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Lost-Chances
There's no such thing as a winnable war. It's a lie we don't believe any more.

Age 33, Male

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Project: Plantania.

Posted by Lost-Chances - September 4th, 2009

Well, some people will remember me mentioning this contest a few weeks back. Most wouldn't have a clue so I'll talk about it. It's a free-to-enter contest for writers. The prize is nothing really materialistic like money. All you get is a web-certificate saying you did the contest and managed to meet their requirements and acknowledgement on their winner's page. The objective is to write a novel in a month with at least 50,000 words. It can be as long or short as you want (as long it's over the 50,000 word requirement) and it can be about anything at all. The company wouldn't check through your writing so you could, theoretically, load up 50,000 letter "G"s or upload an already done story and get the certificate. However, that would defeat the general purpose.

You can basically plan or anything at all before the contest but you must not start writing until the 1st of November. You then have until the 30th to submit your story to the word counter. If you've gone over 50,000 words, then you win.

Now that's out the way, now to talk about Project: Plantania. Project: Plantania is the working title (not the final title) for the novel I am going to do. I'm doing two months planning (this month for the plot, next month for character designing). November I'll be writing, of course, then December I'll be proof reading all I can. The release date will be around Christmas to the literature portal (if it's up), deviantART and Fourth Perspective.

In terms of plot development so far, something has been done. It's a very boney skeleton missing quite a few bones but I plan to find the bones and then flesh out the skeleton before October. By October, the plot should be nailed down so I'll likely reveal a bit more information on the plot. However, until at least late September (hopefully), my lips are sealed. Means less of a clean up if I change my mind about the plot. All I can tell you currently is if the current story-line goes ahead, then it'll be like a cross between Forbidden Siren, It and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. I know, I know, I've probably done too much similar to Eternal Darkness, but it's a strong enough idea to sound like it's writeable for a novel. There may be references to previous stories but the chances are thin to none. The only other thing I'll mention now is the genre of it will very likely be horror. Granted, it wouldn't be enough to scare people, but there's enough horror elements. Probably.

So, shadys and mentalmen, this is my Christmas present to you this year. A novel, for free.

Edit: Here's the plot for you:

Drip...Drop...Drip...Drop...

When you haven't slept in days, suddenly every noise at night is amplified ten fold...

Charlotte, during a week stay at her uncle's castle, suddenly is unable to sleep. What starts out as minor insomnia slips into what Charlotte assumes is simply hallucinations and delusions brought about by the lack of sleep. One day though, in the middle of the night, she succumbs to the voices' desire; the desire for her just to go down into the basement where she was strictly and firmly told not to go by her uncle. What starts off as just looking turns into a twisted nightmare she can not wake up from.

Drip...Drop...Drip...Drop...Drip...

Maniae.

Working title number 2.

Comments

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S3ns

Bone. Heheheh.

Sounds pretty cool. After I return all the books I have back to the library, I think I'll just read a bunch of your stuff for a while instead of getting more.

Lost-Chances

Hokay. Thanks.

S3ns

Oh btw this is Sensationalism in case that wasn't obvious. Alt-o-rama.

Lost-Chances

PFT, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR MAIN?!

Colombiana

Why aren't you a mod anymore? :(

Lost-Chances

I was never a mod.

Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever.

Ever.

Colombiana

They de-modd you AND brainwash you.

That's harsh..

Lost-Chances

No, you were.

DevourerJay

not bad... i kinda like it man... good job

Lost-Chances

Thanks.

DumbassDude

Pretty cool, should be a good read.

Lost-Chances

Perhaps, perhaps not.

DumbassDude

Either way, I love creative writing.

Lost-Chances

Pft.

JoeTheToucan

Stop being a cunt please thank you

Lost-Chances

Stop bitching like your opinion is actually worth something.

WritersBlock

I read this a while back and since then I've decided to give this NaNo challenge a crack, too. I've just got a title and a vague genre that I'll be writing in for the moment. And that's about it. Although, yeah, in between Uni and work, I'll be doing a fair bit of planning, I finish Uni towards the beginning of November, so I should have a lot of free time to write and write and write. Most I've ever written in a short sprint was 10k words in a fortnight. I think with a more strict deadline, I may be able to make the 50k word count in the deadline, hopefully.

Good luck, and I look forward to reading your novel come Christmas time.

Lost-Chances

Heh, thanks. To be honest, I haven't done much planning since I posted this. Although since you're taking part in it, it may help my motivation a tiny bit. I have the basic over-view I think, just need to think of a beginning, an ending and go into more depth while sealing up the storyline I'm using.

