed in his way. The wider you make the road, the more it feels like the player actually chooses his own experience, when actually, all he's choosing is whether to travel down the left side of the road or the right side. Half-Life isn't a very wide road. In fact, mostly the road is a corridor wide. It's relentlessly linear, and everyone who's played it has had basically the same experience. So why is it hailed as a huge step forward in game design?

Because it never leaves that road, the writer now has a more or less linear plot that can unfold.

Everything happens from your POV. Scientists get sucked into vents, and if you see it, then you saw it. If you've turned away, then you might hear it. You might see it out of the corner of your eye (or screen, in this case), or you might just catch a glimpse of it as you're turning to look at something else. The story is told by the environment, with the occasional lapse into "you have to get to the lambda complex!" not from some disembodied voice in your ear, but from a terrified scientist who isn't willing to leave the safety of the corner he's found. We know a little bit about what happened, but we piece together the events of that day from the things we see, not what's told to us.

That's a great lesson for all game writers. Trust the audience. If you spell everything out in minute detail, your audience has probably already figured it out. If they don't get every little nuance of your world, so be it. It's their world now anyway. I'm not sure exactly what happened at Black Mesa, but I don't think Gordon Freeman or anyone involved it. I'm not exactly sure why I launched some satellite on the way to the Lambda Complex, but I figure someone will tell me eventually, or maybe not. Maybe it was the first step in bringing Breen to power, or maybe Breen was in power all through Half-Life and it was just another day at the office away from City 17, or 15, or 2.

It made me think about the story as well as what kind of ammo I was using and how to sidestep and hide from army guys.

I've heard people complain about the jumping puzzles in the last third of the game, but sonny, there were jumping puzzles throughout. I lost much more health to ladder mishaps in Black Mesa than to alien beings from another dimension. It got to the point that before attempting to get on a ladder I would automatically save the game. The last third had weird alien platforms instead of broken catwalks and mountain ledges, but it was the same gameplay.


My one complaint is the giant baby-head at the end. (Is it okay to spoil a nine year old game? I know it was spoiled for me before I played, so I guess I'm returning the favor.) Fighting a giant alien baby tells me more about the designers' fears of fatherhood than about the alien race that's trying to invade Earth (or is Earth trying to invade them? That G-man guy sure does talk funny.) The actual killing of the baby-head is anticlimactic in the extreme, because it's more a factor of whether or not you have enough ammo, than any kind of gunplay. You jump into his head when it's open, and you shoot the floor (his brain) until you're out of ammo. It takes awhile, and I'm proud to say I killed the final boss of Half-Life with the pistol (because I'd already unloaded everything else into it). Aargh!


On to Half-Life 2!!!

And another one...

So here's Yet Another Blog. I'm starting this during my most busy time, figuring that if I can get a post a day out when I'm really busy, it'll be cake when I'm not. It could just be another blog with two posts and then nothing forevermore.

I will try.

The idea is that I feel in between academia and industry, in between drama and games, in between scholarship and creation. I am not a delicate flower, I'm just hoping to get some writing done, with maybe some links and pictures too.

So here we go...