The only thing you need to know about Preptober is: -no one knows what they're doing -28th-31st is panic days -the general snack graph goes up -social life goes down Remember to -hydrate -sleep -eat -bathe
...I didnt know preptober was a thing.. I've always taken the first 5 to 10 days of November to plan and plo and then had a mental breakdown trying to average like 4k a day to catch up.
His Majesty's Dragon is significantly about a dragon. The dragon is in fact the best character in the book. It has practically no magic though. The dragons are the only fantastical element and they're approached fairly scientifically, so I don't know if it's going to be very inpiring for what sounds like a story with more magic.
@@natcommon there is no 'right' to preptober. personally, i outline my story a week or two before, or i choose one of my many outlines from my google drive. if you don't want to outline, you can pants, (which means go along with the story as you write it) but i think if you get the basic plot first it makes things easier
@@mercury4104 Thanks for the encouragement. I’m normally not a pantser. I think that’s why I’m freaking out a bit. But I think I figured out what I’m going to do after watching this. :)
Lol I'm seeing Merph go through the exact same process I went through and realizing I must have looked so crazy then. and now the world is built, the magic system--I'm in love with. the characters I know who they are, what they'll do, what they'll suffer and how they'll die. I know who they meet, what their goals are, what pains them. I know what the world will go through, who will save it, and the question of whether it deserves to be saved and who will ask it. I know who the villains are and those who will become villains and who the heroes will be. and the more I write, the more vivid the world and the story becomes. It grows on the page as I excavate it from my mind.
I know exactly what it’s like to have a magic system or have characters and no plot... Just the result of too many stories swirling around. Good luck Merph! Hopefully you can help inspire me to finally get back into my writing after this year we’ve had!
I never heard of NaNoWriMo until you mentioned it in a video and I looked into it and just signed up! I've been struggling to commit to writing my novel and I found this will be a great challenge. Thank you Merphy and good luck!
@@microdavid7098 It’s just supposed to be the first draft and sometimes actually getting the first draft down is a huge challenge for some people. So NaNoWriMo helps people with that
@@Sunday-ex7px Yeah, but still. I like fleshing ideas out as I write them. I plot out, then, as I write, I plot it out even further. That makes the ideas go up and up
Merphy: Reading Vlogs are gone. This Video: I am sorry ma'am I would beg to differ This video is a vlog just Writing Vlog instead of Reading, anyway I am a sucker of Merphy's Vlogs.
Haven't read His Majesty's Dragon, but I know it's basically a "dude and his dragon" type of story, where a guy in the Napoleonic Wars becomes friends with a dragon. So the dragon features heavily. One friend described it to me as an adult How To Train Your Dragon.
I'm actually having a very similar problem! I have my setting, magic system, main characters... And no plot. Which is so bizarre for me. Normally I'm a by-the-pants person, but even I need a climax and ending in mind to aim at!
I've read His Majesty's Dragon! I adore it: it's called Temeraire here in the UK (Temeraire is a central character - and a dragon), but it is FULL of dragons. I mean JAM PACKED. They are talking dragons, and they fight in the service of the British army in the war against Napoleon (and the French army's dragons). I adore books with dragons, and this is one of my favourite books of all time. It's not for everyone, but if you're looking for books featuring, dragons, you can't go wrong - there's a lot of information about their physique and personality ranging over multiple breeds. If you read it, I'd love to know what you think :)
I would read this. It would be even better if they worship the ancient and mysterious Steller's Sea Cow race that disappeared without a trace a few centuries ago.
You on the floor writing out sticky notes rubbing you cat is the most relatable thing!! I made sure my cat has his own dedicated space near my desk, and its raised so he's eye level. I need my kitty for motivation
When you told about your world I was really reminded of The last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli. Especially the dragons and clans and the dragons leaving their clan.
First of all, thanks a lot for wall stickies 💡. I've connected with all of you but one point, I always have magic/characters/world 1st. I still don't know how to outline, nor ever understood other peoples outline. I'm going on a whim and its flowing very fast until now. But I still think its quite long and a drag at times. Few points I do-if ur interested. 1.i always have my phone around me, so when ever an idea pops up, I will note them down in a specific note dedicated to that idea, while doing this, never check for grammer, spelling mistakes, let it all flow in ur mind and after its done, note it down. In that specific note, I make categories -action , drama, dialogues, romance etc. 2. Drawing out the world helped me expand it even more, drawing the characters, u don't have 2 be an expert, just a really good imagination. 3. Any picture can either target or Improve ur character or his design or the story, onces the certain pic collides with a story, attach it with the part were it did on ur draft, it helps to trigger and help enhance its previous use. 4. Marinating the characters, objects etc. I'm not sure this help everyone, but I keep getting ideas on a daily basics, so my phone is filled with notes, seperated by categories, script or novel ideas, I normally don't get at once, so I keep the chuncks and subconsciously think of them (I live them out by placing myself in them as I listen to music) you can do it in ur mind palace, it helped me get a deeper understanding & ideas to extend the universe/story. I still struggle with outline, I know stuff, but I'm not sure if I could end my book at the certain, I really want to, but I'm just scared about word count, if people would get too mad or even worst if they would get the point! -- if you could share ur thoughts on this last paragraph topic, it would be much appreciated.
