Recent content by Ned Marcus

Inventing a language is interesting, but it seems like a lot of work. I think it took Tolkien a lifetime, to develop his languages. For me, it takes enough time just to learn a couple of existing ones. Still, let us know how this develops.

I thought my current 10-month hiatus was long, but 20 and 30 years! How are you both (pmmg and ThinkerX) getting back into the stories again? After 10 months, I've had to slowly reread everything (I was about one third of the way through the novel) editing as I've been going along. Actually...

We could always turn this NaNoWriMo section of the forum into a November Novel Writing section and have our own writing event here.

Accusations are not proof. That's true. But for many people, their aggressive endorsement of AI-generated fiction is enough reason to abandon them.

If true, it's really bad. Perhaps they are finished.

What things?

The controversy was that they decided that AI-generated stories were to be included in NaNoWriMo, and when people complained, they accused them of being ableist and classist. One senior executive left; others have withdrawn their support. Since then, they've tried to walk it back a little bit.

Accepting AI entries makes reaching 50,000 words easier. But it seems to devalue NaNoWriMo. They've lost many people over this.

Me too. I'm still learning English, and it's my native language. I think learning languages is a way of life.

Main side characters I develop in the way I would the protagonist, but with less depth. I give lesser side characters a verb to describe their main orientation and then just write.

I'm from the north but in the mountains in Taiwan now. Welcome!

I still live in Taiwan. In the hills outside Taipei. It's not just the high-speed rail that has announcements in the four languages, the MRT does the same. It's a good way to practice!

Yes, Yunnan does have a crazy number of languages. Some interesting ones.

What is her home region? Which province or city? If you know that, you should be able to find out the name of her third language, or at least narrow it down.

English is my first language. I understand and speak Mandarin at a conversational level. I'm relearning Spanish. I can understand the Stargate episodes I've watched in Spanish (more or less) but my speaking needs practice. Apart from that, just collections of words and phrases in French and...