alexanderwales
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NaNo 2023: Failed First Chapters
🕑 Added 2023-11-03 23:16:29 +0000 UTCHello there!
I have long been a fan of National Novel Writing Month, and credit it with having increased my output, especially in the early years. In 2010, I wrote 50,000 words of absolute garbage and have done it most years since then in one form or another, sometimes just adding 50,000 words onto an existing work. 2014/2015/2016 were all spent on adding to (and then finishing) The Dark Wizard of Donkerk, which can be read on my website in its still-unedited form, where it will stay until I can find the time or the publisher for it. 2022 was, of course, Thresholder.
This year, I decided that I wanted to try writing something that had more marketability, so during what I dubbed 'Draftober' I set out to write a bunch of starts to see what worked and what didn't. I think left to my own devices, I would probably end up writing epic fantasy about sad English majors wringing their hands about moral issues, the nature of narrative, gender and sexuality, the burdens of the future, and stuff like that, with the occasional fight scene or complicated romance thrown in. I think that's all well and good, but wanted to try something different, and perhaps more widely appealing, and dare I say, profitable.
Anyway, here's a link to the GDocs folder where the drafts are stored. 3, 4, and 9 are incomplete, with the last of those not even really being a story. 7 is missing, because that's the one I selected for NaNo 2023, Doomsday Pivot!, a system apocalypse story about a small startup that makes a sudden course correction when the end of the world comes with blue boxes in hand.
I don't fully endorse reading any of these, but if you have interest in first drafts and stories that I decided not to write for one reason or another, then you might get something from them. A few of these I might come back to when I have the bandwidth for them, and each was given a "rejection letter" to serve as a note to myself about what worked and what didn't, and why it wasn't selected for 2023.
In the past, I've done NaNo in the open, posting whatever got written that day, but this year it's going to be kept private. In theory, December will be the time to polish, and then January might be the time to share, but I'm keeping myself open right now, and using this NaNo as a time for experimentation. (The target is for this to be a new serial that would be posted to RoyalRoad with a huge backlog, written concurrently with Thresholder until the end of Thresholder, with its continuation depending on how well it's doing and either an early end or a late one, depending. But I'm very willing to throw all that work in the trash or course correct if needed, which is the point of keeping it private and considering it an experiment.)
Thanks for reading, if you choose to, and any comments below would be appreciated.
Comments
Andrei
Concerning your decision to end Thresholder after the next world I understand the reasoning of it, especially if your goal is to increase your popularity and thus your income, but personally I quite enjoy the serial nature of the story (One Piece-like) so I would prefer it if it was continued on a schedule that allows you to work on other projects as well (perhaps once per week?). That said, it's your decision and regardless of whichever path you take I wish you all the best!
OdinSon_1774
I loved the "Family Business" one, I think of all of them it has the most interesting premise and it was the one that immediately drew me in! I agree with your notes that it would be a much more serious story than "Thresholder" but I loved WTC so I know you have the chops for more serious stuff. Smoothing you mentioned in your notes, and you wrote about a bit in WTC is the how depressing returning the normal world might be for those taken to a magical one. Maybe part of the story would be that some of the family resents coming home, or that the Uncle or the sister aren't trapped in the magical world, but chose to stay there and abandoned their family. Overall I loved it, great work!
patreonizing
(man I hate the Patreon interface, didn't mean to split comments) #2 - overly disturbing with no reason to like the protag given, comic book levels of gratuitous evil, just real heavy downer shit. I think you're right it's better to just file-drawer that one rather than even attempt a salvage. #3 - not sure where this was going, but I do think the conceit of "actually literally world-class talent get isekai'd to somewhere that talent would both fit in and matter" is interesting. Usually it's in the form of Science(tm) or other modern knowledge. But a physical skill...and fantasy worlds often have healing magic, right, so...? #4 - shrug, though the idea of "The Chosen One isn't flawed enough, I don't believe it!" is kind of amusing conceit. #5 - proof of concept that 3 could work, hope to read finalized/salvaged in future sometime. #6 - now *this* is genuinely interesting underexplored territory, I'd love to see it finished/worked into another work. One always wonders what happens to those "left behind", or conversely what happens if the world-hopper does make it home. It's so often conveniently written out of the picture by protags dying or having terrible lives or some other reason not to go back, yanno? #8 - uh, creative and definitely weird, seems scope-limited though. Gonna pretend it's noncanonical TUTBAD background. Also someone with those skills could totally make a killing working for Wotsee or whoever, I don't get the pecuniary difficulty. #9 - sounds like it'd be a fun videogame, but as you note, somewhat derivative + also you kinda already did WtC so that'd be an inevitably hard shadow to get out from under. Thanks for sharing, it's cool to see your process.
patreonizing
#1 - grim, but glimmer of a potentially interesting (and interestingly different-enough) world. Good vehicle to explore the morality of (addressing) homelessness, if you so wanted - beggars typically aren't something I expect in fantasy worlds, except as convenient plot devices.
