Camp NaNoWriMo
wetcircuit
Posts: 0
A friend has got me to sign up for Camp NaNoRiMo, a July version of the November novel writing challenge with a more flexible approach that includes poetry, nonfiction, short stories, and scripts. I'll be rushing to finish my script for my graphic novel/animating this fall.
The flexibility is that you can specify your own "novel" length (wordcount goal). It's up to you to meet the goal (no one reads your stuff or looks over your shoulder). Their forum suggested estimating between 150–200 words per page for a script, so I would like to crank out 120pp (my project is episodic whether it is graphic novel or animations, I'm not worrying too much about how it breaks apart I'm just trying to make a big push on my timeline). In the fall I will start programming my script into ComicLife, which will serve as a storyboard and pre-production for animating. To be honest I have no idea if I will reach my goal of 120pp, but the whole point of the challenge is to participate in a big "push" along with other people doing the same, kinda like running a marathon. The camp analogy is that for the month you are in a "cabin" with 11 fellow campers to communicate and share encouragement with the whole month.... If you sign up find me under the username "wetcircuit"
If you are interested, sign up! They will sort you into like-minded genres or maybe we can cabin together!
http://campnanowrimo.org
From their website:
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. Participants work toward the goal of writing a 50,000-word draft during the month of November. Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought fleetingly about writing a novel.
Camp NaNoWriMo is a more open-ended version of our original November event. We have Camp sessions in both April and July, and we welcome word-count goals between 10,000 and 1,000,000. In addition, writers may attempt non-novel projects. Camp is a creative retreat for whatever you’re working on!
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Comments
Sounds really cool Holly. For myself, the April timeframe works better, as we're usually still in a semi-winter-like state. It's too muddy to do anything outside, the cows aren't freshening yet and the chicks aren't hatching. Plus, my nephews aren't here visiting from the city. Can you follow along on the forum without actually participating in the writing aspect of it?
I think so. If you are not writing I assume there would be no reason to sign up for a cabin, but I actually already found a lot of useful info on their forums. The whole thing seems to not take itself too seriously, but there are "prizes" if you hit your goal (mostly discounts on writing and organizing software).
Since I never did it before I don't really know what to expect, but I have so many pieces of my script in chunks and outlines scattered across a couple computers and different software, at the LEAST I figure it is a chance to try to focus and collate everything into a script.... Even if I end up with scattered scenes or need to skip some sections, it will help me push through the main concept and get some scenes "in the can" so to speak...
That camp wouldn't be good for me. I don't write with words, but with images. Sometimes, I have a more or less vague storyline before I start, but nothing written down. No storyboards either. I just procede to block out scenes one by one in Carrara and then ideas come up, slowly and sparsely. What if the character did this instead of that? Like the saying goes, art is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
Besides, even though I work for ours every day, I couldn't come up with anything serious if you gave me only one month. I guess I couldn't be called a screenwriter in the classic sense, but I consider myself a writer anyway.
I need to get started on the third novel in a trilogy (but it's only loosely planned out), and there's a novelette/novella I was promising my readers, which is supposed to be done first but I got kinda distracted building stuff in Carrara....
So I guess I could use some backside proddage, as it were. (but a chunk of July is reserved for when part 2 comes back from the editor, and looking at whatever has to be done...)
Just to say I identify with what argus1000 has said here, even though I started out as a writer and that's my comfort zone, I've found myself having images guide me since I started creating work with Carrara, partly because I can't 100% know for sure how the images will turn out (still learning and all that) but also because the images just take a life of their own.
Holly thanks for the info on Camp NaNoRiMo, sure looks like it could come in handy some time.
That's sorta how I came into 3D - as an aide to inspiration for writing (and for "publicity" images). But it rather took on a life of its own...!
I learned on their forum this is called "pantsing", as in writing "by the seat of your pants". LOL
Apparently it's a "thing" and they embrace it. So there are threads talking about "planning vs pantsing". They also talk about getting stuck (skip to the next chapter), and it seems like most people have a beginning and an end but no real middle.... In fact they encourage you to NOT have a big labored outline.
