It's not so much the names for me as it is the people. I'm trying to develop sentient life that isn't human - or humans plus pointy ears and tails or elves or any other staple fantasy race. Other humans on the planet - and even some of the other sentient creatures - I can manage. But these people are eluding me, so I'm trying to go in-depth with their thoughts and the way they develop concepts. I can't really wing it there, since they're masterminding the plot and at least two of them will be major characters.

Thus, make the language or I'll regret it later. I'm already running into major problems with a story I wrote when I was 14, since I changed things to make them less stupid and there are large holes in the plot and setting. I'd rather not do that again.

@hugbug993: Same! The main race in my story are amphibious so they're very different to us and the language is very simple so far, they have only 35 characters/glyphs and they have their own basic meanings and are put together to make words, but it's hard. I want to try and make some more characters/glyphs and start again but the way they are drawn it's not as simple as just adding another.
I have a couple ideas for sentence structuring (obviously they'll just speak normal in the sorry but i want to make a basic working language to create things like idioms)

@SuperSimoholic
It's waaaaay too generic. You might have a great story in mind, but as Mammal said that line doesn't tell us anything about what makes your story unique. Nor does it say anything about the stakes or conflict.

I'm working from the way it's spoken instead of the alphabet. Maybe that's easier, since you know how they need to sound from the race's perception. For instance, the word for "cold" is very harsh-sounding, but "hot" sounds nice. They don't like the cold, since they developed in a time when the planet was warmer and they mostly stick to the warm parts of the world - the equator, deserts, above active volcanoes, underground near lava streams. Room temperature feels like a fridge to them, so when something's cold for humans, they're freezing. Their word for blizzard is a vicious cuss word that roughly translates to FUBAR. In fact, throwing ice at someone - or putting it down their robes - is pretty much begging to get attacked. Saying that you "ice" someone means that you regret that they exist and would like to rectify the situation. "Hail", on the other hand, just means that you dislike them.

It may be stopping me from writing, but it's actually pretty fun.

I don't take any of it unkindly! Quite the opposite, I'm very grateful for the help!

I see what you mean about it not really revealing anything. I can get rid of the "in another world" because to her it's simply home, it's just not earth. It's not an alien planet either really, it's just and all round different reality.
I'll also change young girl to young woman, but she's not entirely of age just yet and to me young woman sounds like 20ish, she's more along the lines of 14/15 (or the equivalent in her race) perhaps just "a girl"? And add a descriptive word, not sure what yet though.

In that case, how about:

A chosen teen must master strange magics on her quest to join the gods.

Or something along those lines.

I'm with hugbug993; teen is absolutely the way to go. That was what I thought when I read your explanation above, too.
Two nice things about his/her sentence: the pronoun tells you the teen is female (therefore doesn't require 'teenage girl') and the bits about strange magics and quest to join the gods tell me I'm probably dealing with fantasy and not sci-fi or something else. I had no idea of your genre with your original sentence.

She has always dreamed of using magic and is willing to give up everything to use it. She never tried before because there was no reason to change anything, she had her life planned out for her, she was going to be an alchemist and probably mate with handsome man (or two or three... Their race has low female birth rates and most women take multiple partners. my character has siblings but they are with their own fathers. None of them have interest in magic.) But with this calling she realised it's her only chance to use it. She does it less for the prize of being a god and more for the chance to feel magic. The test isn't do or die, she could have gone her whole life ignoring the dream with no adverse affects to her, but the dangers in choosing to take up the challenge are in learning the magic to begin with, followed by the things they have to get past to further develop their magic. If they fail, they aren't automatically put to death, it just depends on how badly they fail, if they do something very wrong they could just die. Once she has enough magic skill and finds where the gods live/hide the tasks they give her after that will pretty much be do or die because of how dangerous they are but I don't know if she'll be told about those tasks in the first dream (so she knows what to prepare for) or if they'll just tell her to get as strong as possible first.

-She is willing to give up everything to use magic.

-She never tried before because there was no reason to.

That...seems a little contradictory to me. If she would do the things in the tasks - leave behind her life, face death, give up her mortality/humanity - to feel magic, then why not do it before receiving the call? If she's so content in her life that there's no need to change anything, then why change things because of the call? If she's afraid of getting executed like her mother, then why perform the tasks and risk death?

What if she had already learned magic? What if she were so determined that she learned it illegally - she's an alchemist, so she can make the potion, right? - and practiced it in secret? Then she's already demonstrated her desire to learn and willingness to face death.
However, because of her mother, she's always watched. It's difficult to practice or learn more. So when the quest comes, she's hungry to discover more, to strengthen herself. This is the one chance she has to exit the shadows and be what she is without fear. And thus, she takes it.

