While NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) may not be a perfect fit
for Cosmic Voyage, it's still writing related and serves as a good kick-in-the-pants to get some words out there. This year I'd like to
help that along by doing something fun and supportive for the writing
crews.

Writing Prompts!

I haven't settled on the exact format yet. In general I want to provide
prompts to all the Cosmic Voyage writers (and other writers out there)
with questions or thought provoking questions that you can take to
trigger stories or scenes.

This is a little trickier than typical writing prompts because I don't
want to give out scene or character concepts for everyone to explore. If
that were the case everyone would be writing about Space Cats all at
once. With a more generalized or conceptual prompt I'd hope you can
incorparate the ideas and themes into your writing.

I also want to toss in some peer-pressure motivators, perhaps by keeping
track of how many prompts you did in the month? I don't know that we
have any obvious place to put up badges, but bragging rights abound.

What are your thoughts? Anything to add?
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Hey,

I'm new around here, and I've only discovered this NNTP server
a few days ago, so forgive me for any major greviences and
my late response.

I haven't settled on the exact format yet. In general I want to provide >prompts to all the Cosmic Voyage writers (and other writers out there)
with questions or thought provoking questions that you can take to
trigger stories or scenes.
This is a little trickier than typical writing prompts because I don't
want to give out scene or character concepts for everyone to explore. If
that were the case everyone would be writing about Space Cats all at
once. With a more generalized or conceptual prompt I'd hope you can >incorparate the ideas and themes into your writing.

This makes sense. It would be funny if all the crews reported
space cats. I personally think a more 'game jam' approach of
theming would be fun. For example, the recent GMTK game jam's
theme was 'Out of Control', but this did not breed games with
disfunctional controls.

I also want to toss in some peer-pressure motivators, perhaps by keeping >track of how many prompts you did in the month? I don't know that we
have any obvious place to put up badges, but bragging rights abound.

Maybe transmissions from a 'Star Fleet' command or similar for
awards, and a badge by a ship or colony's name, for example.

randomuser | randomuser@tilde.club | t.c/~randomuser
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

# Who

During the month of November I'll be sharing a daily message to all the
writers of Cosmic Voyage (and beyond). These messages are affirmations,
writing prompts, story questions, and observations aimed at helping story development and motivation.

For the first week of NaNoWriMo I'll be focusing on the basic questions of
the story: who, what, where, when, and why.

If you're a detailed planner you may have most of this worked out already.
In this case, take the time to review and reflect and maybe, just maybe,
you'll find a new nugget, or a different way of looking at your story.

If you're a pantser you may have skipped them entirely, waiting on the
story that comes out to do all the work. I hope to show that even in an impromptu story there's a lot to be gained from jotting down some thoughts
on each point before you dive in too far.

And for those of you who are already begun and underway with your logs on Cosmic, or in your new novel, it's never too late to go back to the
basics. Perhaps it'll lead you in a new direction or perhaps it will
motivate you to continue on your path.

This first week is all about questions, so lets dive right in:

## Who is in the story?

Who are your characters and how are they related to each other? Do you
have a large ensamble or a small select crew? Are they a family or were
they tossed together by chance? This is also a good time to think about,
at least in rough terms, what makes them each unique.

## Who's story is it?

This is ultimately about determining who your protagonist is, and the
answer may not be obvious. A good protagonist will instigate change in the story. Without them, something else would have happened. Maybe the ship
would have crashed. Maybe the island would never have been found. Maybe
they would have never fallen in love. If your character isn't instigating changes in the story, are they really the main protagonist?

## POV

Once you've decided whose story it is, now we must decide who your
narrator will be? Are they the same character or not? Who tells your
story? Perhaps it makes more sense to have someone else relaying the information. It might give you a stylistic ability to describe action more narratively in that way, but you may also trade some interior insight by
going in that direction. Is this a Jane Eyre story told from the main character's perspective, or maybe you are Ishmael telling us the story of
Ahab?

One of my greatest criticisms of the Hunger Games trilogy is that while
Katniss Everdeen is clearly the protagonist in book one, the author's
choice to keep her as the point-of-view character in book 3 left us away
from the action for most of the book. We read about the other characters
off doing things while we are stuck back at base. Was this really the best
way to convey the story?