I'll still be at college during November so I'll have to be writing in my own spare time; which I am fine with. In 4 years, this is by far the longest story I've ever written so it's an interesting challenge.

Oh well, good luck with your piece and I'll try to check out your story if you do decide to host it on a website for free. Which reminds me, are you going to host it for free? If so, where?

Tykwa

Send me a copy, an e-copy, i'll read it.

Lost-Chances

When it's done, a link will be shoved up on my user-page to a Fourth Perspective page with my story on it unless the NG Literature Portal. Then it'll be posted there as well and you'll be able to find it yourself..

WritersBlock

Am I going to host it for free? That's an interesting question. In all honesty, I think it'll depend on how good the story is. The thing is, since I've started studying creative writing at Uni, I've been itching to write a full novel so I'd have something major I could try to get published. I suppose I could submit the original NaNo draft or the first few chapters edited and ironed-out. But really, I'm in two minds about it. If I do host it somewhere though, I'll definitely have it up here, probably deviant art and fourth perspective, same as you, and maybe campnorth too.

Lost-Chances

I think, if I was in your position, I'd post the first full novel for free. Just to test the waters and see how it feels. If the waters seem fine and there's no sharks trying to bite your face off, then you can try to get it published. That way, not only you have the new fans, but also people who have read your stories, loved them and want more to buy them as well.

However, if it's so good and you're confident it'll do at least somewhat well, then skip the previous step and sell, sell, sell.

WritersBlock

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it would be good to get some feedback on a full body of work as opposed to short stories. But by and large, I've noticed people are more often than not reluctant to read any large piece of world, like more than 5,000 words or so. It's the laziness of the internet. I suppose the people that would read an entire novel online would have a lot to say as far as criticisms go. Also, if I did get a novel published, I'd say that my demographic would be largely Australian, and only a small proportion of that would fall within my so-called "fanbase" here on Newgrounds. Unless I push for the book to sell in the NG store. ;)

Thanks, L-C.
I've also decided to put the first chapter of the first novel I started working on in my literature blog. The link is in my NaNo blog, if you're interested. ;)

Lost-Chances

To be honest, and this is something I've thought about for a few months, it would be nice for the NG store to sell some sort of collaboration of all the different NG writers, just because it could act as a foot in the door or some sort of experience in the writing field when talking to a potential publisher.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to try make as much people your target audience. So, it wouldn't hurt that if you had to alter some things, to make your demographic not just Australian audiences but rather just a Western-society audience. Although I guess it may depend on what places you use. Like my story, assuming if the plan carries on with no drastic changes, in England in Yorkshire. There's also the language you use, like I could use American English and try to appeal to Americans as well as English people, Australian people and so on who either don't mind reading or prefer American English, but I just feel a lot better using English than American English because it just allows me to express my national identity. Not to mention, if someone is not reading a story I've written just because I spell things in a different way like "Scrutinize" as "Scrutinise", I don't think they're worth associating myself with. Even if they're just a reader.

WritersBlock

Now that'd be damn cool. I'd definitely love a short story collaorative book in the store. With a bit of funding it probably wouldn't be too hard. Could probably get it published through something like lulu.com and talk with Tom about making a bit of a competition about it. Who knows?

And yes, I think it's a good idea to keep your target audience as wide as possible. I've seen quite a few literary awards sites for Australian literature that are pretty much limited to the telling of stories that are about living in Australia and events occuring in Australia as opposed to a wider Australian authors in general. I usually write in non-specific locations, standard English, but if I did get published, it'd be highly likely that my readership will be entirely Australian until the possibility of getting my books overseas.

As for American English, I don't bother writing it at all, as for reading, it really doesn't bother me. I expect an American writer to write in US English, whereas an English author would write in UK English. I recently read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", and the thing that bugged me was that he didn't use apostrophes in several contractions. Dont, wont, cant, didnt. Isn't, I'm, you're, he's were fine, but pretty much all the "___ not" contractions ignored the apostrophe. Which exists in both UK and US English. I didn't get it. It kind of got me paying more attention to the contractions and not as much to the content. :(

Lost-Chances

That's actually a good point. Just ask Lulu to publish the collection and get Tom to sell it. The question is how do you collect a large short-story collection without diminishing the quality due to poor writers? Ah, who knows really?

I usually write in a non-specific place as well, strongly hinting at a western civilisation though. However, sometimes I drop place names (e.g. this novel will have actual place names (although it'll most likely have some fictional place names, the county it's based in will be real) and Feed My Eyes had some place names dropped here and there) and sometimes I drop a few hints where something may take place (like my February entry in the monthly contest if I remember rightly, I tried to strongly hint that it was based in New York in America, even if I dislike basing things in America just because I don't know the culture as much as I wish I did when writing things like that) but usually it's open.

