Thanks for the encouragement! I just hope that my entry will fit the theme.
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My ideas all involve gore, hate and homicidal clowns, lol. So, Anything you can think sure it will better themed than mine. As I associate mischief with bullies, harassment and really triggering stuff. I canāt even think in a light theme associated with the concept as all my experiences with pranks and mischief have been based in bullies harming people and psychological abuse.
In fact, I canāt even think of a joke that is funny, as all the ones I suffered were cruel and bad.
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My goal this month is the same as my goal from last month. Work on my chapter, but donāt be too hard on myself either. Make sure Iām having fun, and writing for myself.
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I didnāt meet my goal today ā well, rather, I havenāt yet. Iām 1600 words short and I need to go run errands. Iāll be back home after midnight 
But, you know, life comes first. and I did put rest days into the schedule. Maybe Iāll be able to make it up on one of those, or maybe iāll be seized by the ghost of hemingway or something when i get home
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homicidal clownsā entire reason for existing is to cause MISCHIEF 
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How do you know the competition focuses on a narrow anything? The theme is literally ONE word.
But if it makes you feel stressed, by all means, donāt participate
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Hello everyone I hope youāre all having a good weekend. Iām writing like mad today hoping to get my chapter update today (I last updated on the 7th of February).
Iām nearly done but not sure if Iāll quite make the deadline. Iām using Pomodoro timers.
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Iāve finally come to a conclusion about what my entry will be about. Now im plotting.
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CONGRATSā¦ Now time to write like a mad person
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I didnāt make my deadline but Iām not bothered as Iām close. I wrote 28,000 words of new material in the past 28 days and Iām very happy with it. Several thousand words of notes written in the same time frame too.
I wrote my first fight romance fight today and it was a lot of fun.
My notes file on this project is 18,000 words. Thatās all the notes Iāve written on a computer over the past two years. I also have two 5x8 spiral notebooks full of notes.
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Managed to get my update out there! Proud of myself.
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I wrote 368 words today. The entire prologue. Now iām 136 words into the first chapter.
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Gah! Even with an outline of the main plot, the more I get to know my charactersā origins the more this is an endless rabbit hole. 18th Century European politics is an infinity onionā¦
A small selection of the characters that will be rooming together:
- A Polish szlatcha from Lithuania (Russian Partition) who was run out of town
- An actual Russian who doesnāt like the Pole because to the Russians Poles are subversive āproblem peopleā
- An Alasatian deserter from the Prussian Army because he feels the Legion gives him a better chance to advance
- A mƩtis with a French mother and native Algerian father - the other way around is acceptable but this is not
And thereās like a dozen more of themā¦ Help! How do you stop things from going everywhere? I havenāt written any more because I keep adding to behind-the-scenes stuff like this, stuff that still wouldnāt show up for a long time.
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I assume you are putting all this back-ground into your character sheets you are building to go along with your outline?
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If not, this is the first stepā¦ put all this into a character sheet you can then use in the future as needed. There are a bunch of templates out there, but the core function of this is to act as an āoutlineā for each notable character in your story
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Once you organize this, you keep the main plot nice and tidy by having a section in your outline that puts only the relevant info of each character for each plot-point:
For example: the motivation of the deserter belongs where in your outlineā¦ or the Metisā motherā¦ etc.
Believe me, I understand your painā¦ I have over 50 notable NPC characters in one of my projectsā¦
Here is a basic Character āSketchā for anyone needing one. Some are more complicated or go into greater details, but this is a good core to use:
Character Sketch
Character Name
Role in Story:
Occupation:
Physical Description:
Personality:
Habits/Mannerisms:
Background:
Internal Conflicts:
External Conflicts:
Notes:
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Yes, I have a document with more or less something like that detailing out their roles, backgrounds, and conflicts. The chapters are marked and planned out now and Iām using those numbers to mark their major conflict turning points. So it looks like Iām on the right track?
Plot-wise this has been easy to plan out since your group goes wherever and does whatever the top brass wants you to (go march here, defend this fort, etc.), though youāre shuffled off somewhere hundreds of miles away from civilisation and this being the 1880s the cast is isolated while theyāre off there. Thereās still a hierarchy in there, but theyāre all at the āfollowing ordersā level.
Sigh, I guess this is the difficulty of a non-historian trying to do historical fiction. I didnāt expect this to be this detailed - itās like I started trying to emulate the romanticism of Beau Geste, and what itās turning into now is a deep dive into some seriously messed up history over a month of reading articles and trying to figure out everyoneās backgrounds and how theyād interact with those different nationalities. Iām starting doubt that Iām skilled enough to pull off all these.
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That sounds rough. Regardless, I do think reading up about this history - which is what youāre doing - is an excellent strategy to gain a better idea of life during that era. Skill will likely increase as you become more knowledgeable about this historical setting, and as you write more about it too. Further, if you already have your chapters planned out, thatās a big plus as well!
In other news, Iām at about 8k words into my prologue. Still unpolished, and a lot more writing to do, but I think Iāve reached the 50% mark.
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I experience the same as I do on-the-fly research on ancient Chinese culture. Not only do I learn things I never knew before (since Iām not history/literature buff), Iām learning new things that many people have never known before due to newly discovered (and ongoing) archaeological findings! Many things are so obscure there arenāt even official translations in Englishā¦ 
And every so often I have to do search & replace on old terms/concepts that are wrong/improper (ie. candles were expensive, cheap paper has not yet been mass produced) for what I have written, or if itās too extensive (ie. more people wearing trousers), I have to be okay with hand-waving them and accept it as fictionā¦ 
The silver lining is we will at least be more āknowledgeableā even if we donāt ever finish the projectā¦ 
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Iāve been dealing with a big pile of Life Stuffā¢ and Iām not gonna lie, thereās still a lot more of that on the horizon. But Iām still here, and still plugging stubbornly along on my 3 WIPs.
Marchās (optimistic) goals:
- Finish chapter 2 of The Flower of Fairmont and return to the chapter 3 outline.
- Add/edit two scenes in Turncoat Chronicle chapter 3, in response to beta feedback.
- My novel draft from November is on ice, but I do need to decide whether to do Camp NaNo this year or not (April or July, usually).
- Secret writing goal.
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I wouldnāt stress it. Finding your way tends to be process of elimination. @armadillidium
In one sense, writing is infinitely more about what you donāt write. Each word you type is not any of the many other words there are. If you truly want to narrow, you have omit everything that isnāt a part of the story you want to tell lest you detract by addition. However, I sense that you like word building. Maybe you should do the opposite of narrowing and take that to the point of exhaustion. Then, when you have a lore-rich fully and realized world, you can decide which narrow keyhole glimpse you want to show us.
In science fiction, the world is often the main character. Historical fiction is science fiction, only the sciences are social, like archaeology and anthropology, rather than natural or physical, like chemistry or physics. Anyway, science fiction āworldbuildersā often pair with a āstorytellerā writing partner who has a firmer grasp of plot and character. The best-selling āExpanseā series, which is the basis of the Amazon series, was written this way. Ty Franck developed the world for a tabletop game, I believe. Daniel Abraham, an established fantasy novelist at the time, asked to collaborate. Now, theyāre rich and widely read.
Hang in there.
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Well- I feel like banging my head against the wall. So, things are going swimmingly in the writing department! 
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