In our science fiction stories on Cosmic this is a regular challenge for
all writers as the form of the QEC suggests that our stories need to be
told from the POV of the person logging the messages. It railroads us
toward epistaltory fiction that is first-person. But some authors have
been damn creative in their ways around this. In one story a ship-board AI
is designed with narrative code to colorize the story happening aboard as
if it were a reality TV show. In another, the ship's monitors report back
what is heard in script form.

## Voice

Point of view also brings with it a second dimension, that of the
character voice. In life every individual has their own way of expressing themselves, both inwardly and outwardly. How does that come through in
your story's prose, and in the way the story is told?

How omniscient is this narrator, and how reliable? Do we understand the motivations of the characters and report on them, or is this strictly
a reporting of events and action? Can we trust their word?

Some of the greatest fiction plays with these aspects and uses them to
create suspense or surprise, from Fight Club to The Raven Tower.

## Who is it for?

Finally, I want to round out the "who" questions by asking who this story
is for. Is this meant for young adults just dipping their toe into genre fiction or is this meant to challenge a seasoned reader's expectations?
Perhaps this is the hardest thing to codify and the answer is often not
black & white. You want your story to be enjoyed by a wide audience,
right? Give this a little thought regardless and we'll see the question in
a new light in the days ahead.
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# What

The second big question about a story is "what". There's a lot to
encompass here. We know a bit about who the story is about and
for, but, well, what happens?

## What happens?

### One sentence

This is an essential question that I like to break into 3 parts.
First, and arguably most difficult is, "What is the 1-sentence
version of your story?" Before you take the plunge and try to
answer this about what you're writing or about to write, lets play
a game. Think of a movie you love and try to summarize it in one
sentence. How about one of your favorite books? Try this a few
times or even with a friend before you turn your focus to your own
work.

When you do so, do you find it difficult because you don't know
enough of the story? Do you struggle to summarize because of some
need to perfect the sentence? Think back on the films and books of
the game and try to focus on how flexible you could be with those
descriptions and still make it work. Then, try to give yourself
the room to be vague or imperfect. Get that sentence out and write
it down. Stare at it for a minute or two. Does it "feel" right? If
not, give it some time and try again.

### What happened next?

The second way I like to think about the "What happens?" question
is to put it in the context of telling a friend. If you called up
your best friend and started explaining the events that take place
in your story how would you do it? Would you get mired in the
details right away or try to paint a beautiful scene? Not yet. In inter-personal storytelling we have a natural tendency toward
keeping alive the feeling of the narrative with tension to keep
the listener asking "what hapened next?". Try this with yourself
in the mirror, or with your pet. Try telling, not showing. Yes,
this is the opposite of how you'll eventually write, but we'll get
to that later. For now, see how far along you can narrate the
events about to take place. If you're in an initial outline, or
pantsing, don't worry about telling the whole thing or getting too
granular. Maybe tell it at a high level or focus on the beginning
scenes.

Your goal here is to try and internalize that sense of drama and
avoid stagnation on unimportant aspects. In fiction, especially
world-building fiction, there's a lot of time spent dreaming up
your reality and all the rules, groups, places, and things. In
science fiction and fantasy there is a trope known as the
info-dump that tends to happen as a result. That is where the
author presents all the basics of this universe and its rules to
the reader in a blob, often through exposition or through a proxy
character that is new to the setting. If you suspect you'll be
doing that, see if you can put it into a narrative of its own with
tension enough to get a reader asking "what happened next". If
not, perhaps there's a way to defer some of that information for
another time when it's less intrusive on the story and won't slow
your pacing.

### What's different?

The third part of the "What happens?" question is a way to
short-circuit bad writing before it can start. We know that good
characters grow and change through a story, but so does the world
they inhabit. Something happened, after all. What was the impact
of that something.

Think about your world at the very beginning of your story and the
characters in it. You might want to write a tiny bit of that
sensation down, or at least try to visualize it strongly.

Now, think about the very end of your story, after the resolution
and the last page is closed. What is the world like now? What has
changed?

If you want to go a step further you can try to do this exercise
at key moments in the story. If you're following a 3 act structure
you can do a sketch at each act. Or perhaps you want to focus in
on the moment of climax and highest tension. Knowing these key
"frames" of the story will help you work toward them, even if you
don't have details on how it'll get there just yet.

## What do you want the readers to feel?

The "what" question can also apply to the reader. What do you want
them to feel? Should they laugh? Do you want them to be lost in an
immersive world? Do you want them to feel empowered? What sort of
mixture do you want to stir up inside them?