In terms of what language to write in, it's just something someone from DeviantART advised me to do. Considering he's in the process of writing a book, writing in American English as opposed to English was something to actually consider but, as you can tell, was quickly dismissed. I'm not sure if it's national pride (and me noticing that England has a severe lack of it besides the nationalist bastards) or just me hating how America has to be the central basis of western culture.

Although I do know what you mean by that. I was reading either Drawing Of The Three or Wizard And The Glass (more likely to be the first one than the later one) and Stephen King kept saying that a character called Odetta (or Detta, or Susannah...Or Mia...) had schizophrenic because of the multiple personalities when the real disorder is called either Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or, these days, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). It annoyed me to the point where I considered just not finishing the book because it felt such a stupid mistake to make. Perhaps it's just me caring too much about finer details though? Who knows really?

I think I managed to write a decent plan so far with a loose beginning, a decent ending and all the characters to appear in the first-person perspective (each chapter is broken up by different characters in a different time period). I can already tell it'll have some dark themes running through. I could share some thoughts why I see it that way based on my current notes, but best not spoil the story yet.

WritersBlock

Hmm, I think if we were to seriously do a short story collection, I'd say maybe give it a solid word limit, maybe 5-15k words, so that way, there'd be more time and effort invested in the stories. Limited positions available in the book, maybe start it off as invite-only before opening the remaining positions up for competition. We could easily set up a private board (like what gum did on Nabble with the MWCs) to workshop ideas, read drafts and edit as a group, to ensure a level of quality is produced from the stories. Find an artist to draw up cover illustrations and we'd be all set.

I can't recall a time where I've used an actual place name in my writing. I usually go for entirely fictional towns in entirely fictional worlds. But that's just me. Besides, if a story's interesting, it's interesting whether it's set in America, Europe, Africa or outer space. A lot of writers I read are American or British, but that doesn't mean I'll like them any less. I guess, when you read something that mentions the town you grew up in or a place close to home, you can't help but connect with the text, at least on a nostalgic level.

Great to hear you're getting your novel fleshed out. Your narrative style sounds really interesting. I've been making notes on my story every so often and the setting's starting to come together, and from that I've got a sketchy outline of a plot. Getting there, though. I'm planning on doing mine as a singular flow of events, only broken by short chapters, kind of like how Stephen King does "chapters", sizes ranging from a couple of paragraphs to half a dozen pages. I think it'll help me get the words flowing.

Lost-Chances

I think that would be an interesting idea, but how would you know which people to invite and which ones not to? Would there be a common theme or just a collection of random stories put together? Plus, there's a question of if people will be paid and if so, how would it work? In terms of the artist though, I think that would be the easiest part. Likely hood, there's a lot of artists who would be willing to draw the front cover for a book being sold on NG, especially if there's a bit on money in it for them.

I think you're right about that, but I have yet to come across a story which is based close to home. Closet would probably be two stories I have both based in London. It's one bad thing about living in a small little village is a generally unknown county. Then again, there's a place near-by that a lot of celebrities have either lived in or were born in, so maybe that's good enough to hope for a story to be born based there? Perhaps that's one motivation for me to do well in writing? To actually bring my village to some level of fame, as remote as it is, then again I can't say I like where I live enough to associate myself to it. Although if I do go professional, I'll be sure to base a story around there. Probably something to do with some monster from the sea. A bit like Poe's story perhaps except more modernised and a bit different.

Thanks for the interest in my narrative style. As I said, it does have some Forbidden Siren and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem elements in it. In terms of inspiration to new stories, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem may be rivalling Silent Hill 2. Of course though, I'll be trying to add my own little twists to the chapter style. Maybe the character finds items which initiates the chapters? (A bit like Halo: ODST) No idea really. Your style seems interesting it's self but just be careful not to make it feel broken. Stephen King usually breaks up his larger chapters with character focus changes (if the current book I'm reading (The Dark Tower 6, Song Of Susannah) is a good judge of his style anyway). As you can tell, my styles usually are slightly stolen but I always try to add a bit of "me" into the style. I just hope you manage to add a bit of "you" into the Stephen King style you have going.

WritersBlock

I think it wouldn't be too hard to come up with an invite short list, just look at some of the monthly writing competitions over the months; gumOnShoe, Zerok, RapeMuffin, Coop83... others I can't think of off the top of my head, but basically, there's plenty of winners/other 'high profile' writers who've displayed themselves there.

