On Saturday October 17th 2015, we’ll be taking part in NiaD 5; our FIFTH event to pool the collective talents of writers from around the world and write a damn fine novel in just a single 24 hour period!
What is it?
If you’re new to NiaD please check out the FAQs for more details and background, but essentially:
At midnight (UK time) on the day of the event you’ll be emailed a brief of what you need to include in your chapter.
You go away and write your section without any knowledge of the wider story or where your chapter fits in the book.
You return your chapter by 8pm (UK time) at which point it’s turned into ePub, mobi and PDF books using the magic of Scrivener, ready for publication on or around midnight.
So basically we’ll be writing a novel… in a day!
How do I sign up?
If you’re up for the challenge of taking part (and have read the FAQs to know what you’re letting yourself in for), let me know by posting in this thread!
We’ll be keeping the registration open until a few days before the event to produce as many versions of the book as the number of participants allows, so invite your writing friends to sign up too! PLEASE NOTE - SIGN UP FOR NOVEL-IN-A-DAY 2015 HAS NOW CLOSED
This post will be updated as people register their interest, to save people trawling through what I’m somewhat optimistically hoping will be a long thread!
i’d like to make a request that makes a LOT more work for you : give us chapter endings that portray pacing - something like, “after an incredible car chase that involved an incredible number of bullets, the main character is pulling his hearse into a curry take-away parking lot.”
my reasoning is that last year’s NiaD had me asking a multitude of clarifying questions from you, and when i read the bookend chapters of my own, the story pacing was quite whip-lashed.
Are you doing teams for chapters this year? I thought that came up last year but some organizer was all “oh gods no… Jaysen and Vic-K … no … NO … NOOOOOOO!!!”
It’s a story about this team of astronauts who go into space for 520 days as part of an experiment on the long-term effects of space travel on mental health. No wait… that was the second one. Scrub that I’ll think of something else.
No, not yet.
Yeah, some shifts in pacing are inevitable. It’s an important part of the event that everyone gets to write in their own style, and bring their own voice and interpretation to their chapter. With the same chapter brief, one writer might produce a high octane action piece filled with guns and explosions, and another might want to cover the same plot points over a quiet cup of tea and biscuits.
The best indication I can give you are the limited chapter start and end points. I’ll spend extra effort to look at those and be as descriptive as I can without giving too much away, but the changing style and pace are always going to be there. My advice is to embrace it! It’s fascinating to see how people take such different approached with the same or similar material.
The pacing thing is only “problematic” if you try to follow the idea as a novel. I like to see it as a set of loosely related short stories all put together between two covers. In that light we get to see the varying styles with a bit more enjoyment.
Now?
I would be afraid that any pacing indicators would actually reduce the creative nature by taking folks like me, a poor writer at best, and forcing us to focus too much on meeting the pacing requirements over writing as compelling a piece as possible. I hope that make sense.
How about: a deranged detective is given a second chance by a shadowy government organisation to operate as a mole aboard a space station which has over the course of time become overrun by the cosa nostra?
After my miserable fail last year, I said I wasn’t gonna do it. I swore I wasn’t gonna do it. But I’m gonna do it. Because if Jaysen can destroy a chapter, I am certainly not gonna not destroy a chapter too.
This sounds PERFECT! I would love to participate! Just let me know what I need to do (besides posting in this thread). I’m new to this whole scene, but I would really love to be included this year.