Correct me if I misunderstood, in that last part of your comment you said you were scared of possibly not making the correct word count by the end of the month? I like to think of NaNoWriMo as reaching a personal goal that you have set for yourself. I seen some say they just want to write everyday regardless if they reach 50-80k. Some aim to finish a whole first draft. Really it's all up to you. The challenge is suppose to help you grow as a writer. It not might be fun at times, but the end result will be satisfying. If it helps you any, my goal is to write as many short stories within my world as I can. Very loose and vague, but enough to get me excited to start writing. Thanks for reading my long reply and I hope it helped you in any way😁
@@nikkoleburns3213 no thats not what I meant 😅, thanks for the advice. What I meant to say was that I want to end my first book with a certain ending I have in mind. But I'm not sure that I would hit the required word count needed in an novel. So I was confused to if I should extended the first book even more! Hope it made sense 😅
I’ve heard of a theory of asking why all the time. If you know how it’ll end then ask why did that happen, then ask why that event happened all the way to the start. Never tried it myself but may help with gaps X
I can totally relate. I always think about a character and the world first but I am never able to form a proper plot. And, when you say 2 sister I always think of Anna and Elsa
My scriptwriting teacher told us that great writers know "the rules" of story-telling and therefore know how to find great ways to contradict/change them. Sometimes I loosely plot according to the standard structure just to get my main points down and then from there I look at how I want to divert from it. I don't know if this is helpful but I relate to your frustration and wanted to share!
As someone who doesn't have someone in my life to actually talk about all this kind of stuff with in my writing journey, I am enjoying seeing your journey and how it's going for you.
Tips for plotting (especially when discovery writing): Keep raising the stakes until the climax. Don't let your characters get too comfortable. When a character takes action, ask if they succeed or fail. If they succeed, make that success come at a cost. If they fail, add something else that goes wrong. This is the "Yes, but" "No, and" method of plotting. Make sure the events of the plot are tied to the character's inner conflict. If the character's conflict doesn't relate to the plot in any way, the story may feel disconnected. Don't worry about adhering to a specific structure. They are more useful in revision when you are trying to fix structural problems. If you start with a structure, then it can feel formulaic as you said. For discovery writing, it can be helpful to pinpoint a few key game-changing scenes (often called lamppost scenes) and then discovery write your way to those scenes. This can help make the book feel less daunting as you only have to fill in a few in between scenes rather than an entire book, and it can help you stay on track. I hope you found this helpful! Good luck with NaNo!
Maybe give the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. I read them as a little girl and my favourite part of that story was about the relationship between Eragon and his dragon, Saphira.
The premise of the story you began to write sound very interesting and have huge potential 👍👍Combined element of fantasy dragon and a little bit of post apocalyptic world with very nice world setting with many different tribes and dragons. Maybe you could combine a little bit element of pirates too (pirates that try to collect other tribe's dragon)? Hopefully it would became full-fledged novel 🙏 Wish u all the best👍👍
I love this video! id love to see more writing vids from you :D watching you being so hyped for this makes me feel hyped for it and i dont even know anything about it!
Also I need a giant video series on this process with this same energy forever because you make no bones about the neuroses that come into play, and I'm living for this. Please and thanks.
Hi Merphy! I don't think you need to be particularly worried about discovery writing; by the sound of it, you have a clear idea of the direction you want the story to go, and a basic idea of the ending, even if you don't know the exact details. Using those as the goals that drive your writing, and keeping track of everything you set up in the beginning should help keep your writing manageable and prevent you from falling into the traps you've identified in other books. I'm writing my murder mystery this way, too (thank you again for critiquing the first two chapters a couple of months ago!). I've known my characters and setting for almost 10 years, and I'm letting them write the plot for me, going by their decision-making as the agents of the story rather than my own as author. Before I add any new material, I always reread everything leading up to the point I've left off at to make sure I'm always aware of everything I've set up (I too hate it when books forget to touch on the things they've set up early on). It's leading me to have about 6 or 7 intertwining plots, which have vague resolution goals but nothing more concrete for now, but that's part of the fun!
Yay, I'm so thrilled you're doing NaNo and writing your first fantasy story. Your excitement is contagious (in a good way). Sisters, dragons and a dying culture sounds so cool. One thing that helps me to plot is to figure out the core conflict of the story and the Big Boss Troublemaker. Your characters want something. Who is stopping them from getting it and why.