## Is there a theme?

Along with the reader's feelings, is there a greater depth to the
story? Is this an allegory or is there an overriding theme? Or is
this a fly-by-your-pants action thrill-ride that's just there for
the popcorn? Like everything else we've covered there's no right
or wrong answer.

## Is there a moral?

Finally, what is the moral, or is there one. Should we learn
something?

That's a lot of things to consider especially if you're not
planning everything from the start. Don't feel the need to answer
every question, but try to give them each a moment of thought.
Perhaps you don't sense a moral now, but considering it may lead
you somewhere down the road.
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# Where

What in tarnation? Was I going to write another writing
encouragement? Indeed I was. So lets see what we're up to today.
Oh yes, "Where".

I'll keep this one brief. I need to get back to writing my own
stories, you know?

## Where does the story happen?

It's a basic question, but it can lead you in a lot of different
directions. On Cosmic Voyage we have stories from spacecraft of
various types. Generation ships to solo craft are at play. There's
more at play than that, however. We have stories at outposts and
on other planets. We even have at least one story from the point
of view of a consciousness stuck in interstellar space without
a ship. Neato!

The setting you choose can be as important as a character in some
stories, but not all.

## Is the setting essential or is the story timeless?

The movie Clueless (1995) is a remake of the Jane Austen novel,
Emma. In that book the setting wasn't essential to the story. The
characters, motivations, and desires drove everything along nicely
and so it was ripe for transport to a modern era.

Some stories are indistinguishable from their setting. Discworld,
for instance, is all about the setting. In fact, science fiction
tends to have more emphasis on setting as part of the genre than
other types of literary fiction. Fantasy, likewise, is often
intimately entwined with the worlds it creates.

What about your story? Is every part of the setting vital, or is
it backdrop to something more important? Will your story take
place in just one locale, or will you hop around. Thinking of Star
Trek it's easy to see how a mixture of a familiar setting (like
the Enterprise) and unfamiliar settings (like the planet of the
week) can make for interesting storytelling and give the author
a lot of choices.

## Does the location change the characters?

So why does it matter what setting you choose? How does it affect
things, most notably the characters? If you set your fantasy
adventure in a run-down merchant ship in the 1700s how does that
change your lead? What if you had her captain a modern destroyer
in the Chinese fleet?

Perhaps you're not considering such a wide shift of settings, but
try to think of some variations in your default locations and
bounce them around in your head a bit. If you were going to write
about a generation ship and the senior crew managing an
interstellar ship of thousands of people what can you change up?
Is the ship well kept or disorderly? Is the captain the original
one or has this crew been born here, perhaps generations removed
from the original? What elements of a modern city do you bring to
life in your ship? Have groups segregated either voluntarily or
through some force? Is there commerce?

This is all world-building 101 except the next part: Take a minute
with your choice and run over a few of your main cast and try to
think of how those world-building choices have formed them or made
them different in some way. Being born on ship vs first generation
may have some physical effect, but also could change the
priorities vs a planet-centric person. What are their goals and
dreams?

## Do the characters change the setting?

Then it's time to do the reverse. Settings are inhabited (mostly).
The things that live there affect the world. What are people doing
to your city? Or to your farm house in the country? What affect
does your gentleman doctor have on the sleepy hamlet he has moved
to after the war?

Characters move the plot and make waves in the settings. Let their
actions tell us about them by how the setting reacts and is
changed. It's one of the techniques to use in "show don't tell."

Good luck!
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What's that? Wasn't that guy going to send us one of these every
day? It's getting pretty late. Hmmm.

What can I say? I had a great day writing, but forgot all about
the encouragement I wanted to send out. It's 10:20pm now, so this
one is going to get written quick!

# When

The question of when is more complex than you might think. That's
mostly because stories don't necessarily find themselves
constrained by time the same wy we do. This is a good thing! It
gives us some very creative options (think Momento) and sometimes
even plot devices (think TimeCop).

## When does the story take place?

So lets start with the basics. When does your story take place? Is
it a single timeline or do you a more complex story happening in
different timelines, like in the Godfather II? Perhaps your story
has an epic sweeping scale that covers all of creation until the
death of the universe (or more!), or maybe it covers the events of
one day in great detail.

