Ooooh yes! I love that one! The music’s beautiful. (ღ˘ᴗ˘ღ) 
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63k and chapter 32…I’m not very happy with how these chapters are turning out, editing will be a pain, but…at least…I’m moving forward 
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These are great but I tend to write right through the breaks! I have two ‘rainy night coffee shop ambient jazz’ loops I used when I did nano 4 years ago and they’ve been carrying me through this one too.
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That makes sense actually. By the time you get to a break you’re often in a writing flow, so why bother to stop? ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯
Oooh, are the jazz ones on YouTube? If so, link them! We can all check out one another’s playlists. (*＾-‘) 乃
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These are my favorite two. The creator has a playlist of all of their coffee shop stuff but I normally just go back to the first once since they’re so long.
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Very nice! Good music and I love the rain. Chef’s kiss! ( ˘ ³˘)
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The hamster man can wait, he’s being too slow with the word count 
He must hibernate 
He can come back in 8 days!
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Current word count for the month sits at around 4k, as expected starting a new fulltime job has sapped much of my creative energy 
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Everyone’s been doing so well 
I came on here, finally, feeling like I can talk about this.
So, I’ve been doing a bunch of experiments for this challenge. Read each one if you’re interested.
1: Write a main character who keeps to himself.
Atticus is comfortable around his friends and family and will joke around with them, but he becomes quiet around other people. He’s not outwardly or inwardly expressive either. Mainly because he can’t get angry because it will trigger his cursed fire magick to come out and burn him and others around him (a lot of my MCs have been very emotional and chaotic, so I wanted to see if I could still write a good character who doesn’t always get to be emotional, or who isn’t immediately chaotic).
He has, as a result, gotten extremely good at calming himself, and then breaking down his anger or sadness to understand it, and even figuring out how to forgive people.
2: Have a secondary character who is the opposite of MC.
Atticus’ BFF Davius is outgoing, chatty, and expressive, but he’s also going through his own emotional journey behind the scenes (a lot of my secondary characters were either ones that have only met MC later in the story, and/or are already emotionally mature).
I’ve had to think about Davius’ journey because it comes out in his actions towards Atticus later in the book. But I have to write it in a way that readers might guess what’s up, but Atticus won’t understand. Because unlike Davius, Atticus is rather focused on himself and his own problems.
3: They barely travel.
Most of my stories feature some long traveling sequence. I love building the world that way, and so I use my characters to explore the world. But for Project Scorch, I decided to really focus on one location at a time. The majority of Project Scorch takes place in Calidus City, which is the main city that Atticus lives in. Even if he leaves the city, he doesn’t leave the Empire.
(I figured, since the Empire is huge, Atticus and friends could travel for days and days and not leave the Empire, so it makes sense to just focus on a few locations in the Empire instead of trying to go outside of it)
4: Write about a world that used to have magick.
I have one story that doesn’t have magick, but a majority of my stories have magick in some form or other. I thought it would be interesting to write about a world that still has some magical things but most of it has been purged from the land. Inspiration comes from witch hunts.
I watched an interesting documentary about how witch hunts started in Germany (people who did magical things weren’t feared in the beginning), and it inspired me to figure out a fantasy world that used to love magick and now suddenly fear it to the point of wanting to get rid of it.
5: Be a little more aware of realism.
When I pants a fantasy story, I’m not really thinking about how many days it’ll take MC to go from A to B, or what kind of food is natural to be growing there, or what kind of clothes people wear or the jobs people have. I either ignore it altogether or make it up as I go.
But for this story, I decided to be a little more aware of realism. I look at the map I made in Inkarnate. Then I’d think: “If they live here, how long would it take them to go here…realistically speaking. Could they get there in half a day, mess around a bit, and then return in that same day? Maybe…?”
Also looked up Roman Empire for Empire inspiration and decided on the clothes people would wear depending on their class, and thought more about architecture and level of technology. Also came up with a little religion, a little history, and some fake beliefs and folklore.
For a pantser, I usually just kind of wing it and hope I remember my details. But this time I’m keeping notes as I write.
With these experiments, I noticed a few things about myself.
I want to write traveling fantasy epic adventure stories real bad. Allowing myself to include fantasy species like nymphs and strange orc-like creatures isn’t fantasy enough, apparently. I need magick springing from hands or staffs, and I need someone to be traveling great distances. I need the scenery to change. I need sprawling landscapes.
I also need much more chaos. Atticus having to hide out or being kind of a careful kid isn’t working. I need him to hurry up and become more daring, and he does. It’s just not this story 
He’s still in his shell here.
I feel like I could make this story more foreboding. There’s this sleeping evil beast lore I figured out yesterday. None of the people know it’s sleeping. They think it’s dead.
Maybe there’s signs that it’s sleeping but no one knows these signs link to the beast? Maybe I could put that in? But… this is the first draft. All first drafts have some sucky parts I just need to focus on getting it DONE right now.
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If anyone in here has
defeated their word dragon
and wants some social media swag to display that
Let me know
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I’m in a similar boat right now 
I referenced an African expedition at the beginning of the story, which was going to be just a random thing I threw in, but it ended up being pivotal to the murder part…I’ve been vague about where in Africa, but I kind of had Algeria in the back of my mind (it was a French colony in the 1890s and most of my story takes place in France).
and last night, as I was trying to sleep, I had a revelation that the expedition wasn’t random, it had a very specific (and secret) purpose and now I’m gonna have to sprinkle hints about it 
I’m currently at 65k, beginning chapter 33, but my finish line keeps moving my outline now stretches to 39 chapters.
I was thinking about this, and I realised I do lots of travelling, too, though usually without magick 
there’s just something about characters going places that leads to lots of juciy drama!
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my problem is that I have too many characters, ergo too many subplots…it all ties up together, but it’s exhausting to keep track of. I don’t even know if I can cut any out, because they do serve the plot in one way or another, and I’m laying the groundwork for the next book in the series, but yeah. it’s a tough one
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Oh no a revelation! That’s what you get for putting in random things. But, ooooh, sounds interesting!
Speaking of random, I have to now remind myself that it’s snowing in Aralic Empire because I randomly added in a first snowfall scene.
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I’m so proud of us; we’re all doing great! Kudos, everyone! (*＾-‘) 乃
I’m having the same problem. My characters travel by horse and carriage, so they really shouldn’t arrive as quickly as they do for the distances they’re traveling. I need to correct that in the next draft! (♯^.^ღ)
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This story is really weird but I kinda dig it.
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Honestly, that’s a whole mood
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Just had “First Thanksgiving” today. Am at 26,888(-975) words, out of 30K, but haven’t written today–and am debating writing today at all.
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That’s an interesting spike on the 9th
And heeeyyy, you’re getting there!
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Same here XD
I doubt my characters can take a day trip by horse and carriage for the location they went 
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