Oh my goodness! I've never related to a video more!(And I'm only a third of the way through.) Just the whole story coming out of somewhere, and the intense urge to get it written out, and then the struggling to get it arranged in a way that makes sense when you have a hard time with more conventional plotting formats/outlines, and just, yay! I actually don't talk about my writing process much with other people because they always look at me like they think I'm crazy. But I feel validated watching this. Thank you Merphy! I'm so glad I found your channel! Also, side note, I am also working on my first fantasy story. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm enjoying it!
The Sisters are at the head of two armies at War, right before it starts it tell the story of how they got there, maybe hint that their fight is inevitable but whether they fight or not at the end thats for the reader to tell
I loooove your confusion, your excitement and just general happy muddle of emotions about writing this new thing! It's making me happy cos I have noooo idea what I'm doing when it comes to writing and it's refreshing to realise that's not an alien feeling. :D
It was refreshingly realistic to follow your frustration and progress in prepping for Nanowrimo. Discovery writing can be fun but can also derail the outing. Outlining the plot with a formulaic style can be SO overwhelming. You can write this book 👍
I love that you can see your first fresh reactions to your story coming together. I love this feeling, it's so exciting. I'm going to join your patreon so that I can read your work 😊
I LOVE THIS VIDEO!!!! I am in a kinda similar place with my story, except I've been doing what you did in a few days over the course of a YEAR AND A HALF. But now, I'm finally starting to understand the first inklings of my plot. I know what happens in Act 1, and I know that there are much larger forces at work... Like you, I realllly wanted to have a nice snappy compelling outline before I started writing. But guess what! November 1 came around and I just had to start writing. I'm approaching the part in my story in which I don't know what happens next so.... wish me luck! Thanks for this video and your awesome excitement vibes!! Your dragon story sounds so unique and I really want to read it!
this is my 5th nanowrimo and i am so fricking hyped because i’ve never been so prepared before!! i’m usually terrible about outlining (last year i literally changed my entire story and cast of characters a week in) but this year i have a legitimate plan?! it’s a good feeling. good luck Merphy!! there’s absolutely no way to do nanowrimo wrong i’m sure your novel will be amazing
I know this may sound crazy, but this thing... this excitement... that word that you used (fossil)... it's all CONTAGIOUS! Starting from the moment you uttered that word, all the way to the end of the video, so many ideas for the novel I've been working on flooded into my head! I had been kind of stuck for a long time and nothing was flowing. But I've just written so. Much. Lore! It could be that my idea for the novel came in the same way yours did. The magic system came first, along with some tidbits of history. Thank you so much for posting this video. I'm excited to find out more about what you're writing. 🙏💕
aaaah this is so relatable! I have a whole host of characters I've been creating for years and they feel super real for me. I know what they look like, how they talk and how they view each other... but I have no clue what happens xD
Absolutely amazing. I never watched any of your reading vlogs (though, I did like your instagram stories format earlier today), but this was great to watch. I've also recently stepped more into the "discovery" style of writing, though I know a lot of the major points over all that I'm building too. But, I've been working with these characters for over a year now, closer to 2 probably, so I feel you on that. Hope you're do well in NaNo, and great content regardless. ^_^
This was so helpful - I was trying to motivate myself to work on a painting(deadline is November 20th and I started today... oops) and just couldn't push myself. But with you rambling in the background I managed to sink my teeth into the nitty gritty prep that needs to get done. So thank you!
I currently have this great idea in my head and am having the same problem as you 😂 although I’m always terrible at outlining so not that different from normal 😂
Here I go again, watching people on RU-vid doing what I'm supposed to do myself. But it's so interesting to see how Merphy's struggle for an outline is so similar to my own. I'm almost at the same point with my story, but have written some pages to see where it is going. :) Keep it up, Merphy! It'll be awesome!
Wow!! This will be super!! 💙 it sounds like a calling. Cant wait to see what happens! What a great idea to start with the magicsystem! I am at a standstill in my story. Will try this method!
Love how you are letting us better understand how you think and your writing process. Love mermaids!!! im not writing my mermaid work in progress yet cause lots of world building and magic I dont wanna create yet. I am writing a dramatic highschool mystery
Thank you so much for this. I have a good 3 or 4 different story ideas that started with a pile of characters and no plot for them. Apparently, I'm not the only one with this issue. 😄
Just found your channel, awesome NaNo video! I've never written a book in my life but have this wild world in my head I want to explore, so I signed up. But I am more of a math guy (gasp), and when I did write in school I NEVER used an outline. So now its Oct 29 and I have nothing outlined for NaNo and just a dumpster fire full of worldbuilding.... Thinking of waiting until next year so I can really dedicate a whole month to writing....