## When are we within the plot?

So that's when your story happened, but what about the plot
itself? Are we starting at the beginning or are we coming in part
way through? Is the action fully underway and we'll catch up on
the backstory as we go? This is very common and a great way to
skip past a bunch of boring setup.

## When is the story told?

If we know when the story happened and our window into it, when
are we hearing about it? Are we with the action now as it happens
or relaying it after the fact in summary and recitation. A good
example here is Moby Dick. Ishmael will tell the story as it
happened but only after the fact.

On Cosmic Voyage our system is set up to relay log messages. This
would naturally incline our stories into this aftermath
storytelling, but as you may have noticed in reading some of the
authors have found creative ways around this. My own Melchizedek
story uses a mixture of techniques such as personal log messages,
live-recorded voice transcriptions, and email messages to vary our
distance from the story as it unfolds.

## Is the story being told linearly?

What about the order of the story itself? Sometimes start to
finish is great, but other times you want to reveal things at the
right moment. Perhaps you have flashbacks or perhaps we're jumping
around from moment to moment following a theme. Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind gives a unique and powerful view of this in
action as we're jostled around a failed relationship as those
memories are erased from the main character.

## Is the story chronological?

This is a similar question, but distinct. Perhaps a story is told
linearly from start to finish, but not chronologically. It may be
that beginnings don't always happen before endings on a clock.
Believe me, if I had started writing this post earlier in the day
I had some really interesting stuff to say on this subject.
Instead I'll just leave you wondering and maybe that'll do the
trick.

## Will the narration and story happen in tandem?

Finally, another take on the 'when is the story told' question
asks about the sync-up between story and narration. Is this
happening even remotely in time as we hear it or are we getting
the tale from an old man at the inn of events that happened fifty
years earlier? Then again, perhaps there's a lot of backstory that
needs covered before we get into the here and now. Forrest Gump is
a fantastic example of that. How much do we learn from that bench
before we stand up with him and walk away from it?

Keep thinking about these different angles on your stories and
share your thoughts. Writing is fun. Be silly. Experiment. I can't
wait to read what you share.
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

# Why

As in "Why-o-why did I decide to write one of these every day of
November?"

Also, it's a nice question for your story.

## Why these characters?

Why _THESE_ characters specifically? That can be an in-story
question: "Why are these the characters that need to DO THE
THING™?" It can also be a question for you as a writer: "Why are
these the characters that you want to use to tell the story?"

Is there a better character to use in this scene or in this story
as a whole? What makes a character good or bad for it? I'd argue
that the right character choice is one that makes the story more
compelling. That means the character choice combined with your
setting and plot create some sort of drama. If you're lacking
drama, or lacking "oomph" in your scenes, maybe your character
isn't right for the action.

I recently read a very interesting fantasty novel based around the
idea that the chosen one, storied through fables and destined
through prophecy, sets off on day one of his great journey only to
catch an arrow to the chest and die. Instead, it's his childhood
friend that heads out in his place, doomed to failure from the
start.

What drama!

## Why this story?

So maybe you like your character, damnit. You don't want to change
her, but things aren't working out the way you want. Well, why
_THIS_ story? Do you have 800 pages of backstory that you love
writing to set up this tale? Why not write that story instead? Or
maybe the character is really cool but just in the wrong genre
entirely.

## Why here?

And speaking of genre, why is your story taking place _HERE_? Is
your setting adding to your drama? Is it setting the right stage?
Is it pulling its weight or did it just kind of fall in your lap?

## Why now?

Finally, why now? Why is your story being told now, or why are you
telling the story that happens in time now? Would it be more
interesting if you started a year later in the timeline? Or maybe
one hundred years prior? Or maybe you're better off telling the
story after the action is all done.

Why why why?
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

# Evocation

Now that the basic questions of story are out of the way, lets
hone in on the craft of writing itself. How you tell a story is as
important as the story contents itself. A dry telling of an
awesome moment will fall flat. A dramatic telling of a mundane
event, on the other hand…

## Show don't tell

The advice you'll hear in every Creative Writing workshop and
101-level class is "show, don't tell". It's painful to hear, and
groan-worthy to repeat, but it's absolutely the truth. Is your
character sassy and bull-headed? Well that's awesome! Don't tell
me that, though. And yes, "don't tell," includes having another
one of your characters tell us in dialogue. Instead, give your
character a scene where those qualities show up and affect the
outcome or reactions from others. If you do it well you'll never
need the words "sassy" or "bull-headed" at all.

