If I want to have any chance of being able to achieve the nanowrimo word count of 50,000 then I had best get started soon. I still haven't written anything for it. If I had been writing every day then I would have had to average 1666 words a day but if I start now then I will have to average a nice round 2,000 words a day. I have decided to go with the spark thing and I will start it today. Right now I will work with the following general outline of the story order.
1. scene featuring the antagonists performing some sort of misdeed and foreshadowing the danger to our hero (~8 pgs)
2. ordinary life of our hero (~15 pgs)
2.3 include information of area of study of protagonist
2.5 subpoint in normal life introduce hero romance interest
3. botched assassination/kidnapping attempt on protagonist (~4 pgs)
4. introuduce the good guys (may or may not have helped prevent #3) (~5 pgs)
5. flight and hiding (~15 pgs)
6. betrayal or failure of some sort (~8 pgs)
7. secondary flight (~5 pgs)
8. capture of either protagonist or love interest (~2 pgs)
9. Revelation of betrayers identity (~2 pgs)
9. confrontation of main protagonist with a powerful villain ending in failure for protagonist (~5 pgs)
10. horrible fate averted/ redemption of betrayer (~3 pgs)
11. Escape (~2 pgs)
All in all that should carry me to the 50,000 mark and a bit beyond hopefully it won't be total crap. Ok I have wasted enough time not writing it I had better start.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Saturday, November 3, 2007
nanowrimo
So november is national novel writing month and I am definitely going to make it to the 50,000 word count this month... even though I haven't started yet and actually probably have even less time to do it than I have had other times. I still haven't decided what kind of book it is going to be. I was thinking either science fiction or fantasy if it was going to be a science fiction I was going to do some sort of story about a set of superhuman genetically engineered creatures who are essentially immortal and each of which has a very different view on the prospect of being immortal. That may sound a bit fuzzy and that is because it is a bit fuzzy I'm not really sure where to go with that one.
On the other hand if it was going to be a fantasy story I think I would do something rather similar to the backstory of my current dnd character which runs something like this. There is a powerful mage who is collecting the memories of people from accross the planes of existence and our hero is earmarked to have his memories consumed by this being and he would rather like to avoid it. It could be fun to write but just exactly how our hero defeats the godlike magus is not clear to me but that is ok... I don't have to end the story I only need to drag the story out to 50,000 words.
Lastly though I have been thinking about a story that is more of the sci-fi/fantasy mix thing it would be set in a modern day setting (maybe a few years in the future for fun) and the main character would be a skeptical physicist (yes I know it is tacky to base ones main character on ones self but he isn't me he would just be posessed of certain qualities of me and how else can a writer work but to put bits of themselves on the page?) This physicist would be relatively ordinary except he would happen to have a soul. It would not be called a soul in the book it would be called something more subtle like a "spark" and then be immediately likened to a soul something that is the essence of the person who has it. In the context of the story the idea is that not everyone has a soul or rather not everyone has a "spark". The book wouldn't make it clear what the nature of this spark object was there would be multiple groups with different theories about it. There would be a religious group who believe the spark is the physical manifestation of the soul and that those people who have the spark are something akin to a godly army on earth. But there would also be more secular groups who would simply be researching the properties of this relativley newly discovered "spark" of course our hero much more readily takes to the idea that this spark can be explained with the sciences of the day. At any rate the plot of the story runs something like this sparks give super powers to people who have them and there is something very unusual about our hero's spark that makes him very desirable to a large number of groups the good guys get to him first but then he is on the run and has to find out what is going etc.
if you feel like it you could post comments on the story ideas I rather think I won't have anything set in stone for the next couple of days.
On the other hand if it was going to be a fantasy story I think I would do something rather similar to the backstory of my current dnd character which runs something like this. There is a powerful mage who is collecting the memories of people from accross the planes of existence and our hero is earmarked to have his memories consumed by this being and he would rather like to avoid it. It could be fun to write but just exactly how our hero defeats the godlike magus is not clear to me but that is ok... I don't have to end the story I only need to drag the story out to 50,000 words.