I had a lot of preconceptions about NaNoRiMo too. Especially because I do NOT want to write a novel. My art comes first too. I can't really imagine writing it without having my characters 3-dimensional so to speak, and I actually hunted around for something similar for graphic novels (didn't find anything).... But I've come to a point where I realized I am never going to BEGIN - much less finish - without a solid structure. I have hdds full of character renders (complete with changes of costumes, lol thanks DAZ and Rendo), I have tons of partial sets, and a lot of animation "tests" and notebooks full of scenes.... But if I were to try to show someone my "story" I have nothing really. It's all for nothing unless I sit and set some goals and then follow through on them....
I also play an elaborate mental trick on myself, where I over-complicate the story. It has to take place on a dozen worlds, and it's a saga/space opera so I need lots of main characters, all of their stories overlap... blah blah blah... In otherwords it is too BIG to ever start because it is so BIG and epic... I think I'm old enough to know what procrastination looks like... hahaha.
So I bought some screenwriting software, which was a bit formulaic. It suggests that you write your story as a series of plot points and conflicts... "Your hero is an outsider because __________________________________" (fill in the blank) "Your hero loses all when ______________________" (fill in the blank).... I was skeptical, but I could see how my saga would "fit" in the formula. It was still my story but I had to isolate a single main character and just tell it from her point of view, but it did work. It wasn't my whole story but it sort of stretched one of my characters on a loom and, yeah, there was the whole formula already in their story arc, I just had to plot the points like connecting the dots (a bit of homework, on paper, with words, ugh it was torture, I didn't quite finish it lol).... Anyway, what I learned: if it was hollywood that would be my main character, and it didn't really ruin my big saga.... Some of the other characters didn't fit so neatly, in hollywood they would not be my main characters.... I'm not saying I'm a believer, but I always felt I should try to make it at least somewhat "commercial". I'm not trying to do Dada-ist art or confuse the reader with surrealism.... I have (I think) a pretty solid subject matter - one I don't really see in sci-fi.... I *want* to do this.... I understand that I need to find a comfort zone between telling *my* story, and following a formula that the reader already understands so they can follow it, not feel alienated or bored.... I *want* people to read it.
So that's what I'm trying to accomplish with this, that one particular story arc. Any work I complete on that "excerpt" can stand as a piece of the whole.... It will also (hopefully) stop me bs-ing around my project and put it in a form that I can show to others. I'll never get out of pre-production if I don't move into production. LOL
I have this idea for a story, and first I thought animation, but then I started thinking graphic novel because realistically an animated long-form project would be unrealistic. Then I started seeing motion comics, and I went Aha! A combination of animation and graphic novels might work! The animation would be somewhat limited, yet there would be room for some cool short animated sequences.
I'm like Holly a bit. I picture my story as a bit of a saga, or at the least maybe an anthology set in the same universe but with different characters, that would occasionally run across characters from different plot lines. It's all so big it's almost easier to not start. Unlike Holly, my attempts at visualizing it have been fairly abortive and I only have a semi-firm grasp on a couple characters, but haven't yet tried to visualize them.
What I need to do is select the opening story simplify it, and just write a rough outline and maybe try and sketch out the main characters.
Yeah! Yeah! Exactly! I'm actually skipping over my "big" story arc set up.... It has too much action, and too many "seed" references for plot intrigues that happen later on... In short, it's over my head. Both as a writer and as animator...
So my new starting point is a little further in... It now starts with a "naive" character, she's not stupid but she's an "outsider", a newbie. She doesn't know any details of intrigue or history of the other characters. She also doesn't have much power or influence at the beginning, so the story stays in one location for a while (*whew*) as she learns about the other characters and the bigger intrigue... The "epic" scenes are a ways off.... That's basically the plot of Star Wars, there's this "epic" stuff already going on (mostly implied), but we follow the bumpkin farmboy. We only "discover" the bigger conflict slowly through his POV, and other characters aren't really blurting out their full history to him.