Well I guess for me it's a bit different as there aren't all that many popular Australian writers hitting the best sellers list. In fact, Tim Winton and John Marsden are the only two that come to mind as far as modern Australian best-sellers go. And I guess I relate to most Australian fiction in general because of it. I guess also that there's a huge contrast between your cities and towns, whereas here, there's a lot of sameness. That was one of the things I really liked about the Tomorrow Series, by John Marsden. It's pretty much set in your generic country farming town. So, while it's technically not a real town, and just an imaginary place, it's every small country farming town in Australia, it's every no-name place from Woop-Woop to Wogga Wogga and everywhere between. But I guess anyone who does become somewhat famous puts a marker of some form or another of their home town on the map, whether they explicitly write of it, suggest towards it, or completely ignore it.

Your writing style should work well for breaking the story up, I think, which should make delegating time slots easier and reaching that 50k marker less of a trek. As for me? I doubt my story will bare much resemblance to King's style other than the length of chapters. So, yeah. I'm hoping to inject a lot of "me" into my story.

Lost-Chances

There's probably one or two other's I'd put on that list like Scarab, but yeah that's a nice actual gist. There's some "writers" I wouldn't invite along personally but that's just personal preference really.

I think it is possible to become very famous and not put your home town on the map, such as a pen-name and a fake biography. Depends how the dice rolls I guess.

Honestly, I'm just trying to do things the easiest way possible this way around. It may not even come close to revolutionary and it may not be the most original thing about, but it's just something that works rather than "it does well or badly". Personally, I think most books have touches of unoriginality and seen-that-done-that idea, but it's the personal touches that really define the book as it's own. Let it be a unique idea or even just a unique blend of other ideas.

Magik-Waffle

This contest sounds interesting. Can I do it? I wanna try. :D Can you type it on Word or what?

Lost-Chances

Feel free to enter and type it on whatever you want. Just follow the website's rules.

WritersBlock

Yeah, Scarab, of course. Now, I've had a brief look at the cost calculator on Lulu.com and checked out how much it'd cost to print a book around about 200 pages long. Then I tried to figure out what would be a respectable amount of books we could get in the store at an 'affordable' price. And the number I came up with was 50 books for around $300. Or 25 for around $150. Printing cost is $6.10 per unit. From what I saw browsing through the site, paypal is a viable option. If we seriously attempted this, I'd say opening up a paypal for donations is the best option, so then once it's up and running, the proceeds from the books could go into that account to keep the book in print and also, eventually, maybe make a little revenue for the writers involved. It'd be a big task, but certainly not insurmountable.

Pen-names and fictional biographies? I doubt they'd care much for a 15-minutes-of-fame cast upon their home town if they're going to that extent to hide their real selves. At one point I thought about picking a pen name, but really, I couldn't care less. Besides, I'd feel great about seeing my own name in professional ink.

Easy is good. Back in the early days of classic hollywood, their films were made to a tried and proven structure, and they just ran with it on mass production. As the saying goes; "Why fix that which isn't broken?" Who cares if it's overly-simplistic. If it's written in an effective manner, then by all means, run with it.

My creative writing lecturer was telling me a similar thing the other day. The class was analysing a poem of mine. A four stanza haiku. And he said that as far as writing difficulty goes, out of a ranking of ten its difficulty was a one or a two. But it was that simple structure used effectively that made the simplicity of the poem obsolete. A novel's no easy task, so the easier you make it on yourself, the more likely you are to succeed.

Lost-Chances

Yeah, that could all work, but it would need someone to make it work really. I'd be pretty clueless myself. If it works out, then I'd be more than happy to submit something to the book, assuming my work is wanted anyway. If it isn't, fair enough, I'll just sit by until I'm wanted. I think it'd be more interesting to see writers get their foot in the door rather than anything else. To be able to just say "my writing is in a book". In terms of sales, I doubt people would get much more than $0.10, but it's something.

Personally, I'd start off with a pen-name probably. Maybe introduce my real name later, but not straight away. Partly because if I get famous (and fuck am I getting ahead of myself here and making a lot of assumptions), I wouldn't want to sacrifice my spare time just in the name of people stopping me and asking "HEY, YOU'RE THAT WRITER! OMFG! AUTOGRAPH!". Also partly because readers probably get put off in liking an author or recommending him/her if they have to even struggle to try to pronounce the name which people probably would with my first name (Kailan). Who knows though? Maybe much later I'll slap my real name onto a book and see how hard shit hits the fan.

