[CONTEST OVER] JNC Original Light Novel Contest
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@QuixoticHorizon I use speech to text on my phone while walking around the neighborhood and just let the story flow off the top of my head. I tried doing the whole outline thing but had trouble getting it going so and shelved that story for now.
Of course with all the new licenses I might run out of time before I finish a draft…
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@QuixoticHorizon said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
How does everyone else get the feeling going?
I've tried listening to the OST for shows that have similar vibes for the scenes I'm going for. I jammed to kumakuma bear OST for a slice of life chapter for example.
At a more subconscious level, (I'm not sure if this is gonna make sense), but I focus on writing the next sentence, rather than thinking of what I'm writing. I find that helps me keep the words flowing.
@Lily-Garden said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
I tried doing the whole outline thing but had trouble getting it going
I've never found outlining useful, so it's not just you. I try to think of the ending and write towards that, and have found a little more success that way.
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@QuixoticHorizon I find the ideas flow when my mind is otherwise unoccupied, like when I’m out walking, or trying to get to sleep. I always keep a notepad by my bed to jot down ideas. (And then I inevitably look at my shorthand in the morning and have no clue what I was thinking... I really wish sleepy-me would write in more detail.)
I end up going through a loop of blasting out a chapter of ~2k words, then going off to do something else for a bit while I plan the next one. It’s a great excuse to nap lots!
In terms of outlining, I’d consider myself part of the wing-it crowd. I do a small amount of world building before starting, and usually have a few plot points in mind, but then I dump my characters into the world, have them behave realistically, and wait to see what happens. Any time I’ve tried to lock myself into a detailed plot before writing, things have gone horribly.
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@QuixoticHorizon
It’s not like I’ve written many stories—it was only after reading Tearmoon Empire that I was inspired to write at all—but now it’s sort of become my hobby.
I knew that I would be pressed for time on this —so I decided to take something tropey and try to make it mine (in this case I was inspired by a story that I had read and grew to hate as I continued to read it and despised the ending. I hated it so much, that I decided to take the central premise and turn it on its head—it’s my own revenge story of sorts!)
I start with an idea and a few characters that I think I will like. Then I imagine as many scenes that I can that might be interesting and use those as sort of check points that I am trying to reach—everything else is like finding pieces of a puzzle that I am putting together—scenes and characters start showing up until I sort of have a story. It’s pretty organic—the characters are free to direct the story to places I never expected—and the places may have characters that I never expected. Then I go from “sort-of-have-story” to “story”and then polishing the story.Finding out the minimum has been cut down to 35K words has allowed me to drastically decrease the scope of my current story—right now I am at 32K words but there are still too many gaps to be coherent— but it is not nearly as intimidating as it was before. It won’t be polished without outside help but I may have found someone willing to proofread it. Finishing in time is possible now—assuming outside life does not get in the way.
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Up to 66k words now. At first I worried about getting enough words, but now I can only hope I finish before 100k. I'm getting close to the end, but the words feel like they won't stop. I have a clear idea of the final scenes, yet each one takes much longer than I expected.
In other news, I'm honestly surprised how light hearted most Isekai stories are. I finally got around to writing the MC's death scene pre-isekai, but found myself tearing up at the scene. I wish I could take my stories less seriously, but it's a skill I lack. I probably should have just dropped a truck on them and called it a day...
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I finally finished copying my grandfather's book from an old manuscript, and now I'll go back through it and do some more editing. The whole thing is 179k words, so I was wondering how I should go about splitting it into parts; should I try to divide it in two, or should I aim for 3-4 parts around 50k words each?
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I have the first draft complete! :) Doing the first round edit now.
Technically, it is a complete story and if push comes to shove, I can submit this edit as my entry. However, there are a few parts I'd like to flesh out and expand (like adding another story arc in before the time skip). After I finish this edit, that will be my main focus.
edit: I forgot that I have another completed book sitting on my hard drive. Since we can submit up to 3 works, I'll go ahead and submit that one as well. It's more serious than your standard LN, though.
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Just submitted my second entry. :) Unlike the first, it's one I started writing after the competition started, which may not matter according to the rules, but still makes me feel better.
Once again, I ended up butting against the word limit. 99998 this time. At one point in my final editing pass, about 5k words before the end, I was on 100000 exactly. Shame I ended up deleting a couple.