Lastly though I have been thinking about a story that is more of the sci-fi/fantasy mix thing it would be set in a modern day setting (maybe a few years in the future for fun) and the main character would be a skeptical physicist (yes I know it is tacky to base ones main character on ones self but he isn't me he would just be posessed of certain qualities of me and how else can a writer work but to put bits of themselves on the page?) This physicist would be relatively ordinary except he would happen to have a soul. It would not be called a soul in the book it would be called something more subtle like a "spark" and then be immediately likened to a soul something that is the essence of the person who has it. In the context of the story the idea is that not everyone has a soul or rather not everyone has a "spark". The book wouldn't make it clear what the nature of this spark object was there would be multiple groups with different theories about it. There would be a religious group who believe the spark is the physical manifestation of the soul and that those people who have the spark are something akin to a godly army on earth. But there would also be more secular groups who would simply be researching the properties of this relativley newly discovered "spark" of course our hero much more readily takes to the idea that this spark can be explained with the sciences of the day. At any rate the plot of the story runs something like this sparks give super powers to people who have them and there is something very unusual about our hero's spark that makes him very desirable to a large number of groups the good guys get to him first but then he is on the run and has to find out what is going etc.
if you feel like it you could post comments on the story ideas I rather think I won't have anything set in stone for the next couple of days.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
odd perfects
I did a research project a while ago on Odd perfect numbers (as in they actually paid me to do original research. Turns out my research wasn't so very original basically everything I thought up has been thought up before. While they aren't actually paying me for it anymore I have been continually trying to figure out some sort of novel approach to the problem. Today I was thinking about odd perfects instead of working on my electronics homework and the following equation found its way onto my page,
ln(2) = sum(ln(Pi-(1/Pi)ai)-ln(Pi-1))
Which is actually a rather unremarkable equation since in the end it ultimately says something rather akin to the sum of the reciprocals of the divisors of the OPN is equal to 2. The reason putting this equation together so intrigues me is that it brings up a question of how difficult it can be to determine whether or not a given equation has any solutions at all. This more complicated equation made me realize that I don't even know when the equation sum(1/xi)=c has solutions. What series of reciprocals can I add together to get 5? does there exist any set of reciprocals that will give me 5? Without having even begun to think about proving it I think that any rational number can be expressed in terms of a sum of reciprocals of different integers. After all the sum of the reciprocals diverges so there is no number too large to be approximated by them and they converge to zero so there is no number that they would skip over so to speak. Of course that isn't a proof and there very well may be some sort of bizarre number that cannot be written as a sum of reciprocals for some strange reason just like there are ratios of quantities that can't be written as the ratio of two integers (the ratio of the diagonal of a square to its side being the famous one of course). Assuming for the moment that we can express any rational number as a sum of reciprocals of integers then the natural question arises is there more than one way to do it? I know that 1/2 + 1/3 = 5/6 but can I break 5/6 into a combination of the reciprocals of any other two or more numbers? Furthermore how does one go about finding out how many reciprocals is the minimum necessary to compose some number? How many reciprocals does it take to add up to 19/3? or can you at all?
ln(2) = sum(ln(Pi-(1/Pi)ai)-ln(Pi-1))
Which is actually a rather unremarkable equation since in the end it ultimately says something rather akin to the sum of the reciprocals of the divisors of the OPN is equal to 2. The reason putting this equation together so intrigues me is that it brings up a question of how difficult it can be to determine whether or not a given equation has any solutions at all. This more complicated equation made me realize that I don't even know when the equation sum(1/xi)=c has solutions. What series of reciprocals can I add together to get 5? does there exist any set of reciprocals that will give me 5? Without having even begun to think about proving it I think that any rational number can be expressed in terms of a sum of reciprocals of different integers. After all the sum of the reciprocals diverges so there is no number too large to be approximated by them and they converge to zero so there is no number that they would skip over so to speak. Of course that isn't a proof and there very well may be some sort of bizarre number that cannot be written as a sum of reciprocals for some strange reason just like there are ratios of quantities that can't be written as the ratio of two integers (the ratio of the diagonal of a square to its side being the famous one of course). Assuming for the moment that we can express any rational number as a sum of reciprocals of integers then the natural question arises is there more than one way to do it? I know that 1/2 + 1/3 = 5/6 but can I break 5/6 into a combination of the reciprocals of any other two or more numbers? Furthermore how does one go about finding out how many reciprocals is the minimum necessary to compose some number? How many reciprocals does it take to add up to 19/3? or can you at all?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)