Easy is good, unless the audience has a bit of intelligence. I remember reading Dan Brown's book and getting severe deja vu by the third book. It's then I realised there's really a very, very, very similar layout between the books. While the plot was the same, they were very similar to the point where it felt lazy and half-arsed. I mean, if you can't even be bothered to make plots that can't even remotely be tied together (unless it's a series), then why bother? I mean, Stephen King has a lot of variation himself, a gun-slinger, a group of kids, a prison warden. While Dan Brown, personally, has very similar main characters which just feels a bit crap.

I think simplicity can work and be good as something too complex can confuse the reader. However, in terms of novels, simplicity rarely works. Partly because it's the sheer complexity that makes it work; the sub-plots, the plot twists and the character development. If we wanted a simple story that is very focused on the main story, then we'd probably just all read short stories.

WritersBlock

Yeah, I think most writers here wouldn't have much to show in terms of their own material published and for sale. Theoretically, if the project happens, and succeeds, that could potentially set up some solid funding for the Newgrounds writing community at large. But that's, in the meantime, largely hypothetical.

I don't think I'd mind people recognising me as 'that writer guy', also speaking hypothetically, I'd prefer my writing successes to be attributed to me, rather than someone I made up.

Easy is good, yes, but there's easy and then there's oversimplification. So this whole unoriginal methodology Brown's got going on would be an example of the latter. I'd say there are a lot more popular novels that are easy as opposed to complex, because it doesn't as quickly confuse, and offers the reader with something to relate and connect with. I've read some really complex sci-fi stuff, and while I love it, I'll go back to "The Road" as an example again. It's just a father and son walking down a road. There's a long, drawn out conflict of what they're going to eat, and where they're going to sleep, and the immediate, suspense conflict of are cannibals going to find them and eat them. The latter conflict in the book is barely mentioned explicitly, so when you break the book down to its simplest parts, it's really fucking basic, no conflict of politics or religion or philosophy or any of that stuff. There's life and death and how the characters deal with those issues.

As for Stephen King. I really should read more of his stuff. He churns out books like there's no tomorrow, so he must have some sort of formula that works, but I suppose diversity isn't exactly a direct correlation to complexity. I read Misery, and all that's basically driving that book is the singular internal conflict and singular external conflict that's driven by numerous situations. I guess what works works. And The Lord of the Rings. Well, that's so hideously complex in its rich history and geography and the conflicts that occur on both a small and a large scale, within the story, what happens affects the major characters on an immediate level, but also their races, and the wars and all that affecting the whole of Middle Earth on a much larger scale. It's very complex, and as such, it's a little harder to get involved with the story, there's just so much to take in.

I think simplicity works solely depending on the context. Sometimes the story works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm a huge fan of sub-plots, though. I love it when numerous things affect the outcome of the story, and how one thing affects another affects another, but again, I find that only works if it's delivered right. In Fight Club (the book, not the movie), the story tied up every scattered piece of plot really well in the end, so it all makes sense. Of course, there's usually some form of logical reasoning as to why you read the whole book, I guess you could say the denouement of a novel is sort of a present to the reader, like 'you've read this far, and now here is why this story works'.

Lost-Chances

I think the idea of a collaboration book could work as a self-funding thing where the previous book funds the following books and so on or pays the author back for their works; or both.

To be honest, while I wouldn't mind people to know me as a good writer, I wouldn't want to be noticed in public at all as a writer. Maybe it's because I throw a bit of me into it and I'm not that open about my inner self? Maybe I just don't like attention? Maybe a bit of both?

I think simple works if the context deems it and you hide the parts which have been "copied" well. Like, while I'll full out admit that stories like Feed My Eyes and Clouds In The Sky are HEAVILY based on things I've seen, I'll at least attempt to alter it enough so people wouldn't just go along and be like "AH, THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A RIP OFF!". However, at times, it feels like it's just best to just write it down and hope for the best. So far, no one has called me out as a pathetic rip off although that could be I full out admitted to "stealing" ideas from the places I have instead of just not saying a word about it and seeing if people notice. Although most of the references I have, I often hide deep into the story so people don't notice. Like one of my stories was based on my ex but it was so hidden into it, people just took it as a story and full out said things like "wow, what a bitch she is". At the time, I still had feelings for her so I was trying to defend her a bit but the negative comments kept coming.

I think the difference between getting inspiration and full out ripping off something is a very thin line and this novel might wonder a little too close to the ripping-off-something line. However, the bones aren't all there so it may manifest it's self into something very different. Who knows really?

TwilightFox

what's up?

Lost-Chances

Please. Leave me be.

Sensationalism

Holy shit it's like a book on your comments page!

Lost-Chances

Fucking hell does WritersBlock make some good advertising.

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