That;s what my take would be, anyway.

SuperSimoholic, it looks like your story is really coming together between you, hugbug and darthesp. It sounds really good. Use those placeholders and write it!

Well, I'm about an hour and a half in, and I've got 800 words. (Not counting quick revisions). Seems like a good start to me.

I'm not gonna bother with a word count just because I'm sure I"m gonna keep writing this even after November. I'm pretty much just using this month as an excuse to get started XD

I'm NaNo-ing too. It's my first time as an adult, I've participated in YWP the past three years, so first time writing 50000 words. I haven't written a single one yet, and I'm not really sure what the plot of the novel actually is. It's gonna be exciting.

The prologue is finished at 1268 words! Well, does it count as a prologue if it's at the end of the story? Never mind.

It's probably okay to use sims, since you're not making any money off of it.

Well, if it's at the end if the story then it's an epilogue!

I'm telling it out of order. The framing story is that the main character wrote a letter to her mom, which she's reading after the main plot happened. So I'm telling it through the letter, the mom's thoughts, and the normal narrative. So it's at the end of the plot, but the beginning of the story. Sort of.

I'm confused now.

ETA: if anyone wants a writing buddy, my username on the site is [email protected]. I meant to do just the first part, but my autocorrect struck again.

I've heard of it, but as I'm too flighty (read: lazy) to focus on such a huge task, I've never bothered to try. My forte is in short stories or episodic parts.

Well, I missed a couple of days because of a storm, but I'm nearly back on track. How are everyone else's projects going?

I've been procrastinating and working on the language which isn't really needed at all :/

I've also been wondering if I should change the story, based in the same world, maybe even the same character but with a different storyline. I found some old text files that have like a "creation" story that I completely forgot about, and it's better than what I've got now, but the whole "become a god" thing doesn't fit in with the new (or rather, old) pantheon.

With week 1 of NaNo under our belts, how is everyone doing so far? I got severely behind this week and just wrote a butt load of story by forsaking sleep (it's currently 4:26am my time). It put me up to 10,379. If you're word count is just a scratch or if you haven't begun at all, the first week is one of the easiest weeks to make up. The excitement of a new story will drive you if you kick your inner editor/doubter out of your head and let the story flow--flaws, bad writing, warts and all. Remember, this is a 1st (or 2nd) draft. You're not about to publish so it doesn't need to be perfect or even any good. Just get the story out! If u need/want a writing buddy I'm: arnis1

@hugbug993 Glad your getting back on track. Nature does not understand!

@SuperSimoholic Go with the story you're more passionate about. A good creation myth is not the same as a good plot. Which story line is more fleshed out and has more that you can write about? Also consider fusing the two story lines together. Maybe have two main characters with their own POVs. One of them might have the truth while the other is following a lie and it's not until they get to the gods that they (we) find out which is which and what consequences this brings. Multiple POV is fun as you can simply go to the other character when you run out of ideas for the first one or get tired of writing them! It's like jumping into a fresh story even though it's the same story!

I'm out for the count on this one. Time issues mainly. It's a bit meh, especially since I also missed the 24 hour comic challenge, but there's always next year I guess.

Good luck to all of y'all! May the creative spirits be with you. :pint:

There is a forum for "NaNo Rebels" where everyone not writing novels gathers during Nano. This includes those writing scripts, non-fiction and, yes, short stories. I've actually done a Nano where I wrote 4 or 5 short stories each averaging about 7-15k. Ultimately, Nano can be used for a draft of anything that uses words. So, an episodic story for a blog, sims story, graphic novel or whatnot would also work, but you would need to be able to put a good chunk of story down in November. That said, you would have to set aside laziness which is the greatest battle of all! My brain keeps reminding me of all the Netflix I could be watching! And still I wish I could get paid to sleep because I do it so well. Anyway, thought I'd let you know so if you ever have a bunch of short stories in your head around October/November, you can still do NaNo! (if you want )

Thanks for the info, my blog is where I stuff all my short writing for the moment, and it just so happens that I'll have some posts throughout November's weekends. Keep your eyes peeled.

The laziness I have only applies to long projects like full novels, so there.

I like selective laziness! What is your blog called?

It's Avalina Francesca's*, and you can check it out in my sig. I don't just blog about sims, but that's my current project.

*My real name is neither of those, but it sounds pretty similar to Avalina.