Speaking of editing, I can't recommend enough that you play back your text through a good text-to-speech program. Some mistakes that the likes of Grammarly or ProWritingAid would never spot, and even human readers who aren't skilled editors wouldn't notice, are really obvious when converted to speech.
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@cathfach said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
Speaking of editing, I can't recommend enough that you play back your text through a good text-to-speech program.
Funny you should say that, a friend of mine who is writing a novel herself has been staying over these past few days and actually recommended the very same thing to me.
As for my own story, I'm just deeply stuck. I was able to make great progress during the last anime season when I wasn't watching hardly anything, but with watching 15 series this season I'm really struggling to make any progress beyond a little editing here and there.
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OMG 100k in that short amount of time is insane, congrats!
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@petitmelon My stats on Royal Road say I've done about 1.5M words in the past 3 years. It's not completely accurate; I have stuff I've written that isn't on Royal Road, and I started writing before joining there, but an average of 10k a week is a pretty good approximation.
Of course, it varies a lot. I've gone a month without writing anything (thanks to Steam's latest sale, I can probably wave goodbye to December... >.>) but when I've got an idea stuck in my head, I can do 20k a week fairly easily.
I only write for a hobby, though, and my stats pale compared to the people who write webnovels for a living. It just seems to be faster in general than traditional publishing. The one that usually gets tossed out as a not-completely-sane example is The Wandering Inn, which Pirateaba has been writing at about 50k words a week for the past 7 years.
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I’m so confused, my story is longer than the 100,000 word count, so does that mean I have to scrap the rest of it or can I send just the first part of it?
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@xxjyoxx You need to submit something not over 100000 words, and it needs to be readable standalone. If you're not too far over the limit, you could edit it down. If you're far over, find a decent stopping point, some sort of climatic event you can use as a volume climax and ending, split it there, and send in the first part.
Edit: I think I misread what you were asking. It's not saying that you need to scrap the rest of it, just that the rest of it won't form part of your competition entry.
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@cathfach Those numbers make my fingers ache just hearing them. One day, after I give up video games, maybe my hands won't be so tired.
@xxjyoxx said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
my story is longer than the 100,000 word count
I think you may need to edit it then. I'm no expert, though
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@cathfach oh ok, so could I like do just a few story arcs and send those?
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@xxjyoxx said in [SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!] JNC Original Light Novel Contest:
@cathfach oh ok, so could I like do just a few story arcs and send those?
Just look at how other light novels with satisfying volume endings do it and find a cutoff point in your own story that feels good while imparting your reader with the desire to read more.
It could be an important job interview with a merchant, an impactful fight scene with bandits who kidnapped a younger sister, or an intriguing mission to cure a young woman's injuries with a secretive method while being pursued by international spies who want to learn that secret method.
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Oh can the submissions be of any genre or do you have a certain preferred one?
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@xxjyoxx the previous answer was it can be any genre
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@igounfazed well if you can't find the kind of story you're looking for you could always write it for J-novel Club's light novel writing contest 😉
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@Lily-Garden said in I Shall Survive Using Potions (Light Novel) Vol 9 licensing:
@igounfazed well ... you could always write it for J-novel Club's light novel writing contest 😉
hmmm... No... I am nowhere good enough for something like that. I don't mind embarrassing myself, see below url, but competitions are just not me. And there is a lot that goes into writing that I just don't have. If it were a legal document, or even a formal document, I would put it up there with complete confidence. But a story? I don't have what it takes to provide the "filler" a story needs.
For instance, this is one idea that crossed my mind because truck-kun tends to delete people that don't want to be deleted, Isekai Before Death, (google docs). If you read that, you can quickly see that I lack a lot of story building. I have the concept, guy that wants to die, world that summoned him as he was trying to kill himself, god that misunderstands his requests, and the world of hurt he brings to the kingdom that summoned him. It stops with ideas for future writing, but just reading those couple of pages you can see that I lack the ability to 'fill in' what I did write.
Also, there is something about reading a good story you don't know its writing. It tugs at your creativity/imagination in a way that my own writing can't. My $0.02 of course.
{edit: it says second draft, but it was some grammar and syntax correcting. The story itself was left as it was first written ~about 5 hours.}
