NaNoWriMo - April 2016 event

[Valka]

The whole project sounds as though it prepares a individual to write a master's dissertation.

It can be that complicated.  For me, this is part prep work to do a small Wiki for the series, and part actual story-writing. I'm not someone who just makes up details that aren't at least plausible extrapolations of the source material, so this is mostly to help me with future stories and I won't have to keep looking up details. And if any other Busby fans find it interesting or useful, that's great. There's someone on Livejournal who posted years ago that he was frustrated at not being able to find any Hulzein Saga fanfic. I'd like to be able to remedy that situation, as it's something that frustrated me as well. I'd have thought that somebody would have written some by now...

Anyway, It's Day 12. Word count is 6200. I'll be three-quarters of the way to the end goal before the end of the week, though the project itself will still have a long way to go. I started another story yesterday that's still in longhand form (it helps to keep some looseleaf and a pen by the chair while I'm watching TV, so I can do a few sentences during the commercials). That one isn't part of the totals I've been reporting here, though it will be once I get it typed up and added to the other material.

[Valka]

Day 13 total: 6893 words. That's for the material I'm doing on my computer, and I also got a couple of handwritten pages done on the other story.

[Rusty Edge]

Okay. I'll give it a shot. 10,000 words sounds like a bit much for my aspirations of a short story, but the month has a head start on me, so maybe it will work out about right. I am in the process of re-reading the stories, writing notes that evolve into paragraphs or dialogue, re-reading and re-writing what I've written.

I don't have an Office program, because I see my machine as being for gaming and e-mail. I write in e-mail drafts, so word count is awkward. I don't write in linear fashion, I start with a premise and plot and develop it.  Too many distractions at the moment for a word count, but I'll get back to that today.

I'll be traveling again by the end of the month, so who knows? Regardless, this is a move forward.

[Valka]

10,000 is 334 words/day. I can knock that out in 20 minutes.

I usually do more than 334 words/day, though.

You don't have to have a specific program. I use Open Office but have to do more words because that program counts differently from how NaNo counts.

[Rusty Edge]

Just added a 366 word anecdote. Great idea about the wiki, Valka. It's helpful with details I forgot, and a link to a World of the Ptavvs wiki, even if there are some new wrinkles revealed in the Man-Kzin Wars. Oh well, better to find out now while there's still time to change things without starting over. I'm going to get back to my research, then re-consider my assumptions.

[Valka]

Day 14 total: 7355 words.

My writing streak tonight got interrupted by another false fire alarm. 


@Rusty Edge: I'm glad you found a wiki. Most of the popular series have something, though sometimes they're out of date. Way back about 10-12 years ago I found a Darkover wiki in progress, and they were asking for volunteers to help. Since I'd already started writing one by hand years before and knew the series very well, I replied... but never heard back. I've no idea if that site even exists anymore.

[Valka]

Day 15 total: 7907 words. I'm working on two stories simultaneously now, and have just typed up the first two pages of the one that I've been writing in longhand.

[Rusty Edge]

Didn't write much yesterday, did some more corrections to fit the wiki. A bit of googling some science.
Between previous writings, rewritings, and what I wrote today, I have a total of 2,185 words.

I still have some details to reconcile between my plot and the wiki, and need to give it more thought. I'd like to keep it as another Known Space short story, and not allow it to grow into a  novel to solve the problems. That's for Larry to do, not me. 

More dialogue and monologue than action, really. Do you think that's a problem?

[Buster's Uncle]

...I couldn't say without knowing more...

[Rusty Edge]

...I couldn't say without knowing more...

I understand. I'm doing this more as a progress report at this point, to keep me focused. But since you want to help -
 I want your input on this excerpt,  which serves two purposes, 1) Niven stories usually have some anecdote about future styles, such as nudity, Belter hair styles, asymmetrical Wunderland beards, etc. 2) This is essentially my attempt to rationalize why people in the future smoke so much in Known Space.

The main character in this story is Garvey ( from The Handicapped ). It is told from his perspective. In this scene he is talking with his great grandfather, affectionately known as "G Squared".