There's a million-and-one examples of this online. If you find
yourself struggling with it, give a little web search.

## Make the characters active

Your characters should drive the story events, not just respond to
them. I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. If you
have events occuring in the world and your characters aren't
either: a) directly impacting their outcome, or b) somehow causing
them in the first place, something is wrong. Either you're telling
the wrong character's story or this isn't the story you should be
telling. Get them in there, get dirty, and change things.

A mental exercise you can take is to imagine your story if your
characters didn't exist. What happened differently? Hopefully
quite a bit! Now, zoom in. In this SCENE, what if your character
wasn't there. What happened differently? The answer should still
be quite a bit.

## Break the rules

Finally, as with any writing "rule", it's important to acknowledge
that there's good reasons to break them. Like any art, though,
don't go creating new avant garde styles before you can practice
the basics. If you're new to this, then show-don't-tell. If you've
got that down, then maybe you have the know-how to decide when
telling is okay. Here's some further reading!

https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/balancing-showing-telling/
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# Fear

Are you getting intimidated by writing? Is the blank page
overwhelming, or is it more specific? Something about your story
not adding up? Maybe you feel unqualified to the task?

Lets talk about that.

## Don't worry about it being bad

Here's a secret: everyone's first drafts are bad. Yes, everyone.
Even that guy. Sometimes they're so bad they need to be thrown
out, yes, but more often they reveal something about the story
that was impossible to see until it was all there on the page.
Then it's just the matter of a great deal of hacking, tweaking,
rewrites, and finesse before you have something solid.

Writing during nanowrimo isn't about writing a good book. It's
about writing 50,000 words. If those words are crap it really
doesn't matter. We all kind of assume they will be! Not just
yours, I mean.

If you're writing on Cosmic you might not be treating this like
a first draft of some longer work. That's also fine. This platform
doesn't exist so we can all load up publishable quality content.
It's an outlet for experimentation and expression. It's okay to
put some bad stuff up there! I certainly have.

## Don't worry about having everything figured out

Are you a perfectionist? Do you have a story that's super duper
important in your soul that needs to be conjured into reality it
its truest form so you can be like Wyld Stallyns and bring peace
to the earth? Yeah, that's also not a real thing. Let go! Even if
you are the greatest planner in the world you're not going to plan
a story into existence. Just write, and then write some more.

Here's another secret: you don't need to keep it! If you haven't
figured out how the middle of your story is going to work then
just write it and see what happens. If you don't like it, shove it
in an archive folder and try it again a different way. (Don't
delete anything! You might want to reference a really cool turn of
phrase you had in the failed chapter later on.)

On Cosmic you might want to send a log message from one of your
ships without really knowing where things are going. Normally in
a novel or short story you'd want to pull out the bits that don't
move the story along or lend themselves to the theme,
world-building, or some-such. But here on Cosmic we all benefit
from these little glimpses of your worlds, even if nothing much
happens. You lend character and credibility to the entire site and
help the other stories feel more legitimate.

So feel free to log your captain's critique of the jello in the
mess, or duty log 302. It's fine. If nothing else it will give you
a chance to speak as your characters and get to know them better.

## Don't worry about making a mistake

And finally, don't worry about screwing up. Did you say that Jim
had blonde hair in chapter one and then decide he's a lizard man
in chapter 8? Oops. In a novel that's all fixable stuff down the
road. When you're sitting back with 50,000 words or more and
re-reading you'll catch that stuff and you can flag it for
revision. That's part of the process.

But what about on Cosmic Voyage? What if you declare there's nine
people on the ship in one log and suddenly there's eleven? Well,
you can either go back and tweak the old entry (yes, you can do
that. It's okay. Just run "web" when you're done), or maybe roll
with it. Why are there suddenly two more people on a ship halfway
across the galaxy and nobody noticed? Maybe someone else on the
QEC will point it out to your crew and then…DRAMA.

Even if you don't catch it, don't be afraid of it. There's too
much going on in your story to keep it all straight in your head
all the time. That's why editors exist! You're doing great.

Now, as Dory says, "Just keep swimming."
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# Questions for your main character

Sometimes it can be helpful to write about things that aren't
a part of your story to help you get to know your characters. Here
are a few prompts to explore:

The chief problems in my relationship with my mother were...

The chief problems in my relationship with my father were...

The chief problems in my most recent relationship were...
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Linux NewsLink 1.113