Some nanowrimo winners just fly by the seat of their pants the whole time. No prep whatsoever. If you feel up to writing, go for it, doesn't matter if it makes sense in the end. Just throwing that out there because I've done this and every year I kept putting it off lol
this was such a fun video to watch, especially as I’m kind of freaking out about NaNoWriMo! I have never had a plot come to me first. Instead, my brain will randomly start to show me a character, who I’ll fall in love with, then the world they live in, and their friends and family, and some dialogue or a single scene. And then 90% of these go nowhere. It’s only if I really sit down and try to work out a story and then fit my characters into it that I ever get plots. Hopefully my NaNo project will still be ok despite this
I enjoy discovery writing. There are times it's a pain, especially if I write myself into a corner, but outlining doesn't work for me. I've tried half a dozen different ways of outlining and my brain ignores it all the second I sit down to actually write. At most I know how the story is going to end, who's who and a general idea of how I want the character arcs to develop, but the specifics are left intentionally blank. One thing I find super helpful to discovery writing is to edit as I go. For example, if I get to the third chapter and there's suddenly a fact about a character that should've been at least hinted at, I can then choose to work it in a suitable place earlier or go back and remove it so that my characters and the story maintains an internal consistency. I'm crossing my fingers you try it out and find you actually love it Merphy, or at the very least gives you some solid direction to work from, the story idea sounds cool as hell.
You know, you're actually helping me out with this! Because with my story, I have a lot of the world and the magic and the characters and plot, but I have no clue how to write it down. But, just sitting and writing what I know might be pretty helpful. (I have no idea why I haven't tried that before, I think I just get really stumped on the keeping things organized)
I'm struggling with my outline as well. I'm so excited about NaNoWriMo and I'm mildly freaking out that November is right around the corner. You're not alone Merphy, you can do it!
It was such a joy to watch your novel concept and world-building organically evolve. You created a travelogue for inspiration, which is amazing. Completely agree with the whole follow-the-formula approach. Maybe it works for some authors, but it's always felt a bit too much like an attempt at mass-producing the same story over and over, just with different characters and settings. I I LOVED watching your reaction to getting missing pieces for your book. I know the feeling, and seeing you talk your way through all the information you just received was spectacular. It also made me pause and think "Ok, yeah, that's exactly what I sound like." (from the sound of it, our writing processes are eerily similar) Out of sheer curiosity, do you also get visual 'movie clips' that play out in your head along with your ideas? I loved the whole fossil bit. It's one my favorite feeling when it comes to writing, and often it has little or nothing to do with whatever sparked the idea.A few years ago, I received the entire third act for the third book in my series while listening to a Taylor Swift song on a plane. Was NOT expecting that...I know from previous videos that you don't necessarily feel that your writing is ready for primetime yet, and while I can't speak to that, your instincts are spot on (which is great, because instincts aren't really something you can teach, unlike writing itself, which I've found develops primarily through experience.) As for writing advice, whenever I'm at an impasse with plotting, the most effective thing for me is to stop fixating about the problem (the ideas I need tend to slip away and become even more elusive) and do something completely different while my subconscious works through the issue. I don't know how effective this strategy would be when there's a short timeline/schedule, but it's what's worked for me for the past 30 years. Another, more immediate strategy (which works well for me, at least) is to literally explain the problems I'm having to my husband or my father, and describing all the bits that I do have, as well as the problem itself. I'll be in the middle of explaining whatever I'm struggling with when my brain suddenly generates the connections and solutions that solve the problem, or at least lead me down a rabbit hole to my eventual solution. You might be able to achieve the same result by talking to the camera, explaining everything, as then you'd have a recording of your thought process too (I'm not suggesting that you post this). When it comes to plotting very discovery writing, I was a 100% discovery writer for years, which was fun but messy and a massive pain to edit. Over the last few years, I've become much more of a hybrid between pantsing and plotting, which sounds like the approach you're taking with this novel. I tend to plot out the essential story beats for the first act, know the big moments throughout the entire story, and where the novel ends. I use the skeleton of the outline like a roadmap, to stay on track while maintaining the fun of just letting your characters loose at the beginning of the scene and writing through it to figure out where you need to go from there. As the first act ends, the second act becomes clearer (which helps account for any surprises the characters might have displayed). My favorite part of this process is that, while I know certain things that need to be discussed or explained in a given scene, by not outlining every moment of every scene and letting in just a bit of chaos, I seem to get much more organic and authentic character interactions. Some level of discovery writing can also sometimes yield fantastic surprises, like a piece of magic that's probably the most original thing I've ever created, but I would never have found it if I'd rigidly outlined every single thing. I was shocked as the characters when it was revealed, which was...interesting. I have no idea if any of this is helpful, but hopefully there's something in there that might work for you, or jog your mind to find a different solution that works the best for you. Looking forward to hearing how your process continues to evolve through November!