Anyway, I'm trying to take a lesson from hollywood and dumb it down, LOL! Now I can focus on setting up the audience to discover the world/conflict through an "eye" character. She has her own personal conflict and resolve (which the cheesy software helped me see...). It's a much easier bite for me. There are less locations, and most really powerful characters are outside her scope (at this point in the story) so they don't figure in the plot. They might be talked about, but she's not going to meet them, so I don't have to build them... Likewise some "amazing" locations might be implied, but she doesn't get to go there.... The "villains" are a lot smaller, planets are not smashing into each other, lol.
Yeah! Yeah! Exactly! I'm actually skipping over my "big" story arc set up.... It has too much action, and too many "seed" references for plot intrigues that happen later on... In short, it's over my head. Both as a writer and as animator...
So my new starting point is a little further in... It now starts with a "naive" character, she's not stupid but she's an "outsider", a newbie. She doesn't know any details of intrigue or history of the other characters. She also doesn't have much power or influence at the beginning, so the story stays in one location for a while (*whew*) as she learns about the other characters and the bigger intrigue... The "epic" scenes are a ways off.... That's basically the plot of Star Wars, there's this "epic" stuff already going on (mostly implied), but we follow the bumpkin farmboy. We only "discover" the bigger conflict slowly through his POV, and other characters aren't really blurting out their full history to him.
Anyway, I'm trying to take a lesson from hollywood and dumb it down, LOL! Now I can focus on setting up the audience to discover the world/conflict through an "eye" character. She has her own personal conflict and resolve (which the cheesy software helped me see...). It's a much easier bite for me. There are less locations, and most really powerful characters are outside her scope (at this point in the story) so they don't figure in the plot. They might be talked about, but she's not going to meet them, so I don't have to build them... Likewise some "amazing" locations might be implied, but she doesn't get to go there.... The "villains" are a lot smaller, planets are not smashing into each other, lol.
You don't really need to dumb it down. Think of how Tolkien introduced us to The Lord of the Rings. He didn't reveal everything right away, but rather gave us glimpses here and there of a much older and complicated world and history. The Hobbits were meant to be more relatable to the reader and in addition to furthering the plot, would ask the questions the readers wanted to ask.
Yeah, it's classic story telling.... and world building. It's *the* starting point.
Then there is like an Act II where the character stops just observing and begins to make their own actions. ...
And the Act III where they make sacrifices and risk ever returning to their "old" life. ...
It's popcorn formula..., but I was like, yeah, ok that is actually already in my story if you just follow this one person, plus now I am actually structuring that deliberately so it is easier to write. I'm still wary of being too cliche, but now I know why the story starts here and I know why it ends where it ends. It's not about setting up a cliffhanger for the next movie, it's about wrapping up that one character's arc.
After two novels and three shorts, my characters are pretty well visualised. The big problem I'm having is realising those visualisations in Carrara. My heroine is somewhere between Teen Josie and Stephanie - (I either need a younger morph for Stephanie6 or an older morph for Josie6, neither of which I've found...) Then there's the skin... all the skins on Daz are too picture perfect. The nearest I've seen is Danae's London over on Rendo, but that's for V4. The men are even harder to sort out. There simply aren't any decent skins for older teens - they're all either boys or men, no pimply adolescents! And that's not even getting into the ethnicity of the characters (European, Afro-Caribbean, Indian, Chinese...)
I think the only way I'll get clothes that are remotely right is to design them myself. Everything in the store is way too skimpy, and/or completely impractical. Mec4D does have a brilliant set of hunting leathers that would be an ideal fit, only... they're for Dawn. I could get the right morphs, and a good skin and one outfit for Dawn, but I can't get it to pose in Carrara without exploding, so that's no good.
There are so many "nearly's" it gets quite frustrating.
At least I'm making good progress building my sets and locations :-)
3-Act is a very well defined structure, with rigid beats and rhythms, but even though it's formulaic, it works. Good for novels as well as movies too :-)