"Take this, it came from the Belt, you can have it if you don't ask any other questions of me," G-squared said, handing me what must have been an open stasis box, apparently smuggled, which he had taken from his desk drawer. It contained a plasticized claw with 4 fingers, some cubes of meat, an electronic device, an empty drinking bulb, and a canister of amber beverage. "It should provide some clues in your quest. The labs say the meat is toxic and the bottle contains a unique ethanol liqueur. "

"Truth be told, I'd rather smoke than drink," continued G-squared.

"How has this dangerous smoking habit endured in humanity for over a thousand years, if you don't mind my asking? It doesn't make sense that it would," I said, following his lead and changing the subject.

"I suppose not. You might have reasonably expected the habit to die out with the smokers after the Surgeon General's warning first appeared on the product, and they banned advertising from TV, around the time of the Moon landing. Maybe they should have outlawed it altogether, but Prohibition on alcohol didn't work, and besides, the government was a partner in crime with the tobacco companies through vice taxes. So it survived.

" Well, obviously it's an acquired taste, but an addictive one. Like all acquired tastes, the pleasure exceeds the pain, at least in the short to intermediate term. So a lot of people continued to smoke, and a lot of people got curious enough to find out for themselves. Meanwhile the commercial interests were trying to revise their business plan with healthier, smokeless, and electronic versions of cigarettes, to grant themselves an extension. When marijuana was decriminalized in the early 21st century, the big tobacco interests muscled in, and added tobacco to regulate the strength of the product, and make it more addictive, too.

"Eventually medicine caught up, and you could use the auto doc at the pharmacy every week when you dropped by to pick up your cigarette supply, neutralizing most of the harmful effects.

"But the biggest reason smoking survived the intervening centuries was those kidnapping organ legger gangs. To them, a person was either a potential product or a potential black market customer, and smokers make way better customers than marketable product."




I went slack jawed. "Damned if you do, and damned if you don't!"

[Valka]

Day 16 total: 8341 words. I barely made it (got into an argument over on CFC and then the cat threw up...).

@Rusty Edge: I got right into your excerpt, even though I don't have a clue who the characters are or what the story is about. It's been many years since I last read any Known Space stories.

The only things you need to be aware of with paragraphs that consist only of dialogue is that you should occasionally remind the reader of who is speaking and have the character do something besides speak. Have the speaker sit, stand, take a drink of something - any small thing to give the reader an indication that the speaker isn't standing center stage making a speech, and making sure the reader doesn't get confused as to who is speaking.

[Rusty Edge]

Thanks, Valka.

The characters only appeared in one short story," The Handicapped." They had a family business, making dolphin hands, and other prosthetics for sentient species who were unable to do things like
use tools or communicate audibly.

[Buster's Uncle]

...I would have guessed that it was either/and the bad health effects being cured -which you mentioned, though someone probably bread a non-toxic tobacco, too- or a gesture of libertarian civil disobedience on the part of Belters against an oppressive Earth authority that caught on as a fashion...  Spread back to the Flatlanders, what with heroic (smoking - there was a brief vogue for actual authenticity in entertainment for a while) Belters so often being the protagonists of adventure vids.  After a while when the autodocs got good enough, the authorities gave up fighting it...

[Rusty Edge]

...I would have guessed that it was either/and the bad health effects being cured -which you mentioned, though someone probably bread a non-toxic tobacco, too- or a gesture of libertarian civil disobedience on the part of Belters against an oppressive Earth authority that caught on as a fashion...  Spread back to the Flatlanders, what with heroic (smoking - there was a brief vogue for actual authenticity in entertainment for a while) Belters so often being the protagonists of adventure vids.  After a while when the autodocs got good enough, the authorities gave up fighting it...

Your way is more plausible. My way, is more Nivenesque in an "Ethics of Madness" / "Safe at Any Speed" kind of way. Ironically, people smoke to prolong their life.

[Buster's Uncle]

I dunno - he never did much more with it, but the mutual antagonism between Earth and the Belt was a major plot-point in World of Ptavvs - so there was definitely a time when it would have made perfect sense in that universe...